A SOQAL HISTORY OF
\ translated from the Frehch;.by;;f '
A
%^;;'^
:
\ ROBERT BALDICK-
,-
v^:jj^||;;.
;
This brilliantly imaginative and seminal book offers an fntire! of manners. It tells '-K(^^esjfe new contribution to the hijstory
man's notions abopt chilidhood and family
and developed from the Middle Ages
life
to
have
modern
cjferigeij tintes.
· .~
The The Times Times Literllf'Y Literary SUPPl.em!mt (London), Supplement (London),
reviewing the French French edition of Centuries edition of Centuries of reviewing the of Childhood Childhood in in 1960, called it it "a "a most most valuable valuable 1960, called and and important contribution ... its its insights important contribution... insights open new doors for intellectual excitement new doors for intellectual excitement open and and curiosity." curiosity." The theme book is theme of of this this extraordinary extraordinary book is the of the modem conception the emergence of the modern of emergence conception of family life and and the the modem modern image of the the nanafamily life image of ture of childhood ture of of children. children. The discovery discovery of childhood as of life, M. Aries shows, a distinct as a distinct phase of Aries is life, shows, is phase aa recent recent event. event. Until Until the the end end of of the the Middle Middle Ages, the child child was, almost as as soon soon as he was as he was was, almost Ages, the weaned, as a small adult, who minas a small minweaned, regarded adult, regarded gled, and played with worked, and gled, competed, competed, worked, played with mature mature adults. adults. Only did parents Only gradually gradually did parents begin of adults to encourage the separation begin to encourage the separation of adults and children, and a new family attitude, and a orichildren, family attitude, oriented ented around around the the child child and and his his education, education, appeared. appeared. M. Aries Aries traces traces this this metamorphosis through metamorphosis through the paintings the and diaries of four diaries of four centuries, the centuries, the paintings ~nd history of of games games and and skills, skills, and and the the developdevelophistory of schools schools and their curricula. curricula. Ironiment of and their Ironically, he finds that individualism, far from from he finds that individualism, far cally, triumphing in our time, has been held in in our has been held in time, triumphing check check by by the the family family and and that that the the increasing increasing power of of the the tightly tightly knit knit family family circle circle has has power been been gained gained at at the the expense expense of of the the open, open, richrichtextured communal society society of of earlier earlier times. times. textured But But if if the the emphasis emphasis on on the the child child and and the the home has has meant meant aa loss loss of of social social diversity, diversity, itit has has also also a provided a means for to escape the unmeans for men to the unprovided escape bearable bearable solitude solitude of of modern modem life. life. Though Centuries Centuries of of Childhood Childhood deals deals pripriThough marily with with the the family, family, the the child, child, and and the the marily school school in in pre-nineteenth-century pre-nineteenth-century France France and and England, itit isis undoubtedly undoubtedly destined destined to to have have England, (continued on on back backflap) fl4p) (continued JACKET DESIGN DESIGN BY BY ANITA ANITA KARL KARL JACKET
11/62 11/62
CENTURIES OF OF CHILDHOOD CHILDHOOD CENTURIES
;-AT
311974
o:,r
\
PHILIPPE ARIES
0F CENTURIES OF
CHILDHOOD Social History History of of A Social Family Life Life Family Translated from from the the French French by by ROBERT BALDICK
Translated
New Alfred A. A. Knopf York: Alfred New York: Knopf 62 19 1962
Translated from from the the French French Translated la Ilk familiak sous SfJUJ Vancien I'andm la
L'Et!fant et tt L'Enfant
viefamiliale
,.gime
regime
© 1960 1960 by ~ Librairie Librairie Plon, PIon, Paris Paris English version (S) 1962 1962 by by Jonathan Jonathan Cape Cape Ltd Ltd English version
PRINTIID PRINTED IN BRITAIN IN CRIIAT GREAT BIUTAiN
39':<'.3
A b 9c.
CONTENTS
99
mITRODUCTION INTRODUCTION
CHILDHOOD
PART ONE: THE IDEA OF CHILDHOOD I I o H m ra IV IV V
LIFE THE AGES OF LIFE THE DISCOVERY OF CHILDHOOD
IS 15 33 33
SO CHILDREN'S DRESS 50 mSTORY OF GAMES AND PASTIMES 62 A MODEST CONTRIBUTION TO THE HISTORY 100 IOO FROM IMMODESTY TO INNOCENCE CONCLUSION: THE TWO CONCEPTS OF CHILDHOOD 128 128 PART TWO:
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
MEDIEVAL SCHOLARS YOUNG AND OLD A NEW INSTITUTION: THE COLLEGE
137 137
01 III
THE ORIGINS OF THE SCHOOL CLASS
IV
THE PUPIL'S AGE THE PROGRESS OF DISCIPLINE FROM DAY-SCHOOL TO BOARDING-SCHOOL THE''LITTLE LITTLE SCHOOLS' THE THE ROUGHNESS OF SCHOOLCHILDREN CONCLUSION: SCHOOL AND THE DURATION OF cmLDHOOD CHILDHOOD
176 176 89 1 l8p
II II n
V VI VI VII vii V1ll VIH
ISS 155
241 241
269 269 286 I S 3315
329 329
PART THREE: THE FAMILY II II II
PICTURES OF THE FAMILY CONCLUSION: THE FAMILY AND SOCIABILITY
339 365 365 405 405
CONCLUSION
4II 411
NOTES
19 4419
INDEX
441
FROM THE MEDIEVAL FAMILY TO THE MODERN FAMILY
ILLUSTRATIONS THE CHILDREN OF HENRI-LOUIS HENRI-LOUIS HABERT DE MONTMORT
by Philippe Philippe de Reims Museum. Museum. (Photo de Champaigne, Bulloz.) (Photo Bulloz.) Champaigne, Reims by C£ Part I, Chap. III. Analysed by B. Dorival in the Catalogue Catalogue B. III. Dorival in the Cf. Part I, Chap. Analysed by of Philippe de Champaigne Exhibition Exhibition at at the the Orangerie, de Champaigne of the the Philippe Orangerie, Paris, 1952, No. 33 facing page page 64 No. Paris, 64 1952, 33 facing THE DUG DUC D'ANJOU D'ANJOU:AS AS A CIDLD CHILD by Arnoult. Cf. Part I, Chap. Part Arnoult. Cf. I, Chap. by
III, and 3 n. 3 and n.
65 65
Ill,
THIEVES THE THIEVES
by thieving beggar-boys beggar-boys Callot. Typical Typical thieving by Caliot.
65 65
BURGOMASTER MAYER AND HIS IDS FAMILY
by Holbein, Dresden. (Photo Alinari-Giraudon.) C£ Part I, Cf. Part Holbein, Dresden. by (Photo Alinari-Giraudon.) Chap. III; Part III, Chap. I, and n. 14 and n. Part III, Ill; 14 Chap. Chap. I,
I,
96 96
A GAME OF CHUCKS
by S. Leclerc, from figures contenant tous les les jeux, 1587. contenant tons from Trente-six Trente-six figures S. Leclerc, jeux, 1587. by C£ III, and n. 18; and Chap. IV and and n. Part I, IV Cf. Part I, Chap. HI, 18; Chap. Chap. IDS CHILD THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS by Lagniei, from Les Proverbes. Proverbes. Note Note the the from Les by Lagniet,
97 97
little playpen playpen supporting supporting
little
97 97
the child the child THE VAN BERGHEM FAMILY, FAMILY, 1561 1561
by F. Floris. (Photo Bulloz.) Cf. Cf. Part I, Chap. Chap. IV; IV; Part Part III, Part I, F. Floris. III, (Photo Bulloz.) by Chap. I, and 23. Typical portrait showing a little and n. n. 23. little family portrait showing a Chap. I, Typical family 160 concert during dessert dessert 160 concert during THE TAVERN
by Lagniet. Lagniet. Little children are to be be seen here too, too, despite the evil Little children are to seen here evil by despite the haunts. C£ Part III, II, and and n. reputation of n. 47 of these these haunts. Cf. Part III, Chap. 47 reputation Chap. II,
161 161
AN EVENING BY THE FIRE FIRE
by treated as as aa scene Stella. An allegory scene of family life. family life. by Stella. (winter) treated allegory (winter) III, Chap. I, and n. 31 Cf. Part Cf. Part III, Chap. I, and n. 31
161
THE WEDDING PROCESSION Stella. C£ Cf. Part by III, Chap. and n. n. Part III, by Stella. Chap. I, and I,
40 40
192 192
GRACE
by Stradan. many such pictures dating dating from the sevenStradan. One of many such pictures the sevenby a teenth century, child III, Chap. teenth century, showing a child saying grace. Cf. Part Cf. Part I III, Chap. I showing saying grace.
192 192
ILLUSTR4'fIONS ILLUSTRATIONS
77
BLIND BUFF and BLIND MAN'S BUFF and THE PAPER PAPER GAME
from Les Les Heures Heures de fa Duchesse Duchesse de de Bourgogne, Bourgogne, Chantilly from de la Chantilly Museum. (Photos Giraudon.) Cf. Part I, Chap. IV, and n. II Museum. Part Cf. and n. n I, (Photos Giraudon.) Chap. IV,
Details Details
facing page page 193 193 facing A CLASS CLASS
by de Pas. Plate from Academia sine vita scho/astica, by Crispin Crispin de Pas. Plate from Academia sine vita scholastic^ Amheim, 1602. C£ Part II, Chap. Chap. III 1602. Cf. Ill Part II, Arnheim,
256 256
SETTING OFF FOR SCHOOL SETTING OFF
by Crispin de Pas. The The Parents Parents are are shown entrusting their boy to to de Pas. shown entrusting their boy by Crispin hand'. The The latter aa preceptor preceptor or to an or rather rather to an 'old is being given a 'old hand'. latter is being given a is taking some money of his his chicken, and the boy's father is and father out of some the chicken, taking money out boy's purse. In the background other schoolboys can be seen already on can In other be seen the schoolboys background already on purse. II, Chap. V and VI 256 their way. Cf. Part and VI their way. Cf. Part II, Chap. 256 A SCHOOL SIGN
(above): An evening for adults, adults. (below): school for (below): A evening school (above): Basle Museum. (Photos Basle little school for children. little school for children. Basle (Photos Basle Museum.) Museum.) C£ VII, and n. 331I 257 and n. Cf. Part Part II, II, Chap. 257 Chap. VII,
by Holbein, Holbein. by
THE MASTER SCRIBE'S SCRIBE*S CLASS CLASS
Note the the age the pupils, pupils, who are wearing swords. of the swords. C£ Cf. Part Part II, Note are wearing II, age of Chap. VII, and 28 and n. n. 28 Chap. VII,
288 288
cmLD PLAYING WITH YOUNG VALET CHILD
by From Les Les Proverbes. Proverbes. Showing which the familiarity by Lagniet. familiarity which Lagniet. Showing the existed between children children and servants. Cf. C£ Part existed between Part I, and servants. I, Chap. V; Chap. V; II 289 Part III, III, Chap. Part II 289 Chap. THE STEPS OF THE AGES OF LIFE LIFE
C£ Cf. Part Part I, I, Chap. Chap. II
289 289
THE FEAST OF ST NICHOLAS
by J. J. Steen, Amsterdam. (Photo Steen, Rijksmuseum. by (Photo HanfstaenglHanfstaenglRijksmuseum, Amsterdam. III, Chap. I, and n. 43 352 Giraudon.) C£ Part n. 43 352 Giraudon.) Cf. Part III, Chap. I, THE CARD-PLAYERS Children playing by Nain. (Photo playing games games of Le Nain. Giraudon.) Children by Le (Photo Giraudon.) chance. Cf. Cf. Part Chap. IV 353 chance. Part I. I, Chap. 353
THE ROYAL FAMILY
by Nocret, Nocret, by
Versailles Museum. Museum. (Photo (Photo Giraudon.) Giraudon.) Cf. C£ Part Part I, I,
Versailles
88
ILLUSTRATIONS ILLUSTRATIONS
CHILD'S TOMB CHILD'S TOMB
Reproduced Chap. II C Part Part I, I, Chap. II Reproduced by by Gaignia-es. Gaigniires. c£
facing page 384 facing page 384
ANTOON ANTOON ANSBLMB ANSELME AND AND IUS HIS FAMILY FAMILY
Brussels. Chap. I, and n. 5; Part III, Brussels. (photo Cf. Part Part I, I, Chap. I, and n. 5; Part III, (Photo Bulloz.) Bulloz.) C£ 384 Chap. Chap. II 384 UTTLB LITTLE GIRL GIRL AT AT THE THE WINE-MERCHANT'S WINE-MERCHANT's Cf. Part Part m, C£ and u. n. 34 HI, Chap. I, and 34 Chap. I,
385 385
INTRODUCTION
T
HIS book book on on the the family family under under the the ancien regime is is not the work work of of ancien regime not the aa specialist specialist in that period, but of a demographic historian who. in that of a but historian who, period, demographic struck by the original characteristics characteristics of of the modern family, felt the struck by the original the modern family, felt the need to go back into into aa more to discover the limits of this need to more distant distant past go back past to discover the limits of this originality. I make it clear from the start that there there is is no no question I must must it make clear from the start that originality. question here examination of society under the ancien regime. II a gratuitous of a of here of examination under the ancien gratuitous society regime. have explained elsewhere!1 difficult it was for me clearly to distinguish have explained elsewhere how difficult it was for clearly to distinguish the characteristics of of our our living present, except by means of the differences the characteristics of the means differences living present, except by which separate separate them the related related but never identical aspects of which them from from the but never identical aspects of the the past. Similarly I can tell the particular nature of a period in the past from I can the nature of a tell in the from past. Similarly particular period past the degree to which it to resemble resemble our present. This to which the degree it fails fails to our present. This dialectic dialectic of of past. and present can be fairly safely neglected by historians of 'short .and of can be 'short historians past present fairly safely neglected by periods',l2 but it must be used in the study of manners and feelings whose periods', but it must be used in the study of manners and feelings whose variations extend period'. This the case the family. a 'long variations extend over over a This is is the case with with the family, 'long period*. with day-long, day-long, lifelong relations between parents and between parents with relations and between between lifelong parents parents and and children. children. But have have we any right to of the the family? Is the the family But talk of a history to talk of a family any right history of family? Is than instinct is? It is possible a phenomenon phenomenon any more subject to history a is to than instinct is? It any more history subject possible to it is is not, not, and maintain that that the the family partakes of to argue and to of the that it to maintain the argue that family partakes immobility of species. It It is no doubt true that that since since the the beginning of the the species. is no doubt true immobility beginning of the the human race have built built homes homes and begot children, children, and it of race men have and begot and it can be be argued that within the great family types, monogamous and and can that within the family monogamous argued great types, comparison polygamous, historical differences are of litde little importance in historical differences are of polygamous, importance in comparison with the the huge huge mass mass of of what what remains unchanged. with remains unchanged. On the the other hand, the great demographic revolution in in the the West, other hand, the great West, demographic revolution from the eighteenth to the has revealed to us us considerconsiderfrom the twentieth century, revealed to the twentieth century, has eighteenth to able possibilities of of change hitherto .believed to be be invariable able possibilities in structures structures hitherto believed to invariable change in because they biological. The adoption measures because were biological. they were contraceptive measures adoption of contraceptive has brought about about both both quantitative and qualitative in the has brought the changes in qualitative changes quantitative and family. However it it is is not not so so_ much the the family as a is our a reality that is our reality ~t family. However family as ~I!hl~ct her~~_t:he an idea. will always as an idea. Tiue, True, men and women will jhe family always family as subject here_as go o;toving one~er: Will always always go having children, children, whether whether another, will go on go on having loving one numbers or give free free rein rein to instinct, and will will always they limit limit their to instinct, or give their numbers they always go go on guiding not the steps of those children. That is is not the question question at children. That at the first first steps of those guiding the these relations issue. The point is that that the the ideas about these relations may may be issue. entertained about ideas pltertained be point is dissimilar dissimilar at by lengthy periods of time. time. It It is is the at moments separated the lengthy periods separated by
THIS
10 10
INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION
of the the family family which which concerns concerns us us here, here, not not the the of description of manners or the nature of law. the nature of kw. description of manners or In what what direction direction isis this this idea idea evolving? evolving? In For aa long long time time itit was was believed believed that that the the family f~..Y _constituted ~ ancient ~.9~t constituted the For bas~ Q( our soc;i~, and that, starting in the eighteenth century. the the basis of our society, and that, starting in the eighteenth century, The progress oflibera1 individualism had ~cn, an.d ~_eak~~ j1. The history individualism had shaken and weakened i$. history progress of liberal of die the family family in in the the nineteenth nineteenth and and twentieth twentieth centuries centuries was was supposed supposed to to of of be that of a decadence: the frequency of divorces and the weakening of be that of a decadence: the frequency of divorces and the weakening marital and and paternal paternal authority authority were were seen seen as as so so many many signs signs of of its its decline. decline. marital The study of modem demographic phenomena led me to a completely a led to The study of modern demographic phenomena completely contrary conclusiotl. It seemed to me (and (and qualified qualified observers observers have have come contrary conclusion. It seemed to 8 that on the to share my conclusions)' the contrary ~ .~y occupied a the to share my conclusions) that on family occupied a contrary had tremendous place in our industrial societ!~, and that it had perhaps and that it tremendous place in our industrial societies, perhaps never before before exercised exercised so so much much influence influence over over the the human condition. condition. The never legal weakening proved only that that the the idea idea (and (and the the reality) reality) did did not not follow follow legal weakening proved only the same curve as the institution. Is not this disparity between living ideas the same curve as the institution. Is not this disparity between living ideas idea and legal structures one of the characteristics of our civilization? The idea and legal structures one of the characteristics of our civilization? I then of the family appeared to be one of the great forces of our time. I then our time. of the family appeared to be one of the great forces of it went on to to wonder, not whether whether it was on on the decline, but but whether whether it the decline, it was went on wonder, not had ever been as strong before, and even whether it had been in existence in existence had ever been as strong before, and even whether it had been out to find out for time. I looked back into past, to find our into our back looked I accordingly time. a long for a past, accordingly long whether not been been born born comparatively had not the family of the idea of die idea whether the recendy, comparatively recendy, family had to at from both both biology itself from freed itself had freed the family time when when the at a a time biology and law to family had become an occasion of emotion. The aim of expression, a theme theme of become aa value, value, a expression, an occasion of emotion. the idea idea of of to this on the of the the modernity this question to is to to reply this' book book is of this' modernity of question reply the the faJnily. family. to But references to of the the past, in the the documents documents of to discover. was II to how was Bui how discover, in past, references far removed things which were too ordinary. too commonplace. too far too too too were which commonplace, ordinary, things from to mention mention writers to for contemporary incident for memorable incident the memorable from the contemporary writers has them? of the. modern demographic rev9lution has revolution the of Our experience them? Our demographic experience revealed of the child's in this We in this silen.t.history~ of the child's role role the importance us the to us revealed to sUemJiistary. importance the of childhood childhood and the know idea of the idea between the is a a connection connection between there is that there know that this connection also that connection idea We were entided to suppose that this also to entided were the family. idea of of the suppose family. of the existed and the help the one with with the and to to estimate estimate one distant past, in a a more more distant existed in help of past, other. going to study them together. them to are is why we are other. That That is together. study why going as a a man man a child child except In unable to to depict artists were were unable tenth century. In the the tenth except as depict a century, artists of childhood to on of childhood to come from from that that ignorance did we we come How did scale. How on aa smaller smaller scale. ignorance in the nineteenth the of the family around the child in the nineteenth century? around the child of the the centring family century? centring of the die How to aa parallel evolution of evolution correspond this evolution does this far does How far parallel evolution correspond to die towards concept people _have of the fat.nily. the feeling they entertain towards it, of the entertain it, feeling they family, concept people jiave history of the idea history of the idea
II INTRODUCTION II INTRODUCTION the value value they they attribute attribute to to it? it? It It will will be be no no surprise surprise to to the the reader reader if if these these the us to the very heart of the great problems of civilization. questions take of of the the to heart us civilization, take great problems very questions of biology biology and and sociology sociology from from for we we are are standing standing on on those those frontiers frontiers of for which mankind mankind derives derives its its hidden hidden strength. strength. whichi
PART ONE
THE IDEA OF CHILDHOOD
I THE AGES OF LIFE LIFE
X A
AN of sixteenth or the seventeenth seventeenth century be astonished of the the sixteenth or the :AN would be astonished century would at the the exigencies with regard to civil status to which submit at to with civil status to we submit which exigencies regard As soon as our children start to talk, teach them quite naturally. children them As soon as our start to teach we talk, quite naturally. proud their name, their age and and their their parents' parents' name. are extremely their age name. We are their name, extremely proud when little asked how old he is, replies correcdy that he is two and old he little Paul, is, replies Paul, asked correctly that he is two and
We
aa half. hal£ We feel fact that that it is aa matter matter of of importance importance that that little Paul feel in in fact it is little Paul should get this this right: what would become of him if he forgot his age? In become him if his what would of he should get right: forgot age? In is still obscure notion, something which is the bush, age African bush, still quite an the African age is quite an obscure notion, something which is not so important that that one one cannot our technical technical civilization, civilization, not so important it. But But in in our cannot forget forget it. ho'Y could anyone anyone forget forget the the exact exact date of his birth, when he he has has to to his birth, date of how could remember it for almost every application he makes, every document he he remember it for almost every application he makes, every document fills in in --and and heaven heaven knows there there are are enough enough of signs, every form he he fills of signs, every form those be more in in the the future. Little Paul Paul will will give give his his age there will will be those and and there future. Little age at will soon Paul - - - of of Form - and and when he he he will at school; soon become become Paul school; he job he he will will be be given, together with his Social Security card, starts his first first job his with Social starts his card, given, together Security aa registration will double his own name. name. At At the double his the same same which will registration number which time as being being Paul indeed rather than being being Paul Paul - - he he rather than Paul - - and indeed time as will be aa number, number, which which will will begin begin with with his sex, the the year of his birth, his sex, of his will be birth, year and month of year. A day day will will come when every will have have citizen will and the of that that year. the month every citizen his number. Our civic civic personality personality is is already more precisely his registration already precisely registration number. expressed by the co-ordinates of birth than than by by our of our time our birth our surname. In time the co-ordinates surname. In expressed by the latter might well not disappear but be be reserved reserved for private life, while well not the latter might for private life, while disappear but birth would be be one aa registration registration number the date in which the of the the date of of birth one of number in elements would take its place for civic purposes. In the Middle Ages the In for civic Middle take its the elements would Ages the place purposes. Christian had been been considered too imprecise imprecise aa description, and it had had and considered too it Christian name had description, a place with aa surname, many been found found necessary necessary to to complete it with in many been surname, a complete it place name in cases. it has become advisable to add further detail, the numerical add aa further the advisable to numerical has become cases. And now no wit detail, character, the the age. age. The Christian belongs to to the world of the the world of fancy, Christian name belongs character, fancy, the surname to to that of tradition. tradition. The age, a quantity legally measurable to a to measurable that of surname age, quantity legally another world, In within aa few few hours, hours, comes comes from another that of precise precise figures. In within world, that figures. our partake at of all worlds. the same time of all worlds. at the our day our registration registration practices practices partake day our There are, however, however, some acts acts which commit us to aa serious us to serious degree. There are, degree, call for for the which we draw up and which which do not not call the inscription which ourselves, and inscription up ourselves, different species, of our our date date of birth. Belonging Belonging to to very are of birth. species, some are very different IS 15
16 16
THE IDEA OF CHILDHOOD
commercial or cheques, cheques, and the others are bills of of exchange others are and the commercial documents, documents, bills exchange or wills. were all devised in ancient times, before the rigour of in But they all devised ancient were the wills. But before times, rigour of they modem identification identification had had been of life. life. The introduced into of been introduced into our modern our way way recording parish registers was imposed on the priests of France in parish of births births in recording of registers was imposed on the priests of France by I, but but to to be be respected, this order, which had already been Franois I, respected, this order, which had already been by Fran~ois prescribed by the authority of the councils, had to to be by people the had of the be accepted councils, authority accepted by people prescribed by who for for aa long time remained hostile to the rigour of abstract accounting. the remained hostile to time of abstract accounting. long rigour It is generally agreed that it was only in the eighteenth century that the It is generally agreed that it was only in the eighteenth century that the parish priests began keeping their registers with the exactness, or the parish priests began keeping their registers with the exactness, or the of its registrars. The attempted which aa modern state requires modern state exactness, which requires of its registrars. The attempted exactness, personal importance of the idea of age must have grown in proportion proportion have of must the idea of age grown in personal importance as religious and reformers imposed imposed it it in in documentary as religious and civic civic reformers form, documentary form, is to say, in the beginning with the more educated social strata, that that the with die more educated social is to in strata, say, beginning sixteenth those had a college education. had a those who education. sixteenth century, century, college In the the fifteenthfifteenth- and memoirs which have conand sixteenth-century conIn which II have sixteenth-century memoirs 1 it is sulted order to collect aa few few examples of the status of scholars,! in order of of it is sulted in to collect the status scholars, examples not uncommon to find at the beginning beginning of story the author's age or of the the story the author's not to find at the age or of birth. Sometimes indeed the age becomes an object his date date and of indeed and place birth. the becomes an his Sometimes age object place of attention. It is inscribed on portraits as an additional sign of of special special attention. It is inscribed on portraits as an additional sign of individualization, authenticity. On many many sixteenth-century and authenticity. exactness and individualization, exactness sixteenth-century - in his ..tEtatis suae 29 his twentytwentyportraits one may fmd inscriptions lIke find like suae one ALtatis 29 - in may inscriptions portraits ninth year year --with with the the date date of the painting painting ANON! (portrait by by ninth of the ANDNI 1551 1551 (portrait 2 2 On the Pourbus Jan Fernaguut, Fernaguut, Bruges). the portraits of famous people, of Jan of Pourbus of famous people, Bruges). portraits court portraits, this reference is be found; but it exists either on this reference is rarely to court portraits, rarely to be found but it exists either on canv.as or the old of family portraits, linked with family family the canvas or on old frame linked with the on the frame of family portraits, symbols. of the oldest examples is admirable portrait of of oldest is the admirable One the the portrait of examples symbols. Margaretha Eyck. the top: co(n)iux m(eu)s Joha(nn)es me me Van At the Eyck. top: co(n}iux m(eu)s Joha(nn)es Margaretha c(om)plevit Junii -- what what meticulous my husband meticulous accuracy: 1439, 17 Junii accuracy: my an(n)o 1439,17 c(om)plevit an(n)o painted on June 17th, 1439; and at the bottom: ..tEtas mea triginta mea me and the bottom: at JEtas triginta June lyth, 1439; painted trium aged thirty-three. Very often these sixteenth-century these often triutn an(n)orum sixteenth-century an(n)orum -aged thirty-three. Very portraits go in pairs: one for the wife, the other for the husband. Each portraits go in pairs: one for the wife, the other for the husband. Each portrait bears the same date, which is is accordingly accordingly given given twice t'Nice over over bears the same date, which portrait of both husband and wife: thus the pictures by together with the age two thus the the of both husband and wife: with pictures by together age Pourbus of Fernaguut and his wife Adrienne de bear the same de Buc the bear and of Jan his wife Pourbus Adrienne Jan Fernaguut the man's case and Anno domini with Altatis .lEtatis suae suae 29 29 in man's case indication: in the indication: Anno domini 1551, 1551, with 3 It sometimes happens too that the 19 in the woman's.s that the portraits too in It the woman's. sometimes 19 portraits of happens like husband painted together on the same canvas, like the the Van same and wife the husband and wife are are painted canvas, together Gindertaelens to Pourbus, Pourbus, depicted with their little their two with little Gindertaelens attributed attributed to depicted has one hand hand on his hip and is the other children. is resting the other on children. The husband husband has his hip resting his shoulder. The two children children are playing at their feet. feet. The date his wife's at their wife's shoulder. are playing date ;
17 17
THE AGES AGE~..OF LIFE
is the husband's is his his coat coat of with the aetas is 1559. husband's side side is arms with of arms the inscription 1559. On the inscription aetas an. 27, and on the wife's side, the coat of arms of her family and the an. 27, and on the wife's side, the coat of arms of her family and the inscription lEtatis mec. 20.' These particulars sometimes take on the inscription JEtatis mec. 20* These particulars sometimes take on the appearance real epigraphic formula, as on the portrait by Martin de of a a real appearance of epigraphic formula, as on the portrait by Martin de Voos which depicts Antoon Anselme, an Antwerp magistrate, dated 1572, Voos dated 1572, which depicts Antoon Anselme, an Antwerp magistrate, his wife wife and their two husband and and wife are sitting on his and their two children. children. 56 The The husband wife are sitting on opposite sides of table, one holding the the boy boy and the other other the of a a table, one holding the girl. and the opposite sides girl. Between their heads, heads, at and in the middle of the canvas, there is Between their at the the top top and in the middle of the canvas, there is aa fme scroll, carefully ornamented, bearing the following inscription: fine scroll, carefully ornamented, bearing the following inscription: cot/cordi ae antonii anton;; anselmi anselmi et johannae Hooftmans Hoofimans feliciq je/iciq: progagini, progagini, Martino Martino concordi ae et johannae de Vos pictore, DD natus natus est est We ann MDXXXVI die febr uxor de Vos pictore, ilk ann die IX febr uxor ann ann decembr liberi /iberi aa lEgidius ann Augusti MDLV D XVI decembr JEgidius ann MDLXXV XXI Augusti Johanna ann septembr. ann MDLXVI XXVI septembr. Johanna These portraits were documents history, as These dated dated family of family as documents of family portraits were family history, photograph were to to be be three three or centuries later. later. The same albums were or four four centuries same photograph albums spiri~ governed the family record books, in which, apart from the spirit governed the family record books, in which, apart from the household domestic events were noted noted down, down, births household accounts, and deaths. deaths. events were births and accounts, domestic the family came together. It Here regard for accuracy and the idea a regard Here a for accuracy and the idea of of the came together. It family was not not so so much aa question of the individual's co-ordinates as of those of of of individual's as of those the co-ordinates question the members of the family: felt aa need need to to give give famIly life aa history history the members of the family: people family life people felt by dating it. curious passion for dating appeared not only in portraits it. Tlus This curious for in not by dating only passion dating appeared portraits but also also in belongings and furniture. In the seventeenth but in personal and furniture. In the seventeenth century personal belongings century it habit to or paint a date beds, coffers, it became became a a common habit to carve carve or date on on beds, chests, coffers, chests, paint a cupboards, spoons and ceremonial glasses. date corresponded to aa and The date ceremonial cupboards, spoons glasses. corresponded to solemn the family's history, generally a marriage. In certain in the solemn moment in a In certain family's history, generally marriage. regions -- Alsace, Alsace, Switzerland, Central Europe Europe -- furniture and Central furniture Austria and Switzerland, Austria regions from to the the nineteenth and particularly painted the seventeenth and from the seventeenth to nineteenth century, century, particularly painted furniture, was dated dated and inscribed with the names of of its its and also also frequently names inscribed with the furniture, was frequently joint owners. In I have noticed this inscription on a chest: a I have this chest: owners. In Thun noticed Museum joint inscription 'Hans - 1709 - Elizabeth Misler'. Misler'. Sometimes Sometimes only the initials of initials of 'Hans Bischof Bischof1709 -Elizabeth only the husband and and wife wife were were inscribed on either either side date of the side of the date of the husband of the the date, inscribed on date, the marriage. very common in France, and and disappeared disappeared in France, This custom became very custom became marriage. This only at the end of the nineteenth century: thus an official of the Musee des an the Musec des thus official of at the end nineteenth of the only century: Arts et Traditions found a piece of furniture in the Upper furniture in the a Arts et found Traditions Populaires Upper piece Populaires Loire bearing the the inscription: 1873 ]V.66 The inscription inscription of ages of Loire bearing ages or of inscription: 1873 LT JV. to the desire the aa date portrait or or an helped to answer the desire to give the to answer date on a a portrait an object give object helped family historical consistency. family greater consistency. greater historical the middle taste for while lasting lasting into into the middle ofthe the The taste for chronological inscription, while chronological inscription, nineteenth century at least among people in average circumstances, rapidly in nineteenth at least among people average circumstances, rapidly century to disappeared and court, it was obviously considered in town and court, where it obviously considered early early on to disappeared in :
18 18
THE IDEA OF CHILDHOOD
be naive and provincial. From the middle ofthe seventeenth century, inscripbe naive and provincial. From the middle ofthe seventeenth century, inscriptions tended to disappear disappear from pictures (there were still a few to be found, from pictures tended to tions (there were still a few to be found, but only on on the the pictures pictures of working in or provinces). Fine Fine of painters in but only or for the provinces). for the painters working period furniture was signed, or, if it was dated, it was dated very discreetly. was if was furniture it it was dated or, dated, signed, very discreetly. period In of the importance which age had acquired in family epigraphy In spite spite of the importance which age had acquired in family epigraphy in the sixteenth in everyday usage remained in and usage sixteenth century, there remained in the custom and century, there everyday custom some curious survivals age when it was an and difficult an age of an it was an uncommon and difficult some curious survivals of thing to remember one's age exactly. I pointed out earlier that our little thing to remember one's age exactly. I pointed out earlier that our little Paul knows age as soon as he begins begins to to talk. talk. Sancho not as soon did not his age as he Paul knows his Panza did Sancho Panza how old his own daughter was, for all that he was extremely old his know exactly all he for that was was, extremely exactly daughter fond her: 'She may be be fifteen, two years years older older or younger, yet she of her: 'She may or two fond of or younger, fifteen, or yet she is as morning ... '77 This This is a case of of is as tall tall as as a a lance lance and and as as fresh fresh as as an an April is a case April morning aa man of the people. people. In In the even in the educated classes even in of the the sixteenth sixteenth century, the educated classes century, where habits habits of modem precision precision were were observed observed at earlier date, date, where of modern an earlier at an children age; but but an an extremely curious custom children doubtless doubtless knew their their age; curious custom extremely forbade them in in the name of good manners manners from it and the name of good from openly forbade them revealing it and openly revealing obliged them to answer questions about it with a certain reserve. them to answer When it with a about certain reserve. obliged questions the humanist and pedagogue Thomas Platter Platter tells the story story of of his his and pedagogue the Valais tells the Valais humanist life,e8 he he states great precision when and where he was born, yet and states with he was with great where life, born, yet precision considers himself obliged obliged to to wrap up the fact in prudent paraphrase: paraphrase: considers himself the fact in a a prudent wrap up 'To begin with, with, there is nothing vouch for for with with less less assurance than there is 'To begin can vouch assurance than nothing II can the exact date birth. it to to ask for the date date date of ask the the exact of my birth. When it occurred to to for occurred me my of my birth, birth, II was was told told that had come into the world in 1499, on of my that II had into the world in 1499, on Quinquagesima Sunday, just as tlle bells were ringing for Mass.' A Mass/ as die bells for were Quinquagesima Sunday, just ringing curious mixture of of uncertainty uncertainty and and precision. precision. This This reserve is an an habitual habitual reserve is curious mixture reserve, a souvenir of aa time time when nobody nobody ever ever knew aa date for certain. certain. souvenir of date for reserve, a What is is surprising surprising is that it have become become aa part part of manners, is that it should of good should have manners, good for this was was how one was supposed give one's one's age response to any to any in response for this one was to give age in supposed to inquiry. In Cordier's dialogues, two boys at school question each other each other In Cordier's at school inquiry. dialogues, boys question during the play-hour: old are are you?' 'Thirteen, so so II have have heard heard my during the play-hour: 'How old you?' 'Thirteen, my 99 mother say. say.'9 the habits of personal personal chronology chronology became became part part Even when the habits of mother of our way way of they did succeed in imposing themselves as aa themselves as of life, of our did not not succeed in imposing life, they positive attainment, and did not immediately dispel the old obscurity of old did the not obscurity of immediately dispel positive attainment, age, and the custom of obscuring one's age lingered on for time for some time the custom of one's age, obscuring age lingered in the observance of good good manners. manners. in the observance of *
. . .
* * * The''ages ages of life* life' occupy a considerable considerable place place in in the the pseudo-scientific pseudo-scientific The occupy a treatises of the the Middle Middle Ages. Ages. Their Their authors use aa terminology authors use terminology which
treatises
THE AGES( OF LIFE LIFE AGES^ ,
19 19
strikes us as verbal: childhood, puerility, adolescence, as purely strikes us childhood, puerility, adolescence, youth, purely verbal: youth, senility, old age -- each each word a different period of life. Since word signifying senility, old age signifying a different period of life. Since then have borrowed these words to denote borrowed some some of then we have of these ideas such words to denote abstract abstract ideas such as puerility or but these meanings were not contained in the first or senility, as puerility senility, but these meanings were not contained in the first The' ages', 'ages of life', or 'ages of man' corresponded in acceptations. acceptations. The 'ages', 'ages of life', or 'ages of man* corresponded in our ancestors' minds minds to to positive concepts, so well known, so often our ancestors' positive concepts, so well known, so often repeated and so commonplace that they passed from the realm of science repeated and so commonplace that they passed from the realm of science to that that of of everyday everyday experience. experience. It hard for for us us today today to the to is hard It is to appreciate appreciate the importance which the the concept of the' ages' had in ancient representations of the had in ancient 'ages' importance which representations concept of world. A man's man's 'age' was a scientific category of the same order the world. of the 'age' was a scientific category of die same order as or speed it formed as weight for our our contemporaries; of a formed part a system of weight or speed for part of system of contemporaries it physical description and explanation which went back to the Ionian which to and went back die Ionian description explanation physical philosophers of B.C., which compilers revived revived of the the sixth sixth century which medieval medieval compilers philosophers century B.C., in the writings of Byzantine Empire and which was still the writings of the and in the Byzantine which was still inspiring the Empire inspiring the first books of scientific vulgarization in the sixteenth century. first printed books of in the scientific sixteenth printed vulgarization century. ~ave no no intention trying to to determine formulation and W e have of trying its exact intention of determine its and We exact formulation its the history of science: all matters here is that should in the all that here its place in of that matters is that science we should history place realize to what what extent this science had become property, how realize to extent this science had become common property, 'far entered into mental habits and what it represented in it had entered and far its its concepts had into mental habits what concepts represented in everyday life. life. everyday We shall shall understand the problem better if if we glance glance through the 1556 understand the 1556 problem better dirough the 10 edition Le Gratld Proprihaire de utes choses. thirteenthof Le edition of Grand Propriltaire de to This was was aa thirteenthtoutes choses. 1o This century Latin compilation which itself itself repeated all the the data data of of the the writers writers century Latin repeated all compilation which of Empire. It was thought fit translate it into French and the Byzantine was to it French and of the It fit to translate into Byzantine Empire. thought to give give it circulation by means of printing. Le Grand Proprihaire to a greater circulation means of it a Le Grand by greater Proprittaire printing. de toutes is an encyclopedia, aa sort sort of Encyclopa:dia Britannica, Britannica, but but de an encyclopedia, of Encyclopaedia toutes choses choses is which is is not not analytical in concept and which attempts to render the in and which which to render the concept attempts analytical Nature and on physics, physics, metaphysics, metaphysics, essential unity of and God. essential unity of Nature God. A treatise treatise on natural history, history, human physiology physiology and and anatomy, hygiene, medicine and and hygiene, natural anatomy, medicine and astronomy, at the same time as theology. Twenty books deal with as deal widi the same time at books astronomy, theology. Twenty God, the angels, the elements, man and his body, diseases, the sky, the and the his the elements, God, the diseases, sky, the angels, body, weather, matter, air, water, fire, birds, etc. The last book is devoted to etc. last is devoted to book birds, fire, weather, matter, air, water, be found numbers and and measures. practical recipes recipes could also be could also in found in numbers measures. Certain Certain practical this book. book. A general idea emerged from it, a scientific idea which had a idea this from scientific which idea it, emerged general fundamental unity become extremely extremely commonplace, the idea of the the fundamental unity of of idea of become commonplace, the Nature, of the solidarity which exists between all the phenomena all exists between the of the which Nature, phenomena of solidarity Nature, phenomena which could not be distinguished from supernatural be not could which Nature, phenomena supernatural distinguished manifestations. The idea idea that that there there was was no opposition opposition between between the the natural natural manifestations. and the derived both from popular beliefs inherited from beliefs inherited the supernatural both from derived popular supernatural well as as paganism and from a science that was physical as well as theological. I that was from a science paganism physical theological. I ;
:
20
THE IDEA OF OP CHILDHOOD
am inclined the unity of Nature think that to think that this this rigorous concept of inclined to rigorous concept of the unity of Nature must be held responsible for the delay in scientific much must be held responsible for the delay in scientific development, development, much more than the authority of tradition, the ancients or the Scriptures. more than the authority of tradition, the ancients or the Scriptures. We cannot on an an element exert any influence on element of cannot exert of Nature unless we are are agreed Nature unless any influence agreed that isolated. Given a certain degree of solidarity be adequately that it it can can be adequately isolated. Given a certain degree of solidarity between postulates, it of Nature, as Le between the the phenomena Le Grand Grand Proprietaire Nature, as phenomena of Proprittaire postulates, it is intervene without setting off a chain reaction, without is impossible to impossible to intervene without setting off a chain reaction, without upsetting the order of the world: none of the categories of the cosmos upsetting the order of the world: none of the categories of the cosmos possesses a sufficient autonomy, and nothing can be done in the face of possesses a sufficient autonomy, and nothing can be done in the face of universal of universal determinism. determinism. Knowledge of Nature Nature is is limited to the limited to the study Knowledge of study of - aa the causality the relations relations governing means of of aa single by means governing phenomena phenomena by single causality knowledge from can foresee foresee but but cannot which can cannot modify. There is is no no escape knowledge which modify. There escape from this except through magic or miracles. A single rigorous law this causality causality except through magic or miracles. single rigorous law governs at one and the same time the movement of the planets, the one and the at the same time of the governs planets, the vegetative of the the seasons, the connections connections between between the the elements, seasons, the elements, cycle of vegetative cycle the the human body and its its humours, and the the destiny of a a man, the with the humours, and man, with body and destiny of result makes it discover the personal effects of that astrology makes result that it possible to to discover the of effects possible astrology personal this universal determinism. this universal determinism. As late late as as the the middle middle of of the the seventeenth seventeenth century, the practice widespread for the of astrology was sufficiently century, the practice of astrology was sufficiently widespread for the sceptical Moliere to choose it a butt for his raillery in Les Amants to choose it as as a Molire butt his for sceptical raillery in Les Amants magnifiques. magnifiques. The correspondence correspondence of of numbers numbers seemed seemed to to be be one the keys keys to to this this one of of the of numbers was a commonplace profound solidarity; the symbolism the of numbers was a profound solidarity; symbolism commonplace theme in religious speculations, in descriptions physics and theme in religious of physics and natural natural speculations, in descriptions of history, and in magic practices. For example, there was a correspondence and in For there a was magic practices. history, example, correspondence between the the number of man's temperaments, temperaments, of the the elements, between the number number of of man's elements, the and the the number of of the the seasons: seasons: the the figure figure 4. 4. We find find it it difficult difficult today today to to and imagine this tremendous concept of a massive world in which nothing this tremendous a of massive in world which imagine concept nothing it could be be distinguished distinguished but but aa few few correspondences. correspondences. Science had made made it could Science had possible to formulate the latter and to define the categories which they to the and formulate latter to the define which possible categories they linked together; together; over over the the centuries centuries these these correspondences correspondences had had slipped slipped from from linked the realm realm of of science science into into that that of of popular popular mythology. mythology. The concepts concepts born born the in in sixth-century sixth-century Ionia Ionia had had gradually gradually been been adopted adopted by by the the ordinary ordinary mentality; the the categories categories of of antiquo-medieval antiquo-medieval science science had had become become mentality; commonplaces: the elements, the temperaments, the planets and their the the the and their elements, commonplaces: planets temperaments, and astrological significance, and the symbolism of numbers. the of numbers. astrological significance, symbolism The concept concept of of the the ages ages of of life life was was also also one one of of the the common ways ways of of in human understanding biology, in accord with the universal system of the accord with universal understanding biology, system of correspondences. This This concept, concept, which which was was destined destined to to become become extremely extremely correspondences. popular, did did not not go go back back to to the the great great period period of of ancient ancient science, science, however. however. popular,
THE AGES OF LIFE LIFE
21
{
{
11 Fulgentius It in the Byzantine Empire in the sixth century.l1 It originated originated in the Byzantine Empire in the sixth century. Fulgentius found it hidden in the Aeneid: he saw in Aeneas's shipwreck the of found it hidden in the Aeneid: he saw in Aeneas's shipwreck the symbol symbol of
man's birth in midst of the storms interpreted Cantos in the the midst of the man's birth of existence. storms of existence. He interpreted Cantos II the image image of of childhood for fabulous tales, and III as as the and III II and childhood hungering and so so fabulous tales, hungering for on. Arabian fresco fresco of of the eighth century already represented the ages on. An Arabian the eighth century already represented the ages oflife. of life. 12 There are countless medieval texts Le Grand Propriitaire There are countless medieval this theme. texts on on this theme. Le Grand Proprittaire de toutes choses deals with the in its sixth book. Here the ages corredeals with de toutes choses the ages ages in its sixth book. Here the ages correspond to the the planets, and there are seven of them: planets, and there are seven of them: spond to The first first age is childhood when the teeth are planted, and and this this age childhood when the teeth are planted, age is age begins born and and lasts lasts until in this this age the child child is is born until seven, and in that seven, and begins when the age that which is born is called an infant, which is as saying which is born is called an is as as good not infant, which good as saying not talking, because because in this age it cannot talk well or form its words in this it cannot talk well or form its words talking, age perfectly, for its teeth are not yet well arranged or firmly implanted, perfectly, for its teeth are not yet well arranged or firmly implanted, as Isidore Isidore says Constantine. After infancy comes the second and Constantine. as After infancy comes the second says and age ... pueritia and is given this name because in this age the ... it it is is called called is and this in because this age pueritia given age the is still like the pupil in the eye, as Isidore says, and this age person is still like the in the as Isidore and this person eye, age pupil says, lasts till till fourteen. lasts fourteen. Afterwards follows the third which is called adolescence, Afterwards follows the third age, age, which is called adolescence, which ends ends according to Constantine in his viaticum in the twentytwentyto which Constantine in his viaticum in the according first year, but but according to Isidore it lasts till it first year, to Isidore it lasts and it till twenty-eight ... and according twenty-eight can on till thirty or thirty-five. This age is adolescence till or can go This is called called adolescence thirty thirty-five. go age because person is is big to beget children, says Isidore. In because the the person big enough enough to beget children, says Isidore. In this the limbs are soft and able to grow and receive strength the limbs are and able this age soft and and to receive age grow strength and vigour from natural heat. because the person grows in this age from heat. natural And the in this because vigour person grows age to the the size to him by Nature. Nature. [Yet growth is before him by to size allotted allotted to is over over before [Yet growth thirty or thirty-five, even even before twenty-eight. And it it was probably or thirty-five, before twenty-eight. was probably thirty even tardy at at aa time time when work at tender age mobilized the even less a tender less tardy at a the mobilized age resources of the constitution constitution earlier earlier on.] resources of the on.] Afterwards which occupies position the central follows youth, central position Afterwards follows youth, which occupies the among the ages, although the person in this age is in his greatest in is in his the this the greatest person age among ages, although strength, and this age lasts until forty-five according to Isidore, or or until to lasts and this Isidore, forty-five according age strength, until fifty according to others. This age is called youth because of the is This called because the until to others. age youth fifty according strength the person person to help himself himself and others, others, according according to to to help in the strength in Aristotle. Afterwards follows according to Isidore, to which Aristotle. Afterwards follows senectitude, Isidore, senectitude, according is half-way half-way between youth and and old old age, calls it it gravity, is Isidore calls and Isidore between youth age, and gravity, because the the person person is his habits and bearing; and in and in his in this this age because habits and is grave in age bearing; grave the person as Isidore the person is old, but but he he has has passed passed his youth, as his youth, Isidore says. is not not old, says. After this After this age follows old which according to some lasts lasts until until old age, age, which according to age follows . . .
22 22
THE IDEA OF CHILDHOOD
seventy and according to others has no end until death .•• old old people people seventy and according to others has no end until death have not such good sense as they had, and talk nonsense in their old have not such good sense as they had, and talk nonsense in their old . . .
age •.• The The last last part part of of old old age age is is called called senies senies in in Latin, Latin, but but in in French French there is no separate word for it ••. The old man is always coughing old is there is no separate word for it ... always coughing and spitting spitting and and dirtying dirtying [we [we are are aa long long way way yet yet from from the the noble noble old old and man of Greuze and Romanticism] until he returns to the ashes and man of Greuze and Romanticism] until he returns to the ashes and dust from from which which he he was was taken. taken. dust Nowadays we may may consider consider this this jargon jargon empty empty and and verbose, verbose, but but it it had had Nowadays of astrology: astrology: it it aa meaning meaning for for those those who read read it, it, aa meaning meaning akin akin to to that that of called to mind the link which joined the destiny of to that of the of the that of man to the which mind link the called to destiny joined planets. The same sort of sidereal correspondence had had inspired inspired another another planets. The same sort of sidereal correspondence division into periods connected with the twelve signs of the zodiac, thus of the twelve with the connected division into periods zodiac, thus signs linking the ages of life with one of the most popular and moving themes and themes of most the moving popular linking the ages of life with one of the Middle Middle Ages: Ages: the the scenes of the the calendar. calendar. A fourteenth-century fourteenth-century scenes of of the poem, reprinted reprinted several times in in the the fifteenth fifteenth and and sixteenth sixteenth centuries, centuries, several times poem, 13 expounds this calendar of the ages :13 expounds this calendar of the ages: age
. . .
The years of life on on earth earth of life six years The first first six We to would compare, would to January compare, January is as For in that month month strength in that as rarc rare For strength is As from birth. birth. in a a child child six six years from As in years 14 u Or witness this thirteenth-century witness this thirteenth-century poem: poem: Of all behold, the first all the first behold, the months months the 15 11i January two-faced and cold. and cold. two-faced January Because its eyes two ways are Because its cast, ways are cast, eyes To face past. and the face the the future future and the past. Thus the child six summers old old Thus the child six Is is told. told. not worth all is Is not worth much when all But one care one must must take take every care every To see he is is fed fed good that he see that fare, good fare, For well life well he who does does not not start start life For he Will one can tell ..• ... one can tell Will finish finish badly, badly, When October winds do blow, October winds blow, Then aa man his his wheat wheat must sow To feed feed the the other other men on earth; earth; Thus a man of worth Thus must must act act a Who has has arrived arrived at at sixty sixty years: years: He must ears folk's ears must sow in in young young folk's Wisdom all all their their hearts hearts to to fill, fill, he will. And give if he will. give them charity charity if
.
Of LIFE LIPE THE AGES OP
,
23
Of the the same same nature nature is is the the correspondence correspondence established established between between the the ages of life and the other 'fours': consensus quatuor elementorum, quatuor ages of life and the other 'fours': consensus quatuor elementorum, quatuor humorum (the (the temperaments), temperaments), quatuor quatuor anni anni temporum temporum et et quatuor quatuor vitae vitae humorum aetatum.18 About About 1265, 1265, Philippe Philippe de de Novare Novare spoke spoke of of the the 'four 'four times times of of aetatum. 17 namely four periods of twenty years each. And these man's age', age',17 man's namely four periods of twenty years each. And these speculations went on recurring in text after text up to the sixteenth speculations went on recurring in text after text up to the sixteenth 18 century.lS century. must try try to to grasp grasp the the fact fact that that this this terminology, terminology, which which seems seems so so We must futile to to us us now, now, expressed expressed ideas ideas which which were were scientific scientific at at the the time time and and futile also corresponded corresponded to to aa popular popular and and commonplace commonplace idea idea of of life. life. Here Here also again, come up against great difficulties of interpretation, because difficulties we come of because up against great interpretation, again, today we no no longer longer have have this this idea idea of of life: life: we see see life life chiefly chiefly as as aa biological biological today phenomenon, as a situation in society. Yet say' Such is life!' to express as a in is life! Yet we Such to situation society. say express phenomenon, at once once our our resignation resignation and our conviction conviction that that there there is, is, outside outside biology biology and our at and sociology, sociology, something something which which has has no no name, name, but but which which stirs us, which which stirs us, and look for for in the news news items items of of the the papers, papers, or or about about which which we say: say: in the we look 'Thit's lifelike.' Life in this this case is aa drama, which rescues rescues us us from from everyLife in case is That's lifelike.' drama, which everyday boredom. For the man of old, on was the on the the contrary, it was the inevitable, For the of old, inevitable, contrary, it day boredom. of the cyclical, sometimes amusing and and sometimes sad continuity the ages sometimes sad continuity of ages cyclical, sometimes amusing of life; aa continuity inscribed. in the general and abstract order of things in and abstract order the of inscribed of life; things continuity general rather than in experience, for periods of heavy mortality mortality in those of heavy in real for in those periods real experience, rather than few to live through all ages. all these to live these were privileged few men were through ages. privileged The popularity of the 'ages of life' made the theme one of the the most the theme one of most of the The popularity 'ages of life' common in iconography. They are to be found for instance on to for on are be found instance in profane profane iconography. They 19 lll some capitals in the baptistery at Parma. in the at Parma. some illuminated illuminated twelfth-century twelfth-century capitals baptistery The has tried to represent at one and the same time the parable The sculptor sculptor has tried to represent at one and the same time the parable of and of the the eleventh eleventh hour, and the the labourers labourers of the vineyard the master of the of the master of hour, and vineyard and the of the ages of life. the first one can see the master of one can the master life. In In the first scene scene see of of the the symbol ages symbol the laying his hand on a child's and underneath an an and underneath a child's head, hand his the vineyard head, vineyard laying inscription points out the allegory of prima aetas primum of the child: prima aetas saeculi saeculi:: primum the child: inscription points out the allegory humane: Further on: hora tertia: aetas the master aetas master secunda -the tertia: puericia secunda hora on: Further humane: infoncia. puericia infancia. of can be seen putting his hand on the shoulder of a young a shoulder the his hand seen can be of the the vineyard young putting vineyard man who is last of the the labourers labourers bill-hook. The last and a a bill-hook. animal and is holding an holding an animal is his mattock: senectus, sexta aetas. sexta aetas. is resting beside resting beside his mattock: senectus, that the the essential essential But in the fourteenth century the fourteenth all in was above But it it was above all century that characteristics of this iconography became fixed. and remained virtually fixed of this iconography characteristics virtually be recognized unchanged can be the eighteenth until the recognized on they can century; they eighteenth century; unchanged until 20 the Eremitani in a a fresco fresco of the than in capitals in the Palace of the Doges" no less less than capitals in the Palace of the Doges 21 First of all the age of at Padua. III toys: children playing with aa hobbychildren of at Padua. First of all the age hobbyplaying toys: the the leashes. horse, a doll, a windmill, or birds on leashes. Then the age of school: the school: horse, a doll, a windmill, or birds age *
*
'
24 24
THE IDEA OF CHILDHOOD
boys learning to to read or carrying book and pen-tray, the the girls learning to to read or and pen-tray, carrying book boys learning girls learning spin. Next the ages of love or of courtly and knightly sports: feasting, spin. Next die ages of love or of courtly and knightly sports: feasting, boys and girls walking together, a court of love, and the Maytime boys and girls walking together, a court of love, and the Maytime wedding festivities hunt of the calendars. calendars. Next Next the the ages ages of of war or hunt of the and war and wedding festivities or chivalry: a man bearing arms. Finally, the sedentary ages: those the of the bearing arms. Finally, the sedentary ages: those of chivalry: a men of law, science or learning the old bearded scholar dressed in oldof law, science or learning the old bearded scholar dressed in oldfashioned clothes, sitting sitting at his desk by the the fire. of life did not at his desk by fashioned clothes, fire. The The ages ages of life did not correspond to biological biological phases phases but also to to social but also social functions; functions; we correspond simply simply to know that that there there were were some some very young lawyers, lawyers, but but in in popular popular imagery very young imagery learning is an old man's trade. learning is an old man's trade. These attributes attributes of of fourteertth-century art are to be found in almost These fourteerlth-century art are to be found in almost identical form in in prints prints of more popular, popular, more more commonplace identical form of a a more type, commonplace type, which lasted with very very few sixteenth century the lasted with from the the sixteenth which few changes to the changes from century to beginning of nineteenth century. They were called the 'steps of the the nineteenth of the beginning century. They were called the steps of the ages', because they depicted a of figures representing the various ages', because they depicted a row of figures representing the various ages death, and going up on the from birth to death, and often on steps birth to often standing ages from standing on steps going up on the left and going on the the right. In the centre of this double staircase, as left and going down on right. In the centre of this double staircase, as under the the arch bridge, stood the skeleton of Death, armed with with his under of a arch of a bridge, stood the skeleton of his Death, armed scythe. ages merged merged with with that it is the theme Here the theme of of the the ages of death, and it is that of death, and scythe. Here probably no ~ccident that these two themes were among the most no that these themes accident two were most the probably among popular: prints prints depicting depicting the the steps of the ages and the dances of death steps of the ages and the dances of death popular: went on recapitulating until the beginning beginning of the nineteenth century an on recapitulating went until the of the an nineteenth century iconography established in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. But established in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. But iconography unlike the dances of death, death, in which the the costumes costumes never never changed dances of in which unlike the and changed and remained those those of of the and sixteenth centuries even the fifteenth fifteenth and remained sixteenth centuries even when the the was produced in the nineteenth, the steps of the ages dressed their print in was the the of the dressed their nineteenth, produced print steps ages characters fashion of in the the nineteenthnineteenthafter the of the characters after the fashion the day: last of die last of the day: in century prints, First Communion costumes can be seen making First costumes seen can be their century prints, making their appearance. The enduring quality of the symbols is more remarkis all all the of the the remarkappearance. enduring quality symbols able that: the child is is still there riding riding his hobby-horse, the the schoolboy the child for that: still there able for his hobby-horse, schoolboy carrying and pen-tray, the handsome couple, with the young man book the handsome with the carrying pen-tray, couple, young sometimes holding aa may-bush may-bush in one hand as of the the feasts of sometimes holding in one as a a sign feasts of sign of adolescence and the at arms, an officer wearing adolescence and spring, now an the man at officer arms, spring, wearing the sash of command or banner; on the the downward slope, the sash of the or carrying a banner; slope, the carrying a costumes have stopped being in fashion or have remained true to the have remained costumes have in or true fashion to the stopped being fashions of old; the men of their procedureprocedurefashions of of law are are still still equipped with old; the equipped with their bags, the scholars with their books or their astrolabes, and the churchgoers the scholars with their books the or their astrolabes, bags, churchgoers 22 of all all these figures -- with -- the the most most curious curious of these figures with their their rosaries. rosaries. III The repetition repetition of of these these pictures, pictures, pinned pinned to wall next next to to the the calendar to the die wall calendar in the and in the midst everyday objects, fostered the idea of a life cut midst of everyday fostered the idea of a life cut into into objects, *
THE AG,J\$ LIFE AGJB$ OF LIFE
,
25 25
clearly to certain modes of activity, defined sections sections corresponding dearly defined corresponding to certain modes of activity, of dress. The division of life physical types, social functions and styles physical types, social functions and styles of dress. The division of life into periods had the same fixity as the cycle of Nature Nature or the organization organization into periods had the same fixity as the cycle of or the of society. In spite of the constant evocation of old age and the of society. In spite of the constant evocation of old age and death, death, the ages of life remained good-natured, picturesque sketches, life remained character sketches, character good-natured, picturesque ages of silhouettes rather whimsical whimsical kind. kind. of a a rather silhouettes of
* * * Antiquo-medieval speculation speculation had had bequeathed to posterity posterity aa copious Antique-medieval bequeathed to copious terminology relating relating to to the of life. In the sixteenth century, when it it the ages terminology ages of life. In the sixteenth century, was proposed to to translate this terminology French, it it was was found that was proposed translate this into French, found that terminology into the French language, usage, had not as the French and consequently as many had not French usage, language, and consequently French many words at its Latin or or at least learned learned Latin. its disposal as words at had Latin at least Latin. The I556 1556 disposal as had translator Proprietaire de choses makes makes no bones bones about of Le Grand translator of Grand Propri&aire about de toutes toutes choses recognizing the 'It is more difficult in French than in Latin, the difficulty: recognizing difficulty: 'It is more difficult in French than in Latin, for in Latin Latin there there are are seven seven ages referred to by various various names, names, of which for in of which to by ages referred there are only three three in French: to wit, childhood, youth and old age.' are only in French: to wit, there and old childhood, youth age/ It will be noted that since youth signifies signifies the the prime prime of life, there no noted that It will be since youth of life, there is is no room for for adolescence. eighteenth century, adolescence was Until the adolescence. Until the eighteenth was Adolescence century, confused with childhood. In school Latin the puer and confused with childhood. In school Latin the word puer and the the word adolescens were used used indiscriminately. indiscriminately. Preserved Preserved in the Bibliothfeque Bibliotheque in the adolescent were Nationale are the catalogues of the the Jesuit College at Caen, a list of the Nationale are the catalogues of Jesuit College at Caen, a list of the 23 23 pupils' names accompanied by comments. boy of fifteen is is described names A boy of fifteen comments. described pupils' accompanied by in these these catalogues catalogues as bonus puer, puer, while while his young schoolmate thirteen in as bonus his young of thirteen schoolmate of is optimus adolescens. infant prodigies, admitted is called in a a book on infant admitted called optimus adolescens. Baillet, Baillet, in prodigies, that there were were no terms terms in in French French to pueri and and that there to distinguish between pueri distinguish between adolescentes.24 was virtually virtually only one word in use: enfant. in There was one adolescentes^ There use: only enfant. the Middle meaning of this word was was parparend of Middle Ages, the end of the the meaning of this At the Ages, the ticularly extensive. It be applied to both the putto (in the sixteenth the It could could be to both the sixteenth extensive. applied ticularly putto (in century the putti room, room, the the bedchamber bedchamber decorated decorated with with frescoes frescoes depicting depicting century theputti naked children, was referred referred to to as as 'the 'the children's and the the adolesnaked adoleschildren's room') children, was room') and cent, the big big lad lad who was a bad bad lad. sometimes also also a lad. The word enfant was sometimes cent, the enfant (' child')· in the Miracles Miracles de Notre-Dame26 was was used used in the fourteenth fourteenth and in the de Notre-Dame** in the ('child')* as valets, fifteenth as aa synonym valets, valeton, such as other words such fifteenth centuries centuries as valeton, synonym of other garfon,.fils ('valet', 'varlet', 'lad', 'son'): 'he was a valeton' be a valeton 'he was would be 'lad', 'varlet', 'son'): garfon,jils ('valet', the word translated today today as 'he was was aa good-looking lad' t but but the same could could translated as 'he lad', good-looking a child be used of both both aa young was be used handsome valeton') child ('he valeton') and a ('he was young man ('a ('a -Translator's note: In the following following discussion of terminology the wherever the discussion of translator's note: In the 25-32), wherever terminology (pp. (pp. 25-32), word 'child' 'child' or used, the the original original French has 'enfant* 'enfant' or or 'enfants*. 'enfants'. source has or 'children' French source is used, 'children* is
26 26
THE IDEA IDEA OF OF CHILDHOOD CHILDHOOD THE
Ii
valeton, so so they they loved loved him him dearly dearly ... ..• ft valez valez grew grew up'). up'). Only Only one one word word aa valeton, kept this this very very ancient ancient ambiguity ambiguity down to to our our times, times, and and that that is is the the has kept word gars gars ('lad'), (,lad'), which which has has passed passed straight straight from from Old Old French French into into the the word
has
popular modern idiom in which popular modern idiom in which
it is is preserved. preserved. A strange strange child, child, this this bad bad it was 'so 'so perverse perverse and and wicked wicked that that he he would would not not learn learn aa trade trade or or who was behave as as was was fitting fitting in in childhood childhood ... ... he he kept kept company company with with greedy, greedy, idle idle behave folk who often often started started brawls brawls in in taverns taverns and and brothels, brothels, and and he he never never came came folk across aa woman by by herself herself without without raping raping her*. her'. Here Here is is another another child child of of across fifteen: 'Although 'Although he he was was aa fine, fine, handsome handsome son', son', he he refused refused to to go go riding riding fifteen: or to to have have anything anything to to do do with with girls. girls. His His father father thought thought that that it it was was out out or of shyness: shyness: "This 'This is is customary customary in in children.' children.' In In fact, fact, he he was was betrothed betrothed to to of the Virgin. Virgin. His His father father forced forced him into into marriage: marriage: 'The 'The child child became became very very the angry and struck him hard.' tried to his escape and suffered angry and struck him hard.' He tried to make his escape and suffered by falling falling downstairs. downstairs. The Virgin Virgin then then came for for him and and mortal injuries injuries by mortal said to to him: him: 'Dear 'Dear brother, brother, behold behold your your sweetheart.' sweetheart.' And: And: 'At 'At this this the the said to aa sixteenth-century sixteendl-century calendar calendar of of the the child heaved heaved aa sigh.' sigh.' According According to child ages, at twenty-four 'a 'a child is strong strong and brave', and 'this is is what what and 'this and brave', child is ages, at twenty-four 26 becomes of of children they are are eighteen.' eighteen. '28 children when they becomes The same same is is true true in in the the seventeenth seventeenth century. century. The report report of of an an episcopal episcopal The inquiry of 1667 states in one parish 'there is jeune enfans 'there is un un one that in states that of 1667 parish jeune enfans ['a ['a inquiry young child'] aged about fourteen in the year or so he has has been been or so he in the who fourteen about year young child'] aged living in the aforementioned place has has been children of both both been teaching teaching children living in the aforementioned place sexes write, by arrangement with the inhabitants of the of inhabitants the with the and write, read and to read sexes to by arrangement 27 aforementioned place. '27 aforementioned place.' In took place a change seventeenth century of the the seventeenth the course course of In the by which century a change took place by more dependent classes of society, the was maintained in the classes in the was maintained old usage the old society, dependent usage while appeared in the middle class, where the word in the middle the different usage a different while a class, usage appeared •'child' child' was duration of duration its modern meaning. The long to its was restricted restricted to long meaning. childhood the common idiom was due to to the the indifference indifference in idiom the as it it appeared in childhood as appeared with biological phenomena were regarded at the the time: time: which strictly with which regarded at strictly biological phenomena in nobody would have thought of seeing the end of childhood in puberty. childhood the of have would puberty. seeing thought nobody idea of dependence: the The idea the idea with the of childhood childhood was bound up idea of dependence: the up with were also words in vocabulary words sons', •'varlets' varlets' and in the the words also were and 'boys' words •'sons', vocabulary 'boys' of the leave childhood childhood only could leave subordination. One could of feudal feudal subordination. only by by leaving leaving the is or at lower degrees of dependence. That is state lower or at least least the the of dependence, state of dependence. degrees dependence, in a to indicate indicate in why the words associated with childhood would endure to a with childhood associated the words why familiar in the spoken language, men of humble rank whose in the familiar style, spoken language, style, submission for instance, remained absolute: others remained absolute: lackeys, to others submission to instance, journeymen lackeys, for journeymen a child necessarily and not child but 'little boy' (petit garfon) was not but soldiers. A 'little and soldiers. necessarily a boy' (petit garfon) or a foreman aa young servant, just as today an employer or a foreman will say of aa will as an today employer say young servant, just lad lad
TilE AGES AGRS OF LIFE LIFE THE
27 27
,
worker of of twenty twenty to to twenty-five: twenty-five: 'He's 'He's aa good good lad/ lad.' Thus Thus in in 1549, 1549, one one worker of aa college, college, an an educational educational establishment, establishment, wrote wrote to to Badud, the the principal principal of Baduel,
of his his young young pupils pupils about about his his outfit outfit and and attendants: attendants: of 28 is all all that that he he will will need need for for his his personal personal service/ service.'18 , A little little boy boy is 'A At the the beginning beginning of of the the eighteenth eighteenth century, century, Fureti&re's Furetiere's dictionary dictionary gave gave At an explanation explanation of of the the usage: usage: ' "Child* "Child" is is also also aa term term. of of friendship friendship used used an to greet greet or or flatter flatter someone someone or or to to induce induce him to do do something. something. Thus Thus when when him to to one says says to to an an aged aged person: person: "Goodbye, "Goodbye, good good mother" mother" ['so long, grandone ['so long, grandma,' in in the the modern modern idiom] idiom] she she replies: replies: "Goodbye, "Goodbye, my my child" child" ['goodbye, [' goodbye, ma/
the father father of of one one the
*
1
she will will say say to to aa lackey: lackey: "Child, "Child, go go and and get get me this this or or that/' that." lad']. Or she
lad'].
master will will say say to to his his men men when when setting setting them them to to work work: ""Come along, Come along, A master children, get get to to work." work." A captain captain will will say to his his soldiers: soldiers: "Courage, "Courage, children, say to :
fast.'" Front-line Front-line troops, troops, those those most most exposed to danger, children, stand fast/ children, stand exposed to danger, were called called 'the 'the lost lost children'. children'. were At the the same same time, time, but but in in families of gentle gentle birth, birth, where where dependence dependence At families of was.only a consequence of physical infirmity, the vocabulary of childhood of childhood a of the was-only consequence vocabulary physical infirmity, tended rather rather to to the the first age. Its became increasingly refer to first age. Its use use became to refer tended increasingly frequent frequent in the seventeenth seventeenth century: the expression 'little enfant) the 'little child' child' (petit in the (petit enfant) century: expression began to take on the meaning give it. usage had preferred on had we it. The older older take the to usage preferred give meaning began 'young enfant), and this expression had not been completely child' (jeune (jeune enfant), and this expression had not been completely 'young child' abandoned. Fontaine used it, and and again in aa translation of in 1714, translation of La Fontaine used it, abandoned. La 1714, in again in Erasmus, reference to girl' who was not yet five: five: a 'young was not a reference was a to a there was Erasmus, there yet 'young girl' 29 The word petit 'I young girl who has begun to talk.'119 has scarcely *I have have a a young petit scarcely begun to talk/ girl or meaning by the end of the a special one* had also acquired or 'little 'little one' had also acquired a special meaning by the end of the sixteenth even of the all the the pupils the 'little 'little schools', it referred referred to to all sixteenth century: schools', even pupils of century: it In England, the word 'petty' had those children. the In were no no longer children. those who were 'petty' had England, longer the as in French, and a text of 1627 on the subject of school school of a of the in and text as the same same meaning French, 1627 subject meaning 30 spoke of the 'lyttle petties', the smallest pupils. 80 spoke of the 'lytde petties', the smallest pupils. It and pedagogic all the the moral moral and and with with all with Port-Royal all with It was was above above all pedagogic Port-Royal and literature from Port-Royal (or drew its its inspiration literature which which drew gave Port-Royal (or which gave inspiration more expression to a need for moral discipline which was widely more general widely general expression to a need for moral discipline used to the terms terms used to felt that the too bore bore witness), felt and to which which Port-Royal and to witness), that Port-Royal too denote all modem: modern: Jacqueline and above above all became common and denote childhood childhood became Jacqueline middle Pascal's at Port-Royal were divided little ones'. divided into into 'little Pascal's pupils ones', 'middle pupils at Port-Royal were 31 'With regard to ones' ones'.SI the little she wrote, she little children,' the to ones' and 'With and 'big ones'. wrote, children/ regard 'big fed if 'they even more than all others must be taught and fed if possible be others must the all the than even more possible taught 'they at Port-Royal like of the little schools schools at like little little doves.' The regulations doves/ The Port-Royal regulations of the little little ones.'sz ones/ 32 People stated: the little Mass every to Mass stated: 'They do not not go People day, only only the every day, 'They do go to 33 spoke 'little angels'. souls' and 'little a new way 'little souls' in a of 'little angels',88 expressions expressions spoke in way of In her her which which foreshadowed the eighteenth foreshadowed the century and Romanticism. In eighteenth century 1 '
'
*
THE IDEA OF CHILDHOOD
18
~s, Mlle Lheritier claimed to be addressing 'young minds', 'young ss, Mile Lh6ritier claimed to be addressing 'young minds', 'young >ple': 'These pictures pictures probably probably lead lead young people to reflections which "These to reflections which >ple young people 84 It can thus be seen that that seventeenth century feet reasoning.'" It can thus be seen that that seventeenth their reasoning/ feet their century lich have scorned scorned childhood, childhood, in fact brought into use seemed to to have ich seemed in fact brought into use )ressions phrases which which remain remain to to this this day in our Under sessions and and phrases our language. day in language. Under word 'child' 'child' in his dictionary, dictionary, Furetifcre Furetiere quoted proverbs which are in his are which quoted proverbs child, has been allowed to misl familiar to us: us: 'He is a a spoilt 'He is familiar to who has been allowed to mischild, spoilt lave without being punished. The fact is, there there are no longer any lave without fact is, are no being punished. longer any to have reason and cunning at an ldren, are beginning are to have for people reason and at an Idren, for people beginning cunning lyage.' 'Innocent as a new-born child.' as a new-born child.' 'Innocent ly age/ \11 the same, in its its attempts to talk talk about the French French about little Vll the little children, same, in children, the attempts to of the seventeenth century was hampered by the lack of words guage was the seventeenth of the lack of words century hampered by guage The same was true of English, distinguish them from bigger ones. from ones. same was true of bigger distinguish English, was also applied to to big big children. Lily's Latin ere the word 'baby' also applied ere the children. Lily's Latin 'baby' was mmar in English, which which was in use use from the beginning of in English, was in the beginning of the the sixsixr866, was intended intended for babes, all lytell nth century until until 1866, for 'all 'all lyte11 babes, tith century all lytell lytell rldren'.36 rldren'. 85 )n hand there were in in French French some expressions expressions which which seem there were other hand 3n the the other seem these was the word poupart. poupart. In In one refer very little little children. children. One of of these was the refer to to very one the Miracles de Notre-Dame there there was was aa 'little wanted to to feed de Notre-Dame son' who wanted the Miracles 'little son' feed the Infant Jesus. 'Tender-hearted Jesus, seeing the insistence icture Infant Jesus. of the 'Tender-hearted Jesus, icture of insistence Seeing the I good good will will of tlle little to and said: "Poupart, weep of the little child, to him and said: child, spoke spoke "Poupart, weep shall eat Witll me.'" But this poupart was more, for in days you in three shall eat with three days me.'" But this more, for you poupart was t really really what 'o/hat the French today would call a bebe: he was also referred the French a would call he was also bfbf: referred today as clergeon or 'little clerk', wore aa surplice and served at Mass: or 'little as a a clergeon clerk', wore surplice and served at Mass: had few letters and and would ere there were also little were also little children children who had ere there few letters would 36 In her have fed fed at breast than do divine service! '36 at their their mother's mother's breast her have than do In divine service!' of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the word , language of the seventeenth and the centuries language eighteenth 'part no longer longer denoted denoted aa child, but instead, in the the form poupon, poupon, what what child, but instead, in ipart the same name, but in the feminine: aa , French French today today still call by still call in the same but the feminine: name, by ,pee, or doll. or doll. \pte, ~rench was therefore therefore reduced reduced to to borrowing borrowing from from other other idioms idioms -- either either Drench was - words to or trade to denote eign languages or the slang used in school in or or trade denote the used school slang eign languages an interest henceforth going French that little in whom an to little child child in interest was henceforth French that going to talcen. This was was the the case case with with the which became became the the taken. This the Italian bambino which Italian bambino bambino Mme de de Sevigne used in in the the same sense a form of the :nch sense a inch bambin. of the also used Svigne also in the >venrral pitchoun, which she had doubtless learnt in the course of learnt course word she had doubtless )ven$al pitchoun, 37 Her cousin Coulanges, who did 37 ee of her stays stays with with the the Grignans. cousin did of her Coulanges, Grignans. 88 t like children but but spoke distrusted like children a great distrusted 'three-yeardeal, spoke of them a three-yeargreat deal,88 old word which in the I marmousets', marmousets', an old which in the popular popular idiom would become >
:
I
I
t
1
'
t
l
THB AGES THE
~
LIPB LIFE
chins
marmots.
,
2p
dish'.
'brats with with greasy greasy chins who put put aa finger finger in in every every dish*. People People marmots, 'brats also used slang terms from from school school Latin Latin or or from from sporting sporting and and military academies: aa little little jrater, aa cadet, and, and, when when there there were were several several of of them, them, academies:
military ftater, cadet, a populo populo or or petit petit peuple." peuple.'8 Lastly Lasdy the the use use of of diminutives diminutives became became quite quite a also used slang terms
common: fanfan fanfon isis to to be be found found in in the the letters letters of of Mme de de Svign S6vign6 and and common: of F&ielon. Fenelon. those of those
In time time these these words words In
would come come to to denote denote aa child child who was was still still small small would
but already already beginning beginning to to find find his his feet. feet. There There would would still still remain remain aa gap gap but where aa word word was was needed needed to to denote denote aa child child in in its its first first months months of of life life;; where
this gap gap would would not not be be filled filled until until the the nineteenth nineteenth century, century, when the the French would would borrow borrow from from the the English English the the word word 'baby', 'baby', which which in in the the French sixteenth and seventeenth seventeenth centuries centuries had had denoted children of of school school age. age. denoted children sixteenth and this
This borrowing was was the the last of the story: henceforth, with the This borrowing last stage stage of the story: henceforth, with the litde child child had had aa name. name. little
French word word bAt, bebe, the the very very French
* * * Even when aa vocabulary vocabulary relating relating to to infancy infancy appeared appeared and and expanded, Even when expanded, an remained between childhood and adolescence on the the one and on one an ambiguity between childhood adolescence remained ambiguity hand the category as youth on the other. People had no idea no idea the had as on other. hand and and the known People youth category of adolescence, and the idea time taking taking shape. a long idea was of what and the was a what we call call adolescence, long time shape. One can of it the eighteenth century in two characters in in characters -a glimpse of it in the can catch catch a eighteenth century glimpse as presented by Ch6rubin, and the other social, the one the conscript. one literary, conscript. literary, as presented by Cherubin, and the other social, In of puberty that was uppermost, and was the ambiguity of that In Cherubin it was was the Cherubin it uppermost, and ambiguity puberty the the effeminate boy just just emerging emerging from side of a boy of a the stress laid on effeminate side stress was was laid on the childhood. speaking, this was not a new thing: life social life since social childhood. Stricdy thing: since Strictly speaking, this was not a age, the full, round features of early adolescence, began at a very early of round features the at a adolescence, full, early began very early age, about the This is is the a feminine feminine appearance. of puberty, about the the age boys a gave boys appearance. This age of puberty, gave explanation of the ease with which men disguised themselves as women as themselves which of the ease with disguised explanation and sevenat the the beginning of the the sevennovels at and vice versa in in coundess countless baroque vice versa beginning of baroque novels - two teenth youths becoming friends when one was a girl in a friends one teenth century two girl in youths becoming century disguise, and so on; however credulous readers of adventure stories have stories have readers of adventure credulous and so however on; disguise, that there there always of probability the very been, the probability demands that always been, very minimum of a should and a girl. a beardless beardless boy resemblance between a should have have been some resemblance been some girl. boy at as a However, that resemblance was not presented at the time as a charactercharacterthe time not was that resemblance However, presented istic of age. with beardless men with istic of of adolescence, a characteristic characteristic of adolescence, a age. Those beardless lOft already behaved like fully like behaved ;oft features for they features were not adolescents were not adolescents for fully they already ~rown and giving orders. But in the feminine in Cherubin Ch&rubin the feminine men, fighting jrown men, fighting and giving orders. Lppearance it expressed child to to adult: adult: it transition from child was linked linked with the transition with the ippearance was expressed love. Lcondition a certain period, the period of budding love. the condition during a certain budding period during period, i
30 30
THE IDEA OF CHILDHOOD
Cherubin was was not not destined destined to to have have any any successors. successors. On the the contrary, contrary, itit Chrubin was manly manly strength strength which, which, in in boys, boys, would would express express the the idea idea of ofadolescence, adolescence, was and the the adolescence adolescence was was foreshadowed foreshadowed in in the the eighteenth eighteenth century century by by the the and conscript. Witness the text of this recruiting poster dating from the end conscript. Witness the text of this recruiting poster dating from the end 40 It is addressed to 'shining youth' (brillante of the the eighteenth century. century.~ It is addressed to of shining youth* (brillante *
eighteenth
jeunesse): 'Those 'Those youths youths [jeunesgens] [jeunes gens] who wish wish to to share share in in the the reputation reputation which this this fine fine corps corps has has won for for itself itself can can apply apply to to M. M. d'Ambrun d' Ambrun ... •.. which
jeunesse)
:
bring them them some some upstanding upstanding They [the [the recruiters] recruiters] will will reward reward those those who bring They [beaux homtnes]. hommes].' men [beaux The first first typical typical adolescent adolescent of of modern modem times times was was Wagner's Wagner's Siegfried: Siegfried: The the music music of of Siegfried Siegfried expressed expressed for for the the first first time time that that combination combination of of the (provisional) purity. physical strength, naturism. spontaneity and joie and naturism, joie strength, spontaneity physical (provisional) purity, de vivre vivre which which was was to to make make the the adolescent adolescent the the hero hero of our twentieth twentieth of our de century, the century of adolescence. made its appearance in in What of made its adolescence. the century appearance century, Wagnerian Germany was to enter France at a later date, in the years France at a later in the was to enter date, years Wagnerian Germany around 1900. The 'youth' 'youth' which which at at this this time time was was adolescence adolescence soon soon became became around 1900. The aa literary theme and a subject of concern for moralists and politicians. of concern for moralists and a and theme politicians. subject literary People began wondering wondering seriously what youth was thinking. and inquiries thinking, and inquiries seriously what youth was People began such writers as Massis and Henriot. Youth gave were made made by the and Henriot. as Massis writers such were gave the by impression of secretly possessing values capable of reviving an aged of an values of new reviving aged capable secretly possessing impression and like interest had been evidenced in in the the Romantic Romantic and sclerosed sclerosed society. society. A like interest had been evidenced period, but not with such specific reference to a single age group. and to a such reference not with but single age group, and specific period, moreover been limited that literature. of that literature. readers of and the the readers limited to to literature literature and had been it had moreover it Awareness became aa general phenomenon, however, after the of youth Awareness of youth became general phenomenon, however, after the end orId War, were solidly front were at the the front in which the troops which the of the First W end of the First World War, in solidly troops at opposed to the older generations in the rear. The awareness of youth awareness in rear. the the older to youth generations opposed began by being a feeling common to ex-servicemen, and this was this feeling to a ex-servicemen, feeling began by being feeling to countries, even in the America of Dos of in the America even the belligerent all the be found found in in all to be countries, belligerent Passos. adolescence expanded: it it encroached encroached upon that point, Passos. From that upon point, adolescence expanded: childhood in the other. Henceforth marriage, Henceforth other. in the in one one direction, childhood in direction, maturity marriage, maturity to it: which down', would not not put it: to be be a a 'settling had ceased ceased to which had put an end to 'settling down', the types the most prominent one of the was to to become adolescent was become one the married married adolescent prominent types customs. Thus our of its values, its appetites and its its customs. of our our time, time, dictating dictating its values, its appetites to a a adolescence to society has passed from a period which was ignorant of adolescence society has passed from a period which was ignorant to period in which adolescence is favourite age. We now want to come is the the favourite in adolescence which age. period to linger in it as long as possible. to it it early and early and linger in it as long as possible. This has been been accompanied evolution has This evolution contrary parallel but contrary by aa parallel accompanied by in the the society started evolution We know that old age started early old old age. that evolution of of old early in society age age. MoH&re's old. as Moliere's old men, of We are familiar with of the are familiar with such the past. such examples men, examples as past. the who appear to be still our eyes. Moreover the iconography to be still young to to our iconography of eyes. appear young 9
THE AGES OF LIFE
31 31
old does not always represent it in the guise of a decrepit invalid: old old age age does not always represent it in the guise of a decrepit invalid: old age begins with the losing of one's hair and the wearing of a beard, and age begins with the losing of one's hair and the wearing of a beard, and as a is bald. aa handsome handsome old old man sometimes sometimes appears appears simply simply as a man who is bald. the case with the the old old man man in which is a This is the This is also a case with in Titian's Titian's concert, is also concert, which of the ages of life. But generally speaking, before the representation of the the of before life. But representation ages generally speaking, was regarded regarded as of eighteenth century the old man was as ridiculous. ridiculous. One of eighteenth century the old Rottou's characters to force his daughter daughter to accept aa quinquagenarian quinquagenarian: Rotrou's characters tries tries to to accept force his 'He hasn't aa tooth tooth in In the whole of Nature is only fifty, and He is of Nature in his his head. head. In the whole only fifty, and hasn't not aa man who doesn't was born born in the age of Saturn or there's not he was in the there's of Saturn doesn't think think he or age of the the Flood. which he walks, two two are the time time of on which the feet on are Flood. Of the the three he walks, three feet gouty. at every and are always having to be propped stumble at gouty. They They stumble every step step and are always having to be propped 41 up or picked up.'u in another ten years he will will look look like like this or ten And in another this sexasexapicked up.' years he up his stick, the little old coughs, genarian in Quinault: 'Bent over in his the little old man over 'Bent stick, Quinault: coughs, genarian spits, blows his nose, cracks jokes, and bores Isabelle with tales of the spits, blows his nose, cracks jokes, and bores Isabelle with tales of the 42 days.''' good o.ld days.' good o.ld Old France had little old age: it was the age of retirement, France had little respect for Old respect for old age: it was the age of retirement, whole man in in books, churchgoing and rambling talk. talk. The picture picture of and rambling of the the whole books, churchgoing that of younger man: man: the the sixteenth centuries was was that of a a younger the the and seventeenth sixteenth and seventeenth centuries at the top of steps of the ages. He was not aa young young officer in the the sash of the of the was not sash at the top the steps officer in ages. man, although although he would be be today. that second to that he would second man, today. He corresponded corresponded to ages, between between childhood and old old age, which in category in the childhood and the of the the ages, age, which category of was called youth. Furetiere, Furetiere, who still seventeenth still took called youth. took very seventeenth century very century was seriously the archaic problems of the division of life into periods, thought seriously the archaic problems of the division of life into periods, thought maturity; but but he he recognized recognized that that it up an intermediate of maturity; it was was concept of up an intermediate concept not current and admitted: 'Jurists see only one age in youth and maturity.' not current and admitted: 'Jurists see only one age in youth and maturity.' youth, as The seventeenth century recognized in this itself in this military as the the seventeenth century military youth, recognized itself its adolescents. twentieth century recognizes itself in twentieth century recognizes itself in its adolescents. has disappeared, disappeared, at spoken French, French, where the Today old at least least from spoken where the old age age has Today un vieux, 'an old fellow', has survived with a colloquial, expression has survived with a 'an old fellow', colloquial, expression un vieux, taken place place contemptuous patronizing significance. This evolution has taken evolution has or patronizing significance. This contemptuous or stages. First of all there was the venerable old man, the silverin old was the venerable the silverin two all there two stages. First of man, in precious wise Nestor, Nestor, the the patriarch patriarch rich rich in precious experience: haired the wise haired ancestor, ancestor, the experience: Greuze, Restif Restif de de la and the the whole nineteenth nineteenth the old old man of la Bretonne Bretonne and the of Greuze, was not yet very agile, but he was longer as decrepit as century. He no as but he not was longer decrepit as yet very agile, century. the the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. There still remains still seventeenth centuries. There and remains the old sixteenth old man of of the this respect respect for old man in in the the received received ideas ideas of something the old the of the for the of this something of no has But the fact is this respect longer has any object, for present day. this is that that the fact But respect longer any object, for present day. the second the old has disappeared. in time, and old the has in our second stage, man is the our time, and this this is stage, disappeared. been replaced by •'the the elderly elderly man' and and by by 'well-preserved He has has been ladies 'well-preserved ladies replaced by or gentlemen': is still still middle-class, but is but which is tending or a concept which is which a which middle-class, gentlemen' tending concept :
4
:
32 32
THE IDEA OF CHILDHOOD
to become The technological idea of preservation is replacing to become popular. popular. The technological idea of preservation is replacing of old old age. the biological and moral idea the biological and moral idea of age.
* * * It is as as if, to every of history, history, there a It is to there corresponded if, every period period of corresponded a of human life: 'youth' is the privileged age and a particular division privileged age and a particular division of human life: 'youth* is the the seventeenth childhood of ninetee~ privileged of the seventeenth century, of the the nineteerrthf privileged age age of century, childhood adolescence the twentieth. twentieth. \"'-G';;"-"';-"-of the adolescence of \\G J^^^ variations from one century to another bear witness to the the naive naive The variations from one another bear witness to century to interpretation which public opinion has given, in each and every period, has in which each and interpretation given, public opinion every period, of it could an objective of its its demographic structure, could not not always form an demographic structure, when it always form objective idea of it. it. Thus Thus the the absence absence of and the the contempt idea of of adolescence adolescence and for old old age age contempt for - at on the the one and on the other hand hand the the disappearance of old age one hand, the other of old hand, and disappearance age - at - and the least as aa degradation the introduction introduction of of adolescence, least as adolescence, express degradation - and express of life. the average society's reactions to to the the duration duration of life. Prolongation of society's reactions Prolongation of the average life-span brought into existence tracts of life to which the scholars of the life-span brought into existence tracts of life to which the scholars of the Byzantine the Middle Middle Ages Ages had had given names even even though and the Byzantine Empire Empire and given names though they had not existed for the generality; and the modern language has had not existed the for and the they generality; language has borrowed these terms, which were originally purely theoretical, to borrowed these old old terms, which were originally purely theoretical, to denote realities: the the last phase of familIar and forgotten denote new realities last phase of a a long and familiar now long forgotten the 'ages of lIfe'. theme, that of of the theme, that 'ages of life'. In periods when life life is is short, idea of a privileged privileged age age is even more m~re In periods the idea of a is even short, the important than in our period of longevity. In the following pages, than in our of In the important period following pages, we longevity. shall pay particular particular attention indications of of childhood. In the shall pay to the attention to the indications the course course childhood. In of this this study must never never forget to what what extent extent this representation of of this representation study we must forget to childhood relative, in the preference in comparison childhood remains remains relative, to with the given to comparison with preference given 'youth' in the under examination That the period examination (pre-nineteenth 'youth' in period under century). That (pre-nineteenth century). time was not not one one of of children children or or of or of old men: of old men it it was a time of adolescents a adolescents or of young men. period of men. period young :
:
II THE DISCOVERY OF CHILDHOOD
M
EDIEVAL art art until until about about the the twelfth twelfth century century did did not not know childhood or or did did not not attempt attempt to to portray portray it. it. It It isis hard hard to to believe believe childhood or incapacity; incapacity; it it seems seems that this this neglect neglect was was due due to to incompetence incompetence or that
MEDIEVAL
no place place for for childhood childhood in in the the medieval medieval more probable probable that that there there was was no more of the the twelfth twelfth century century provides provides us us with with aa world. An Ottoman Ottonian miniature miniature of world. of the deformation which an artist at that time would striking example striking example of the deformation which an artist at that time 1 l on children's bodies. The subject is the scene in the Gospels in inflict in the the is scene inflict on children's bodies. The subject Gospels in asks that that little little children children be be allowed allowed to to come to to Him. The which Jesus Jesus asks which
is clear: clear: parvuli. parvuli. Yet Yet the the miniaturist miniaturist has has grouped grouped around around Jesus Jesus is men, without without any any of of the the characteristics characteristics of of what are are obviously obviously eight eight men, what childhood; they they have have simply been depicted on a smaller scale. In a a a scale. In on smaller been childhood; depicted simply
Latin text text Latin
of the the late century the the three three children children brought brought French miniature miniature of late eleventh eleventh century French by St Nicholas are are also reduced to to aa smaller smaller scale than the the adults, adults, to life life by scale than St Nicholas also reduced to
or features. 22 A painter painter would would without any any other difference in in expression other difference without expression or features. not even hesitate to give the naked body of very few cases cases in the the very a child, not even hesitate to give the naked body of a child, in when it was exposed, the musculature of an adult: thus in a Psalter dating a in Psalter when it was exposed, the musculature of an adult: thus dating
from after thirteenth century, or early from the the late late twelfth twelfth or Ishmael, shortly shortly after century, Ishmael, early thirteenth 33 The thirteenth of a man. birth, has the abdominal and pectoral muscles thirteenth man. of a and muscles the abdominal has birth, pectoral century, although it showed more understanding in its its presentation of presentation understanding in century, although it showed 4 In St Louis's moralizing childhood, remained faithful to this method.' Louis's St this method. In to faithful remained childhood, moralizing Bible, are still still indicated indicated only but they are depicted children are often, but Bible, children only they are depicted more often, by in the life of Jacob, Isaac is shown sitting an episode their size. In an size. In sitting episode in die life of Jacob, Isaac is by their between little men who come fifteen little surrounded by his two between his two wives, wives, surrounded by some fifteen up their children. are their children. 65 When these are waists: tllese to the the grown-ups' the level of the level of up to grown-ups' waists: illuminator Job is rewarded for his faith and becomes rich once more, the illuminator Job is rewarded for his faith and becomes rich once more, the his good fortune by placing Job between an equal depicts between equal number of depicts his good fortune by placing Job cattle on the left and children on the right: the traditional picture the traditional the children cattle on the left and picture of right: in the the Book fecundity inseparable from wealth. In another illustration illustration in In another wealth. from fecundity inseparable size. in order of some children are lined up in order of size. lined ofJob, are some children up Job, in an the Sainte-Chapelle, In In the the thirteenth-century Sainte-Chapelle, in Gospel-book of the thirteenth-century Gospel-book the illustration Christ and one of the loaves and fishes, the loaves of the illustration of the miracle miracle of of the fishes, Christ a little man who comes up on either side little Apostles are shown standing side of a either are shown up Apostles standing 8 In the to the fishes. fishes.6 In the world of carried the child who carried to their their waists: the child no doubt doubt the waists no the thirteenili thirteenth century. the end of the to the Romanesque formulas, right century, up to right up Romanesque formulas, :
33 33
B B
34 34
THB IDEA IDBA OF OF CHILDHOOD CHILDHOOD THE
there are are no no children children characterized characterized by by aa special special expression expression but but only only men men there to be on a reduced scale. This refusal to accept child morphology in art is to be on a reduced scale. This refusal to accept child morphology in art is found too in most of the ancient civilizations. A fine Sardinian bronze fine Sardinian bronze found too in most of the ancient civilizations.
A
of the the ninth ninth century century B.C. B.C. shows shows aa sort sort of ofPiet~: mother holding holding in in her her Pieta: aa mother of 7 7 arms the the somewhat somewhat bulky bulky body body of of her her son. son. The The catalogue catalogue tells tells us: us: arms 'The little little masculine masculine figure figure could could also also be be aa child child which, which, in in accordance accordance 'The with the the formula formula adopted adopted in in ancient ancient times times by by other other peoples, peoples, had had been been with that represented as an adult.' Everything in fact would seem to suggest that to in would seem fact adult/ as an suggest Everything represented the realistic realistic representation representation of of children children or or the the idealization idealization of of childhood, childhood, its its the to Greek art. Little Eroses grace and rounded charms, was confined Eroses to Little art. Greek confined was rounded and charms, grace proliferated in in the the Hellenistic Hellenistic period, period, but but childhood childhood disappeared disappeared from proliferated
iconography together with the other Hellenistic themes, and Romanesque
and Romanesque iconography together with the other Hellenistic themes, art returned to that rejection of of the the special special features features of of childhood childhood which had already already characterized characterized the the periods periods of of antiquity antiquity before before Hellenism. Hellenism. had This is is no no mere mere coincidence. coincidence. Our Our starting-point starting-point in in this this study study is is aa world of This art returned to that rejection
pictorial representation in which childhood childhood is is unknown; unknown; literary literary hishisin which the have the same observation about the same observation the have made Mgr and epic, in which child prodigies behave with the courage physical the with behave child which in physical courage prodigies epic, strength of doughty warriors. This This undoubtedly undoubtedly means that that the the men of strength of doughty warriors. the tenth did not not dwell the image childhood, on the dwell on centuries did and eleventh eleventh centuries tenth and the image of childhood, It and that image had neither interest even reality for for them. It even nor interest nor had neither that that and that reality image that of in that suggests too that in realm of real not in and not simply real life, of realm the in the that too life, and simply suggests aesthetic childhood was transition which passed a period was a aesthetic transposition, passed period of transition transposition, childhood quickly. and which was just as quickly forgotten. as was which and quickly forgotten. just quickly little imps to the the little Such How do we get there to is our our starting-point. Such is imps get from there starting-point. in all ages in of of children of all our family of children the photographs to the of Versailles, Versailles, to family ages photographs albums? albums? to be found are to About children are a few of children few types thirteenth century, the thirteenth About the century, a types of which to be a little concept of childhood. the modern to the modem little closer closer to a to be which appear concept appear There depicted in the guise of aa very man, aa young the angel, is the There is young very young young man, angel, depicted in the guise 88 But how old is this this old is ulolescent: as Pere du Colombier remarks. remarks. du Colombier as Pere a clergeon, idolescent: a clergeon, various ages 'little were children of various who were children were The clergeons clerk'? The little clerk'? ages clergeons for holy destined for were destined :rained church and who were in church the responses make the to make rained to holy responses in no seminaries were orders, seminarists of a sort in a period when there were no seminaries there when in a of a sort seminarists orders, period was that existed, and ofschooling kind of the only in Latin, existed, was and when when schooling Latin, the schooling that only kind schooling in de reserved for future clerks. 'Here', says one of the Miracles de Notre-Dame, Miracles the of one clerks. future Notre-Dame, for reserved 'Here', says fed rather have have fed would rather 'there and would letters and had few who had few letters children who little children were little 'there were late that at time: at their mother's breast [but children were weaned very late at that time: weaned children were breast mother's their at very [but do divine divine than do Shakespeare's Juliet was still being breast-fed at at three) three] than Shakespeare's Juliet was still being breast-fed 9 The angel of Reims, to take one is a one service.'8 example. is a big boy rather of take to The service.' Reims, big boy rather example, angel pictorial representation torians such such as Calve as Mgr Calve torians
THE DISCOVERY DISCOVERY Of Of' CHILDHOOD CHILDHOOD THE
.
, J5 3S
than aachild, child, but but the theartists artists have havestressed stressed the theround, round, pretty, pretty, and andsomewhat somewhat than ofyouths youths barely bardy out out of ofchildhood. childhood. We have have already already effeminate features features of effeminate
We
come aa long long way way from from the the small-scale small-scale adults adults of ofthe the Ottoman Ottonian miniature. miniature. come
This type type of ofadolescent adolescent angel angd was was to to become become extremely extremely common common in in the the This was to to last last to to the the very very end end of ofthe the Italian Italian QuattroQuattrofourteenth century century and and was fourteenth cento: the the angels angels of of Fra Fra Angelico, Angelico, Botticelli Botticelli and and Ghirlandajo Ghirlandajo all all belong bdong cento: to it. it. to
The second second type type of of child child was was to to be be the the model modd and and ancestor ancestor of ofall all the the The of art: art: the the Infant Infant Jesus, Jesus, or or the the Infant Infant NotreNotrelittle children children in in the the history history of Dame, for for here here childhood childhood isis linked linked to to the the mystery mystery of of motherhood motherhood and and Dame, the Marian Marian cult cult. To To begin begin with, with, Jesus, Jesus, like like other other children, children, isis an an adult adult on on the reduced scale: scale: aa little little God-priest God-priest in in His His majesty, majesty, depicted depicted by by Theotokos. Theotokos. aa reduced The evolution evolution towards towards aa more more realistic realistic and and more more sentimental sentimental representarepresentaThe tion of of childhood childhood begins begins very very early early on on in in painting: painting: in in aa miniature miniature of of the the tion second half half of of the the twelfth twelfth century, century, Jesus Jesus is is shown wearing wearing aa thin, thin, almost almost second His arms arms round round His His mother's mother's neck, neck, transparent shift and standing with with His transparent shift and standing 10 With the nestling against her, cheek to cheekY) the Virgin's motherhood, cheek. motherhood, to cheek Virgin's nestling against her, of pictorial pictorial representation. representation. In In the the thirteenth thirteenth childhood enters enters the the world world of childhood 11 century it inspires other family scenes. In St Louis's moralizing Bible,1l St Louis's In scenes. other it moralizing Bible, family inspires century are shown surrounded by there are are various various family scenes in which parents are by there family scenes in which parents at the as their children with the same tender respect as on the rood-screen at tender same the with their children respect Chartres: thus in a picture of Moses and his family, husband and wife his of Moses a in Chartres: thus family, picture are are hands while the children men) surrounding them are children (little are holding (little men) surrounding holding hands while the stretching out their hands towards their mother. These cases, however, mother. their however, towards cases, hands their stretching out to the limited to remained of childhood childhood remained limited idea of the touching rare: the remained rare: touching idea Italianas is Jesus until the fourteenth century, when, as is well known, Italian. Infant known, fourteenth when, the Infant Jesus until century, it. art to spread and and devdop was to to hdp art was develop it. help to spread child. A third type of child appeared in the Gothic Gothic period: in the child period: the naked child. A third type of appeared than often More naked. The Infant Jesus was scarcely ever depicted naked. More often than not, not, ever was The Infant Jesus depicted scarcely in like other children of His age, He was chastely wrapped in swaddlingwas He His of swaddlinglike other children chastely wrapped age, the until the undressed until be undressed not be would not clothes He would dress. He or aa dress. shift or in aa shift clad in or clad clothes or Bibles in the of the Middle Ages. Those few miniatures in the moralizing Bibles end miniatures few Those moralizing end of the Middle Ages. in the of the case case of which children showed them fully dressed, except showed them except in which depicted fully dressed, depicted children was Solomon mothers the Innocents or the dead children whose mothers Solomon was judging. whose children dead judging. the Innocents or the into the introduce into the to introduce was to which was soul which of death ItIt was the soul and the death and the allegory was the allegory of in the world of forms the picture of childish nudity. Already in the preof childish prenudity. Already world of forms the picture features of of in which which many Byzantine iconography of the fifth century, the fifth many features century, in Byzantine iconography of bodies the of the their the future Romanesque art made their appearance, the bodies of the made the future Romanesque art appearance, than living bodies. smaller than were smaller dead scale. Corpses in scale. living bodies. dead were reduced in were reduced Corpses were scenes are half batde in the dead the the fliad in the Ambrosian Library the dead in the battle scenes are half In In the Iliad in the Ambrosian Library little
THB IDEA IDBA OF CHILDHOOD THE
36
lll In living.12 In French French medieval medieval art art the the soul soul was was depicted depicted as aa little little child clri1d who was was naked naked and and usually usually sexless. sexless. The The Last Last Judgments Judgments as 13 The lead the the souls souls of of the the righteous righteous to to Abraham's Abraham's bosom bosom in in this this form. form. 18 The lead his mouth in a symbolic dying breathes the child out through the a child out in man breathes his mouth symbolic through dying representation of the soul's departure. This is also the entry of of the the representation of the soul's departure. This is also how the entry is depicted, depicted, whether whether it it isis aa case case of of aa holy, holy, miraculous miraculous soul into into the the world world is soul conception - the Angel of the Annunciation presenting the Virgin with aa conception the Angel of the Annunciation presenting the Virgin with l'naked child, child, Jesus's Jesus's soul soul 14 or aa case case of of aa perfectly perfectly natural natural conception: conception: -or naked a couple couple resting resting in in bed bed apparently apparently quite quite innocently, innocently, but but something something must must a have happened, happened, for for aa naked naked child child can can be be seen seen flying flying through through the the air air and and have entering the woman's moutll 'the creation of the soul by natural natural of the human soul mouth 'the creation woman's the by entering
the size size the
of the the of
living.
15 means '.16 means'.
In the course course of of the the fourteenth fourteenth and and particularly particularly the the fifteenth fifteenth century, century, In the these medieval medieval types types would would develop develop further, further, but but in in the the direction already direction already these llave already already observed observed that tlIat the the indicated in the the thirteenth thirteenth century. century. We have indicated in
We
angel-cum-altar-boy would go on playing its part, without very angel-cum-altar-boy would go on playing its part, without very much the other change, painting of the fifteenth century. On the other in the die religious religious painting of the fifteenth century. change, in hand the theme of the Holy Holy Childhood never cease in would never cease developing of the Childhood would hand the theme developing in - its both and variety from the fourteenth century on and its popularity and the and from fourteenth on both scope century variety popularity scope fecundity bearing witness to the progress, in ilie collective consciousness, fecundity bearing witness to the progress, in the collective consciousness, of that idea idea of observer can can dIstinguish of childhood which only a keen keen observer childhood which of that distinguish only a in and which did not exist at all the in eleventh did not at all in the eleventh and exist thirteenth century which in the the thirteenth century century. In ilie group of Jesus and HIS mother, the artist the stress the and the of His the artist would stress In mother, century. group Jesus graceful, affectionate, naive aspects of early childhood: the child seeking child naive of the childhood affectionate, seeking aspects early graceful, its ready to kiss or caress her, the child playing breast or or getting its motlier's mother's breast getting ready to kiss or caress her, the child playing the child a leash, the child with fruit or a childhood games fruit or a bird bird on a traditional childhood the traditional leash, the games with eating its pap, the child being wrapped ill its Every in its swaddling-doilies. die child its swaddling-clothes. Every being wrapped eating pap, gesture tllat could be observed -- at least by somebody prepared to pay gesture that could be observed at least by somebody prepared to pay attention in pictorial form. to them them -- would henceforth be reproduced henceforth be attention to pictorial form. reproduced in These time to extend to time extend a long of sentinlental take a sentimental realism features of realism would would take These features long beyond iconography, which is scarcely surprising of religious frontiers of the frontiers beyond the religious iconography, which is scarcely surprising when one with landscape and genre that this this was was also the case also ilie case wimlandscape one remembers remembers tlIat genre painting. It none the less that me group Child of Virgin the that the less true true It remains remains none Virgin and child group of painting. changed the picture and became and more profane: in character character and became more and picture of profane: the changed in aa scene life. of everyday scene of life. everyday the painters Timidly then with with increasing at first, first, then painters of frequency, the increasing frequency, Timidly at all they turned religious childhood went beyond that of Jesus. First of all First to childhood of that they turned to religious beyond Jesus. the which inspired at least two new and popular least the childhood childhood of the the Virgin, at Virgin, popular inspired themes: in St the birth St Anne's Anne's the theme of the birth of the Virgin-people themes: the of the Virgin people in over bedroom fussing over the new-born child, bathing her, wrapping the her in in child, bathing her, wrapping her fussing :
THE DISCOVERY OF CHILDHOOD
37 '37
swaddling-clothes and showing her to her mother -- and the theme of the swaddling-clothes and showing her to her mother and the theme of the Virgin's education: a reading reading lesson, lesson, with with the Virgin following the words a the Virgin education: following the words Virgin's of in aa book book held held by by St Anne. Then other holy holy childhoods: St Anne. Then came came other childhoods: those those of in St the Infant Jesus's James, and the children of the holy 's playmate, St Infant St and the the the children of St John, Jesus playmate, holy James, John, women, Mary Mary Zebedee Mary Salome. and Mary Zebedee and Salome. A completely iconowomen, completely new iconography thus came into existence, presenting more and more scenes of graphy thus came into existence, presenting more and more scenes of childhood, care to gather together in similar groups these holy and taking childhood, and taking care to gather together in similar groups these holy children, with or without their their mothers. or without mothers. children, with This which generally speaking started with the fourteenth which This iconography, iconography, generally speaking started with the fourteenth century, coincided with a profusion of priors' tales and legends, such as a with of coincided priors' tales and legends, such as century, profusion those in the the Miracles Miracles de Notre-Dame. It to the seventeenth de Notre-Dame. It continued continued up the seventeenth those in up to century and its can be followed in painting, tapestry and in and its development can followed be development painting, tapestry and century sculpture. shall in any case have occasion to return to it with regard shall in have occasion to return case to it We with any regard sculpture. to the religious practices practices of of childhood. childhood. the religious to From this this religious religious iconography lay iconography iconography of childhood, a lay childhood, a iconography of eventuilly detached itself in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This and in the fifteenth sixteenth This itself detached centuries. eventually was not yet yet the the portrayal portrayal of the child child on own. Genre painting was was of the on its its own. Genre painting was not developing at this time by means of the transformation of a conventhe means of this time transformation of a at convenby developing tional iconography inspired by the antiquo-medieval concept tional allegorical allegorical iconography inspired by the antique-medieval concept of Nature: ages life, seasons, senses, elements. pictures and and elements. Subject of life, of Nature: seasons, senses, Subject pictures ages of anecdotal paintings began began to to take take the the place place of of static static representations representations of of anecdotal paintings symbolic characters. shall cause to deal with this at shall have to have cause deal We with at this evolution evolution characters. symbolic 16 Let us merely note here that the the child became one some length later later on. Let us merely note here that child became on.16 one some length of most frequently frequently found found in these anecdotal anecdotal paintings: paintings: the in these the the characters characters most of the child with his the child with his playmates, were often his child with were the who often his family; child with playmates, family; adults; the child in aa crowd, but very very defmitely his in his child in crowd, but adults; the definitely 'spotlighted' 'spotlighted' in mother's arms, arms, or or holding holding her her hand hand or playing or piddling; the the or playing or even even piddling; mother's child the crowds miracles or or martyrdoms, martyrdoms, listening to crowds watching child among watching miracles listening to among the sermons, or liturgical rites such as presentations or circumrites such as or circumor following sermons, presentations following liturgical cisions; the child an apprentice apprentice to to aa goldsmith goldsmith or a painter painter or as an or a or child serving cisions the serving as an old some or the child at school, an old and popular theme at child or the theme some other other craftsman; school, craftsman; popular which went back back to to the the fourteenth and would go go on inspiring fourteenth century which went century and inspiring subject paintings up to to the the nineteenth nineteenth century. century. subject paintings up as a rule devoted to a general general rule the These subject subject paintings paintings were not not as to the These a great in a cases exclusive portrayal of of childhood, but in many cases there were there were exclusive portrayal childhood, but great many children the characters depicted, both principal principal and secondary. characters depicted, children among secondary. among the the following ideas: first, children mingled with adults And this children ideas: adults the this suggests first, mingled with following suggests the for in life, and any gathering for the purpose of work. relaxation or relaxation or in everyday and work, purpose any gathering everyday life, sport brought together both children and adults; secondly, painters were children both adults; secondly, painters sport brought together for its childhood for particularly fond depicting childhood its graceful graceful or or picturesque picturesque of depicting fond of particularly ;
,
THE IDEA IDEA OP OF CHILDHOOD CHILDHOOD THE
38
qualities (the taste for the picturesque anecdote anecdote developed developed in in the the fifteenth fifteenth
taste for the picturesque qualities (the
and sixteenth sixteenth centuries centuries and and coincided coincided with with the the appreciation appreciation of ofchildhood's childhood's and charms), and they delighted in stressing the presence of a child in aa group group in in the of a child and stressing presence they delighted charms), or aa crowd. crowd. Of these these two two ideas ideas one one now strikes strikes us us as as out out of ofdate, date, for for today, today, or as also also towards towards the the end end of of the the nineteenth nineteenth century, century, we tend tend to to separate separate the the as world of of children children from from that that of of adults; adults; the the other other foreshadows foreshadows the the modern modem world idea idea
of childhood. childhood. of
* * * The origins origins of of the the themes themes of of the the angel, angel, the the holy holy childhoods, childhoods, and and their their The subsequent iconographical developments date as far back as the thirteenth date as far back the as thirteenth subsequent iconographical developments century; two types of child portrayal appeared in in the the fifteenth fifteenth century; two new types of child portrayal appeared century: the portrait and the putta. The child. as have seen, was not not was The as we have and the the child, seen, putto. portrait century: missing from the Middle Ages, at least from the thirteenth century on, at from the least thirteenth Middle the from century on, Ages, missing but there there was was never never aa portrait portrait of of him, him. the the portrait portrait of of aa real real child, child. as as he he was was but at a certain certain moment moment of of his his life. life. at a 17 the child In the funeral funeral effigies effigies listed in the the Gaigni&res Gaignieres Collection, Collection,17 the child listed in In the appeared only at a very late date, in the sixteenth century Curiously in the sixteenth late a at date, century Curiously very appeared only not on his his own tomb tomb or that of enough, his first appearance was or that of his his was not enough, his first appearance parents but on that of his the tombs of the masters of of tombs of the masters his teachers. teachers. On the that of on but parents 18 As early as 18 Bologna, the teacher was shown surrounded by his pupi1s. was his As surrounded teacher the early as by pupils. Bologna, 1378, Cardinal de La Grange, the Bishop of Amiens, had the two princes had the of the two de La Cardinal Amiens, Bishop princes Grange, 1378, he .tutored portrayed at the ages of ten and seven on a 'handsome a 'handsome and often seven on at the hadvtutored he had ages portrayed 19 his cathedral. pillar' in a picture a child child of keeping No one thought cathedral. 19 Noone in his thought of keeping a picture of a pillar* if to manhood or had died in infancy. died or in to lived to to grow had either either lived child had if that that child grow infancy. In an unimportant childhood was simply first case, In the the first case, childhood phase of which simply an unimportant phase there that of the second case, of the in the the second to keep need to no need was no case, that there was record; in any record; keep any dead it was thought that the little thing which had disappeared so that the little it was dead child, child, disappeared so thing thought soon of remembrance: there were far too many far too of remembrance: there not worthy was not life was in life soon in many worthy children was problematical. survival was whose survival was, and children whose feeling was, general feeling problematical. The general in order for order to to keep children in that one one had had several several children time remained, a long for a remained, that keep long time de As late in Le Caquet de l'accouchie, just a few. in as the the seventeenth seventeenth century, late as As a few. Faccouchde, Caquet century, just we have a woman who has has at the bedside of a the bedside have aa neighbour, standing at neighbour, standing just given birth, the mother of five 'little brats', and calming her fears her fears 'little mother five the brats', calming just given birth, with to bother bother you, will 'Before they are old old enough words: 'Before these words: with these you will enough to you, you they are 80 have or perhaps all of them.'10 A strange consolation! or of them/ of them, all consolation! half of lost half have lost them, strange perhaps ,People could not to something attached to allow themselves to become too too attached not allow themselves to something (People could is the the reason for that as loss. This is reason for certain remarks a probable certain as a This remarks loss. was regarded that was probable regarded which shock our present-day sensibility, such as Montaigne's observation: as such our observation: shock which Montaigne's present-day sensibility,
THE DISCOVERY ~. &P CHILDHOOD
.-39 39
'I three children their infancy, not without regret, but two or or three lost two children in in their have lost 'I have infancy, not without regret, but 81 on LOWson in Le I.e MalaJe MalaJe without great great sorrow',ll or Moliere's Moli&re's comment without comment on Louison in sorrow', or
imaginaire: 'The little girl doesn't count.' Most people probably felt, like
imaginaire: 'The litde girl doesn't count.' Most people probably felt, like Montaigne, that recognizable that children children had had 'neither 'neither mental mental activities activities nor nor recognizable Montaigne, 88 ss bodily shape'. shape'. Mme de de Sevigne records without without any sign of surprise of bodily Sevigne records surprise any sign a similar remark made by by Mme de when the latter fainted similar remark de Coetquen a on the latter fainted on Coetquen when receiving the news of her little daughter's death: 'She is greatly distressed receiving the news of her little daughter's death: 'She is greatly distressed
and that she will never again have one so pretty.' and says says that she will never again have one so pretty.' think today, that every child already' Nobody thought, thought, as as we ordinarily Nobody ordinarily think today, that every child already contained a man's personality. Too many many of mine die in man's personality. of them died. 'All 'All mine contained a them died. die in infancy', wrote Montaigne. This indifference was a direct and inevitable infancy', wrote Montaigne. This indifference was a direct and inevitable consequence the demography demography of of the the period. It lasted until the nineof the consequence of period. It lasted until the nineteenth century century in of the country, in so far as it was was compatible compatible in the of in the depths so far as it the teenth depths country, with Christianity, which the immortal soul in every that which respected the soul in immortal child that with Christianity, respected every child had been baptized. baptized. It is recorded that the people of Basque country It is recorded that the people of the the Basque had been country retained for for aa very the custom burying children that had of burying time the custom of had retained children that very long long time died without baptism baptism in in the the house, house, on the the garden. the threshold, or in in the died without threshold, or garden. Here may perhaps rites, of of ancient of sacrificial see a a survival sacrificial offerings, survival of ancient rites, Here we may perhaps see offerings, or rather it it may be that the child that had died too too soon was buried had died soon in in life that the child that life was or rather buried may be as bury a domestic pet, a cat or aa dog. almost as we today a a or much cat domestic almost anywhere, today bury pet, anywhere, dog. inadequately involved in life, was such unimportant little so in an unimportant little thing. so involved such an He was life, thing, inadequately that nobody nobody had fears that he might return after death to pester the return after that he death to had any fears that any might pester the living. It is to note that in the frontispiece to the Tabula in to note that the the It is interesting to Tabula frontispiece interesting living. Cebetis placed the the litde little children children in in aa sort marginal zone, sort of of marginal M6rian has has placed Cebetis Merian zone, between the earth have emerged and the life into which and have the life into which from which which they earth from between the they emerged they have not yet entered, and from which they are separated by a portico they have not yet entered, and from which they are separated by a portico bearing the inscription Introitus ad vitam. 13 This This feeling of indifference indifference feeling of inscription Introitus ad vitam. bearing the towards a too too fragile childhood is not really very far removed from the is far the not childhood towards a really very fragile callousness or Chinese Chinese societies practised the the societies which practised the Roman or of the callousness of exposure of new-born children. can understand the gulf which now understand the can We which children. new-born of gulf exposure separates our concept of childhood from that which existed before the that which existed before the separates our concept of childhood demographic revolution or its preceding stages. There is nothing about is about its or revolution nothing preceding stages. demographic this which should in the the us: it it was only natural should surprise this callousness callousness which only natural in surprise us: there are community conditions of the time. On the hand, there are grounds other hand, the other time. the of conditions grounds community for in the earliness of the idea of childhood, childhood, seeing that conconthe idea for surprise seeing that surprise in the earliness of and ditions were still unfavourable to to it. it. Statistically objectively ditions were still so so unfavourable Statistically objectively later. True, speaking, this idea should have appeared much later. there was the the True, there speaking, this idea should have appeared litde creatures, taste for for the the picturesque, picturesque, pleasing pleasing aspects aspects of the the little the idea idea of taste creatures, the be derived from the the charms charms of to be the the entertainment entertainment to the and the of childhood childhood and as ingenuous antics of infancy: 'puerile nonsense', as Montaigne said, in of Montaigne said, in ingenuous antics infancy: 'puerile nonsense',
40 4O
THE IDEA IDEA OF OF CHILDHOOD CHILDHOOD THE
which we we adults adults take take an an interest interest 'for 'for our our amusement, amusement, like like monkeys'. mo"nkeys'. 2' which But this idea could quite easily go hand in hand with indifference towards But this idea could quite easily go hand in hand with indifference towards 24
the
essential, definitive defmitive personality personality of of the the child: child: the the immortal immortal soul. soul. The The the essential, new taste taste for for the the portrait portrait indicated indicated that that children childrenwere were emerging emerging from from the the new
anonymity in which their slender chance of ofsurvival survivalhad had maintained maintainedthem. them. in fact fact quite quite remarkable remarkable that that at at that that period period of ofdemographic demographic wastage wastage It isis in It aa child of anyone should have felt a desire to record and keep the likeness of child likeness and the record to desire a felt have should keep anyone of ofaa child child that that was was dead. dead. The The portrait portrait of the the that would would go go on on living living or or of that dead child child in in particular particular proves proves that that that that child child was was no no longer longer generally generally dead considered as as an an inevitable inevitable loss. loss. This This solicitous solicitous attitude attitude did did not not exclude exclude considered or eliminate the opposite attitude, that of Montaigne, the neighbour at or eliminate the opposite attitude, that of Montaigne, the neighbour at the mother's mother's bedside, bedside, and and Molire: Moliere: down down to to the the eighteenth eighteenth century century they they the coexisted. It It was was only only in in the the eighteenth eighteenth century, century, with with the the beginning beginning of of coexisted. idea the that Malthusianism and and the the extension extension of of contraceptive contraceptive practices, practices, that the idea Malthusianism of necessary necessary wastage wastage would would disappear. disappear. of The appearance appearance of of the the portrait portrait of of the the dead dead child child in in the the sixteenth sixteenth century century The of feelings. in the feelings. accordingly marked a very important in the history moment a marked history important very accordingly This portrait portrait was was aa funeral funeral effigy effigy to to begin begin with. with. The child child was not not at at first first This the show portrayed alone, alone, but but on on his his parents' parents' tomb. tomb. Gaignifcres's Gaignieres's records records the portrayed 25 feet. child by his his mother's side and very tiny, tiny, or else at his parents' parents' feet. 25 at his or else and very mother's side child by These tombs all back to sixteenth century: the sixteenth to the 1560. date back 1530* 1560. 1503, 1530, all date These tombs century: 1503, that of note that us note let us Among the interesting tombs in Westminster Abbey, let in Westminster tombs the Abbey, interesting Among 26 the in 1586. died in of Winchester, I586. 26 The recumbent Winchester, who died Marchioness of the Marchioness her tomb front of her the front figure qf the Marchioness isis life-size; life-size; represented represented on the figure of the Marchioness the tiny on the Marquess, husband the her husband are her scale are smaller scale tiny on aa smaller kneeling, and the Marquess, kneeling, from 1615 a tomb dating tomb Westminster too, At Westminster 1615 child. At dead child. too, on a of aa dead dating from tomb of in a a pair are represented to of Shrewsbury and Countess Countess of the Earl Earl and pair to 1620, represented in Shrewsbury are 1620, the at their their feet, of with their kneeling at little daughter their little feet, with recumbent figures, of recumbent kneeling daughter figures, who children who the children that the here that her It should be noted noted here in prayer. folded in hands folded her hands prayer. It should be is the whole whole family surround themselves: the dead themselves: not always are not dead are the dead surround the family is always dead time when the time at the when were at it were gathered round the as as if if it that family, of that heads of the heads round family, gathered are still still alive alive the the who are children who they breathed their last. But the children But beside beside the they breathed their last. is always an an there is sculptor has portrayed those who are dead; there are already who those dead; has always already portrayed sculptor hold aa cross cross in in and indication them: they are smaller and they hold are them: smaller to distinguish indication to they they distinguish or else else aa skull skull their on John Coke's tomb at 1639) or at Hoikham, tomb Coke's Holkham, on their hands hands (as 1639) John (as four boys are four there are and (on Cope of Ayley's tomb at Hambledon, tomb at Hambledon, 1633, 1633, there boys and (on Cope of Ayley's are holding one and one three around the dead parents, and one boy and one girl are and dead the around three girls girl boy holding parents, girls aa skull). skull). an extremely is an there is interAt des Augustins Musee des in the the Musee Toulouse in At Toulouse extremely interAugustins there 27 27 The volets Collection. are Du Mege Collection. The volets are esting triptych that comes from the the Du from comes that Mige esting triptych anonymity in which their slender chance
THE DISCOVERY ,OF OF CHILDHOOD
. 41 41
dated either side the Cross' the donors, a side of of a dated 1610. 1610. On either a 'Descent from the Cross* the 'Descent from donors, a husband and wife, are depicted on their knees, together with their ages. husband and wife, are depicted on their knees, together with their ages. Both are Next to the man there is aa child, wearing what what are sixty-three. Both there is child, wearing sixty-three. Next to the was then the fashion for very little children, under five years of age: a was then the fashion for very little children, under five years of age: a girl's dress and pinafore and a big bonnet with feathers. The child is dress and pinafore and a big bonnet with feathers. The child is girl's dressed bright, rich colours, green green brocaded brocaded in in gold, gold, which throw into into in bright, rich colours, dressed in which throw relief the severity of the donors' black clothes. This woman of sixty-three of the the severity relief donors' black of sixty-three clothes. This cannot possibly have a child child of five. It a dead no doubt have a of five. an It is is clearly a doubt an cannot possibly dead child, child, no clearly only whose memory old couple and whom they they wanted son whose the old wanted treasured and only son memory the couple treasured his best to beside them them in in his show beside to show best clothes. clothes. It was pious custom custom in the old days to present churches with aa picture picture a pious was a in the It old days to present churches with or a stained-glass window, and in the sixteenth century the donor had or a stained-glass window, and in the sixteenth century the donor had himself portrayed portrayed with with his his whole whole family. family. On the the walls pillars of of himself and pillars walls and German churches one can still a great many pictures of this kind one can kind still see see a of this German churches many great pictures which family portraits. In St Sebastian's in Niimberg, in a in fact are in fact family which are portraits. In St Sebastian's in Niirnberg, in a portrait from the second half of the sixteenth century, the father is portrait from the second half of the sixteenth century, the father is shown in in the the foreground full-grown sons behind him and with two full-grown and then then sons behind foreground with aa scarcely of six boys crowded crowded together, together, hiding hiding bunch of six boys scarcely distinguishable distinguishable bunch behind each that some them are are barely barely visible. these so that each other other so some of of them behind visible. Surely Surely these must be be dead dead children. children. must A similar dated 1560, and kept in Bregenz Museum, has the similar picture, picture, dated 1560, and kept in Bregenz Museum, has the children's ages recorded banderoles: three three boys, boys, aged two on the the banderoles: recorded on children's ages one, two aged one, and aged one, two, three, four and five. But the eldest eldest four and But the five. and three; five girls, one, two, three, three; five girls, aged of five has the same size dress as the youngest youngest of has been been girl and dress size and as the one. She She has of one. girl of five has the same given her place in the family group just as if she had gone on living, but on as she had the if in her living, but family group just gone given place she been portrayed at the age she died. she died. at the when has been she has age portrayed These groups are naive, clumsy, monotonous works works without without are naive, These family clumsy, monotonous family groups style; their painters, like their models, remain or obscure. It a is a It is unknown or obscure. their remain lie their models, style; painters, different matter when when the the donor has obtained the services a celebrated celebrated of a donor has services of obtained the different matter painter: in such instances art historians have carried out the research painter: in such instances art historians have carried out the research This is is the case with required to identify the figures in a famous painting. This the case identify the figures in a famous painting. required to feet. the Meyer family which Holbein portrayed in 1526 at the Virgin's in at the Holbein the Meyer which 1526 Virgin's feet. portrayed family had died in of the six people in the picture three had died in 1526: three in the We know that the six that of 1526: picture people Jacob Meyer's wife and boys, one of whom were dead at at her two boys, and her first wife Jacob Meyer's first earlier at the of ten and the other, who is naked, at an earlier age. is shown the age and the often naked, other, age. age in the Here in in fact fact we have have aa custom became widespread the custom which became Here widespread in mid-nineteenth sixteenth and remained so until mid-nineteenth century. until the the so and remained sixteenth century century. century Versailles Museum has has aa picture picture by by Nocret Nocret portraying portraying the the families families of Versailles Louis XIV and brother; this painting is is famous because the King King and because the Louis this painting and his his brother; - like gods of Olympus. the at least the princes princes are half-naked -- the the men at least -like are half-naked gods Olympus.
42 42
THE IDEA IDEA OF OF CHILDHOOD CHILDHOOD THE
We would would draw draw attention attention to to one one detail detail here: here: in in the the foreground, foreground, at at Louis Louis
feet, N ocret has placed a framed picture showing two little feet, Nocret has placed a framed picture showing two little children who had had died died in in infancy. infancy. children who Gaignieres's records note as early as as the the end end of of the the sixteenth sixteenth century century Gaigniires's records note as early some tombs bearing effigies of children on their own: one dates from some tombs bearing effigies of children on their own: one dates from 1584, the other from 1608. The child is shown in the costume peculiar to 1584, the other from 1608. The child is shown in the costume peculiar to his age, in a dress and bonnet, like the child in the Toulouse 'Descent from his age, in a dress and bonnet, like the child in the Toulouse 'Descent from the Cross*. Cross'. When within within the the two two years years of of 1606 1606 and and 1607 1607 James James II lost lost two the she was three days old and the other at two years of of daughters, one when old and the other at two years daughters, one when she was three days age, he had them portrayed fully dressed on their tombs at Westminster, dressed on their tombs at Westminster, age, he had them portrayed fully and he he gave gave instructions instructions that that the the younger younger should should be be shown lying lying in in an an and alabaster cradle in which all the accessories the lace of her swaddlingthe lace of her swaddlingalabaster cradle in which all the accessories clothes and and her her bonnet bonnet -- should should be be faithfully faithfully reproduced reproduced to to create create the the clothes illusion of reality. The inscription on the tomb gives a good idea of the illusion of reality. The inscription on the gives a good idea of the pious feeling which endowed this three-day-old child with a definite child with a definite pious feeling which endowed this three-day-old personality: Rosula Regia prae-propero Fato decerpta, parentibus erepta, erepta, ut ut in in Fato Rosula decerpta, parentibus prae-propero Regia personality: Christi Rosario Rosario reflorescat. rejlorescat. Christi Apart from these mortuary effigies, portraits of children Apart from these mortuary effigies, portraits of children shown separately from their parents were were aa rarity rarity until until the the end end of of the the sixteenth sixteenth separately from their parents century: witness the painting of the Dauphin, Charles Orlando, by the the the Charles of the witness Orlando, by Dauphin, painting century: Maitre de Moulins, another instance of pious regard regard felt for children felt for children the pious of the another instance de Moulins, Maltre who had died age. On the hand, they became very other hand, the other an early died at at an who had very they became early age. common at of the seventeenth century; it that it is clear it it is clear that seventeenth the of the beginning at the century; beginning had to preserve by means of the painter's art the the art the means of to become customary had become painter's by preserve customary epheme~al appearance of childhood. In the portraits of this this period the period the ephemeral appearance of childhood. In the portraits at the the child company with the family, just as a century earlier, at as a the with child parted earlier, century family, just parted company beginning of the sixteenth century, the family had parted company the sixteenth the of company family parted century, beginning with section of the presentation portrait. Henceforth Henceforth he the religious with the religious section of the presentation portrait. would by himself and for himself: this great the this was the and for himself: himself be depicted would be novelty great novelty depicted by .of The child would be one of its its favourite of favourite one be child seventeenth century. of the the seventeenth century. the models. the leading are countless countless examples There are models. There leading painters painters of the among the examples among period: Rubens, Van Dyck, Franz HaIs, Le Nain, Philippe de ChamFranz Nain, Hals, Rubens, Philippe Dyck, period: as in in the the picture paigne. Some of little princes, as of these these painters picture of princes, portray little painters portray paigne. II's children children Charles Van Dyck or that of James II's by that or children by I's children Charles I's by James Dyck by as the three children Largilliere; others, the offspring of great lords, such as the three children such of the lords, great offspring Largilli&re; others, 28 painted by VanDyck, the eldest of whom isis wearing sword;;28 and others, others, wearing aa sword painted by Van Dyck, the eldest of or well-to-do such as those depicted by Le Nain or Philippe as such those well-to-do bourgeois Philippe de depicted by bourgeois the child's Champaigne. Sometimes there is inscription giving the child's name there is an an Sometimes inscription giving Champaigne. the is all child all alone and as used to be the custom for adults. child is adults. Now the alone the custom for to be as used and age, age, at Grenoble), the (see Philippe de Champaigne's work at now the painter de Grenoble), painter Champaigne's (see Philippe XIV's XIV's
DISCOVERy'OF CHILDHOOD THE DISCOVERY t>JP
43 43
gathers together several children from the same family. This last is a gathers together several children from the same family. This last is a popular type of portrait. favoured by aa great many anonymous painters, of portrait, favoured by popular type great many anonymous painters, provincial art-galleries or in antique-shops. and often to be found found in to be in provincial and often art-galleries or in antique-shops. Henceforth every wanted portraits of its children, and portraits Henceforth wanted of its and portraits children, every family family portraits painted while they were still children. The custom originated in the while were still children. The custom they originated in the painted seventeenth and is with us. Photography took took over is still still with seventeenth century us. Photography over from from century and painting in the nineteenth century: the idea remained the same. in the nineteenth idea the die remained same. century: painting Before finishing with with the portraits, we must must mention mention the the pictures pictures of of Before finishing the portraits, children the plaques plaques placed placed in to record record the the making making children on ex-votos, in churches churches to ex-votos, the or prayer. There are some some in the museum ofpuy of a a prayer. There are in the of Puy Cathedral, or granting Cathedral, granting of and the Eighteenth Century Exhibition of 1958 Paris revealed revealed an an in Paris and the Exhibition of 1958 in Eighteenth Century astonishing portrait of a sick child which must also be an ex-voto. astonishing portrait of a sick child which must also be an ex-voto. Thus. although did not not greatly greatly change conditions did Thus, although demographic change demographic conditions between the the thirteenth centuries, and child and seventeenth and although seventeenth centuries, thirteenth and between although child mortality remained remained at very high high level, level, aa new sensibility granted thes6 at a a very sensibility granted these mortality fragile, threatened creatures a characteristic characteristic which world had had hitherto hitherto the world threatened creatures a which the fragile, failed to recognize recognize in them: as as if if it were only then that the common in them: it were that the failed to only then conscience discovered that the child's immortal. There too was was immortal. soul too There had discovered that the child's soul conscience had can be no no doubt the importance accorded to the child's personality to the accorded child's that the doubt that can be personality importance was linked the growing life and and manners. of Christianity manners. influence of linked with with the was Christianity on life growing influence This interest shown shown in in the the child child preceded preceded by by more than a century century the the than a This interest change in demographic conditions which can be roughly dated from dated can be from which conditions in roughly demographic change Jenner's great discovery. Correspondences such that of General de as that such as General de Jenner's great discovery. Correspondences 29 lll show Martange that certain families insisted at that time on having their time that their insisted at certain families that show having Martange children vaccinated; this this precaution against the a state of reveals a state of the smallpox children vaccinated; smallpox reveals precaution against mind which which must must have have favoured practices at at the the samej other hygienic favoured other mind same/ hygienic practices time. producing producing aa reduction the death-rate which was was counterbalanced counterbalanced death-rate which in the reduction in time, the of the birth-rate, birth-rate. v to an increasingly widespread control control to some an some extent y^ extent by increasingly widespread by
* * * the Middle Ages Another type of of child portraiture unknown to to the Ages is is the the child portraiture Another type
the end of the putto. the naked child. The putto putto made its the its appearance at appearance at the putto, the naked child.
fourteenth and obviously represented aa revival revival of the the Hellenistic Hellenistic fourteenth century century and obviously represented The theme of the the naked child was immediately immediately welcomed with naked child The theme of extraordinary enthusiasm. even in France, where Italian Italian art art was enenextraordinary enthusiasm, even in France, his Due countering a certain native resistance. The Duc de Berry, according to his resistance. a certain native Berry, according countering a room words inventories. had a 'children's room', in other a hung with other in a had 'children's room', hung inventories, tapestries decorated with putti. Van Marie MarIe wonders 'whether sometimes tapestries decorated with p uttL word "children" did not the scribes for the inventories did not use use the the word" children I t the scribes responsible responsible for the inventories
Eros. Eros.
44 44
THE IDEA OF CHILDHOOD
to denote denote these these semi-pagan semi-pagan angels, angels, these these putti putti who so so often often adorned adorned the the to 80 foliage of tapestries in the second half of the fifteenth century.'80 foliage of tapestries in the second half of the fifteenth century/ In the the sixteenth sixteenth century century the the putto putto invaded invaded the the world world of of painting painting and and In became an ornamental motif which was repeated ad nauseam. Titian in became an ornamental motif which was repeated ad nauseam. Titian in or rather abused it: witness the 'Triumph of Venus , in the particular used witness the 'Triumph of Venus' in the particular used or rather abused it: Prado. Prado. The seventeenth seventeenth century century showed showed no sign sign of of tiring tiring of of it, it, whether whether in in The Rome, in Naples, or at Versailles, where the putti still kept the old name Rome, in Naples, or at Versailles, where the putti still kept the old of marmousets. marmousets. Religious Religious art art succumbed succumbed to to them, them, thanks thanks to to the the transtransof formation of the medieval angel-cum-altar-boy into a putto. Henceforth, formation of the medieval angel-cum-altar-boy into a putto. Henceforth, no longer longer be be with one one exception exception (the (the guardian guardian angel) angel) the the angel angel would would no with the adolescent adolescent still to be be seen seen in in Botticelli's Botticelli's paintings: paintings: he he too too had had become become still to the aa little little naked naked Eros, Eros, even even if, if, in in order order to to satisfy satisfy post-tridentine post-tridentine modesty, modesty, his nudity nudity was was concealed concealed behind behind clouds, clouds, mists mists and and veils. veils. his The putto's putto's nudity nudity spread spread even even to to Jesus Jesus and and the the other other holy holy children. children. The If the the artist artist was was reluctant reluctant to to adopt adopt this this complete nudity, he he simply it If complete nudity, simply made it aa little little more more discreet, taking care care not not to Jesus too clothes: He to give too many discreet, taking give Jesus many clothes: 31 or His mother undoing undoing His was shown with His His swaddling-clothes,31 or His His mother was shown with swaddling-clothes, shoulders were uncovered. Pere du Colombier has already P&re du has uncovered. Colombier and His were His legs shoulders and already legs pointed out with regard to the paintings by Lucca della Robbia in the pointed out with regard to the paintings by Lucca della Robbia in the Hopital des Innocents that it was impossible to portray childhood without Hopital des Innocents that it was impossible to portray childhood without 82 The taste for child nudity was obviously linked with stressing its nudity.BI The taste for child nudity was obviously linked with stressing its nudity. the taste for classical begun to had even even begun which had to affect affect taste for classical nudity the general nudity which general and it the whole of modem portraiture. But and it affected affected But it it lasted lasted much longer the whole of modern portraiture. longer ornamental of the Villa Borghese of the or the Versailles or the ceiling Villa in art: witness witness Versailles ornamental art: ceiling Borghese in putto corresponded to something far deeper than Rome. far to for the the putto than taste for Rome. The taste something deeper corresponded the which can be ascribed ascribed only can be to a a for classical classical nudity, taste for the taste nudity, something something which only to broad of interest in childhood. in childhood. of interest broad surge surge Like the soul, a symbol of the or a a holy or an an medieval child child -- a the medieval Like the soul, or child, or holy child, symbol of - the angelic being putto was never a real, historic the child in in either a historic child never either was the the real, putto angelic being fifteenth remarkable in in that This is is all all the the more remarkable that or the sixteenth century. the sixteenth fifteenth or century. This the putto originated and developed at the same time as the at the time and as the the theme of the the putto theme of developed originated sixteenth century But the children in fifteenth and sixteenth portraits child in fifteenth the children But child portrait. century portraits portrait. are ever, naked children. Either they are are wrapped in or scarcely are never, never, or wrapped in scarcely ever, naked children. Either they 83 or in swaddling-clothes even when they are portrayed kneeling in prayer,A are or even prayer, they portrayed kneeling swaddling-clothes station. Nobody else their age the dress dress of their else they are shown wearing age and station. wearing the Nobody they are could he was very even when he historic child, in the visualize the the historic the could visualize child, even small, in very small, nudity of the mythological and ornamental child, and this distinction the and ornamental this of distinction child, nudity mythological remained a long in force for a remained in force for time. long time. to be the the application The final child iconography final phase of the the iconography was to phase of child application of
THE DISCOVERY 10f! O* CHILDHOOD
• 45 45 .
putto's ornamental nudity to the child portrait. and this too was to take putto's ornamental nudity to the child portrait, and this too was to take pla.ce True. a few portraits of naked children in the the seventeenth seventeenth century. place in century. True, a few portraits of naked children are to be noted in the sixteenth century. are comparatively rare. are to be noted in the sixteenth century, but but they they are comparatively rare. One of the oldest is probably the child in Holbein's of the Meyer of the oldest is probably the child in Holbein's painting painting of the Meyer family who had died in infancy (1521). Them too, in one of had died in infancy (1521). Then too, in one of the in the halls halls in family Innsbruck Palace, there is a fresco in which Maria Theresa wanted Innsbruck Palace, there is a fresco in which Maria Theresa wanted to to gather a dead princess is all her her children: children: next next to to the the living, together all gather together living, a dead princess is portrayed draped state of nudity. in a a very very chastely portrayed in chastely draped state of nudity. 84 Philip II in a dedicatory In a picture In a Titian of of 1571 or 1575," 1571 or I575, picture by by Titian Philip II in a dedicatory gesture is shown holding out to Victory his son, the child child Ferdinand, son, the Ferdinand, who gesture is holding out to Victory his is putto, and is completely naked: he looks looks like like Titian's Titian's usual usual putto, and he he seems seems to to be be completely naked: he finding putti were at the situation situation extremely the putti often depicted were often finding the funny: the extremely funny: depicted at play. play. In In 1560 Veronese in in accordance with custom accordance with custom portrayed the CucinaCucina1560 Veronese portrayed the Fiacco the in front of the Fiacco family front of the Virgin and Child: Child: three three men, men, including family in Virgin and including the fathel', a one woman -- the the mother mother -- and and six six children. children. On the the far far right father, one right a woman is by the the picture: in half is almost almost cut cut in half by the edge of the she is is holding edge of picture: she holding aa naked naked child just as child in in her her arms arms just as the the Virgin is holding the a Child, a Virgin is holding the Holy Holy Child, resemblance the dress stressed by the fact fact that the woman is resemblance stressed that the is not not wearing the dress by the wearing of time. Pushed Pushed to one side side as as she she is, her time. to one she cannot cannot be the mother of her be the mother of of the the is, she 85 A midfamily: perhaps she youngest child. she is is the the wet-nurse wet-nurse of of the the youngest child. sli midfamily: perhaps sixteenth painting by the Dutchman P. P. }Ertsen sixteenth century a family: ^Ertsen shows shows a by the century painting family: the father, aa boy boy about about five, of four, and the mother sitting with a a girl the father, five, a girl of four, and the mother sitting with a 86 naked her lap. lap.86 in her naked child child in There have been other cases which more more extensive research to have been other cases which extensive research are sure sure to There are would bring to light, but but they were not numerous enough to create a not numerous to to light, create a would bring they were enough general taste. taste. general In the seventeenth seventeenth century, century, portrayals portrayals of of this this sort became more more sort became In the numerous and more typical: typical: witness witness the the portrait portrait at Helen at Munich of of Helen numerous and more Fourment carrying carrying her her naked naked son, is distinguished distinguished from from the the ordinary ordinary Fourment son, who is putto not only by the resemblance to his mother but also by a plumed to his mother but a also resemblance the not by plumed only by putto bonnet of of the the sort sort that that children children wore at at the the time. time. The youngest youngest of of bonnet Charles I's I's children children painted painted by by Van Dyck Dyck in in 1637 1637 is is shown next next to to his his Charles half covered covered by by the the linen linen on which which he he brothers and and sisters, sisters, naked, naked, and and half brothers has has been been laid. laid. 'When. in writes L. L. Hautecoeur, Hautecoeur. 'Le 'Le Brun portrays portrays the the banker banker in 1647: 'When, 1647,' writes and collector collector Jabach Jabach in in his his Rue Saint-Merri Saint-Merri house, house. he he shows us us this this and with his on powerful casually dressed, with his stockings pulled anyhow. man dressed, anyhow, stockings pulled powerful casually displaying his latest acquisition to to his his wife wife and son son ... •.. his his other other children children displaying his latest acquisition the last-born, last-born, naked naked as as an an Infant Infant Jesus, Jesus. is is lying lying on aa cushion, cushion, are present: present: the are
46
THE IDEA IDEA OP OF CHILDHOOD CHILDHOOD THE
and one one of ofhis his sisters sisters isis playing playing with withhim/ him.'87 The The litde littleJabach, Jabach. more more than than and the naked naked children children of of Holbein, Holbein. Veronese, Veronese, Titian, Titian, Van VanDyck and even even the Dyck and Rubens, has has exactly exacdy the the same same pose pose as as that that of ofthe the modern modern baby baby in in front front of of Rubens, 87
the studio studio photographer's photographer's camera. camera. Henceforth Henceforth the the nudity nudity of of the the little little the child was was to to be be aa convention convention of ofthe the genre, genre, and and all all the the little little children children who who child
had always always been been so so ceremoniously ceremoniously dressed dressed up up in in the the time time of ofLe Nain and and Le Nain had Philippe de de Champaigne Champaigne would would be be depicted depicted naked. naked. This This convention convention isis to to Philippe be found found both both in in the the work work of ofLargilliere, the painter painter of ofthe the upper upper middlemiddlethe be Largilliere, class, and in that of Mignard, the the court court painter: painter: the the Grand Grand Dauphin's Dauphin's class, and in that of Mignard, in the the painting by by Mignard Mignard in in the the Louvre, Louvre, isis lying lying naked naked youngest child, child, in painting youngest on aa cushion cushion by by his his mother, mother, just just like like the the litde littleJabach. Jabach. on
is completely completely naked, naked, as as in in Mignard's Mignard's portrait portrait of of the the 38 the Comte de de Toulouse, Toulouse,38 where where his his nudity nudity isis scarcely scarcely veiled veiled by by the loop loop of of Comte a ribbon ribbon which which has has come come undone undone for for the the occasion, occasion, or or in in Largillifcre's Largilliere's a 89 or else portrait of a child holding aa billhook; billhook ;39 he is is dressed dressed not not in in aa real real or else he portrait of a child holding at the the time time but but in in aa ntglige neglige costume similar similar to to the the clothes clothes generally generally worn at costume which fails fails to to cover cover his his nudity nudity and and indeed indeed often often reveals reveals it: it: witness witness the the which children's portraits portraits by by Belle Belle in in which which the the legs legs and feet feet are are bare, bare, or or children's shift. a but Mignard's Duc de Bourgogne, dressed in nothing but a flimsy shift. in nothing dressed de Due flimsy Bourgogne, Mignard's no need need to to follow further the the history history of this this theme, theme, which There follow any is no There is any further its conclusion conclusion by now had become conventional. found again at at its It can can be be found conventional. It become had now again by in albums and studio shop windows of yesterstudio photographers' and albums in the the family yestershop photographers' family - for for they the pose just for were day: babies baring their little for the bottoms little bottoms their babies they pose just baring day: - and little and little boys normally covered, swaddled or breeched or breeched swaddled boys covered, normally carefully carefully who were girls in nothing the occasion occasion in for the dressed for were dressed transparent pretty transparent nothing but aa pretty girls who shift. child whose likeness in a likeness was not preserved child not aa single was not There was shift. There preserved single a of the Renaissance: a nude directly inherited from the of the the putti from inherited nude study, putti study, directly taste (bourgeois collective taste remarkable in in the the collective of the the persistence remarkable example (bourgeois persistence example of ornamental. was as of a theme which was originally ornamental. which of a theme as lower-class) much as as much originally lower-class) on went on The rediscovered in fifteenth century, in the the fifteenth of antiquity, Eros of The Eros century, went antiquity, rediscovered and nineteenth and the nineteenth of as a model for the 'artistic of the serving 'artistic portraits' for the a model as portraits' serving twentieth centuries. twentieth centuries. Either the the child child Either
is
* * * to notice notice the failed to the have failed not have The will not the preceding of the reader of The reader pages will preceding pages the themes of themes of evolution in the importance of the seventeenth in the evolution of the of seventeenth century the of century importance of that children on childhood. that portraits of children on seventeenth century in the the seventeenth was in It was childhood. It portraits century in the the seventeenth was in It was seventeenth their and commonplace. numerous and became numerous own became their own commonplace. It older tended to plan much a much older genre, tended to century too that the family portrait, a the too that genre, plan family portrait, century
THE DISCOVERY DISCOVERY *0P 'G'f CHILDHOOD CHILDHOOD THE
47' 47
itself around around the the child. child. This This concentration concentration on on die the child child isis particularly particularly striking in the Rubens family group in which the mother is holding the the is the mother in which in Rubens the holding family group striking 40 and by the the shoulder shoulder while while the the father father has has him him by by the the hand, hand,.a and in in the the child by child works of of Franz Franz Hals, Hals, Van VanDyck and Lebrun, Lebrun, whose whose children children kiss, kiss, cuddle cuddle works Dyck and and generally generally enliven enliven the the group group of ofserious serious adults adults with with their their games games or or their their and affection. The The baroque baroque painter painter depended depended on on them them to to give give his his group group affection. portrait the dynamism that it lacked. In In the the seventeenth seventeenth century century too, too, portrait the dynamism that it lacked. subject painting gave the child a place of honour, with countless countless with a of the child honour, place subject painting gave childhood scenes scenes of of aa conventional conventional character: character: the the reading reading lesson, lesson, in in childhood which the the theme theme of of the the Virgin's Virgin's lesson lesson survived survived in in lay lay form fonn from from the the which religious iconography of the the fourteenth fourteenth and and fifteenth fifteenth centuries, centuries, the the music music religious iconography of of boys boys and and girls girls reading, reading, drawing drawing and and playing. playing. One lesson, and and groups groups of lesson, could go go on on indefinitely indefinitely listing listing these these themes themes which which were were extremely extremely could common in in painting, painting, especially especially in in the the first first half half of of the the century, century, and and in in common the engraving later. Finally, as have seen, it was in the second half of the of half in second the it was as have we later. seen, Finally, engraving seventeenth century century that that nudity nudity became became an an essential essential convention convention in in child child seventeenth portraiture. doubt the discovery of childhood began in the thirteenth the thirteenth in of childhood the doubt No began discovery portraiture. fifteenth art in in the the fifteenth century, and its progress can be traced in the history of art century, and its progress can be traced in the history of its development became more and But the the evidence evidence of of its centuries. But sixteenth centuries. and sixteenth development became the sixteenth century and and plentiful and from the end of the sixteenth century end of from the and significant significant plentiful throughout the seventeenth. the seventeenth. throughout children's This in little little children's time in that time at that interest shown at the interest is confirmed confirmed by This is by the We have already noted, in chapter, habits in the the preceding have and 'jargon'. habits and noted, chapter, preceding already jargon*. how were given new names: bambins, pitchouns and fan/am. People names: were bambins, how they People andfanfans. pitchouns given they also picking up their and children's expressions their children's themselves by amused themselves also amused expressions up by picking nannies using their vocabulary, that their nannies is say, the vocabulary used by their used the is to to that their by vocabulary say, vocabulary, using the most when to them. It for literature, a rare rare thing It is is a literature, even of the when speaking thing for speaking to them. traces popular kind, to preserve traces children's Yet some such traces children's jargon. of traces of to kind, jargon. preserve popular will you further glory are Commedia: 'What further Divina Commedia: the Divina in the found in to be be found are to you glory will before you died before leave an aged flesh if had died had have if you than flesh than an leave if you have if you you aged you 1 in the the existed in stopped sayingpappo and dindi.'61 is The word existed bread. is bread. dindi.'* Pappo and Pappo stopped saying pappo in one one of the is to to be found in of Dante's time: French le papin. It time: Ie French language papln. It is language of Dante's of feeds the picture child who feeds little child Miracles 'the little of 'the that of de Notre-Dame, Miracles ae picture of Notre-Dame, that to Jesus in Our Lady's arms'. But is really confined to is the the word papin But arms'. in Our really papin Lady's Jesus of familiar the to childhood, or does it not rather belong to the familiar speech of everyday rather not it does everyday or speech belong childhood, other sixteenthsixteenthlike other life? de Notre-Dame, Miracles de Notre-Dame, like the Miracles as it it may, Be that that as life? Be may, the from childhood for taste for century texts, bears witness to a certain taste childhood painted from certain a to witness bears painted century texts, the seventeenth seventeenth before the are unusual life. are unusual before children's jargon to children's But references references to life. But jargon in abundance. abundance. found in be found to be are to century. In the seventeenth century they are century. In the seventeenth century they and Stella, Bouzonnet of prints To a collection by Bouzonnet and Stella, collection of a To take one example, take one prints by example, itself
*
THE IDEA IDEA OF 011 CHILDHOOD
48
42 this collection contains dated 1657 I657:0 a series series of of engravings engravings showing showing putti putt; thk collection contains a dated at play. play. There There is is nothing nothing original original about about the the drawings, drawings, but but the the captions, captions, at 1
the
written in in appalling appalling doggerel, doggerel, speak speak the jargon jargon of of infancy infancy and and also also written schoolboy slang, for the of infancy were still anything but clear at at of for the Emits were but clear still infancy anything schoolboy slang, putti playing playing with with hobby-horses hobby-horses is is entitled entitled the time. time. A plate plate showing showing putti the
limits
A
'LeDada'. 'LeDada'.
Some putti putti are are playing playing at at dice. dice. Some One goes goes away, away, and and number number two two Consoles himself himself with with his his toutou. toutou. Consoles
The papin papin of of the the fourteenth fourteenth and and fifteenth fifteenth centuries centuries must must have have been been The of French bourgeois children, possibly dropped, at least from the speech of French the least from at children, bourgeois speech possibly dropped, because it it was was not not confined confined to to infancy. infancy. But But other other childish words had had childish words because appeared which are still in use today: toutou and dada. and toutou in use dada. are still which today: appeared Apart from from this this nursery nursery language, the putti putti also also use use school school slang slang or or the the language, the Apart slang of military academies. In the caption to a drawing of a sledge game a of to a In the academies. of drawing sledge game military caption slang the word word populo, populo, from Latin, is the same childish sense, is used. used. In In the same childish school Latin, from school the sense, Mme de would refer to Mme de Grignan's children as ce petit as refer to de children ce would de Sevigne petit Grignan's Sevigne peuple. One child shows exceptional skill is referred to as ce cadet, a as a skill is referred to ce shows who child cadet, exceptional peuple. term used in the academies academies where where young young gentlemen gentlemen at at the the beginning beginning of of in the term used the taught fencing, riding and war. and the the arts of war. arts of were taught seventeenth century the seventeenth fencing, riding century were we are told that children go and play tennis as Under and tennis as are told that children another picture, Under another play go picture, soon have campos: an academy expression, a military term, which a which an have soon as as they term, academy expression, military campos: they means to have be can be in everyday It was was widely used in leave'. It have leave'. means •'to widely used everyday speech, speech, and can found Again, we are shown some children bathing children are de Sevigne. in Mme de found in bathing Sevigne. Again, and told that health of their camarades. of their camarades. are drinking to the the health the others others are that the are told and are drinking to This further than not date back further than did not date back or at at least least did was also also new or which was This term, term, which the was obviously of military origin (possibly it of was sixteenth century, late sixteenth the late obviously military origin (possibly it century, came mercenaries) and went or German-speaking Germans or the Germans from the came from German-speaking mercenaries) through be more or or less less it would always academies. Incidentally the academies. always be Incidentally it through the confined of the French middle class. It is is still still not class. It not middle of die the familiar familiar speech French to the confined to speech used the older word copain, lower-class speech, which prefers French lower-class in French used in copain, speech, which prefers the older from the medieval medieval compaing. from the compaing. But de Bergerac's In Cyrano the jargon of infancy. to the return to us return let us But let Cyrano de Bergerac's infancy. In jargon of kiss me, Le joue, Granger calls his his toutou: 'Come and kiss his son son his toutou: calls Le Pedant me, come Pidantjout, Granger in my toutou.' The word bonbon, which I suppose originated in nannies' nannies' I which toutou! bonbon, suppose originated my jargon, was admitted to everyday speech. And attempts were even made to admitted was attempts everyday speech. jargon, children to onomatopoeic renderings of the speech of children who had not the of to give speech give onomatopoeic renderings noises the yet learnt to talk. Thus Mme de Sevigne laboriously noted the noises made talk. learnt to de Svign laboriously yet de Grignan by to Mme de them to little daughter and her little Grignan who was daughter and reported reported them by her
THE DISCOVERY
Oli~ .cHILDHOOD CHILDHOOD O^
49 49
48 then in Provence: 'She talks titota, tetita, y totata.'43 then in Provence: 'She talks most most amusingly: amusingly: titota, tetita, y totata/ Already, at the beginning of the century, Heroard, Louis XIII's doctor, the of XIII's at the Louis doctor, Already, beginning century, Heroard, diary his childish pronWlciation of had carefully carefully recorded recorded in in his had his diary his charge's charge's childish pronunciation of certain words: vela for voiti, voila, equivez for ecrivez, and so on. certain words: vela for equivez for dcrivez, and so on. When she she describes her little 'little darling', de describes her little daughter, her daughter, her 'little darling', Mme de Sevigne paints genre .pictures similar to those of Le Nain or Bosse, with with Le Nain or of similar to those Bosse, Sevigne paints genre pictures the pretty pretty affectation affectation oflate engravers and eighteenth and eighteenth the of late seventeenth-century seventeenth-century engravers daughter is dark-haired little little beauty. beauty. She century besides. 'Our is artists besides. She is is a a dark-haired Our daughter century artists very pretty pretty indeed. kisses, but she indeed. Here Here she she comes. comes. She She gives very gives me sticky sticky kisses, but she kisses me, recognizes me, me, she me, she never never screams.' she laughs at me, she screams/ 'She she recognizes 'She kisses me, she laughs at calls just plain Maman [instead of Bonne Maman].' 'I simply adore her. her. 'I adore calls me just simply plain Maman [instead of Bonne Maman].' is aa happy-go-lucky happy-go-lucky style now which which is is just just 1I have have had had her her hair hair cut: cut: it it is style made for for her. her. Her Her complexion, complexion, her her chest her little little body body are are admirable. admirable. and her chest and She and one she caresses, she slaps, she She does does a a hWldred different things: one different hundred and things: she caresses, she slaps, she makes the sign sign of the cross, begs pardon, pardon, she curtsy, she blows a curtsy, she blows she drops makes the of the she begs cross, she drops a aa kiss, kiss, she shrugs her her shoulders, shoulders, she strokes, she holds her her chin: she holds chin: she shrugs she dances, she strokes, dances, she 44 in aa word word she every particular. 1 her for hours on end.''' end/ her in in I watch for hours she is is pretty in watch every particular. pretty COWltless mothers and nannies had had already already felt the same way. But But not a not a felt the same way. Countless mothers and nannies single one had had admitted these feelings were worthy worthy of being expressed expressed of being that these admitted that single one feelings were correspond in an ambitious literary scenes childhood correspond of childhood in such These literary such an ambitious form. form. These scenes of of contemporary painting and engraving: each each reflected reflected to those those of to and engraving: genre painting contemporary genre the discovery of infancy, of the little child's body, habits and chatter. the discovery of infancy, of the little child's body, habits and chatter. *
III •* III
•*
CHILDREN'S CHILDREN'S DRESS DRESS
Tr f
I
HE marked -- except marked indifference indifference shown IHE shown until until the the thirteenth thirteenth century century except
where the the infant infant Virgin where characterwas concerned concerned -- to to the the special Virgin was special characteristics of of childhood in the world of pictures: istics childhood does does not not appear appear simply simply in the world of pictures: dress of of the the the dress the period to what shows to what extent, in the the circumstances real circumstances of of real extent, in period shows was distinguished from manhood. As soon as the life, childhood childhood was from life, manhood. As soon as the child child distinguished his swaddling-band -- the abandoned his band of of doth cloth that that was was wound wound swaddling-band the band his was dressed just like the other tighdy round his body in babyhood he in he was dressed tightly body babyhood just like the other this confusion, men and women ofhis of his class. class. We find find it it difficult difficult to to imagine imagine this confusion, for so so many we who for years wore knickerbockers, the now shameful the now shameful knickerbockers, many years retarded infancy. generation we came out of knickerinsignia In my came out of knickerinsignia of retarded infancy. In my generation at the the end of the the fifth parents, urging bockers at fifth year at school: school: my to year at my parents, urging me to and be patient, the case case of an an uncle uncle of of mine mine who was a general was a and patient, quoted quoted the general to the the military academy in who had gone knickerbockers! Nowadays, gone up up to military academy in knickerbockers! Nowadays, adolescence has has spread adolescence as well well as as downstream. and sports spread upstream downstream, and upstream as sports by both adolescents and children, are tending to take the dothes, adopted both adolescents and clothes, adopted by take the children, are tending to of the clothes place the clothes which were the distinguishing marks of childhood in which were the place distinguishing marks of childhood in the the nineteenth nineteenth century century and the the early early twentieth twentieth century. century. Be Be that that as as it it may, may. if if the the period period 1900 to 1920 1920 still still prolonged prolonged kte late into into adolescence adolescence the the special special 1900 to features of dress dress confined confined to to childhood, childhood, the the Middle Middle Ages Ages features of aa form of dressed dressed every every age age indiscriminately, indiscriminately. taking taking care care only only to to maintain maintain the the ,visible vestiary vestiary signs signs of of the the differences differences in in the the social social hierarchy. hierarchy. Nothing Nothing in in .visible medieval dress dress distinguished distinguished the the child child from from the the adult. adult. In In the the seventeenth seventeenth century, century. however, however, the the child, child, or or at at least least the the child child of of whether noble quality. whether noble or middle-class, ceased to be dressed like the or middle-class, ceased to be dressed like the quality, is the the essential essential point: point: henceforth henceforth he he had had an an outfit outfit reserved reserved grown-up. This This is grown-up. for him apart apart from from the the adults. adults. This This can can be be seen seen for his his age age group, group. which which set set him from from the the first first glance glance at at any any of ofthe the numerous numerous child child portraits portraits painted painted at at the the of the of the seventeenth century. beginning seventeenth beginning century. Let Let us us consider consider the the fine fine painting painting by by Philippe Philippe de de Champaigne, Champaigne, in in Reims Reims Museum, of ofthe the seven seven children children of ofthe the Habert Habert family, family, the the eldest eldest of ofwhom whom Museum, is is ten ten years years of ofage age and and the the youngest youngest eight eight months months old. old. This This painting painting isis of of great interest interest for for our our subject subject because because the the artist artist has has inscribed inscribed die the exact exact age, age. great to to the the nearest nearest month, month, of ofeach each of ofhis his models. models. The The eldest, eldest, at at ten, ten, isis already already dressed dressed like like aa litde litde man, man, wrapped wrapped in in his his cloak; cloak; in in appearance appearance at at least, least, he he
so
50
CHILDREN'S. CHILDREN S DRESS
,51 ,5!
belongs to the world of appearance: he must the world of adults. adults. No doubt doubt it it is is just in belongs to just in appearance: he must be and school life prolongs the age of childhood; he still at and school be still at school, of life the but he school, childhood; but prolongs age will probably probably not not stay at school much longer but leave early in order to at to will school in much but leave order stay early longer he is is already wearing and whose life he mix with the men whose mix with the whose dress dress he and life he whose already wearing will be sharing in camp or court or commerce. But the two twins, will soon soon be sharing in camp or court or commerce. But the two twins, fondly holding each each other other by hand and the shoulder, shoulder, are are only the hand and the four fondly holding by the only four years nine months old: they are no longer dressed like adults but are nine months no dressed like but old: are adults are years they longer wearing a long robe, different from that worn by in that it opens a in different that worn that it from women wearing long robe, by opens is fastened fastened here with buttons, buttons, elsewhere with laces - it it in the front and is in the front and here with elsewhere with laces looks cassock. The same robe is to be found again in the like a a priest's same robe is to be found in looks like cassock. the priest's again of human life' life' by by Cebes. far removed as yet 'picture first age, not Cebes.1 The first 'picture of age, not far removed as yet from non-existence, non-existence, is naked; the the two two following are in swaddlingfrom is naked; following ages ages are in swaddlingclothes. The third, which must be about two years old and cannot yet old and cannot two must about clothes. The which be third, years yet stand by itself, is already wearing a robe, and can tell that it is is aa boy. and we a can tell that it stand by is robe, itself, boy. already wearing The fourth age, sitting astride its hobby-horse, is wearing the same long The fourth age, sitting astride its hobby-horse, is wearing the same long robe, buttoned down the middle in front cassock, as and opening buttoned the middle and like a a cassock, as front like robe, opening in with the the Habert Habert twins twins in the Philippe de Champaigne picture. This robe in the de This robe with Chatnpaigne picture. Philippe was by little boys throughout throughout the the seventeenth find it it seventeenth century. was worn by little boys century. We find again on the child Louis XIII, in countless portraits of French, English in child countless of on the Louis XIII, French, English portraits again and as late late as as the beginning of and as the beginning of the the eighteenth and Dutch Dutch children, children, and eighteenth - for century example, on the young de Bethisy painted by Belle about about on the for de Bethisy painted by Belle example, young century 22 In 1710. In this last picture the boy's robe is longer butroned down the is no last the robe the this buttoned ryio. boy's longer picture front, but it remains different from that of the girls and has no linen that of the it different from and has linen but remains front, girls accessories. accessories. The robe robe can be very very simple, like that child riding riding the the hobbythe child that of the can be The hobbysimple, like of life'. On the other hand it can be extremely horse in in the the 'picture of life'. the hand human other it can be horse extremely 'picture ornamental have aa train attached, like robe worn by by the like the the robe the young and have train attached, ornamental and young 33 Duc d'Aujou in the engraving by Arnoult. Arnoult. in the Due engraving by d'Anjou This robe in form of a cassock cassock was not not the the first of a first type of in the the form This robe type of clothing clothing of his his swaddling-band. swaddling-band. Let Let us us worn by by the the child he had had come out out of after he child after worn return to to Philippe Philippe de portrait of the Habert children. of the Habert children. de Champaigne's return Champaigne's portrait Fran~ois, is twenty-three twenty-three months months old, the youngest youngest child, old, and the child, who Francois, who is like isis eight months old, are both dressed exactly like their sister, that is say, their is to that dressed to say, both are months sister, old, exactly eight is like little women women: in in skirt, robe and apron. This is the dress the youngest This the of and dress robe the like little skirt, apron. youngest sixteenth century boys; it it had had become become customary in the the sixteenth to clothe clothe them them century to customary in boys; like like girls, who for part went on dressing like grown The women. their part for their like girls, grown dressing in the distinction between child still did not not exist exist in the case of women. adult still case of and adult child and distinction between dress which Erasmus gives us aa description description'4 of this this style which his his French French Erasmus style of dress gives us as which publisher in 1714 found easy to translate, as something still existed to still existed found in translate, 1714 something easy publisher a a are burdened in his day: day: 'They [children] are burdened with a vest, a pair of warm in his vest, pair 'They [children] :
52
THE IDEA OF CHILDHOOD
stockings, a thick petticoat, and an outer garment which encumbers the stockings, a thick petticoat, and an outer garment which encumbers the shoulders the hips hips with with aa great great quantity quantity of of stuff pleats, and and the and they shoulders and and pleats, stuff and they are given to to understand this paraphernalia paraphernalia gives gives them them aa wonderful wonderful understand that that all all this are given air.' condemned this this fashion was new new in in his his time time and and fashion which air.' ~asmus \Erasmus condemned which was recom1ireiiCtei greater freedom for young bodies; his opinion carried recomBlSfidea greater freedom for young bodies; his opinion carried little the force of accepted usage, and it was the end of the force of little weight against weight against the accepted usage, and it was the end of the eighteenth century before children's dress became and looser and and before children's dress became lighter century eighteenth lighter and looser drawing by by Rubens Rubens65 shows us allowed greater freedom freedom of of movement. shows us allowed greater movement. A drawing aa little little boy's boy's outfit to that that described described by by Erasmus: the is still outfit which which is still similar similar to Erasmus: the open robe under under which which the can be walk the skirt skirt can seen. The The child child is is starting to be seen. starting to walk open robe and is being being held by braces braces hanging hanging behind behind him, him, which which were were known he is held by and he at the time time as In Heroard's diary, which allows us to as leading-strings. at the leading-strings. In Heroard's diary, which allows us to follow Louis XIII's XIII's childhood day by read in in the the entry for follow Louis childhood day day, we read by day, entry for June 28th, 1602 (Louis XIII was nine months old at the time): 'Leadingnine XIII months old at the was 28th, (Louis time): 'LeadingJune strings have been attached to his robe to teach him to walk.'66 The same strings have been attached to his robe to teach him to walk.' The same his sister wear aa robe resembling his: his: 'Madame Louis XIII did did not not like like his sister to to wear robe resembling Louis XIII his, and and he he sent her away out of jealousy.' arrived wearing aa robe robe just just like like his, of jealousy.' arrived wearing sent her out away As long as as boys wore this feminine costume, they were said to be fa this said to be A la wore feminine As long were costume, boys they bavette, or bib and tucker'. This This was was until the age of four or five. and tucker'. 'in a a bib of or five. or 'in until the four bavette, age Jean Rou, who was born in records in in his his memoirs that he was aa in 1638, was born he was memoirs that 1638, records Jean Rou, tl1at he was sent to Harcourt College accompanied precocious child and and that he was to child sent Harcourt precocious College accompanied by aa servant-girl: 'When II was was still still in bib and tucker, that that is to say, is to in a and tucker, a bib say, servant-girl: by before II had had donned the long long robe robe with a collar came before before the the donned the before collar that that came with a of breeches ... the only one accoutred in the manner I wearing ... I I of breeches I was was the in the manner one accoutred wearing only have just just described described [i.e. dressed like a girl], so that I like a new a I was was like a have dressed like so that [i.e. girl], phenomenon in that place, such had never never been been seen before.'?7 The The as had that place, such as seen before.' phenomenon in collar of the the robe robe was was aa man's man's collar. collar. Henceforth dictated rules of rules of collar of Henceforth custom custom dictated dress for children to their age: the bib and robe as by as worn children according to their and robe dress for the bib according by age: girls, then 'the long robe robe with with aa collar' collar' which which was was also as the the also known as then 'the long girls, jaquette or 'frock'. The regulations regulations of little school, parish school, or parish of of a a little school, or school, of jaquette or 'frock*. 1654 stated that on Sunday the children should be taken to church to to taken church stated on be to that the children should 1654 Sunday hear Mass after instruction, and and that the little little children after receiving that the children hear Mass receiving religious religious instruction, should not be be mixed up up with with the bigger ones, the short robes with the short robes with the the the bigger should not ones, 8 'The little in frocks shall be placed together.'8 long robes: in 'The little ones shall robes: ones frocks be long placed together.' ~- The diary diary of Louis XIII's XIII's childhood childhood which which Heroard Heroard kept kept every of Louis every day day shows how seriously children's dress was treated from that time on: that time it children's dress treated on: it was seriously the stages of the growth which transformed the child into made visible of the transformed the child visible the which into stages growth aa man. man. These These stages as it it were, rites which which had to to be be respected become, as were, rites stages had become, respected and which which Heroard carefully carefully recorded as matters importance. On of importance. matters of recorded as ruly 17th, leading-strings were were attached to the the Dauphin's attached to robe. He 1602, leading-strings iyth, 1602, fuly Dauphin's robe.
a
CHILDREN'S'1)RBSS CHILDREN S i>RESS
13 53
was to to wear wear them them for for over over two two years; years; at at the the age age of of three three years years two two was months, he was given 'the first robe without lea.ding-strings'. The child was he The child 'the first without robe months, given leading-strings'. was delighted, delighted, and and told told the the Captain Captain of of the the Guard: Guard: "Tan "Tan [note [note the the was imitation of of childhood childhood speech], speech], II haven't haven't any any leading-strings, leading-strings, II am going going imitation to walk walk by by myself/ myselC For For his his fourth fourth birthday birthday he he wore wore aa pair pair of of breeches breeches to his robe, robe, and and aa year year later, later, on on August August 7th, 1606, 1606, his his 'child's 'child's bonnet' bonnet' under his under was taken taken away away to to be be replaced replaced by by aa man's man's hat. hat. This This too too was was aa red-letter red-letter was day: 'Now that tha.t your your bonnet bonnet has has been been taken taken away, away, you you have have stopped stopped day: being a child, you have begun to become a man.' But six: days later, the a man.' But six a have to become being child, you days later, the begun him to put his bonnet on again. Queen ordered ordered his on him to bonnet Queen again. put January 8th, 8th, 1607: 'He asked asked when he he would would be be allowed allowed to to wear wear 1607: *He January breeches [instead of the robe]. de Montglat told him that it would him that it would de told breeches of the Mme Montglat [instead robe]. be when when he he was was eight.' eight.' be On June June 6th, when he he was was seven seven years years eight eight months months old, old, Heroard Heroard 6th, 1608, 1608, when recorded with with aa certain certain solemnity: solemnity: 'Today 'Today he he was was dressed in aa doublet doublet dressed in recorded of childhood childhood [i.e. the robe] and and brelx:hes, abandoned abandoned the the clothing clothing of the and brefeches, [i.e. robe] and took cloak were days, however, when he was made he took cloak and sword. There There were and sword.' days, however, to put on the robe robe again, again, just just as he had had been been made to to put put on the the bonnet bonnet as he on the to put this: in doublet and breeches 'he is again, but he hated 'he is very happy and and in breeches he doublet but hated this: very happy and again, joyful, and does not want to put on his robe.' It can be seen that fashion be seen that fashion It can on his robe.' and does not want to put joyful, in clothing is not just a frivolous matter. Here the connection between between connection Here the a matter. in frivolous is not clothing just dress is obvious. for is obvious. it stands stands for of what and the what it dress and the understanding understanding of
7th,
1
In who boarded boarded by robe over a robe over the week wore a In the the schools, the pupils schools, the by the pupils their breeches. Cordier's written at the end of the sixteenth of the end sixteenth at the written their breeches. Cordier's dialogues, dialogues, century, describe the awakening of a boarder: 'After waking up, II got got century, describe the awakening of a boarder: 'After waking up, my doublet out I took a stool, sat on a took my and sagathy, doublet and on my of bed, out of stool, I bed, II put my sagathy, II sat put on breeches fastened my took my both on, and pulled and stockings breeches and shoes, II fastened on, II took my my shoes, pulled both stockings and breeches doublet with laces, I tied my stockings with garters with tied I with doublet to my breeches to laces, garters above my stockings my I took the took my I combed my took my the knee, hair, I belt, I knee, II took my bonnet which II my hair, my belt, '* left the bedroom bedroom... I then arranged carefully, I put on my robe, and then I left the ..• '. I my robe, arranged carefully, put In of the seventeenth century: 'Imagine Francion Francion Paris at at the the beginning In Paris beginning of the seventeenth century: 'Imagine his of breeches out coming into the classroom with his coming out ofhis breeches his underpants with into the classroom underpants coming coming his arm, his on of his shoes, his robe all askew, and his portfolio under his all robe his arm, of his on top askew, shoes, portfolio top 10 to the nose trying to give a rotten apple to one and a on the nose to another.'lO a rap another/ and one to a to rotten rap apple give trying Fliche boardingthe La FlCche at the In century, the regulations at the eighteenth In the boardingeighteenth century, the regulations 'a boarder's robe' robe' include the pupil's outfit should include 'a boarder's school stated that should outfit the that stated school pupil's l11l which had to for two years. to last last for which had years. the girls, This to be be found among not to was not in dress dress was This di1ference difference in girls, who were among the their as they -dressed came out of their swaddlingsoon as as soon like little little women as dressed like swaddlingthey at if we look closely at pictures of seventeenth-century clothes. However, look if clothes. However, pictures closely seventeenth-century
54 54
THE IDEA OF CHILDHOOD
children, that the feminine dress dress of of the the little boys as well as as as well the feminine see that shall see little boys children, we shall of the little little girls included a peculiar ornament which the women did not not a did included ornament the which of the peculiar girls wear: two broad ribbons fastened to the the robe robe behind behind each each shoulder shoulder and and fastened to broad ribbons wear: two hanging the back. These ribbons can be seen, for example, These on ribbons can the back. down be for seen, example, on hanging the Habert children on the the fourth fourth age in the from the children from the left, in the the Habert of the third of the third left, on age Tabula Cebetis (the child in a robe riding a hobby-horse), and on the Tabula Cebetis (the child in a robe riding a hobby-horse), and on the little ten-year-old girl on the early eighteenth-century ladder of the ages, little ten-year-old girl on the early eighteenth-century ladder of the ages, 'human misery or passions of of the the soul in all all its its ages.' The ribbons are or the the passions soul in 'human misery ages.' The ribbons are to be be found many child portraits, to Lancret and Boucher. in a a great child down to and Boucher. to found in Lancret portraits, great many They disappear at the end of the eighteenth century, at the time when end the at of the at the time They disappear eighteenth century, children's radically altered. one of the last portraits altered. Possibly was radically one dress was of the last children's dress Possibly portraits of child wearing wearing these ribbons down the the back back is that painted painted by these ribbons of a is that a child by Mme 12 It shows Gabrielle in 1788 and Victoire. Victoire. 12 for Mmes Adelaide Adelaide and Guiard in Gabrielle Guiard It shows 1788 for their Infante, who had had been dead some some thirty thirty years. years. Mme been dead their sister, sister, Mme Infante, Infante had had lived the age thirty-two, but but Mme Gabrielle Gabrielle Guiard of thirty-two, lived to Infante to the Guiard age of none the less portrayed portrayed her a child child with with her her nanny nanny -- the her as as a to the less desire to none the desire preserve the memory of a of thirty by showing her in her a of woman the of in her her memory thirty by showing preserve childhood reveals aa very very novel novel feeling feeling --and and this child is this child is wearing the childhood reveals wearing the ribbons down the the back back which were still about 1730, but which were still customary about ribbons 1730, but customary of fashion by the time the picture was painted. which had had gone out out of fashion the which the was time gone by picture painted. Thus in the and the eighteenth century these the seventeenth Thus in seventeenth century the early century and early eighteenth century these ribbons down the back had become sartorial indications of of childhood, had become the back sartorial indications ribbons childhood, for boys as as girls. Modem writers have not failed to be intrigued Modern as well well as writers for boys have be not failed to girls. intrigued by them. They have been mistaken for 'leading-strings' (braces for little have been mistaken for them. by They 'leading-strings' (braces for little 18 In the little children wloJ.o were were still their feet).13 in on still unsteady on children who their in the little museum In unsteady feet). Westminster Abbey, there there are a few mortuary effigies in which are a few mortuary in wax which Westminster Abbey, effigies represented the the dead dead person person and which were laid on top of of the the coffm and which were laid coffin on top represented during the funeral ceremony, a medieval practice which was continued the funeral a medieval was continued which during ceremony, practice in England England until until about about 1740. these effigies represents the little in of these 1740. One of effigies represents the little Marquess of Normanby, died at the age of three: he was dressed of who died he was at the dressed in in three: of Normanby, Marquess age aa yellow yellow silk under aa velvet velvet robe robe (the usual costume for little silk skirt skirt under little usual costume for (the children), he is of childhood. is wearing the flat ribbons ribbons of childhood. The catalogue children), and he wearing the flat catalogue describes these as as leading-strings, leading-strings, but but in in fact were cords cords describes these fact leading-strings leading-strings were which bore bore no resemblance to these these ribbons; an engraving by Guerard resemblance to an Guerard ribbons; engraving by illustrating 'manhood' shows us aa child which could a boy boy or or a a girl, shows us child which could be be a illustrating girl, dressed in aa robe, robe, wearing wearing aa Fontange Fontange hair hair style, and seen from behind: dressed in seen and from behind: style, between the two ribbons ribbons hanging hanging from from the the shoulders, one can between the can clearly shoulders, one clearly see the to help cord used used to see the cord help the to walk, walk, the the leading-string. leading-string.114' the child child to This analysis has has enabled enabled us us to pick out of dress This analysis to pick customs of dress confmed out certain certain customs confined that were generally to adopted at the end of the sixteenth the to childhood childhood that at end of the sixteenth generally adopted
CHILDREN' CHILDREN'SS,,'Q.RES ,iptES$S
35
century and preserved until the middle of the eighteenth century. These century and preserved until the middle of the eighteenth century. These customs distinguishing children's clothing and adult clothing' between children's customs distinguishing between clothing and adult clothing' reveal a new desire to put children on one side, to separate desire to reveal a a sort them by sort put children on one side, to separate them by a of what is the origin of this childhood unifonn? is of unifonn. uniform. But But what the origin of this childhood uniform? the Middle Middle Ages, Ages, of the The child's robe is is simply the child's robe of the coat of of the simply the long long coat twelfth and thirteenth centuries, before the revolution which in the case twelfth and thirteenth centuries, before the revolution which in the case of banished it in favour favour of the short and visible visible breeches, breeches. the the of men banished it in of the coat and short coat of our present-day masculine costume. Until the fourteenth ancestors ancestors of our present-day masculine costume. Until the fourteenth century everybody wore wore the or tunic; tunic; the the men's men's robe robe was was not the robe robe or not the the century everybody same as the women's often it was a shorter tunic, or else it same as the women's often it was a shorter tunic, or else it opened opened the peasants peasants in thirteenth-century calendars calendars it down the the front. in the the thirteenth-century front. On the it stops at the knee, while on the great and important it reaches to the feet. stops at the knee, while on the great and important it reaches to the feet. There was in a long long period long fitted in fact which men wore There was fact a wore aa long fitted during which period during costume, as opposed to the traditional draped costume of the or Greeks or costume, as opposed to the traditional draped costume of the Greeks Romans: this this continued continued the Gallic or fashions of the Gallic or Oriental the fashions of the Oriental barbarians barbarians Romans: which had been been added added to to the the Roman fashions during the first centuries fashions during the first which had centuries of unifonnly adopted adopted in the East East as as in West, and in the in the era. It It was was uniformly the West, and was was of our our era. of the Turkish style of dress as well. the origin the origin of the Turkish style of dress as well. In the century men abandoned abandoned the robe for short coat, the robe for the In the short fourteenth century the fourteenth coat, which was sometimes even tight-fitting, to the despair of moralists and sometimes even which was tight-fitting, to the despair of moralists and preachers who denounced the indecency indecency of of these these fashions, denounced the fashions, describing describing preachers them as signs signs of the times. times. In respectable people people of the In fact fact respectable of the the immorality them as immorality of went on wearing wearing the robe, whether whether they they were respectable respectable on account the robe, account of of went on their age age (old men are depicted wearing wearing the the robe the beginning beginning of robe until until the are depicted of their (old the seventeenth account of their station in life of their station in or on account life (magistrates, seventeenth century) the century) or (magistrates, statesmen, have never never given given up up wearing the long coat statesmen, churchmen). churchmen). Some have wearing the long coat and wear it judges, professors least on occasion occasion (barristers, it tod.ay, at and still still wear (barristers, judges, professors today, at least and priests). The priests, priests, incidentally, very near near to abandoning it, to abandoning and priests). it, incidentally, came very for the short coat had and when in had become generally in the the short coat for when when the generally accepted, accepted, and seventeenth its origins had been been completely completely scandal attending the scandal seventeenth century attending its origins century the cassock became too closely connected with his forgotten, the priest's too became his connected cassock with the closely priest's forgotten, ecclesiastical to be be in taste. A priest priest would change change out of in good out of function to ecclesiastical function good taste. to call on his his cassock to go into society, or even to call his bishop, just as an or as an into his cassock to society, bishop, just go 15 to appear at court. court. n officer would change uniform to appear at his uniform of his out of officer would change out least children Children too kept the long children of good family. at least of good Children too coat, at family. A long coat, kept the de Notre-Dame miniature in in the the fifteenth-century fifteenth-century Miracles Miracles de Notre-Dame shows aa family miniature family the father father is a short gathered round the mother's bed; the is wearing a coat, short mother's the round bed; coat, wearing gathered l16 I children are are dressed in long dressed in doublet breeches, but but the three children robes. the three robes. doublet and and breeches, long has a In the same same series the child the Infant Infant Jesus Jesus has a robe robe split down In the series the child feeding feeding the split the the side. side.
5<5
THE THE IDEA IDEA OF OF CHILDHOOD CHILDHOOD
But most of the children painted by the artists of the QuattroBut in in Italy Italy most of the children painted by the artists of the Quattrocento breeches of adults. In France and cento are are wearing the tight-fitting wearing the tight-fitting breeches of adults. In France and Germany it that this fashion failed to it seems that this seems fashion failed to find find favour favour and and that that children children Germany were in the long coat. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the were kept the in coat. the At of the sixteenth kept long beginning century the habit rule: children were always dressed in the robe. habit became became aa general rule: children were dressed in the robe. general always German of the period show four-year-old children wearing the German tapestries tapestries of the period show four-year-old children wearing the 17 Some French engravings by Jean Leclerc on long in front. front.17 Some French engravings by Jean Leclerc on robe, open open in long robe, the of children's games over their of the subject children's show the the children children wearing, subject games show wearing, over their breeches, the robe robe buttoned buttoned down down the the front front which which became breeches, the became the the uniform uniform 18 1S of their their age. of age. The Bat children flat ribbons ribbons down the the back back which which likewise likewise distinguished distinguished children from had the same origins as the robe. in the from adults adults in the seventeenth seventeenth century had the same as the robe. century origins and robes Cloaks otten had sleeves which one Cloaks and robes in in the the sixteenth sixteenth century often had sleeves which one century could into or leave empty at will. In Leclerc's picture of children into or could slip leave at will. In Leclerc's of children slip empty picture playing at chucks, of these these sleeves sleeves can can be be seen seen to to be be fastened chucks, some of fastened only playing at only by women, liked the effect stitches. People of fashion, especially by aa few stitches. People of fashion, especially women, liked the effect these hanging of these their arms into them, with sleeves: they hanging sleeves: they stopped stopped putting putting their arms into them, with the which the result that the result that the sleeves sleeves became became useless useless ornaments. ornaments. Like Like organs organs which to function, have wasted away, lost the hollow inside have ceased ceased to wasted lost the hollow function, they inside into into they away, which the looked like two broad ribbons the arm fitted, flattened out, looked like two fitted, and, broad and, Battened ribbons out, fastened behind the the shoulders: ribbons of seventeenth fastened behind shoulders: the the children's children's ribbons the seventeenth of the and eighteenth centuries centuries were were all all that that remained remained of of the the false sleeves of the and eighteenth false sleeves of the sixteenth century. century. These These atrophied atrophied sleeves sleeves were were also also to to be be found found in in other other sixteenth clothes clothes of of aa popular popuIar or or aa ceremonial ceremonial nature: nature: the the peasant peasant cloak cloak which which the the friars Ignorantin~ friars adopted as their religious costume at the beginning of as their costume the at adopted Ignorantinp religious beginning of the the eighteenth eighteenth century, century, the the first first purely purely military military uniforms uniforms such such as as those those of ofthe the musketeers, musketeers, the the livery livery of ofvalets, valets, and and finally finally the the page's page's uniform uniform -- the the ceremonial uniform uniform of of the the children children and and young young boys boys of of noble noble birth birth who who ceremonial were were placed placed with with families families for for whom they they performed performed certain certain domestic domestic services. The The pages pages of of the the age age of of Louis Louis XUI xm wore wore baggy baggy breeches breeches in in the the services. and false sixteenth-century style and false sleeves. This page's uniform tended to sleeves. This uniform tended to sixteenth-century style page's become the the ceremonial ceremonial costume costume which which was was donned donned as as aa token token of ofhonour honour become and and respect: respect: in in an an engraving engraving by by Lepautre Lepautre some some boys boys in in an an archaic archaic page's page's uniform are shown shown serving serving Mass. Mass.19I1 But But these these ceremonial ceremonial costumes costumes were were uniform are somewhat somewhat rare, rare, whereas whereas the the flat Bat ribbon ribbon was was to to be be found found on on the the shoulders shoulders of ofall all the the children, children, whether whether boys boys or or girls, girls, in in families families of ofquality, quality, whether whether aristocratic aristocratic or or middle-class. middle-class. Thus Thus in in order order to to distinguish distinguish the the child child who who had had hitherto hitherto dressed dressed just just like like an an adult, adult, features features of of old-fashioned old-fashioned costumes costumes which which the the grown-ups grown-ups had had abandoned, abandoned, sometimes sometimes aa long long time time before, before, were were reserved reserved for for his his sole sole
CHILDREN'S CHILDREN'S DRESS DRESS
'57 '57
4
use. coat and the false sleeves, use. This This was was the the case case with with the the robe robe or or long long coat and the false sleeves, also little chilc:lren still also with the bonnet with the bonnet worn worn by little children still in in their their swaddlingby swaddlingclothes: the bonnet was still in the the thirteenth clothes: in thirteenth century the bonnet was still the the noI1l1i1 normal century masculine their hair in position masculine headwear, which the the men men used used to to keep headwear, which keep their hair in position at as can can be at work, be seen seen from from the the calendars calendars of ofNotre-Dame work, as Notre-Dame d'Amiens. etc. d'Amiens, etc.
The used to wear The first children s costume costume was was the the costume costume which which everybody first children's everybody used to wear about before, and which henceforth they were the only ones a century about a and which were the only ones to to wear. wear. century before, henceforth they
It It was obviously out of the the question to invent invent a a costume costume out out of of nothing obviously out of question to nothing it was felt necessary to separate them in a visible manner for yet it for them, was felt to them, yet necessary separate them in a visible manner by means of their dress. They were accordingly given a costume of their dress. were a which by They accordingly given costume ofwhich the the tradition tradition had been been maintained maintained in in certain certain classes, but which which nobody classes, but nobody wore any childhood costume, which more. The adoption of aa special any more. adoption of special childhood costume, which became generalized throughout the upper classes as the classes as from from the the end end of of the the generalized throughout upper sixteenth marked a very important date in the formation of sixteenth century, a date in the formation of the the century, very important idea idea of childhood. childhood. We have to to remember the the importance which dress dress had had in in the the France France importance which of a large capital sum. People spent a great deal of old. old. It It often often represented a sum. a represented large capital People spent great deal on clothes, died they went to to the the trouble trouble of of drawing clothes, and when somebody somebody died they went drawing up an inventory of his or her wardrobe, as we would today only when an his or her as would wardrobe, up inventory today only when fur coats were were involved. was very very expensive, and attempts were fur coats involved. Dress Dress was expensive, and attempts were made by by means means of sumptuary laws to put a curb on luxury clothes, laws to a curb on sumptuary put luxury clothes, as to to their their which ruined ruined some and and allowed allowed others others to to mislead mislead the the gullible gullible as which life. Even more than than in our present-day present-day societybirth and and station station in in life. birth in our society where it it is is still still true true of of the the women, women, whose whose dress dress is is aa visible visible and and necessary necessary where sign of of aa couple's couple's prosperity prosperity or or the the importance importance of of their their social social position positionsign dress pin-pointed pin-pointed the the place place of of the the wearer wearer in in aa complex complex and and undisputed undisputed dress hierarchy: aa man wore the the costume costume of ofhis rank, and and the the etiquette etiquette books books his rank, hierarchy: laid great great emphasis emphasis on on the the impropriety impropriety of of dressing dressing in in any any other other way way laid than that that befitting befitting one's one's age age or or birth. birth. Every Every social social nuance nuance had had its its correcorrethan sponding sign sign in in clothing. clothing. At the the end end of of the the sixteenth sixteenth century, century, custom custom sponding that childhood, childhood, henceforth henceforth recognized recognized as as aa separate separate entity, entity, dictated that dictated should also also have have its its special special costume. costume. should
* * * Wehave haveseen seen that thatchildhood childhooddress dress originated originated in inan an archaism archaism: the the survival survival We of the the long long coat. coat. This This archaizing archaizing tendency tendency continued. continued. Towards Towards the the end end of of of the eighteenth eighteenth century, century, in in the the time time of ofLouis Louis XVI, XVI, little little boys boys were were dressed dressed the :
in
Lancret and and after the fashion of of the the previous previous century. century.
Louis XIII XIII or or Renaissance Renaissance collars. collars. The The children children painted painted by by Lancret in Louis Boucher are are often often dressed dressed Boucher
after the fashion
58 58
THE IDEA IDEA OF OF CHILDHOOD CHILDHOOD THE
But two two other other tendencies tendencies were were to to influence influence the the development development of of But children's dress dress from from the the seventeenth seventeenth century century on. on. The The first first emphasized emphasized children's .fhe effeminate appearance of ofthe the little little boy. We have have seen seen earlier earlier in in this this ie effeminate boy.
appearance
We
work that that the the boy boy 'in 'in bib bib and and tucker', tucker', before before the the age age of of'the 'the robe robe with with work collar', wore wore the the same same robe robe and and skirt skirt as as aa girl. girl. This This effeminization effeminization of of aa collar', the little little boy, boy, which whichbecame became noticeable noticeable about about the the middle middle of ofthe the sixteenth sixteenth the the century, was at first a novelty and barely hinted at. For instance the upper instance For hinted at. and a first at was upper barely novelty century, part of of the the boy's boy's costume costume retained retained the the characteristics characteristics of ofmasculine masculine dress; dress; part but soon soon the the little little boy was was given the the lace lace collar collar of of the the little little girl, girl, which which but boy
given
was exactly exactly the the same same as as that that worn worn by by the the ladies. ladies. It It became became impossible impossible was offour four or or five, five, to distinguish distinguish aa little little boy boy from from aa little little girl girl before before the the age age of to and this this costume costume became became firmly firmly established established for for something something like like two two and centuries. About About 1770 1770 boys boys stopped stopped wearing wearing the the robe robe with with the the collar collar centuries. after four four or or five, five, but but until until they they reached reached that that age age they they were were dressed dressed like like after case until until the the end end of of the the nineteenth nineteenth little girls, and and this this would would be be the the case little girls,
century: this effeminate habit habit century: this effeminate
would be be dropped dropped only only after after the the First First would
World War, War, and and its its abandonment abandonment can can be be compared compared to to that that of the the World woman's corset corset as as symptomatic symptomatic of of the the revolution revolution in in dress dress corresponding corresponding woman's
to the the general general change change in in manners. manners. to It is interesting to note that that the the attempt attempt to to distinguish distinguish children children was to note is interesting It were generally confined to the boys: the little were distinguished only little girls the the to only confined distinguished girls boys: generally as if if childhood century, as by the in the the eighteenth abandoned in false sleeves, the false century, sleeves, abandoned eighteenth by
evidence provided separated girls from did boys. it did than it life less less than adult life from adult provided boys. The evidence separated girls the history by dress bears out the the of furnished by indications furnished other indications the other out bears history dress by by manners: were the first children. They began going to children. the first specialized were began going manners: boys They specialized boys sixteenth century kte sixteenth school numbers as as and the the late as the back far back as far numbers century in large school in large started in a small way of girls early seventeenth century. The education of The education girls started in a small way early seventeenth century. and developed de Maintenon Maintenon and only in the time of Fenelon and de Mme and Mme Fenelon of time the in developed only were the girls slowly and tardily. Without a proper educational system, the educational a Without girls were and system, proper tardily. slowly had as the confused age just as the boys had formerly an early at an women at the women formerly boys with the confused with early age just visible form, ofgiving been form, and nobody the men, with the confused with been confused men, and giving visible thought of nobody thought exist in in to was by means of dress, to a distinction which was beginning to exist reality which a distinction to reality of means beginning dress, by the girls. for but which still remained futile for the futile for the boys girls. for the boys but which still remained he made was he made to to the Why, in order to the boy from the man, was from man, the to distinguish order in boy distinguish Why, did woman? the from look like the girl who was not distinguished from the woman? Why did not was who the Why like look distinguished girl in which which people in a society in that and surprising novel and so novel people that costume, costume, so surprising in a society at least least to the the present started age, last almost to day, at almost last an early at an life at day, adult life started adult present early age, in manners manners the of until of this in spite of the changes in in this century, of the beginning until the changes spite century, beginning Here we we are are touching and of the period of ofchildhood? childhood? Here and the the prolongation touching prolongation of the period of its its consciousness a on' unexplored subject of a society's consciousness of of as yet the as on the society's yet unexplored subject
CHILDREN'S' DRESS 'DRESS CHILDREN'S
behaviour in in relation relation to to age age and and sex: sex: so so far far only only behaviour has been been studied. studied. has
'59
its class-consciousness class-consciousness
its
Another tendency, tendency, which, which, like like archaizing archaizing and and effeminizing, effeminizing, probably probably Another in the taste for fancy dress, led the children of middle-class originated in the taste for led the of children middle-class originated fancy dress, families to to adopt adopt features features of of lower-class lower-class or or working working dress. dress. Here Here the the child child families would forestall forestall masculine masculine fashion fashion and and wear wear trousers trousers as as early early as as the the reign reign would of Louis Louis XVI, XVI, before before the the age age of of the the sans-culottes. sans-culottes. The The costume costume worn worn by by of the well-dressed well-dressed child child in in the the period period of of Louis Louis XVI was was at at once once archaic archaic the (the Renaissance collar), lower-class (the trousers), and military (the (the Renaissance collar), lower-class (the trousers), and military (the military jacket and buttons). military jacket and buttons). In the the seventeenth seventeenth century century there there was was no no distinctive distinctive lower-class lower-class costume costume In and fortiori no no regional regional costumes. The poor poor wore wore the the clothes clothes which which costumes. The and aa fortiori 20 or which they bought from old-clothes dealers. The they were givenllO from or old-clothes dealers. The which were they bought given they lower-class costume costume was was aa second-hand costume, just just as as today today the the lowersecond-hand costume, lowerlower-class class car is is aa second-hand (The comparison comparison between between the the costume costume of of car. (The second-hand car. class car the past* past" and and the the car car of of the the present present day day is is not not as as artificial artificial as as it it may may seem: seem: the has inherited the social which dress used to have.) the car car has inherited the social significance the significance which dress used to have.) of the people was dressed like the the world world aa few Thus the like the of the few dressed man of the was of man the Thus people of Louis XIII's Paris he wore the plumed decades earlier; in the streets he the in of Louis XIlTs Paris wore the streets decades earlier; plumed bonnet which had been fashionable while the in the the sixteenth sixteenth century, the fashionable in had been bonnet which century, while women wore the hood favoured by ladies of the same period. the The ladies of same favoured hood the wore women period. by time-lag varied from one region to another, according to the rapidity time-lag varied from one region to another, according to the rapidity with followed the the the prevailing fashions. At the local gentry the local which the with which prevailing fashions. gentry followed - along beginning of the eighteenth century, the women of certain regions of the certain of the regions along eighteenth century, beginning the In still wearing fifteenth-century coifS. were still instance -- were for instance the Rhine, Rhine, for wearing fifteenth-century coifs. In the course of the eighteenth century this evolution came to a stop, a as this evolution to the of course the stop, as eighteenth century result of a moral estrangement between the rich and the poor and and the the rich between a moral of result poor estrangement also separation. Regional dress in both both a a new dress originated a physical also a originated in physical separation. Regional ,taste (it was the period of the great regional histories histories the the was for regionalism taste for great regional period regionalism (it of Provence, etc., and also of aa revival revival of interest in the interest in the of Brittany, Brittany, Provence, etc., and also of as the the result the proregional languages which had become dialects result of the had dialects as which proregional languages in the in dress to variations variations in the time gress of French) and dress due to differences in and differences gress of French) to reach which reach different different parts and court court took to of town and the fashions fashions of which the parts of the country. the country. the end of the at the the eighteenth In lower-class suburbs, at the great In the century, eighteenth century, great lower-class suburbs, the trousers distinctive trousers the men started wearing a more distinctive costume, namely a started costume, the namely the wearing of the workman's smock in which were the equivalent at that time that time in the at the the the were which equivalent class nineteenth and the dungarees of today: the sign of a class and aa the the and nineteenth century sign dungarees today: century in the the dress the function. that in the eighteenth century the dress of the that is noteworthy It is function. It eighteenth century noteworthy the beggarly it was was lower cities stopped in the the hig class in lower class being the stopped being beggarly costume it big cities
60 60
THE IDEA IDEA OF OF CHILDHOOD CHILDHOOD THE
in the the seventeenth seventeenth-- shapeless, shapeless, anachronistic anachronistic rags, rags, or or cast-offs cast-off's from from an an in old-clothesdealer. dealer.Here Herewe can cansee seethe thespontaneous spontaneousexpression expressionof ofaacollective collective old-clothes
we characteristic, something something like like an an awakening awakening of ofclass-consciousness. class-consciousness. Thus Thus from then then on on there there was was aa kind kind of of artisan's artisan's uniform: uniform: trousers. trousers. Trousers, Trousers, from long breeches reaching down to to the the feet, feet, had had for for aa long long time time been been an an long breeches reaching down article of of seamen's seamen's dress. dress. While While they they might might appear appear in in Italian Italian comedy, comedy, article they were commonly worn by sailors sailors and and also also by by the the inhabitants inhabitants of of they were commonly worn by seaports, Flemings, Flemings, Rhinelanders, Rhinelanders, Danes Danes and and Scandinavians. Scandinavians. The The latter latter seaports, were still still wearing wearing trousers trousers in in the the seventeenth seventeenth century, century, if if we we judge judge by by were collections of of the the clothes clothes of of that that period. period. The The English English had had given given them them up, up, collections although they had worn them them as as far far back back as as the the twelfth twelfth century. century.21 21 They They although they had worn had become become the the uniform uniform of of the the naval naval forces forces when when the the better-organized better-organized had dress of of their their ships' ships' crews. crews. Apparently Apparently at at the the same same states had had regulated regulated the the dress states time they they spread spread to to the the lower lower classes classes in in the the suburbs suburbs of of the the big big cities, cities, who time henceforth refused refused to to wear wear other other people's people's cast-offs, cast-off's, and and to to little little boys boys of of henceforth good family. good family. was rapidly rapidly adopted adopted by by the the children children of The newly newly created created uniform uniform was The the middle middle classes, classes, first first of of all all in in the the private private boarding-schools, boarding-schools, which had the of the the Jesuits Jesuits and which become more more numerous numerous since since the the expulsion expulsion of become careers. The often prepared boys boys for for military academies and military careers. and academies often prepared military military their to dressing silhouette the people's fancy, and adults took to their took adults the dressing silhouette caught people's fancy, caught created thus was created uniform: boys in a costume inspired by military or naval uniform: thus naval or costume in a inspired by military boys the eighteenth the fashion which has the end of the lasted from the has lasted the sailor-boy eighteenth sailor-boy fashion which century to the present day. the to present day. century taste to this this new taste in part The of trousers for children was due in for children The adoption part to adoption of trousers nineteenth century, for to adults in when in the the nineteenth adults to to spread was to which was century, uniform which for uniform spread it had never the or ceremonial ceremonial dress, court or dress, something became court uniform became something it the uniform desire the desire no no doubt, by the been also inspired, It was was also doubt, the Revolution. Revolution. It before the by been before inspired, to give to his traditional traditional dress, of his constraint of dress, to the constraint from the child from the child give him to free free the would lower-class would aa more suburban lower-class the suburban which the costume which casual costume, more casual costume, aa costume both the thus was The boy was thus spared both the henceforth The of pride. kind of with aa kind wear with spared henceforth wear boy pride. unfashionable over-ceremonious breeches, the over-ceremonious and the robe and breeches, over-childish robe or over-childish unfashionable or all the the This happened thanks and navy. class and lower class of lower trousers of the trousers to the happened all thanks to navy. This to give children more in that it always been thought amusing to children been had it had in that give amusing more easily thought always easily such as as the the lower-class dress, of family a few characteristics of of lower-class dress, such of good good family a few characteristics revolutionaries with with the labourer's, peasant's or convict's cap, which the revolutionaries which convict's or labourer's, peasant's cap, one of of Bonnard's Bonnard's bonnet: one their the Phrygian called the tastes called classical tastes their classical Phrygian bonnet: 22 22 In our own this kind. kind. own of us a cap of this In our engravings shows a child wearing us aa child shows cap wearing engravings certain resemblances resemblances offers certain days we have seen a which offers dress which of dress a transfer transfer of seen have we days XVI's time: the Louis XVI's of Louis time: the to of trousers by the boys of the adoption to the adoption of trousers by die boys characteristic,
CHILDRBN'S CHILDREN'S .1)BBSS .MESS
~I 6j
workman's made of coarse blue cloth, have become the 'blue workman's dungarees, dungarees, made of coarse blue cloth, have become the 'blue jeans' which young people proudly wear as the visible sign of their jeans' which young people proudly wear as the visible sign of their adolescence. adolescence.
* * * have come from from the when the child was dressed We have the sixteenth sixteenth century, century, when the child was dressed are like an adult, to childhood costume with which an adult, to the the specialized specialized childhood costume with which we are have already pointed out that this change affected familiar today. We have familiar today. already pointed out that this change affected girls. The idea idea of profited the boys first first of boys more than than girls. of all, childhood profited the boys of childhood all, boys while the girls girls persisted persisted much longer in the traditional way of life which life in the traditional of which while the way longer have cause cause to more than than confused them with with the the adults: to notice confused them shall have notice more adults: we shall once this delay on the part of the in adopting the visible forms of of in the the once this on of the women visible forms delay part adopting the essentially masculine masculine civilization modern times. times. of modern the essentially civilization of If we confine confine our the evidence afforded by by dress, must our attention evidence afforded If attention to to the dress, we must was limited limited for for aa long conclude that the the particularization particularization of of children conclude that children was long time to boys. boys. What is is certain certain is is that that it in middle-class middle-class or or it occurred occurred solely time to solely in aristocratic families. The children of the lower classes, the offspring aristocratic families. The children of the lower classes, the offspring of the peasants and the artisans, those who played played on on the the village village greens, in and the the peasants artisans, those greens, in the city city streets, in the craftsmen's workshops, in the tavern taprooms and and in the tavern in craftsmen's the the streets, taprooms workshops, in kitchens of houses, went on wearing wearing the the same clothes as clothes as of great in the the kitchens great houses, went adults: they were were never never depicted in robes or false sleeves. They kept up sleeves. in or false robes adults: they They kept up depicted way of life which which made no no distinction between children children and the old distinction between the old way of life in work or in play. play. adults, in dress or in or in dress or adults, in like
IV IV A MODEST CONTRIBUTION TO THE HISTORY OF
GAMES AND PASTIMES
T
HANKS to to the the diary diary kept kept by by the the doctor doctor Heroard, Heroard, we can can imagine imagine was like at the beginning of the seventeenth what a child's life what a child's life was like at the beginning of the seventeenth century, what games he played, and to what stages of his physical THANKS century, what games he played, and to what stages of his physical and mental mental development development each each of of his his games games corresponded. corresponded. Although Although the the and was aa Dauphin Dauphin of of France, France, the future Louis Louis XIII, XIII, his his case case child concerned concerned was the future child remains typical typical for for all all that, that, for for at at Henri Henri IV's IV's court court the the royal royal children, remains children, legitimate or illegitimate, were treated in the same way as all aristocratic in the treated same as were aristocratic or illegitimate, way all legitimate was as yet no no real real difference difference between between the the King's King's children, and and there there was as yet children, palaces and the gentry's castles. Apart from the fact that he never went to from the castles. Apart that he to fact never went and the gentry's palaces college, as some of the aristocracy already did, young Louis XIII was was the Louis XIII of as some did, aristocracy already young college, Thus he brought up like like his he was was given and riding his companions. given fencing companions. Thus fencing and riding brought up lessons by by the the same who, in his academy, the in his instructor who, same instructor lessons academy, taught young taught the young de Pluvinel. The illustrations of de aristocracy the arts of war: aristocracy the arts of war: M. de Pluvinel. The illustrations of M. de Pluvinel's manual of horsemanship, the engravings of the fine fine engravings de Pas, of horsemanship, of C. C. de Pluvinel's manual Pas, . show the riding-school. of horseback at at the In the the second half of on horseback second half XIII on Louis XIII show Louis riding-school. In the seventeenth century the monarchical cult separated the little prince the at monarchical cult the little the seventeenth century prince at separated of noble an earlier age in infancy in fact from other mortals, even fact from in other even of noble in earlier an mortals, infancy age birth. birth. Louis XIII was born on on September His doctor, was born Louis XIII Heroard, doctor, Heroard, 2yth, 1601. His September 27th, 1 has us aa detailed his activities. of all all his writes that that at at record of activities. 1 Heroard Heroard writes detailed record has left left us seventeen the violin and sings at the same time'. Before and the time'. Before the violin at same he 'plays months he seventeen months 'plays sings that, to very a the usual little children, with the usual toys he had had played children, a that, he toys given given to very little played with hobby-horse, a windmill and a whippmg-top. But as early as seventeen as as seventeen and a But a windmill early whipping-top. hobby-horse, months violin had had not not yet his hands. into his hands. The violin was put a violin violin was months a yet won put into the fiddle fiddle played recognition as a noble instrument: it for it was still still the for the the a instrument: noble as played recognition dancing weddings and fetes. At the find him playing the same age at village age we find playing dancing at village weddings and fttes. mall: his shot shot and injured muffed his de 'The Dauphin, mall: 'The mall, muffed injured M. de Dauphin, playing playing mall, start playing cricket Longueville.' This is just as if an English boy were to to start playing cricket Longueville.' This is just as if an English boy or months. At twenty-two are of seventeen seventeen months. the age or golf at the twenty-two months we are age of golf at all sorts told sorts of of rhythms' with all to beat his tambourin beat his tambourin with told that he 'continues 'continues to that he rhythms':: every company had its He started drumbeat. its own drum and its its own drumbeat. had started to to every company the talk: are making him pronounce the syllables separately, before are before talk: 'They syllables separately, pronounce making 'They 'the Queen, saying in the words.' words/ The same month, month, August 1603, 'the Queen, going August 1603, going in saying the
62
HISTORY OF GAMES GAMES, AND PASTIMES
63 63
had him him brought brought along along and and placed placed at at the the end end of of her her table. table. and paintings paintings of of the the sixteenth sixteenth and and seventeenth seventeenth centuries centuries often often show show and a child child at at table, table, perched perched in in aa little litde high-chair high-chair out out of of which which he he cannot cannot fall; fall; a it must must have have been been in in one one of of these these chairs chairs that that he he sat sat at at his his mother's mother's table, table. it to dinner, dinner, had to Prints Prints
like other children in other families. This This little litde fellow fellow is is barely barely two two years years find him him being being 'taken 'taken to to the the King's King's apartments apartments and and now we find dancing all sorts of dances to the music of a violin'. Again see to of all sorts of the music a dances violin*. see how we dancing Again early in life music and dancing were introduced into the education of the early in life music and dancing were introduced into the education of the little men of of this this period: period: this this explains explains the the frequency, frequency, in in the the families families of of little professionals, of what should call infant prodigies, such as the the such as of now call infant what we should prodigies, professionals, young Mozart; Mozart; such such cases cases would would become become rarer rarer and and at at the the same same time time seem seem young as familiarity familiarity with with music, music, even even in in its its elementary elementary or or more prodigious prodigious as more bastard forms, forms, grew grew less less common or or disappeared. disappeared. bastard The Dauphin Dauphin began began talking. talking. Heroard Heroard keeps keeps aa phonetic phonetic record record of his of his The chatter: 'Tell 'Tell Papa* Papa' for for 'I tell Papa', Papa'. equivez Iquivez for ecrivez. He was was for tcrivez. *I shall shall tell chatter: often given given aa whipping: whipping: 'Naughty, 'Naughty, whipped whipped (for refusing to to eat): often (for refusing eat): calming down, he asked for his dinner and dined.' 'Went off to his room, to his and dined/ his dinner off he asked for room, down, calming whipped.' Although Although he he screaming the top top of ofhis voice, and and was his voice, was soundly at the soundly whipped/ screaming at now mingled mingled with with adults, adults, playing, dancing and singing with them, he he and with them, singing playing, dancing still children's games. was two years months old seven months old when still played at years seven played at children's games. He was Sully presented him with 'a full of dolls'. full of 'a litde little carriage dolls'. him with carriage Sully presented He to see 'The soldiers are always see soldiers: 'The soldiers are of soldiers: the company liked the He liked glad to always glad company of him.' with a little 'He conducted little conducted cannon/ 'He little military a litde cannon.' with 'He played him/ 'He military played high collar actions a high first collar on him, the first de Marsan Marsan put his soldiers. soldiers. M. de with his actions with him, the put a he 'He played at military engageat he was was delighted.' and he ever worn, he had had ever worn, and military engageplayed delighted/ ments with his he played tennis as as well as that he well as too that lords/ We know too litde lords.' his little ments with played tennis mallhe still a cradle. On July 19th, 1604, when he was two a in cradle. still slept in he mall - yet ipth, 1604, July slept yet years nine months old, 'he his bed bed being with great saw his 'he saw being made with great joy, joy, was years nine months old, put to bed for the first He already knew the rudiments of the his rudiments of his time/ first time.' the for to bed already put 'teligion: at at he was shown the the host host and told told that that it it at the the Elevation, at Mass, Elevation, Mass, "religion: this was note in passing this expression, Ie Dieu. in le bon ban note Dieu. We might le bon bon Dieu. Dieu, was Ie passing expression, might which employed nowadays by priests and churchgoers, but is constantly which is churchgoers, but constantly employed nowadays by priests literature the ancien of literature of the ancien regime. in religious found in be found can be trace can no trace ofwhich which no religious regime. die seventeenth seventeenth century, We can the beginning at the that at here that see here can see century, when beginning of the it belonged to the language not very the was probably not of old, it the expression belonged to the very old, language of expression was probably to children. It contaminated children and nannies when talking to children. It contaminated nannies and of parents or of children or talking parents the eff'eminization the nineteenth century. effeminization the nineteenth in the adults in and, with the ofadults the language century, and, language of le bon bon Dieu Dieu little children. children. of the God of Jacob became Ie of little the of religion. Jacob religion, The out with those those could now talk, talk, and occasionally The Dauphin occasionally came out Dauphin could 'The King showed him the cheeky remarks which amuse grown-ups: him the amuse which remarks King grown-ups: cheeky like other children in other families.
old, yet yet old,
OF CHILDHOOD
THE IDEA
64
birch and asked him: him: "Who is is that that for?" answered angrily: "For and asked birch for?" He answered angrily: "For you." The King could not help laughing'. The could not help laughing'. King you." was three three years years old on Christmas he took took part part in in old when, He was Christmas Eve Eve 1604, when, on 1604, he the traditional festivities. supper he log being lit, Before supper he saw the Yule Yule log the traditional festivities. 'Before saw the lit, being he danced the coming coming of given some and and sang at the of Christmas.' some danced and Christmas/ He was was given and he sang at presents: a ball, and also some 'little baubles from Italy', including a presents: a ball, and also some little baubles from Italy', including a clockwork toys intended for the the Queen as for him. as much for intended as for him. clockwork pigeon, Queen as pigeon, toys During the winter evenings, when he was kept indoors, 'he amused he winter was the 'he amused indoors, During evenings, kept himself by by cutting paper with with scissors.' and dancing still occupied scissors/ Music Music and himself cutting paper occupied dancing still an important place place in in his his life. Heroard writes writes with with aa hint hint of an important life. Heroard of admiration: admiration: 'The Dauphin can can dance dances'. He remembered the ballets ballets which which dance all all the the dances*. 'The Dauphin remembered the he had in which which he he would would soon soon be taking part, part, if if indeed indeed he had and in he had seen seen and be taking he had not already begun doing so: 'Remembering a ballet performed a year a not already so: ballet a begun doing year Remembering performed ago he was was two two years old], he asked: "Why was the little [when he ago [when years old], he asked: "Why was the little Ram bare?'" played Cupid naked.' 'He danced the the galliard, the stark naked.' bare?"' 'He 'He played 'He danced Cupid stark galliard, the bourn~e.' He enjoyed playing Boileau's mandora and saraband, the old the old and bourree/ Boileau's mandora saraband, enjoyed playing singing tlle song Robin. He would would be four years years old old in in aa few be four of Robin. few days' days' song of singing die at least the names the different different strings of the lute. lute. time, he knew at and he least the names of of the of the time, and strings 'He played with with the the tips tips of his fingers his lips, saying: .. Here is the of his on his 'He played fingers on lips, saying: "Here is the acquaintance with with the the lute did not not prevent prevent him from bass.'" But his bass." his early lute did early acquaintance listening to the less aristocratic fiddles played at the wedding of one the to the of the the less fiddles at one of aristocratic listening played wedding of King's chefs or to a bagpipe player, one of the masons were to a one of were chefs or the masons who King's bagpipe player, 'repairing his fireplace': to him him for quite aa long long the 'Dauplun for quite listened to fireplace': the 'repairing his 'Dauphin listened *
*
*
*
.
,
bme. time'.
This was was the the time time when he he was was being being taught to read. read. At the age of three the age of three This taught to years five months 'he amused himself with a of characters from the the a book of characters 'he himself with five months years Bible: his his nanny nanny named the the letters letters and and he he "was was all/ Next he he knew them all.' Bible: taught Pibrac's Pibrac's quatrains, quatrains, aa collection collection of rules of of etiquette and morality of rules taught etiquette and morality which children children had to to recite recite from memory. memory. At the the age four, he was was which age of four, by aa clerk palace chapel called Dumont. given writing writing lessons lessons by clerk of of the the palace chapel called given 'He had his his writing-desk taken into into the write under to write under the dining-room 'He had writing-desk taken dining-room to Dumont's guidance, and said: "I putting my example and down "I said: am Dumont's my example and guidance, putting going to school.'" (The example was the handwriting he model which was the he to school/" handwriting (The example going had to copy.) copy.) 'He wrote wrote his example, following the impression impression made on his example, had to following the the paper, paper, and taking pleasure pleasure in in it/ it.' He started started the and followed it very well, followed it very well, taking learning Latin words. he was six a professional scribe took the scribe took When a words. he was six the Latin learning professional of the chapel clerk: 'He wrote his example. Beaugrand, the King's place the his of clerk: wrote the example. Beaugrand, place King's chapel scribe, to write/ write.' scribe, showed him how to He still played with some little little toys toys and aa dolls: 'He still played with He played played with dolls: German cabinet miniatures by Niimberg craftsmen]. cabinet [wooden miniatures made by Niirnberg craftsmen]. [wooden c
facing:
CInLDREN OF HENRI-LOUIS HABERT DE MONTMORT facing : THE CHILDREN
by Philippe Philippe de de Champaigne Champalgne by
GAMES, AND PASTIMES 65 HISTORY OF GAMES 65 de Lomenie Lomenie gave gave him him aa little little nobleman nobleman splendidly splendidly dressed dressed in in aa scented scented M. de collar ... He combed combed his his hair hair and and said: said: "I "I am going going to to marry marry him him to to collar... Madame's [his [his sister's] sister's] doll/" doll.'" He still still enjoyed enjoyed paper-cutting. paper-cutting. He had had Madame's stories read read to to him him too too: 'His nanny told told him him the the stories stories of of Renard Renard the the Fox, Fox, His nanny stories Dives and and Lazarus.' Lazarus.' 'In 'In bed, bed, he he was was being being told told the the stories stories of of Melusina. Melusina. Dives I told told him him that that they they were were fairy-stories fairy-stories and and not not true true stories/ stories.' (A (A remark remark I which already already foreshadows foreshadows modern modem educational educational practice.) practice.) Children Children were were which not the the only only ones ones to to listen listen to to these these stories: stories: they they were were also also told told to to adults adults at at not evening gatherings. gatherings. evening At the the same same time time as as he he played played with with dolls, dolls, this this child child of of four four or or five five At practised archery, played cards, chess (at six), and adult games such as and adult such as chess (at six), practised archery, played cards, games 'racket-ball', prisoners' prisoners' base base and and countless countless parlour parlour games. games. At At three, three, he he 'racket-ball', was already already playing playing at at crambo, crambo, aa game game common to to both both children children and and was young people. people. With the the pages pages of of the the King's King's Chamber, Chamber, who were were older older young than he he was, was, he he played played at at 'Do you like company?' 'He was the the master master like company?' 'He was 'Do you than of the game] and then, and he did not what [the leader and and he did not know what when of leader the now then, game] [the he had had to to say, say, he he asked; asked; he he played played these these games, games, such such as the game game of lighting of lighting as the he aa candle candle blindfold, blindfold, as as if he were fifteen years he was not not old/ when When he if he were fifteen years old.' playing with pages, he was playing with soldiers: 'He played various various soldiers: he was with with played playing pages, playing games, such as want your place", fiddle-de-dee, and as "I "I want fiddle-de-dee, hand-clapping, your place", hand-clapping, and games, such hide-and-seek, with some soldiers.' At the age of six he played trades trades and and of six he soldiers/ At the with hide-and-seek, played age and stories charades, parlour games games which which consisted stories of guessing trades and consisted of charades, parlour guessing trades that were were represented represented in in pantomime. These were also games played by also These were that games played by pantomime. adolescents and adults. adults. adolescents and To an Dauphin mixed with and took adults and took with adults the Dauphin an ever ever increasing extent, the increasing extent, part in their amusements. At the age of five 'he was taken to the meadow to the the of 'he was taken five age part in their amusements. behind the kennels kennels [at Fontainebleau] to the King's to see Bretons from the see Bretons behind the King's [at Fontainebleau] workshops wrestling.' 'Taken to join tlle King in the ballroom to the ballroom to see see the the to the in 'Taken join King workshops wrestling/ dogs fighting the bears and the bull.' 'He went to the covered tennistennisto the covered and the bull/ the bears dogs fighting court in the the court court ballets. ballets. all he he took took part race/ And above all a badger to see see a court to part in badger race.' At to the the King's a mask, half 'he 'he put and aa half of four four and At the the age mask, went to King's put on a age of apartments to dance a ballet, and then refused to take off his mask, not apartments to dance a ballet, and then refused to take off his mask, not wishing as a a 'Picardy dressed up often dressed be recognized.' to be 'Picardy chamberup as recognized/ He often wishing to 'After maid', or a girl (he was still boy's tunic). a still wearing a or a a shepherdess tunic). 'After maid', a boy's wearing girl (he shepherdess supper he watched some dancing to of a aa a certain certain Laforest', to the the songs some watched he Laforest', dancing songs supper soldier-choreographer farces. At the the the author author of some farces. also the was also soldier-choreographer who was a farce farce in in which age enthusiasm a without great watched without 'he watched of five five 'he great enthusiasm age of the the unfaithful Laforest the comic husband, the Baron de Montglat the unfaithful the comic Laforest played husband, Montglat played wife, her/ At the the age six 'he 'he danced seduced her.' the lover lover who seduced Indret the and Indret wife, and age of six of his in a as a man, in a doublet and breeches on top aa ballet, dressed doublet breeches as a dressed man, ballet, smartly top ofhis smartly *
:
c C
facing above: THE DUC DUG D'ANJOU D'ANJOU AS A CHILD facing above: . below: Callot below: THE THIEVES by by Callot
by Arnoult by Amoult
66 66
THE IDEA OF CHILDHOOD
tunic.' •'He He watched watched the of the magicians devised by the the the devils devised by tunic.' the ballet ballet of devils and and magicians Piedmontese Jean-Baptiste [another soldier-choreographer] danced by danced Picdmontesc Jean-Baptiste by [another soldier-choreographer] de Marsan's Marsan's command.' only ballets soldiers under M. de soldiers under ballets command/ He did did not not dance dance only and court dances, but also took part part in what we should and court call folkfolkalso took in what should now call dances, but dances. was five, he took took part part in in one which reminds reminds me of a of a dances. When he he was one which five, he Tyrolean dance which I once saw some lads in leather breeches perform dance in which I once saw some lads breeches leather Tyrolean perform in cafe: 'The 'The King's King's pages pages danced are in an "There are an Innsbruck Innsbruck cafe: danced the the branIe branle "There cabbages on Midsummer Day" and kicked each other in the bottom; he he on and kicked each in the other Midsummer bottom; cabbages Day" danced it and and did they did!' occasion he he was a did as as they as a danced it was dressed dressed as another occasion did!' On another girl for a play: 'When the farce was over, he took his robe off and for and a took robe off the was he his farce over, girl play: danced on Midsummer Day", kicking his comdanced "There "There are are cabbages cabbages on Midsummer Day", kicking his companions in the bottom. He liked this dance.' in the liked this dance.' bottom. panions Finally he joined the adults in the traditional festivities of of Christmas, he the adults in the traditional festivities Christmas, Finally joined Twelfth Night and it he lit the Midsummer and Midsummer lit the Midsummer Twelfth Night it was he who Midsummer Day; was Day; Day bonfire bonfire in the courtyard of the of Saint-Germain. the in the Saint-Germain. On the the Chateau Chateau of Day courtyard of eve Twelfth Night: Night: 'He the King for the first Everyone eve of of Twelfth was the for the first time. time. 'He was Everyone King shouted: King drinks! drinks!"" God's share is he who eats eats it pay to pay it has has to is left: shouted: "The King left: he God's share aa forfeit.' 'Taken to to the apartments, from which he watched the the forfeit.' 'Taken he watched the Queen's from which Queen's apartments, maypole being set up.' set maypole being up.' Things changed when he he was nearly seven: he abandoned abandoned his his childhood childhood was nearly seven: he changed when Things clothes to men; men; he he left left clothes and and henceforth henceforth his his education entrusted to education was was entrusted of ,'Mamonglas', Mamonglas', Mme de and came under the jurisdiction the de Montglas, and under came jurisdiction of Montglas, de Soubise. was made to persuade him to give up to him M. de to Soubise. An attempt was now give up attempt persuade the and in in particular particular to to stop playing with dolls: 'You of infancy, with dolls: the games games of infancy, and stop playing must stop' playing with these little toys [the German toys] and and playing must playing stop* playing with these little toys [the German toys] the wagoner: wagoner: you you are are aa big boy now, you are no longer a child.' a the child.' He are longer big boy now, you started learning the arts riding, shooting hunting. He played played games started and hunting. arts of of riding, games learning the shooting and of chance: 'He took part part in rafRe and and won aa turquoise.' turquoise.' It indeed of chance: It seems seems indeed a raffle 'He took in a that this age mark.ed aa stage it was was the the age that this of seven seven marked of some some importance: age age of importance: it stage of usually given in the moralistic and pedagogic literature of the seventeenth the seventeenth in and literature the moralistic usually given pedagogic century for starting starting school work. s2 But we should should as the the age school or or starting century as starting work. age for had beware of its importance. For all that he had stopped all that of exaggerating beware its For stopped exaggerating importance. the Dauphin playing, have stopped playing, with his dolls, dolls, the Dauphin or should should have with his playing, or stopped playing, went on leading the same same life as before: before: he he was was still whipping still given a life as given a whipping leading the all. from to time, time, and pastimes scarcely changed at all. went more at He went time to and his from time his pastimes scarcely changed a and more more to to the theatre, and nearly every day: a sign of the theatre, and was was soon soon going going nearly every day: sign of the importance of comedy, farce and ballet in our ancestors' frequent the in our ancestors' of and farce ballet frequent comedy, importance indoor and open-air into the to indoor and the great entertainments. 'He 'He went into great gallery gallery to open-air entertainments. watch the the King King tilting at the ring.' 'He listened to some naughty stories to stories at the listened 'He tilting naughty ring.' by others.' 'Played with some little little Clavette and and others.' in his his apartments by La Clavette apartments with 'Played in
HISTORY OP OF GAMES GAMES, AND ~ND PASTIMES PASTIMES HISTORY
.67 67
noblemen at at heads heads or or tails, tails, like like the the King, King, with with three three dice/ dice.' 'Played 'Played at at noblemen hide-and-seek' with with aa lieutenant lieutenant of of the the Light Light Horse. Horse. 'He 'He went went to to pky play hide-and-seek' tennis and and then then went went to to the the great great gallery gallery to to watch watch them them tilting tilting at at the the tennis
ring.' 'Dressed up and danced the Pantaloon.' ring/ 'Dressed up and danced the Pantaloon/
He was was nine nine years years old old He
now: 'After 'After supper, supper, he he went went to to the the Queen's Queen's apartments, apartments, pkyed played blindblindnow: man's buff, buff, and and made made the the Queen, Queen, the the princesses princesses and and the the ladies ladies pky play it it man's too.' 'He 'He played played "I "I sit sit down'" down'" and and the the usual usual parlour parlour games. games. 'After 'After too/ supper the King's nanny told him some stories, and he enjoyed this.' At supper the King's nanny told him some stories, and he enjoyed this/ At thirteen we find find him him still still playing playing hide-and-seek. hide-and-seek. thirteen Rather more more dolls dolls and and German German toys toys before before seven, seven, and and more hunting, hWlting. Rather riding, fencing fencing and and possibly possibly pkygoing playgoing after after seven; seven; the the change change was was
riding,
almost imperceptible imperceptible in in that that long long succession succession of of pastimes pastimes which which the the child child almost copied from the adults or shared with them. The novelist-cum-historian novelist-cum-historian The them. the or shared with from adults copied
Sorel would would write write aa treatise treatise on on parlour parlour games games intended intended for for adults. adults. But at at Sorel the age age of of three three Louis Louis XIII XIII was was playing playing crambo, crambo, and and at at six, six, trades trades and the charades, all all games which which occupied occupied an an important important place place in in Sorel's Sorel's Maison Maison charades, games
des Jeux. At five he was playing cards. At eight he he won aa prize prize in in aa desjeux. At five he was playing cards. At eight aa game game of of chance in which which fortWles used to to change change hands. hands. fortunes used chance in
rafRe,
raffle,
The same was of musical musical or or theatrical theatrical entertainments: entertainments: when he was true true of The same was Louis XIII was dancing the galliard, the saraband and the old the old the was XIII was three, Louis three, galliard, the saraband dancing bourrt~e, and taking part in the court ballets. At five, he was watching he was At the court ballets. in and five, watching bounce, taking part the and played the violin and the farces, comedies. He sang, at seven, and at seven, comedies. farces, and sang, and played the violin a lute. at a wrestling-match, a at the spectators of the in the front row of the front lute. He was was in wrestling-match, a spectators a or a bearfight, or a display by a tightrope ring-tilting contest, a bullfight a or a or a tightrope display by bearfight, bullfight ring-tilting contest, the that were the walker. he took part in festivals that collective festivals the great in the walker. Finally great collective Finally he took part religious and seasonal feast-days: Christmas, May Day, Midsummer seasonal and Christmas, May Day, feast-days: religious there Day seventeenth century the early in the that in It seems, ... It therefore, that century there seems, therefore, early seventeenth Day ... was games children's is today between children's there is as there division as strict division was not not such such aa strict games today and by adults. YOWlg and the same games. old played and old those played and those games. pkyed the played by adults. Young
*
*
*
no longer this polyvalency At of the seventeenth century this the beginning At the longer poly valency no beginning of the seventeenth century their games. with their familiar with applied to the very small children. We are are familiar We for, children. small to the games, for. very applied their made ever since the fifteenth century when the putti had made their appearance the the ever since fifteenth century appearance putti In at play. children at little children in cOWltless artists had had depicted in iconography, pky. In depicted little iconography, countless artists the bird the their pictures we can recognize the hobby-horse, the windmill, the bird the windmill, can their pictures we hobby-horse, recognize is obvious obvious that that It is dolls. It so often, on not so often, dolls. and sometimes, on aa leash leash ... and sometimes, though though not is entitled to entitled one Yet these dummies were reserved for little children. Yet one is to children. little for reserved these dummies were these had whether and true wonder whether this had always been true and whether these toys had been had this wonder whether toys always . . .
68 68
THE IDEA OF CHILDHOOD
not previously previously belonged to the world of adults. Some toys originated in not belonged to the world of adults. Some toys originated in that of emulation which induces to imitate adult processes, processes, induces children emulation which children to imitate adult that spirit of spirit while reducing them them to to their scale. This the case the hobbyThis is with the is the their own scale. case with while reducing hobbyhorse, time when the horse was the principal means transport and and the principal a time horse was means of of transport at a when the horse, at traction. the litde sails spinning round on the end of a stick stick of a on end the sails round the little traction. Similarly, Similarly, spinning could not be be anything but the imitation by children of a technique which, could not anything but the imitation by children of a technique which, unlike that that of horse, was was not not very very old: the windmill windmill technique of the old: the the horse, unlike technique introduced in the Middle Ages. The The same governs the of children of in the Middle Ages. reflex governs the children same reflex introduced today when they imitate a lorry or a car. But while the windmill has long has a or But the a car. while windmill when imitate long lorry they today ago from our countryside, the child's windmill is still on sale ago disappeared disappeared from our countryside, the child's windmill is still on sale in toyshops and market or stalls. Children form the most and market or fair-ground in toyshops fair-ground stalls. Children form the most conservative of human societies. societies. conservative of Other games seem seem to to have have some other origin than the desire to imitate some other Other games origin than the desire to imitate adults. child is is often depicted playing playing with with aa bird: bird: Louis Louis XIII XIII the child adults. Thus Thus the often depicted had a shrike shrike of fond; the reader himself may he was the himself of which was extremely reader had a which he fond; may extremely perhaps remember trying to tame a wounded crow crow in in his his childhood. childhood. perhaps remember trying to tame a The bird in in these these pictures pictures is is usually attached to a leash which the child is The bird usually attached to a leash which the child is holding in his hand. Sometimes it been just just aa wooden dummy. his hand. it may have in Sometimes dummy. holding may have been In case, judging by the iconographic evidence, the bird on aa leash leash In any the the bird evidence, any case, judging by iconographic would seem seem to to have have been been one of the the most historian The of toys. historian one of most common of would toys. of the religions religions of of Greece, Greece, Nilsson, Nilsson,33 tells that in in ancient as tells us us that ancient Greece, of the Greece, as indeed in modern modem Greece, it was customary during the first days of of first it the indeed in was Greece, days customary during March for boys to to make aa wooden swallow turning on aa pivot pivot and and for boys March swallow turning adorned with flowers. would then take it from house to house and to and house house then take it from adorned with flowers. They would They or its was not an individual toy be given'presents: given·presents: here the bird individual but not an be here the its image was bird or toy but image an collective, seasonal in which youth took part took in in seasonal festivity which of a a collective, an element element of youth festivity part in the which its its age age group group assigned to it. eventually became an an to became the role role which it. What eventually assigned individual toy unconnected with the the community or the the calendar calendar and and individual toy unconnected with community or devoid of any social content, would appear to have been linked at flrst at devoid of been linked first social would have to content, any appear with traditional traditional ceremonies ceremonies which which brought brought together together children children and and with adolescents whom, in any case, there was clear distinction -between whom, in any no clear distinction adolescents -- between there was case, and adults. Nilsson also shows the see-saw and the which were which the swing, and adults. Nilsson also shows how the see-saw and swing, still be found found in in the the iconography of games and pastimes pastimes in in still frequently to games and frequently to be iconography of the eighteenth century, figure among the rites of one of the festivals of the rites festivals the the eighteenth century, figure among provided for in calendar: the Aiora, the the festival festival of youth. youth.'4 The boys in the the calendar: the Aiora, boys provided for used to jump jump on skins skins filled with wine wine and girls were swung swung backused to the girls backfilled with and the Nilsson sees the latter which can be wards and wards and forwards latter scene, forwards on swings; can be sees the scene, which swings Nilsson found on painted painted vases, as a fecundity rite. There was a close connection a as a There close rite. connection vases, fecundity between the the communal religious religious ceremony ceremony and the game which formed between and the formed game which its Later this lost its its essential essential rite. rite. Later this game its religious symbolism and its lost religious symbolism and its game ;
HISTORY OF Of GAMES GAMES AND AND PASTIMES PASTIMES HISTORY
,
, 69 69
communal character character to to become become at at once once profane profane and and individual. individual. In In the the communal was increasingly increasingly confined confmed process of becoming profane and individual, itit was process of becoming profane and individual, to children, children, whose whose repertory repertory of ofgames games became became the the repository repository of ofcollective collective to by adult adult society society and and demonstrations which which were were henceforth henceforth abandoned abandoned by demonstrations deconsecrated. deconsecrated.
of the the doll doll and and miniature miniature toys toys leads leads us us to to similar similar hypohypoThe problem problem of The of the the toy, toy, and and collectors collectors of of dolls dolls and and toy toy miniatures, miniatures, theses. Historians of have always always had had considerable considerable difficulty difficulty in in separating separating the the doll, doll, the the child's child's have toy, from all the other images and statuettes which the sites of excavations of excavations sites the which statuettes and all the other from images toy, yield up in wellnigh industrial quantities and and which which more more often often than than not not yield up in wellnigh industrial quantities had aa religious religious significance: significance: objects objects of ofaa household household or or funerary funerary cult, cult, relics relics had from aa pilgrimage, pilgrimage, etc. etc. How many many times times have have we been been shown shown 'toys' 'toys' from which were were in in fact fact miniature miniature replicas replicas of of familar familar objects objects placed placed in in tombs? tombs? which I am am not not suggesting suggesting that that in in the the past past children children did did not not play play with with dolls dolls or or I use replicas of adult belongings. But they were not the only ones to use these to these ones the not were But adult of only they belongings. replicas replicas; what in in modern modem times times was was to to become become their their monopoly, monopoly, they they had replicas; what of the the doll doll to share share in in ancient ancient times, times, at at least least with with the the dead. dead. The ambiguity ambiguity of to even and the replica replica continued continued during the Middle Ages, lasting even longer in Middle the and the longer in Ages, lasting during of the instrument country districts: the doll was also the dangerous instrument the the also was doll the districts: dangerous country the people magician and the witch. This taste for representing in in miniature miniature the for representing people magician and the witch. This taste in resulted and of daily life, nowadays confined to little children, resulted in little to confined children, of and things daily life, nowadays things children. as to an designed as much to satisfy adults as to amuse children. adults to as and industry an art art and satisfy industry designed art of this art The cribs are one of the manifestations of this famous Neapolitan The famous Neapolitan cribs are one of the manifestations illusion. especially in Germany and Switzerland, possess and in Switzerland, The museums, illusion. The museums, especially possess Germany furniture which sets of furniture complicated collections of houses, interiors interiors and sets complicated collections of houses, familiar objects. reproduce on a small scale all of familiar details of the details all the they objects. Were they reproduce on a small scale It is is really dolls' houses, these little masterpieces of complex ingenuity? It little these dolls' ingenuity? houses, complex masterpieces really children: true adult art also by children: there was also appreciated was art was adult this popular that this true that appreciated by popular baubles'. 'Italian baubles'. or 'Italian aa considerable for 'German toys' France for in France demand in considerable demand toys' or its this industry, to this A single word was used in whether its refer to to refer in France France to used was word industry, single bibeloterie ('knickor adults: adults: bibeloterie products were designed for children or for children were ('knickdesigned products The evolution evolution a toy. also a old was was also knackery'). The bibelot or knick-knack ofold knick-knack of toy. The knackery'). The bibelot or on the the while of has robbed it its popular meaning, while on its childish, of it of childish, robbed has meaning, of language popular language miniature of miniature use of the use other restricted the has restricted ideas has of ideas the evolution evolution of other hand hand the became the knick-knack knick-knack became replicas to children. In nineteenth century the nineteenth In the century the replicas to children. it remained remained aa but it the showcase, or something for the drawing-room or the but showcase, the for drawing-room something of furniture furniture little piece model aa little sedan chair, little sedan chair, aa little familiar object: ofaa familiar piece of model of object: for aa child child intended for been intended never been had or piece of crockery, which had never which or aa tiny of crockery, tiny piece a middlemiddlecan recognize we can to with. In the taste a knick-knack we the knick-knack for the taste for the to play In recognize with. play house. the German German house. or the crib or Italian crib class art of the Italian of the of the the popular class survival survival of popular art theses. Historians
70
THE IDEA IDEA OF OF CHILDHOOD CHILDHOOD THE
The society society of ofthe the ancien ancien regime regimeremained remained faithful faithful for for aa long long time time to to the the The little baubles baubles which which we we would would describe describe today today as as childish, childish, probably probably litde now fallen fallen for for good good and and all all within within the the domain domain of of because they have have now because they childhood. childhood.
In 1747 1747 we wefind fmd Barbier Barbier writing: writing: 'In 'In Paris Paris some some toys toys have have been been devised devised In
called puppets .... These little little figures figures represent represent Harlequin Harlequin and and Scaramouch Scaramouch . called puppets . These or else else bakers bakers [trades [trades and and crafts], crafts], shepherds shepherds and and shepshep[Italian comedy], comedy], or
[Italian
herdesses [the [the taste taste for for rustic rustic fancy-dress]. fancy-dress]. These These ridiculous ridiculous things things have have herdesses taken the the fancy fancy of of Parisian Parisian society society to to such such an an extent extent that that one one cannot cannot go go taken into into
any house without fmding them dangling from from every every mantelpiece. mantelpiece. any house without finding them dangling craze and the They are being bought to give to women and girls, and the craze has has and to women to are girls, give being bought They reached such such aa pitch pitch that that this this New Year Year all all the the shops shops are are full full of of them them ... reached The Duchesse Duchesse de de Chartres Chartres has has paid paid 1,500 1,500 livres livres for for one one painted painted by by The Boucher.' The The worthy worthy bibliophile bibliophile Jacob, Jacob, quoting quoting this this passage, passage, admits admits Boucher.' that in in his his day day nobody nobody would would dream dream of of getting getting up up to to such such childish childish that no practices: 'Society people, are too busy nowadays, longer too are much who longer nowadays, busy practices: 'Society people, the saw which idleness join in such crazes as in the good old days of idleness the of old in the as crazes in such days good join children/ to height of the fashion for puppets: leave baubles to children.' baubles leave we now for fashion the of puppets: height The puppet-show puppet-show appears appears to to have have been been another another manifestation manifestation of the the The illusion in in miniature miniature which produced produced the the knicksame popular art of illusion art of same popular the same knacks Naples. It It underwent the of Naples. cribs of the cribs and the of Germany knacks of Germany and evolution of early nineteenth-century Lyons was aa of the Guignol too: the evolution too: Lyons early nineteenth-century Guignol has character Guignol has while today adult theatre, but adult lower-class but of aa lower-class theatre, while character of Guignol today children. become reserved for for children. reserved of aa puppet-show name of the name become Pte puppet-show also explains No doubt ambiguity of children's games of children's this persistent doubt this explains games also persistent ambiguity the why, from the sixteenth until the beginning of the nineteenth the until sixteenth century the from beginning century why, fashion model. as a fashion century, the doll was used by the well-dressed woman as the well-dressed century, the doll was used by a friend friend to a to 1571 the Duchesse de Lorraine, wanting to give a present In de Duchesse the In 1571 Lorraine, wanting present to give too not some ... who had just had a baby, put in an order for' ... some dolls, not too big for an order dolls, in a had big load who baby, put just child of for the can and to four and six, the best dressed dolls you can find, for the child of dolls dressed find, the best and to four and up six, you up was The delivered*. the Duchess of Bavaria, who has recently been delivered'. The gift was been has who of gift Duchess the Bavaria, recently of the the Most of name! Most intended child's name! the child's in the sent in but was was sent the mother, for the intended for mother, but are which children's dolls in public and private collections are not children's toys, which are not are collections and in toys, dolls private public fashion dolls. but but fashion dolls. usually crude objects roughly treated by their owners, their owners, treated by usually crude objects roughly the taken by the its place being The doll eventually The fashion fashion doll place being taken by eventually disappeared, disappeared, its 5 of fashion drawing, largely thanks to the process oflithography.5 the to thanks fashion drawing, largely lithography. process with aa infantile speciality, an infantile toys had become an By speciality, with 1600, approximately, approximately, toys had become By 1600, have seen We few differences of detail with regard to present-day usage. We have seen to with detail of differences few present-day usage. regard with to used as well in connection with Louis XIII that boys as well as girls used to play with as that XIII Louis with connection in play girls boys between discrimination between dolls. modern discrimination the modern ofinfancy limits of the limits Within the dolls. Within infancy the . . .
'
HISTORY OF GAMES GAMU ^AND .. AND PASTIMES PASTIMES HISTOKY
, Jl 71
,
girls and boys was not so clearly defined: both sexes wore the same
girls and boys was not so clearly defined: both sexes wore die same clothes, the the same same robe. robe. There There was was probably probably some some connection connection between between the clothes,
the
infantile specialization in toys and and the the importance importance of of infancy infancy in in the the ideas ideas revealed by by iconography iconography and and dress dress since since the the end end of of the the Middle Middle Ages. Ages. revealed Childhood was was becoming becoming the the repository repository of of customs customs abandoned abandoned by by the the Childhood adults. adults. infantile specialization in toys
* * * In 1600 1600 the the specialization specialization of of games games and and pastimes pastimes did did not not extend extend beyond beyond In infancy; after the age of three or four it decreased and disappeared. From and decreased From after the of or four it three disappeared. infancy; age
then on the child played the same games as the adult, either with other children or with adults. adults. We know this this from from the the evidence evidence furnished furnished by by an an abundant abundant with
then on the child played the same games as the adult , either with other children or
iconography, for from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century artists iconography, for from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century artists delighted in showing people at play: an indication of the place occupied delighted in showing people at play: an indication of the place occupied
by amusement amusement in in the the social social life life of of the the ancien ancien regime. regime. We have have already already by seen that from from his his earliest earliest years, years, Louis Louis XIII, XIII, as as well well as as playing playing with with dolls, dolls, seen that also played tennis tennis and and hockey, hockey, which which we nowadays nowadays consider consider as as games for also played games for adolescents or In an by Amoult of the late seventeenth seventeenth the late of an engraving Arnoult or adults. adults. In adolescents engraving by 6 century, can see children playing bowls: children of good family, century, we can see children playing bowls: children of good family, People had objection to to judging by by the the little little girl's girl's false had no objection false sleeves. sleeves. People judging allowing children to play card games and games of chance, and to play and to and of to card children chance, play games games play allowing for putti at at to the the subject devoted to Stella's engravings of Stella's for money. subject of putti money. One of engravings devoted 7 play gives a sympathetic picture of the child who has lost his money.? lost all all his has of the child a money. play gives sympathetic picture The of the seventeenth century often depicted The Caravagesque painters of the seventeenth century often depicted Caravagesque painters old bands excitedly the old next to to the ill fame: in taverns taverns of of ill fame: next soldiers gambling of soldiers bands of gambling excitedly in troopers one can see some very young boys. twelve years old or so, who old or twelve see one can so, years very young boys, troopers a seem S. Bourdon shows a enthusiastic gamblers. to be be enthusiastic seem to by S. painting by gamblers. A painting group of beggars standing round two children and watching them children round of watching beggars standing group for money playing dice. s8 The theme chance for of children children playing theme of money games of chance playing games playing dice. is to to obviously did not shock public opinion as yet, for the same theme is the for as shock did not yet, public opinion obviously be portraying neither old soldiers but old soldiers nor beggars neither found in in pictures be found beggars pictures portraying 9 Le characters.9 solemn characters. Le Nain's Nain's solemn children play. Conversely, to play used to adults used only children today only play. games which today play games Conversely, adults a A fourteenth-century ivory shows the frog-game: a young the shows sitting young man sitting frog-game: fourteenth-century ivory are hold of the the men and women who are on catch hold is trying to the ground on the trying to catch ground is 10 Adelaide de 10 pushing him around. Savoie's dating from de Savoie's book of hours, Adelaide him around. hours, dating pushing is largely illustrated the a calendar calendar which is contains a the late late fifteenth fifteenth century, krgely illustrated century, contains l character.l11 with of games, and are not not of aa knightly and games with pictures knightly character. games which are pictures of games, for the (To begin with, the calendars depicted trades and crafts, except for the trades the calendars crafts, except depicted (To begin with,
-
72 72
THE IDEA OF CHILDHOOD
month of May, which which was was reserved oflove. a court reserved for for a were then then of May, court of love. Games month Games were introduced more space: knightly sports such as and more and occupied more and introduced and space: knightly sports such as occupied more hunting, but also popular games.) One of these is is the one of these the faggot-game: hunting, but also popular games.) faggot-game: one person is the candle in the centre of a ring of couples in which in the centre of is playing the candle a in of which playing ring person couples is standing behind her cavalier and holding him tightly round each each lady lady is standing behind her cavalier and holding him tightly round the waist. waist. In part of calendar the the whole whole population population of the of the another part the calendar In another of the the village is having a snowball fight: and women, children and grownand a snowball men is children and women, fight: having village grownups. In an early sixteenth-century tapestry, some peasants and noblemen -ups. In an early sixteenth-century tapestry, some peasants and noblemen less convincingly shepherds -- are the latter more or or less dressed as as shepherds latter more are playing the convincingly dressed playing 12 12 hot cockles: no children. Several Dutch pictures pictures of the second Several Dutch there are are no children. second hot of the cockles: there half of the the seventeenth show people people playing hot cockles. also show seventeenth century In cockles. In half of century also playing hot one of them them aa few children appear, but they are mixed up with adults of few children one of appear, but they are mixed up with adults of all ages: one one woman is her head hidden in her apron and is standing with head hidden in her all ages: standing with her apron and 13 Louis XIII and his mother used 13 one held open behind her back. and behind her back. Louis XIII hand held his mother used one hand open to play play hide-and-seek hide-and-seek together. together. People People played played blind-man's blind-man's buff buff at the to at the 14 Grande Mademoiselle's home, the Hotel Hotel de Rambouillet. 14 de Rambouillet. An engraving Grande Mademoiselle's home, the engraving 15 by Lepautre shows that adult peasants also played this this game. game. 15 also played shows that adult peasants by Lepautre understand the the comment which his study the can accordingly which his of the One can accordingly understand study of of games and pastimes drew from the contemporary iconography of and drew from the games pastimes contemporary iconography historian Van Van Marle: 'As for games played by grown-ups, for the the games one cannot cannot Marie: 'As historian played by grown-ups, one honestly say that they were any less childish than those played by less childish that were than those any they played by honestly say not: they they were were the the same! children.'16 children.' 16 Of course course not: same!
* * * Children part, in place among the other age in their also took their allotted allotted place other age took part, Children also among the groups, in seasonal festivities which regularly brought together the whole festivities which in seasonal the whole regularly brought together groups, community. importance of festivities in the importance and festivities realize the of games in the the community. To realize games and society of old is hard for us today, for countryman and city-dweller us and is hard for when for of old city-dweller society today, countryman alike there is very narrow narrow margin margin between between aa laborious, hyperis only a alike there laborious, hyperonly a very trophied professional activity and a demanding, exclusive family vocation. a exclusive and vocation. family demanding, trophied professional activity The whole political and faithfully mirroring of political and social consocial literature, whole of literature, faithfully mirroring contemporary opinion, deals with living and working conditions; trade and deals with trade conditions; working living temporary opinion, unionism which safeguards real earnings, earnings, and and insurance which reduces insurance which reduces unionism which safeguards real - such the risk and unemployment are the principal achievethe are risk of of sickness sickness and such achievethe principal unemployment ments of the lower classes, or at least least the the achievements most apparent apparent in in of the ments lower classes, or at achievements most public opinion, literature and political debate. literature debate. public opinion, political In the society society of old, not take take up up so time during the did not so much time In the old, work did during the day and did not have so importance in the public mind: it did not in did have so and not much the did mind: it not public day importance have the the existential existential value value which which we have given it for something something like like aa have have given it for
HISTORY OF HISTORY OF GAMES' GAMES' AND AND PASTIMES PASTIMES
·73 .73
hundred years. hundred say that it had the same meaning. One can can scarcely years. One scarcely say that it had the same meaning. On the the other other hand, On the and amusements hand, games amusements extended extended far far beyond games and beyond the furtive moments moments we furtive formed one of the principal means we allow allow them: them: they formed one of the means they principal employed to feel united. to draw draw its its collective collective bonds bonds closer, employed by by aa society society to closer, to feel united. This was was true true of of nearly pastimes, but the social role This all games and and but the social role was was nearly all games pastimes, more obvious obvious in in the the great more took seasonal and and traditional traditional festivals. festivals. They took great seasonal They on fixed fixed dates place broadly dates of of the the calendar, and their their programmes, place on calendar, and programmes, broadly followed traditional speaking, They have been studied only by traditional patterns. have been studied speaking, followed patterns. They only by on folklore folklore or or popular expe-rts traditions, who give the impression that who the experts on that traditions, popular give impression were almost almost exclusively they In fact rural. In fact they concerned the die whole they were whole of of exclusively rural. they concerned of whose whose vitality society, they were a manifestation. Children children were a manifestation. Children society, of children vitality they adolescents -- took and adolescents footing with all the other took part in them them on on an an equal part in equal footing with all the other and more often than not played in them which members of society, and often than not society, played aa part part in them which for them by tradition. was reserved for 1 not of course propose to write tradition. I do do not of course by propose to write these festivals subject and certainly one of here a history festivals -- a a huge and history of these huge subject certainly one of in great in social history but a few examples will suffice to social but a few will suffice to give great importance importance history examples give the place an idea of the occupied in them by children. The relevant documenin them children. The relevant documenplace occupied by is extremely rich, had to tation is even if if little little recourse recourse is is had to the the predominantly extremely rich, even predominantly rural descriptions rural of folklore literature. An abundant iconography and folklore literature. abundant descriptions iconography and countless urban, countless urban, middle-class paintings are themselves to to middle-class paintings are sufficient sufficient in in themselves show the the importance importance of of these these festivals; festivals; people people took took pains pains to to depict depict them them and preserve preserve the the recollection recollection of of them them beyond beyond the the brief brief moment moment of of their their duration. duration. One of the the favourite favourite scenes scenes with with the the artists artists and and their their clients clients was was Twelfth Night, Night, probably probably the the greatest greatest festival festival of of the the year. year. In In Spain Spain it it has has this preserved this primacy which in France it has lost to Christmas. When which in France it has lost to Christmas. When preserved primacy Mme de de Sevigne, Sevigne, who was was then then staying staying in in her her chateau chateau at at Les Les Rochers, Rochers, learnt learnt that that aa grandson grandson had had been been born born to to her, her, she she wanted wanted her her servants servants to to share share her her joy, joy, and and in in order order to to show show Mme de de Grignan Grignan that that she she had had done done things fittingly, fittingly, she she wrote wrote to to her: her: 'I 'I gave gave my my servants servants as as much much food food and and things 17 drink drink as as on onTwelfth Twelfth Night/ Night.'17 miniature of ofAdelaide Adelaide de de Savoie's Savoie's book book of of AAminiature hours hours depicts depicts the the first first episode episode of ofthe the festival. festival.18ls This This was was at at the the end end of ofthe the fifteenth fifteenth century, century, but but the the rites rites remained remained unaltered unaltered for for aa long long time. time. Some Some men men and and women, women, friends friends and and relations, relations, are are gathered gathered together together round round the the table. One of ofthe the guests guests isis holding holding the the Twelfth-cake, Twelfth-cake, isis in in fact fact holding holding itit table. One on on end. end. A A child, child, between between five fIve and and seven seven years years old, old, isis hiding hiding under under the the table. hasplaced placed in inhis his hand handaasort sortof ofscroll scrollbearing bearing an aninscription inscription table. The Theartist artist has which has thus thus recorded recorded the themoment momentwhen, when, which begins beginswith with die theletters lettersPh. ph. He Hehas in in accordance accordance with with tradition, tradition, itit was was aa child child who who shared shared out out the the TwelfthTwelfthcake. )Vhole operation operation was was carried carried out out in in accordance accordance with with aa set set cake. The The ^yvhole
74 74
THE IDEA OF CHILDHOOD
formula. hid under under the table. Then of the the guests cut a piece The child child hid the table. Then one one of formula. The guests cut a piece of the cake and called out to the child, 'Phaebe, Domine ... ' (whence the of the cake and called out to the child, 'Phaebe, Domine (whence the letters in the miniature), and and the the child replied by giving the the name of of the miniature), child replied letters Ph in by giving the guest guest to to be be served. went on. was reserved served. And so so it it went on. One of the of the the pieces pieces was reserved ate it to give give them the for the poor, poor, and the guest guest who ate had to and the it had for the them alms. alms. When the festival this alms-offering became an obligation lost its its religious character, festival lost religious character, this alms-offering became an obligation for king to to pay pay aa forfeit another cake, not to the poor, but to forfeit or or give for the the king give another cake, not to the poor, but to the other guests; guests; but but that that is is of little importance here. Let Let us us simply simply note note of little the other importance here. the role which tradition to the the child in the the Twelfth Night ritual. tradition allotted allotted to child in the role which ritual. Twelfth Night The procedure procedure adopted of the the seventeenth in the the official lotteries of The official lotteries seventeenth century century adopted in was in in all all probability probability based based on the frontispiece of aa book on this this custom; book was of custom; the frontispiece 19 a entitled sur fa foterie shows the lots being drawn by a child,19 the la shows lots being a a sur loterie drawn entitled Critique child, by Critique tradition which has has been been maintained to the the present present day. day. The lottery maintained down to tradition which lottery draw carried out out in the same way as the Twelfth Twelfth Night Night draw. The in the as the draw. The is carried same way draw is playing of this part by the child implies his presence in the midst of the his in the the child the midst of of this implies presence part by playing adults the long hours of the Twelfth Night vigil. of the the hours Twelfth adults during long Night vigil. during The second second and supreme episode of the festival is the toast drunk to and supreme The episode of the festival is the toast drunk to the has found found the the traditional in his his portion of the the cake and traditional bean cake and bean in the guest portion of guest who has has thus become the the 'bean 'bean king': 'The king drinks.' Flemish and 'The The and thus become drinks/ has Flemish king king': Dutch painters were were particularly particularly fond theme; the the famous of this fond of this theme; famous Jordaens Dutch painters Jordaens picture in the Louvre is known, but the subject is also treated by by aa is well in the well but the is also treated Louvre known, subject picture great many other Northern painters. For example, the picture by Metsu, the other For Northern Metsu, painters. example, picture by great many 20 gives us a very good idea of a less and more more truthful realism,20 less burlesque and truthful realism, of a burlesque gives us a very good idea of this evening the king, king, of of people all ages and of all of this around the ages and evening gathering gathering around people of probably all the servants mingling with their masters. They are all conditions, the their masters. are servants with conditions, They mingling probably all assembled round the table. king, an man, is is drinking. A child round the table. The king, an old child old man, all assembled drinking. is taking taking his his hat hat off to him - probably probably the the child child who aa little had little earlier earlier had off to is him shared out the of the Twelfth-cake, according to tradition. Another tradition. the pieces of the to Another shared out Twelfth-cake, according pieces child, too young young as yet to to play play this role, is of those those enclosed as yet is perched in one of enclosed this role, child, too perched in one high-chairs which were still cannot stand on his two stand his cannot which still very widely used. He used. very widely high-chairs feet yet, but but he he has has to to be be allowed to join join in festivities with everybody with everybody allowed to in the the festivities feet yet, else. guests is is dressed as aa jester; jester; the seventeenth century loved of the the guests the seventeenth else. One of dressed as century loved fancy dress and the most grotesque of costumes were appropriate on this this were dress and the most of costumes appropriate fancy grotesque occasion, but the jester's costume is to be found in other pictures of this in other this the is to but costume be found occasion, pictures jester's familiar scene, and it is is clear that it it formed part of of the the ritual: king's the king's ritual: the familiar scene, and it clear that formed part jester. jester. It was of of course perfectly possible possible for one of of the the children to find the children to It course perfectly find the for one bean. Heroard noted noted in entry for January 5th, 1607 (the festivities bean. Thus Heroard in his his entry for January festivities 5th, 1607 (the were held held on the Epiphany), that the future future Louis XIII, then then the eve eve of Epiphany), Louis XIII, that the for aged six, 'was the king for the first time'. picture by Steen of 1668 'was the the A time'. first Steen of 1668 king picture by aged six, '
. . .
HISTORY OF GAMES AND PASTIMES
. 75 75 .
21 The latter commemorates the painter's youngest son.n the coronation commemorates the coronation of of the painter's youngest son. The latter is paper crown, crown, he he has been perched perched on on aa bench as on on aa throne, is wearing a has been bench as throne, wearing a paper and an old is tenderly tenderly giving him a glass of wine to drink. old woman is and an giving him a glass of wine to drink. Then began began the the third which lasted until morning. Some of the third episode, episode, which lasted until morning. Some of the guests can be seen to be wearing fancy dress; sometimes they have a label guests can be seen to be wearing fancy dress; sometimes they have a label attached to their headgear which fixes their their part part in play. The their headgear attached to in the the play. which fixes The 'fool' 'fool' takes of aa little a few mummers, aa takes command of little expedition composed of of a few mummers, expedition composed musician (usually a fiddler), fiddler), and and once a child. Tradition allotted musician a once again child. Tradition allotted (usually a again this child aa well-defined well-defmed role: he carried the candle of the the kings. kings. In Holland this child role he carried the candle of In Holland it seems that it it was was black. black. In France it was in a variety variety of colours: Mme de it seems that In France it was in a of colours: de Sevigne a woman that that she' was dressed as many many colours as once said said of of a dressed in in as she was colours as Sevigne once - that the candle candle of Led by the jester, the 'singers of the star' of the of the the kings'. the Led the the star' that 'singers kings'. by jester, was what were called called in went round round the was what they in France the neighbourhood France -- went they were neighbourhood begging for food and fuel. engraving by Mazot of for and the food of 1641 shows the fuel. An Mazot 1641 shows begging engraving by procession of the singers of the star: two men, a playing a guitar. the of a woman a of the star: two men, playing guitar, procession singers 22 and a "child 'child holding holding the the candle the kings. kings. 22 and a of the candle of 23 Thanks to aa painted painted fan fan of the early early eighteenth century, 23 can follow Thanks to of the eighteenth century, we can follow to a neighbouring house. The hall this procession as hall of as it it makes makes its its way to a house. of the the this procession way neighbouring house has has been been cut open vertically vertically as the scenery scenery in plays and in mystery and house cut open as in in the mystery plays fifteenth-century paintings, so as to show both the interior of the hall and fifteenth-century paintings, so as to show both the interior of the hall and the street behind the the door. In the the hall, hall, the to the king is the toast the king is being drunk street behind door. In toast to the being drunk and queen is is being being crowned. In the the street, street, aa band of mummers is is band of crowned. In and the the queen knocking at the door, which will soon be opened to them. at the which them. will soon be to door, opened knocking Throughout this festival festival we can taking an part in an active the see children active part in the can see children taking Throughout this traditional The same is true true of Eve. Heroard tells of Christmas Heroard tells same is Christmas Eve. ceremonies. The traditional ceremonies. us that Louis Louis XIII, the age the Yule Yule log log being being lit, and of three, 'watched the at the us that lit, and three, 'watched XIII, at age of danced at the coming of Christmas'. Perhaps it was he on this he this it was the of and sang at Christmas'. danced and coming Perhaps sang occasion on the the Yule Yule log, in accordance with the the in accordance with or wine threw salt salt or wine on occasion who threw log, ritual described described for us in in the the late century by by the the German-Swiss late sixteenth sixteenth century German-Swiss for us ritual u He was Thomas Platter when he he was was studying Montpellier. 24 was at Montpellier. medicine at Thomas Platter studying medicine is laid across the fire-dogs. When spending Christmas at Uzes. A big log is laid across the Uzes. at Christinas fire-dogs. big log spending it has caught, the the household household gathers gathers together. together. The youngest youngest child child takes takes aa has caught, it glass of wine in his right hand, together with breadcrumbs and aa some with in his right of wine hand, together glass heads pinch of salt, while in his left he holds a taper. All heads are a lighted All are holds his left hand he in while of salt, lighted taper. pinch In the of bared and and the the child begins to to intone intone the of the cross. In the of the sign the cross. name child begins bared sign In the the Father Father ... a pinch of salt at end of the hearth. In the name salt at one end of the hearth. of a ... he he drops the drops pinch on. The embers, of the Son the other the hearth hearth ... and so so on. end of the ... at other end of the Son ... at the embers, are the which are are supposed to have a beneficial quality, are preserved after the a have beneficial after to which preserved quality, supposed the roles laid essential down ceremony. Here again the child plays one of the essential roles laid child the Here plays again ceremony. by tradition. tradition. He played played aa like which were less less exceptional exceptional role on occasions occasions which like role by :
*
. . .
j6
THE IDEA IDEA OP OF CHILDHOOD CHILDHOOD THE
but which which at at the the time time possessed possessed the the same same social social character: character: family family meals. meals. but It was was traditional traditional for for grace grace to to be be said said by by one one of ofthe the youngest youngest children children and and It for the the meal meal to to be be served served by by all all the the children children present: present: they they poured poured out out the the for dishes, carved carved the the meat... meat ... We We shall shall have have occasion occasion drinks, changed changed the the dishes,
drinks,
to study study the the significance significance of ofthese these customs customs more more closely closely when when we we come come to to to
examine the the structure structure of ofthe the family. family.15 Let Let us usjust just note note here here how how common common examine was the the custom, custom, from from the the fourteenth fourteenth to to the the sixteenth sixteenth century, century, of ofentrusting entrusting was children with with aa special special role role in in the the ritual ritual accompanying accompanying family family and and social social children 25
gatherings, both ordinary and and extraordinary. extraordinary. Other festivals, festivals, though though still still concerning concerning the the entire entire community, community, gave gave Other of the active roles, and the other age groups looked youth the monopoly looked other and the active of the the roles, age groups monopoly youth on as as spectators. spectators. These These festivals festivals already already had had the the appearance appearance of of festivals festivals of of on childhood or or youth: youth: we we have have already already seen seen that that the the frontier frontier was was vague vague and and childhood ill-defined between between these these two two groups, groups, which which today today are are so so clearly clearly separated. separated. ill-defined In the the Middle Middle Ages, Ages, on on the the feast feast of of the the Holy Holy Innocents, Innocents, die the children children In occupied the church; one of them was elected bishop by his companions his elected was of them one the church; companions by bishop occupied and presided presided over over the the ceremony, ceremony, which which ended ended with with aa procession, procession, aa and 26 Still observed in collection and a banquet. banquet." the sixteenth sixteenth century century was was aa Still observed in the and a collection custom that on on the the morning moming of that day day adolescents should surprise their adolescents should of that custom that surprise their as the the expression friends give them whipping, or or as a whipping, them a to give order to in order in bed bed in friends in expression went, them the innocents'. order to to give 'in order went, 'in give them the innocents'. Shrove was apparendy the feast day of schoolchildren and was Shrove Tuesday apparently the feast day of schoolchildren Tuesday in youth. Fitz Stephen has described it in twdfth-century it in described has Fitz twelfth-century London in Stephen youth. at the the a pupil connecti9n was then then a Thomas Becket, hero Thomas his hero with his Becket, who was connection with pupil at their cathedral schoolchildren brought the schoolchildren 'All the Paul's: 'All of St St Paul's: school of cathedral school brought their 27 Cockfighting - still it fighting-cocks to their still popular where it master/ to their master.'27 popular Cockfighting fighting-cocks - was with survives, but intended for adults connected with youth and even connected was adults for intended but youth survives, with out by is borne borne out This is Middle Ages. in the the Middle school in with school fifteenth-century by aa fifteenth-century Ages. This a at a the text which lists payments due to the ferryman to due the lists the which from Dieppe text from ferryman at payments Dieppe one at Dieppe, certain 'The master who keeps the school at one cock, the school master cock, 'The certain crossing: Dieppe, keeps crossing: in the the town, and elsewhere in when or elsewhere school or at the the school held at are being town, and the games when the being held games are 28 fee.' this fee.'28 In for this carried for all of Dieppe shall carried In be shall be of other schoolboys the other all the schoolboys Dieppe cockLondon, according to Fitz Stephen, Shrove Tuesday began with cockShrove Fitz to began Tuesday London, according Stephen, 'In the the afternoon, the fighting, which went on all the morning. all through afternoon, the morning. 'In through the fighting, which went on for the the famous famous ball ball young people of the town went into outskirts for the outskirts into the town went of the young people horseback to to watch on horseback watch game ... The adults, relatives and notables came came on game... The adults, rektives and notables with them.' The the people's games and to become young again with them.' The and to become the young young again young people's games in aa collective collective action, ball brought together several communities in several communities ball game action, game brought together one another: another: 'The 'The setting either two parishes or or two two age against one groups against age groups setting either two parishes of the members ball is game which is Christmas Day by the members of on Christmas is played on a which is a ball game Day by played game game gatherings, both ordinary
HISTORY HISTORY OF OF GAMBS, AND PASTIMES GAMES AND PASTIMES
•.77 77
the this game is the guilds of Cairac in Auvergne [and elsewhere Cairac in of course]; guilds of Auvergne [and elsewhere of course]; this game is diversified that the married men are diversified and divided divided in in such such aa way that the married men on one one are on way side and the side the unmarried unmarried on the the other other side; and the the aforementioned aforementioned ball ball is is side; and carried another in carried from one one place to another another and and taken taken from from one one man man by in another place to by order to order and he who carries for that to win the the prize, carries it it best best has has the the prize prize, and he prize for that 29 day.'19 day/ At Avignon, the carnival was organized and in the the sixteenth sixteenth century, Avignon, in century, the carnival was organized and led by the abbot led the president of the guild of notaries' abbot of of attorneydom, the by the attorneydom, president of the guild of notaries' 80 these youth leaders were usually, at least in the and attorneys' these youth leaders were clerks; attorneys' clerks;30 usually, at least in the south of France, south coined by a to use use the the expression France, 'pleasure leaders', to 'pleasure leaders', expression coined by a modem oflove, king of attorneydom, modern scholar, and bore bore the the title tide of of prince of of scholar, and love, prince king attorneydom, or captain abbot or of youth, or abbot abbot of of the the guildsmen or children children of of the the captain of youth, or guildsmen or of town. At A vignon on carnival the students had the privilege carnival day the students had the Avignon day privilege of 31 The thrashing history of the whores unless unless a a ransom ransom was was paid. The of the thrashing Jews Jews and whores paid. history University tells us us that that on on January the Vice-Legate 20th, 1660, 1660, the University of Avignon Avignon tells January 20th, Vice-Legate fixed the fixed the amount of of this this ransom ransom at a crown at a crown aa whore. whore. The great youth were November. We festivals of of youth were those those of of May and November. great festivals May and know from Heroard Heroard that that Louis child went to the the Queen's Louis XllI XIII as as a a child went on on to Queen's to balcony to watch the maypole being set up. May Day came next watch the set came next to to balcony maypole being up. May Day of depicting Twelfth Night in in popularity popularity with the artists, were fond Twelfth Night with the fond of artists, who were depicting it as of the popular festivals. festivals. It It inspired countless paintings, it as one of the most most popular inspired countless paintings, engravings tapestries. Varagnac Varagnac has has recognized recognized the the theme theme in in die the engravings and tapestries. 32 Elsewhere the traditional Botticelli 'Primavera' 'Primavera' in in the the Uffizi Uffizi Gallery.3s Botticelli Elsewhere the traditional Gallery. of 1642 ceremonies are depicted depicted with with greater greater realism. realism. A tapestry tapestry of ceremonies are enables 1642 enables us to to see see what what aa village village or or small small market market town town looked looked like like on on May May Day Day us 33 in in the the seventeenth seventeenth century. century.33 are in in the the street. street. A middle-aged middle-aged couple couple We are and and an an old old man have have come out out of of one one of of the the houses houses and and are are standing standing on on their their doorstep doorstep waiting waiting to to greet greet aa group group of of girls girls coming coming towards towards them. them. first of of the the girls girls is is carrying carrying aa basket basket of of fruit fruit and and cakes. cakes. These These young young The first people go from door to door, and everyone gives them something to eat eat to and from door them door, people go everyone gives something to in return return for for their their good good wishes: wishes: the the house-to-house house-to-house collection collection was was one one of of in the essential essential elements elements of of the the festivals festivals of of youth. youth. In In the the foreground foreground some some the little boys, boys, who are are still still dressed dressed in in tunics, tunics, like like girls, girls, are are putting putting on on wreaths wreaths little of flowers flowers and and leaves leaves which which their their mothers mothers have have made for for them. them. In In other other of pictures the procession of young collectors has formed up behind a boy has the of collectors formed behind a pictures procession young up boy 84 who is is carrying carrying the the may-tree may-tree: this this isis the the case case in in aa Dutch painting painting of OfI700. i yoo. M group of of children children isis running running through through the the village village behind behind the the maymayThe group tree; the the Htde little children children are are wearing wearing wreaths wreaths of of flowers. flowers. The The grown-ups grown-ups tree; have come out out on on their their doorsteps doorsteps to to greet greet the the procession procession of of children. children. have The The may-tree may-tree isis sometimes sometimes represented represented symbolically symbolically by by aa pole pole wreathed wreathed :
78
THE IDEA OF CHILDHOOD
86 But the may-tree or maypole does not concern us and flowers. and flowers. aa But the may-tree or maypole does not concern us here. Let Let us us simply note the collections taken by the the young young people people from here. note from the collections taken by simply of the children with flowers, which one must the the crowning the adults, and the the children one must of with which adults, and flowers, crowning associate with the implicit in vegetation, an an idea associate with the idea of rebirth rebirth implicit idea of in vegetation, idea symsymbolized too too by the tree tree which is carried carried through through the the streets then bolized and then which is streets and by the 86 88 These planted. wreaths of flowers became, perhaps a pastime for the the These of flowers a for wreaths became, planted. perhaps pastime children, the sign of their age group in pictorial representations. the of in their children, certainly age group certainly sign pictorial representations. In the portraits portraits of the time, time, both both of of individuals individuals and children are are In the of the and families, families, children shown wearing wearing garlands garlands of or foliage. Thus in the Nicolas Maes in Thus Maes of flowers flowers or the Nicolas foliage. picture two little in the first putting of two in Toulouse first girl is Toulouse Museum,S? little girls, Museum, 87 the picture of girls, girl is putting on wreath of with one hand, and the other hand is on a is taking a wreath other hand of flowers one hand, and with with the flowers with taking flowers basket which which her her. Another flowers from is holding out to her. from a a basket her sister sister is Another holding out to group of festivals festivals of was held held at the beginning beginning of and youth of of childhood at the childhood and group of youth was November. 'On the 4th and November],' writes the student the November. the 4th and 8th writes student 8th [of [of November]/ Platter the end the sixteenth was aa masquerade at the Platter at end of of the sixteenth century, 'there was called century, 'there masquerade called the masquerade of the cherubim. I too put on a mask and went to the a and Dr of too on mask went to the I cherubim. put masquerade 38 This was a masquerade for Sapota's house, where there was a ball.'38 for a ball/ This was a where there was house, Sapota's masquerade has completely young people, and not simply and not children. It It has completely disappeared disappeared young people, simply children. from by the proximity of of All All Souls' Day. Public Public from our our calendar, ousted by Souls' Day. the proximity calendar, ousted
in leaves in leaves
opinion refused to allow aa joyful joyful children's to follow follow so so to allow children's masquerade opinion refused masquerade to closely on such a solemn day but this festival has survived in North in on survived a this festival has North such solemn but day closely America under under the name of Hallowe'en. A little little later later on, on, Martinmas Martinmas was the name was America of Hallowe'en. the demonstrations confined confined to to the young and more particularly particularly and more of demonstrations the young the occasion occasion of perhaps to to schoolchildren. is Martinmas', Martinmas', we read read in in aa schoolchildren. 'Tomorrow 'Tomorrow is perhaps scholastic' dialogue of the early sixteenth century describing life in the in life of the the scholastic 'dialogue sixteenth early century describing 39 'We schoolboys reap a rich harvest on that day ... it schools on that of Leipzig. 39 harvest schools ofLeipzig. a rich day... it schoolboys reap is customary for the poor [schoolboys] to go from door to door collecting is door to door for the from to collecting customary poor [schoolboys] go money.' Here, as as with May Day, Day, we find house-to-house collections: collections with May find the the house-to-house money/ Here, aa practice practice which was sometimes a token token of of greeting greeting and sometimes and sometimes which was sometimes a genuine mendicity. has the impression of coming into contact with into contact with of has the One coming genuine mendicity. impression the last traces of a very old structure in which society was divided into divided into was the last traces of a in old structure which society very age groups; nothing remained of this but the custom of reserving for of custom the of this remained but reserving for age groups; nothing youth an essential part in certain great collective celebrations. Moreover celebrations. an essential in collective certain youth great part the ritual ritual of tended to or no distinction little or distinction the of these these celebrations to make little celebrations tended between children children and and adolescents; adolescents; this this relic relic of time when the the two age of a a time between age groups were treated treated as as one no longer longer entirely corresponded with with actual actual one no groups were entirely corresponded manners, be seen seventeenth-century habit habit of decorating decorating as may seen from the the seventeenth-century manners, as may be only the little children, the little boys still in tunics, with the flowers and the the in with flowers little and the little still tunics, children, only boys leaves which in in the the Middle adorned adolescents who leaves which adorned the calendars adolescents calendars of of the Middle Ages Ages had reached the age of love. love. reached the age of :
GAMSS, AND PASTIMES HISTORY OF GAMBS
• 79 79
,
Whatever the the role role allocated allocated to to childhood childhood and and youth, youth, primordial primordial on on Whatever May Day, incidental on Twelfth Night, it always followed a traditional May Day, incidental on Twelfth Night, it always followed a traditional pattern and corresponded to the roles of a collective game which mobilized pattern and corresponded to the roles of a collective game which mobilized the whole whole of of society society and and brought brought all all age age groups groups together. together. the
* * * Other circumstances circumstances brought brought about about the the same same participation participation of of people people Other of various various ages ages in in aa single single communal communal celebration. celebration. Thus Thus from from the the fifteenth fifteenth of of the the to the the eighteenth eighteenth century, century, and and in in Germany Germany up up to to the the beginning beginning of to nineteenth century, century, countless countless subject subject pictures pictures -- painted, painted, engraved engraved and and nineteenth - represented the the family gathering in in which which parents and and children children woven represented
family gathering
parents
formed aa little little chamber chamber orchestra orchestra and and accompanied accompanied aa singer. singer. This This was was formed often on on the the occasion occasion of of aa meal. meal. Sometimes the table table had had been been cleared. cleared. often Sometimes the Sometimes the the musical musical interlude interlude occurred occurred in in the the course course of of the the meal, meal, as as in in Sometimes the Dutch Dutch picture picture by by Lamen Lamen painted painted about about 1640: the company company are are at at the 1640: the table but but the the meal meal has been interrupted: the boy has been waiting at at has been the who table has been boy waiting interrupted: table one of the guests, standing with his back to the fire-place the with his back to has stopped; of the table has one fire-place stopped; guests, standing in one hand, is singing, no doubt aa drinking song, and with aa glass and another another with glass in one hand, is singing, no doubt drinking song,
40 has taken up his lute to accompany him.4.0 guest guest has taken up his lute to accompany him. We no no longer longer have have any the place which music, singing and and idea of of the music, singing place which any idea dancing used to occupy in everyday life. of an Introduction to to in author of an Introduction life. The author used to everyday occupy dancing Practical Music, published in 1597, tells how circumstances made a musician a in tells circumstances musician Practical Music* 1597, published of being ended, and music music 'But supper in company: was dining of him. him. He was ended, and supper being dining in company: 'But of books, to custom, being brought to the table, the mistress the the mistress of to to table, custom, books, according being brought according the me with a part, earnestly requesting me to sing: but but a to with the house house presented sing: part, earnestly requesting presented when, that II could could not, after many not, excuses, II protested when, after unfeignedly that protested unfeignedly many excuses, everyone began to wonder; yes, some whispered to others, demanding to to others, wonder; whispered demanding yes, everyone began 41 If the ability to sing a how II was or play an instrument instrument If the ability to sing a part was brought part or pky an up.' brought Up."l was rather more common in England than on the the than in Elizabethan Elizabethan more rather was perhaps England perhaps in France, Italy, Spain and Germany, Continent, in was also also widespread it was France, Continent, it Germany, Italy, Spain widespread in in spite tradition which, medieval tradition an old old medieval with an in accordance accordance with which, in changes spite of changes into the the in lasted into eighteenth lasted in taste and technical technical improvements, taste and eighteenth and improvements, to the the region. nineteenth or later later according sooner or out sooner nineteenth centuries, centuries, dying region. according to dying out Russia. It It It exists today except in Germany, Central Europe and Russia. in Central no longer It no exists Europe Germany, today except longer circles where middle-class was strong in those days in aristocratic and middle-class circles in aristocratic in those was very days very strong a in a themselves portrayed groups have themselves to have of people liked to taking part part in portrayed taking groups of people liked in too lower-class concert too in lower-class circles, among was strong It was music. It concert of of chamber chamber music. circles, among strong the bagpipe the peasants and even beggars, whose instruments instruments were the bagpipe or the peasants and even beggars, whose been raised to had the hurdy-gurdy, or else the fiddle, which had not yet been raised to the the or else fiddle, yet hurdy-gurdy,
80 80
THB IDEA IDEA OF OF CHILDHOOD CHILDHOOD THE
dignity of the present-day violin. Children made made music music from from an an early early age. age. dignity of the present-day violin. Children Louis XIII XUI when when he he was was very very young young sang sang popular popular or or satirical satiricalsongs songs which which Louis bore no no resemblance resemblance to to the the children's children's songs songs of of the the past past two two centuries; centuries; bore he also also knew the the names names of ofthe the strings strings of ofthe lute. lute. Children Children took took part part in in all all he
knew
the
the concerts concerts of ofchamber chamber music music depicted depicted in in the the iconography iconography of of old. old. They They the
ofpainting painting also played played among among themselves, themselves, and and itit became became aa commonplace commonplace of also
to depict depict to
them holding holding some some musical musical instrument: instrument: witness witness the the two two boys boys them 42 one of whom is accompanying on lute portrayed by Franz Hals,a on the lute the is of whom one Franz Hals, accompanying portrayed by his brother brother or or friend friend who who isis singing; singing; witness witness the the countless coundess children children his 43 In a picture by depicted playing the flute by Franz Hals Hals or or Le Le Nain. Nain.&8 In a picture by depicted playing the flute by Franz Brouwer, some some rather rather ragged ragged urchins urchins in in the the street street are are shown shown eagerly eagerly Brouwer, of out by a blind man straight out of aa listening to a hurdy-gurdy being played man a blind to a straight hurdy-gurdy being played by listening 44 court of of miracles: miracles: aa very very common theme theme in in the the seventeenth seventeenth century. century.M. court Dutch painting painting by by Vinckelbaons Vinckelbaons deserves deserves special special mention mention on account account A Dutch 46 As in of aa significant significant detail detail illustrating illustrating the the new attitude attitude to to childhood. childhood." in of of its its kind, kind, aa hurdy-gurdy hurdy-gurdy grinder grinder is is playing playing for for an an other paintings paintings of other audience of of children, children, and and the the scene scene has has been been captured captured just just as as the the children children audience of the the music. music. One of of them is is too too small small and has has are running running up up at the sound sound of at the are is running been left left behind behind by by the the rest, rest, so so his his father father has has picked picked him him up up and is been running after others so that the the child not miss the delighted miss anything: shall not child shall so that the others after the delighted anything: the child hands out towards the hurdy-gurdy. is holding his child is holding his hands out towards the hurdy-gurdy. The is to be seen in dancing. We have have already same precocity The same already observed precocity is to be seen in dancing. saraband and the that of three danced the galliard, the saraband the danced of three the age at the XIII at Louis XIII that Louis galliard, age 46 the a painting by Le Nain'6 and an engraving Nain Le a us compare Let us bourree. Let old bourree. the old engraving compare painting by 47 In Le Nain's painting we are little by Gueraid.47 shown a of lit de a round-dance round-dance are Le Nain's In Guerard. painting by a collar. collar. Two of the latter tunic with a girls and boys; one a tunic is still still wearing a of the latter is one and wearing boys; girls a to form a little hands and are holding them up have joined little girls have up high high to joined hands and are holding girls also is The Guerard engraving also bridge, and the round Guerard underneath. is passing underneath. round the and engraving passing bridge, the young depicts a round-dance, but are adults, dancers are the dancers but the adults, and one of the young depicts a round-dance, a women in the air skipping-rope. little girl with a a little like a the air like in women isis jumping skipping-rope. There girl jumping of the and that that of the dance and isis scarcely any difference between the the children's children's dance scarcely any difference between and in character adults. however, the adults' dance would change in character and dance would adults' the adults. Later, change Later, however, Abandoned by with the waltz, be finally, individual couple. the individual to the limited to be limited by couple. Abandoned finally, with the waltz, old collective collective the town and court, by middle-class and aristocracy alike, the old and middle-class alike, and town court, by aristocracy folkthe modem modern folkwhere the dances in the the country survive in districts, where would survive dances would country districts, of the round-dances lorists would discover them, and in the children's round-dances of the children's in the and discover lorists would them, out are nineteenth century: in both these forms they are dying out today. forms in both these nineteenth century: today. dying they was in those those days It separate dance and drama. drama. Dancing is impossible to It is days was Dancing in impossible to separate dance and than from ballet more of a collective activity and less clearly distinguished from ballet than less and a of collective more clearly distinguished activity in Heroard's seen in Heroard's have seen We have our in couples. ballroom dancing our modem modern ballroom couples. We dancing in
HISTORY OF GAME$. AND PASTIMES GAME^ ~ND
81 8l
diary'how liked dancing, ballet-dancing Louis XIII's XIII's contemporaries diary how much Louis contemporaries liked dancing, ballet-dancing and play-acting, genres which were still fairly closely linked: a man would which were still would play-acting, genres fairly closely linked: a playa part in a ballet as naturally as he would dance at a ball (the link a in a ballet as as he would dance at ball a play part naturally (the link between same word later split into two, between the the two words words is is significant: the the same into word later two, significant: split the There were ballets ball for the ball for amateurs amateurs and and the the ballet ballet for for professionals). professionals). There were ballets in colleges. At Louis in plays, in the even in the scholastic scholastic theatre theatre of of the the Jesuit plays, even Jesuit colleges. At Louis XIII's from the XIII's court, authors and and actors actors were were recruited recruited on on the the spot court, authors spot from the nobles nobles but but also also from from the the valets valets and and soldiers; children both both acted acted in in the the soldiers; children plays and attended the performances. attended the plays performances. Was this A passage this true true only of the the court? it was was common practice. court? No, No, it only of practice. passage from Sorel villages people had never given Sorel shows that in shows that in the the country had never country villages people given up up performing or to or less less comparable to old mystery die old plays more or performing plays comparable to the mystery plays plays or to the of Central Europe. 'I think that he [Ariste, the present-day Passion plays present-day Passion plays of Central Europe. 'I think that he [Ariste, who found actors boring] would have been delighted if he found professional actors professional boring] would have been delighted if he in a village performing the tragedy of could could have have seen seen as as I I have have all all the in a the boys boys village performing the tragedy of Dives higher than the roof-tops, on which a stage Dives on a than the on all the which all the characters characters stage higher roof-tops, walked times in pairs to show themselves off walked round seven or round seven or eight in times to themselves off before before eight pairs the began, like the little a clock ... I was fortunate the play like the little figures above a above clock... I was fortunate play began, figures enough the Story another occasion to see see the of the occasion to the Prodigal Son and and that that Story of enough on another Prodigal Son of and the of Nebuchadnezzar, and later later the the Loves Loves of of Medor and and Angelique, and the Nebuchadnezzar, and Ang6lique, Descent performed by actors of such into the of Radamont into the Underworld, Descent of actors of such Underworld, performed by 48 Sorel's speaker is being sarcastic; he did not really appreciate quality.'68 Sorel's speaker is being sarcastic; he did not really appreciate quality.' these popular popular entertainments. the text text and the setting were In most entertainments. In most cases cases the these and the setting were governed by oral tradition. In the Basque country this tradition was In oral tradition. the this tradition was Basque country governed by of the eighteenth established the plays plays disappeared. Towards the end the end of the established before before the disappeared. eighteenth century some 'Basque pastorals' were were written written and published, published, the the subjects of Basque pastorals century some subjects of 49 which came came from from the the romances romances of of chivalry chivalry and and the the Renaissance Renaissance pastorals. pastorals." which Like music music and and dancing, dancing, these these plays plays united united the the whole whole community community and and Like brought together the various age groups in both actors and audience. in various both the actors audience. age groups brought together '
'
*
*
*
We
We are are now going going to to see see what what was was the the traditional traditional moral moral attitude attitude vast majority majority accepted accepted towards these these popular popular games games and and pastimes. pastimes. The vast towards games indiscriminately indiscriminately and and without without any any reservations. reservations. At the the same time, time, aa games
powerful and and educated educated minority minority of of rigid rigid moralists moralists condemned nearly nearly all all powerful of them them out out of of hand hand and and roundly roundly denounced them as as immoral, immoral, allowing allowing of scarcely any exceptions. moral indifference indifference of the the majority majority and and the the moral scarcely any exceptions. The
A
of aa prudish prudish elite elite existed existed side side by by side side for for aa long long time, time. A intolerance of intolerance and of seventeenth course the the compromise was arrived at in the course the seventeenth eighteenth in at arrived was eighteenth compromise
82 82
THE IDEA IDEA OP OF CHILDHOOD CHILDHOOD THE
centuries which which foreshadowed foreshadowed the the modern modern attitude attitude to to games, games, an .an attitude attitude centuries fundamentally different different from from the the old. old. ItIt concerns concerns us us here here because because itit also also
fundamentally
bears witness witness to to aa new new attitude attitude to to childhood: childhood: aa desire desire to to safeguard safeguard its its bears also to to educate educate it, it, by by forbidding forbidding itit to to play play games games hencehencemorality and and also morality
forth classified classified as as evil evil and and forth
by encouraging encouraging itit to to play play games games henceforth henceforth by recognized as good. as good. recognized The high high regard regard in in which which games games of of chance chance were were still still held held in in the the The seventeenth century century enables enables us us to to gauge gauge the the extent extent of of the the old old attitude attitude of of seventeenth moral indifference. indifference. Nowadays Nowadays we we regard regard games games of of chance chance as as suspect suspect and and moral dangerous, and the proceeds of of gambling gambling as as the the least least moral moral and and least least dangerous, and the proceeds an respectable of revenues. still play games of chance, but with an uneasy with but of still We chance, revenues. of uneasy games play respectable conscience. This This was was not not yet yet the the case case in in the the seventeenth seventeenth century: century: the the conscience. of moralization is the result of thoroughgoing process of moralization uneasy conscience of aa thoroughgoing result the is conscience process uneasy which made made the the nineteenth nineteenth century century aa society society of of' right-minded right-minded people*. people'. which La Fortune Fortune des des gens gens de de qualite quaNti et et des des gentilhommes gentilhommes particuliers pllrticuliers isis aa book of of La 6o advice to to young young noblemen noblemen on on how to to carve carve out out aa career career for for themselves. themselves. 50 advice The author, author, the the Marechal Marccha! de de Cailliere, Call1iere, certainly certainly has has nothing nothing of the the The him: he he has has written written an an edifying edifying bibliography bibliography trickster or or adventurer adventurer about about him trickster of the the works works of of Pere Pere Ange Ange de de Joyeuse, Joyeuse, the the Holy Holy Leaguer Leaguer monk; monk; he he is is aa of whatever. pious man man if a bigot; bigot; and he has has no no originality or talent whatever. or talent and he a if not not originality pious His current opinion among respectable observations accordingly His observations represent current opinion among respectable accordingly represent is for opinion in 1661, the date his book was published. date when his published. He is for ever opinion in 1661, the is latter is the latter if the putting young people on their against loose living; if loose their guard on living; guard against putting young people the of virtue, it of wealth, for one cannot possess for of the enemy is also also the it is wealth, of the enemy possess virtue, enemy enemy the occasions of pleasing the occasions sees the rake sees 'The young other: 'The the other: Without the one without the one pleasing young rake the brothel and the the brothel his him through the windows of the of the windows him his Master Master escape through escape these tavern.' reader, glancing through these commonThe twentieth-century reader, tavern.' The glancing through twentieth-century this find this to find is all the more surprised places with aa somewhat somewhat weary surprised to weary eye, eye, is all the places with chance. One of punctilious moralist discussing the social utility of games of chance. One of social the moralist games utility discussing punctilious of gentilhomme chapter is entitled: 'If abbreviation of Particulier [an 'If a a Particulier gentilhomme [an abbreviation chapter is entitled: minor words other in other particulier, as with the gens de qua lite, in words aa minor de the with as compared qualite, gens compared particulier, should nobleman circumstances] should play games less impoverished or less in more more or nobleman in games play impoverished circumstances] admits Marechal admits the Marechal of a matter of course: the course: of matter a is not It is notjust how?' It and how?' ofchance chance and just all forms forms of of condemn all that moralists, the the clergy, that the the professional expressly condemn clergy, expressly professional moralists, some embarrassauthor our gambling. This might be expected to cause our author some embarrasscause to be This expected might gambling. some length. He at some himself at ment, to explain himself it obliges him fact it in fact and in length. He ment, and obliges him to explain he endeavours to which remains which he endeavours to die laity, of the old attitude attitude of the old to the faithful to remains faithful laity, it can can that be more to prove justify on moral grounds: 'It impossible to that it be more It is is not not on moral prove impossible grounds justify circumstances... useful is accompanied by the itis ifit harmful if than harmful useful than necessary circumstances accompanied by the necessary a rich of man a for II maintain is for a man of quality is as as dangerous that gambling maintain that quality [i.e. [i.e. a rich dangerous gambling *
:
'
:
. . .
.83
HISTORY OF OF GAMES GAMES AND AND PASTIMES PASTIMES HISTORY
,83
nobleman] as it is useful for a Particulier [i.e. an impoverished nobleman]. nobleman] as it is useful for a Particulier [i.e. an impoverished nobleman]. The one one risks risks aa great great deal deal because because he he isis extremely extremely rich, rich, and and the the other other risks risks The nothing because he is not, yet a Particulier can hope for as much from the the from as is much he a for Particulier can because not, yet hope nothing
the
luck of ofthe the game game as as aa great great lord/ lord.' The The one one has has everything everything to to lose, lose, the other other luck
everything to gain -- a curious moral distinction! everything to gain a curious moral distinction! But gambling, gambling, according according to to Cailli&re, Caillier-e, offers offers other other advantages advantages besides besides But financial profit: profit: 'I 'I have have always always held held that that the the love love of ofgambling gambling was was aa gift gift of of financial Nature whose whose utility utility I1 have have recognized/ recognized.' 'I 'I take take as as the the basis basis of of my my arguarguNature ment the the fact fact that that we we have have aa natural natural love love of of gambling/ gambling.' 'Games of skill skill Games of ment [which we should be more inclined to recommend today] are pleasant to are to recommend more inclined should be we today] pleasant to [which watch but but unsuitable unsuitable for for making making money/ money.' 'I 'I have have heard heard aa wise wise gambler gambler watch had made made aa considerable considerable fortune fortune out out of of gambling gambling say say that that he he had had who had found no no better better way way of ofturning turning gambling gambling into into an an art art than than that that of ofmastering mastering found his passion passion and and regarding regarding this this skill skill as as aa money-making money-making profession/ profession.' The his gambler should have no anxiety, for bad luck will not leave him at at aa loss loss -him leave will not bad luck for no have should anxiety, gambler a gambler gambler always always finds finds it it easier easier to to borrow borrow money money 'than 'than aa good good tradestradesa man'. 'What 'What is is more, more, this this skill skill gives gives the the Particulier Particulier admission to the the best best admission to man*. he how society, and a clever can turn this to good account ifhe if knows account to this turn can man and a clever good society, to use his his opportunities ... 1 who have have no revenue but a pack pack revenue but to use opportunities ... I know men of but who live live in luxury and magnificence in greater three dice, and three of cards cards and dice, but magnificence greater luxury than provincial lords no ready estates [but their great with their lords with than provincial ready money].' money]/ [but no great estates the advise the And Marecha! concludes with this advice: 'I 'I advise with this advice: concludes Marechal the worthy And the worthy his money man of chance to risk on them: to risk his chance of loves games and loves knows and man who who knows money games deal/ a great as can gain not risking is not he is to lose, little to has little he has as he lose, he gain a great deal.' risking much and can a is not simply a For of Pere Ange, the game of chance is chance the Pere of For the the biographer simply game Ange, biographer but a profession, a means of makmg one's pastime one's fortune fortune and extending of a means a but extending making profession, pastime one's -- a perfectly honourable honourable means. one's acquaintances acquaintances a perfectly Cailliere one of this Chevalier de Mere, of this opinion. one Mere, the only is not not the Caillire is opinion. The Chevalier only or the regarded in his as man of the world or man of breeding, a typical as a time in his time breeding, typical regarded 51 'I would du Monde: Monde: 61 'I expounds the same idea in his du Commerce Commerce du Suite du his Suite expounds the same idea in in it it effect when a man indulges point out too that gamblmg has effect in a good has a that too out indulges good gambling point means skilfully and with good grace: it means by which a man can obtain is the the it is with and by good grace: skilfully and princes company where gambling isis practised, admission to any princes admission to practised, and any company where gambling in it.' it/ He He to indulge were would bored if were unable to in if they bored be extremely often be indulge would often they extremely a turquoise won as a a child child won cites examples: Louis XIII (who as a XIII Louis turquoise some august cites some (who august examples: in gambling', relaxation in in Richelieu 'who found relaxation Mazarin, 'who found gambling', Mazarln, in aa lottery), lottery), Richelieu but did anything no Louis and 'the Queen his mother [who] no longer did but mother his 'the and anything longer Louis XIV, [who] XIV, Queen is it is one may merits one gamble and say her prayers'. 'Whatever merits have, it 'Whatever have, her may and prayers'. say gamble and without difficult reputation without entering high society and win aa great high society to win entering difficult to great reputation of sure means means of even aa sure It is is even admission. It gambling is an easy way of ofobtaining obtaining admission. gambling is an easy way *
THE IDEA OF CHILDHOOD
84
enjoying good company without saying a word, especially if one plays enjoying good company without saying a word, especially if one plays like man of that is to say, avoiding 'eccentricity', 'caprice' is to of honour' a man like a honour* --that say, avoiding eccentricity', 'caprice* 'One must play like a of honour, honour, ready ready to and like to win or and superstition. must a man of win or One superstition. play lose whether one has or lost in one's expression or has one won or in lose without whether lost one's without showing showing expression or behaviour.' But But one one should should beware one's friends: try as we as beware of of ruining one's friends: behaviour.' try ruining it, 'we help harbouring grudge may talk ourselves ourselves out out of of it, 'we cannot cannot help a grudge to talk harbouring a may to against those have ruined us'. those have ruined us'. who against If games games of chance aroused no moral moral condemnation, there was no aroused no of chance was no If condemnation, there scenes, which which reason to to forbid forbid children play them: them: hence hence the the countless to play reason children to countless scenes, art handed down to to us, us, of children playing playing cards, cards, dice, backgammon, of children art has has handed dice, backgammon, etc. scholastic dialogues dialogues which used as both manuals of of used etc. The The scholastic which schoolboys as both manuals schoolboys etiquette and Latin glossaries sometimes gave recognition to games and Latin sometimes to of glossaries gave recognition games of etiquette chance as aa practice too common to be condemned if condoned. The if not too to be condemned not The condoned. chance as practice Spaniard Vives confines himself to giving a few rules in the interests of to a rules in himself few the interests of confines Vives giving Spaniard moderation: thus thus he he says says when one one should with (one with should gamble, whom moderation: gamble, (one should persons), at what games, stake at what avoid unruly for what what stake stake (,the should avoid games, for ('the stake unruly persons), should not be be aa trifle, since this this is is ridiculous ndiculous and worth playing playing for, and not should not not worth trifle, since for, nor should be so high that it troubles the mind mind before before tlle game begins'), begins '), so high the game it be that it troubles the nor should it 62 'in what manner', manner', as as aa good gambler, that and for long. 52 that is is to 'in what to say, say, and for how long. good gambler, Even in which afforded the best opportunities for raising in the the colleges, afforded the for which best Even colleges, opportunities raising moral standards, playing for money continued continued for for aa long of in spite for money moral time, in standards, playing long time, spite of the repugnance which the pedagogues pedagogues felt it. At At the the beginning beginning of the repugnance felt for for it. of the the which the eighteenth the regulations at Troyes of the the Oratorian Oratorian College century the eighteenth century College at regulations of Troyes stated: 'There shall be no no playing for money, unless it very is for shall be for unless it is for small stated: 'There very small money, playing sums permission.' The modern university teacher quoted and by who sums and modern teacher university by permission.' quoted by customs so far this text this in 1880, far removed from the text in somewhat shocked shocked by customs so from the 1880, somewhat educational of his time, added: 'This was practically tantamount his of added: educational principles 'This was tantamount time, principles practically 53 to permitting playing playing for money.'63 for money.' to permitting As late or so, so, there there was undisguised gambling heavy betting and heavy late as as 1830 As was undisguised 1830 or gambling and betting in the the English English public public schools. schools. The author of Tom Brown Brown'ss Schooldays Schooldays in author of describes the betting betting fever fever which the Derby Derby aroused that time time among at that describes the aroused at which the among 54 the boys boys at Arnold's reforms would later rid the English rid later the the at Rugby;64 Dr Arnold's reforms would Rugby; English schools of practices practices several the seventeenth seventeenth century century to several centuries old. From the schools of centuries old. to of the present present day a somewhat complex moral attitude towards games towards the attitude a moral games of day complex chance has evolved: as the gained ground that gambling that chance has evolved: as the opinion was a a gambling was opinion gained ground dangerous passion, a serious vice, then custom tended to change some of tended to a serious then custom of vice, change dangerous passion, the gambling games to reduce reduce the element of which the gambling in order of chance order to the element chance -- which games in favour of the the mental mental skill and intellectual intellectual efforts efforts of still still remained in favour remained -- in skill and of the the gambler, so that certain card or chess games less liable to the so that certain card became or less chess liable to the gambler, games censure applied to principle of the game of chance. chance. censure applied to the the principle of the game of *
'
HISTORY OF GAMES AND PASTIMES
,85 ,85
Another pastime underwent underwent aa different different evolution: evolution: dancing. have Another pastime dancing. We have seen that dancing occupied an important place in the everyday life of both seen that an in life the of both dancing occupied important place everyday children and adults. find this less children and adults. Our present-day morality ought to to find this less present-day morality ought shocking than the general practice of gambling. know that monks and than the of know that and We monks shocking general practice gambling. nuns scandalizing public public opinion, nuns themselves themselves danced danced on on occasion occasion without without scandalizing opinion, at least before before the movement to reform the religious religious at least the seventeenth-century movement to reform the seventeenth-century communities. what life life was was like at Maubuisson Abbey when communities. We know what like at Maubuisson Abbey when Mere Angelique Angelique Arnauld the beginning beginning of seventeenth M&re Arnauld arrived arrived there there at at the of the the seventeenth century to reform reform it. it. It not particularly particularly edifying but not necessarily It was was not century to edifying but not necessarily scandalous worldly, if summer days', M. Cognet scandalous -- too too worldly, if anything. 'On *On summer days', M. Cognet anything. tells us, us, quoting Mere Angelique de Saint-Jean, her sister's biographer, tells M&re de sister's her quoting Angelique Saint-Jean, biographer, 'when the the weather weather was was fine, vespers had had been been finished after vespers finished with, the fine, after with, the Prioress used used to to take take the the community for a walk a good way from the Prioress for a walk a from the community good way* Abbey, beside the ponds by the Paris road, often the·monks of beside the Paris the when often the monks of road, Abbey, ponds by Saint-Martin live near near by, would come and dance with Saint-Martin de de Pontoise, and would come dance with Pontoise, who live by, these nuns, and this as naturally as one would do something nobody would would these rtuns, and this as naturally as one would do something nobody 55 These round-dances of monks and nuns aroused dream of criticizing.'55 dream of These of monks and nuns round-dances aroused criticizing.' de Saint-Jean, and it cannot be denied the indignation the of Mere Angelique indignation of Angelique de Saint-Jean, and it cannot be denied that they did did not not correspond correspond with the spirit of monastic life; but they that they of with the monastic did life; but spirit they did not have have the the same effect on public opinion that would be not same shocking effect on that would be shocking public opinion produced today by and nuns dancing together clasped in each monks and nuns in each produced today by dancing together clasped other's arms as modem style of dancing demands. Certainly these as the the modern other's arms style of dancing demands. Certainly these religious persons had easy consciences. There were traditional observances religious persons had easy consciences. There were traditional observances too which allowed for dances of clerics At Auxerre Auxerre dances of clerics on on certain certain occasions. occasions. At too which allowed for every canon marked his by presenting the parishioners his elevation the marked elevation canon new by presenting parishioners every 56 This was then then used used for for aa great great community community game. game. 56 with a ball ball which This with a which was game was always played between two sides, either bachelors against either two bachelors between was sides, against always played game married men or parish against against parish. parish. The festivities festivities at at Auxerre Auxerre began or parish married began with the singing singing of the Victimae Paschai: and ended with aa round round ended with laudes Paschai: Victimae laudes of the with the danced by all the canons canons together. together. The historians tell us us that this custom, that this historians tell all the danced by custom, was in still alive in the which went went back to the the fourteenth still alive the fourteenth century, back to which century, eighteenth. In all the advocates of the Trent reforms looked looked the Trent reforms on advocates of all probability the In probability eighteenth. Mre Angelique had disapprovingly as as Mere Angelique de Saint-Jean this round-dance as as disapprovingly this round-dance Saint-Jean looked the dances the nuns nuns of Maubuisson Maubuisson and the the monks of of the dances of looked on on the Pontoise: different times have have different different ideas ideas about about what is is profane. profane. different times Pontoise: sexual character not have the Dances in in the the seventeenth did not have the sexual character they did seventeenth century Dances they century would acquire acquire much later, later, in nineteenth and twentieth twentieth centuries. centuries. in the the nineteenth would trade dances: dances: in There were even professional and trade in Biscay Biscay there there were even some some professional There were their special dances for wet-nurses in the latter carried their charges in in latter carried in which the for wet-nurses dances charges special 57 In the society of in all their various their arms.57 the ancien regime, games in all their various ancien of the the In arms. their regime, games society
86 86
THE IDEA OF CHILDHOOD
forms the sport, the parlour game, the game of chance - had an forms --the sport, the parlour game, the game of chance -had an importance which they have lost lost in in our our teclmologic.al society but which which they have technological society but which importance 58 they still have today in certain primitive or archaic societies. liS Yet Yet to to this or this in certain still have archaic societies. today primitive they passion which affected all and conditions, the Church opposed an affected all ages and which the Church conditions, ages passion opposed an absolute disapproval, and with the the Church, Church, laymen laymen enamoured and with of order order absolute disapproval, enamoured of who were were also to tame what was was still wild populapopulaand also eager and discipline tame what still a a wild eager to discipline tion, to to civilize civilize what what was was still a primitive primitive way of life. still a of life. tion, way The medieval medieval Church games in in all their forms, also condemned condemned games all their The Church also forms, especially in the communities of scholarship clerks which were to become of clerks in the which were to communities become scholarship especially the and universities of the ancien regime. can obtain some the colleges colleges and universities of the ancien regime. We can obtain some idea of of this from the statutes of these communities. Reading these the statutes of idea this intransigence from communities. Reading intransigence them, the the English English historian historian of the medieval medieval universities, universities, J. Rashdall, was of the was Rashdall, them, J. by the the general proscription of all the refusal to admit that struck of all pastimes, the to that refusal admit struck by general proscription pastimes, there pastimes, in whose pupils pupils for in schools be any innocent pastimes, schools whose for the the there might might be any innocent 50 They condemned most part were were none the less aged from from ten fifteen. /l9 ten to to fifteen. less aged none the condemned most part They the immorality immorality of games of chance, the the indecency indecency of the of games of chance, of parlour the parlour games, games, the of physical sports, which in point theatre and dancing, and the brutality and the of which in theatre and dancing, brutality physical sports, point of often did into brawls. brawls. The statutes the colleges were fact often did degenerate of the of fact statutes of degenerate into colleges were for recreation as drawn up in a way way as such a to limit as in such as to limit the the opportunities drawn up for recreation opportunities much as as the the risks Afortiori, the ban was strict and binding risks of the of delinquency. A ban was and strict fortiori, binding delinquency. on the religious, who were were forbidden by an Council of forbidden by of the Sens on the religious, an edict the Council of Sens edict of of to play play tennis, in their shirts (it is true that in the in their is that in the of 1485 shirts true tennis, especially 1485 to especially (it fifteenth a without a doublet or robe, and with his breeches a a doublet or and his breeches fifteenth century man without with robe, century undone, was was practically practically naked). has the that the the Church, the impression undone, Church, naked). One has impression that incapable as yet of controlling a laity given up to riotous amusements, a of as to riotous amusements, yet controlling laity given up incapable by forbidding them to play any any games set to safeguard its clerics out to clerics by to play set out forbidding them safeguard its games whatever, thus a fantastic contrast in ways of life if ban a thus establishing contrast in fantastic of life if the the ban whatever, establishing ways is what the regulations had really been been observed. observed. Here, Here, for is for example, the what of had really example, regulations of Narbonne College had to say about its scholars' pastimes in 1379: to about had scholars' its in 1379: College say pastimes 'Nobody play tennis tennis or or hockey other dangerous the house house is is to to play or other in the hockey or 'Nobody in dangerous games [insultuosos], under under pain pain of of aa fme play fine of of six six deniers; is to to play deniers; nobody nobody is games [insultuosos], or any other games played for money, or indulge in table amusedice, other for or in table or amusedice, money, indulge any games played ments [comessationes: blow-outs], blow-outs], under under pain pain of aa fine fme of ten sous.' often sous.' Games ments [comessationes: Is there never to be any relaxation and are put the same level. to are on the level. Is never be and guzzling there put any relaxation guzzling then? 'Scholars 'Scholars may may only only join join occasionally occasionally and at rare intervals intervals [what at rare then? [what precautions, quickly they they must must have been swept have been but how quickly for the the aside, for precautions, but swept aside, words opened the door to all forbidden excesses!] in respectable or in to words the door all the the forbidden respectable or opened excesses!] recreational [but which, seeing that even tennis was forbidden? recreational games tennis even was that forbidden? games [but which, seeing Perhaps parlour parlour games?], games?], staking staking aa pint pint of wine or or else on else some fruit, and on fruit, and Perhaps >6 such games are played not habitually habitually [sine [sine mora] mora].'60 condition that such games are played quietly quietly and not condition that .
HISTORY OF OF GAMES GAMES, AND AND PASTIMES PASTIMES HISTORY
,87 87
At Seez Seez College College in in 1477: 1477: 'We 'We decree decree that that nobody nobody shall shall play play dice, dice, or or At other evil or forbidden games, or even recognized games such as tennis, as such or even forbidden tennis, or evil other recognized games games, especially in the common places [i.e. the the cloister cloister and and the the common-room common-room especially in the common places [i.e. used as a refectory], and that if such games are played elsewhere it shall shall be be it elsewhere are and such that if as a used played games refectory], 91 In the Bull of Cardinal d'Amboise infrequently [non nimis continue ].'61 d' Amboise that that of Bull Cardinal the In nimis continue].' infrequently [non founded Montaigu Montaigu College College in in 1501 1501 one one chapter chapter isis entitled: entitled: De De exercitio exercitio founded 62 2 What is understood by that? The corporali. The text begins with a somewhat a somewhat with text that? is understood What begins by corporali* ambiguous statement: 'Physical exercise seems to be oflittle little use use when when itit isis ambiguous statement: 'Physical exercise seems to be of combined with with spiritual spiritual studies studies and and religious religious exercises; exercises; on on the the other other hand, hand, combined it greatly greatly develops develops the the health health when when itit isis indulged indulged in in alternately alternately with with it theoretical and and scientific scientific studies/ studies.' But But by by 'physical 'physical exercises' exercises' the the author author theoretical means not not so so much much games games as as manual manual work work (as (as opposed opposed to to intellectual intellectual means thus work), and he gives pride of place to domestic tasks, thus recognizing domestic to of tasks, he and recognizing place gives pride work), their value value as as aa form form of of relaxation: relaxation: work in in the the kitchen, kitchen, cleaning, cleaning, serving serving their at table. table. 'In 'In all all the the above above exercises exercises [i.e. [i.e. these these domestic domestic tasks] tasks] it it must never never at be forgotten forgotten that that one one should should work work as as hard hard and and as as speedily speedily as as possible/ possible.' be Games come come along along only only after after the the tasks tasks have have been been completed, completed, and with with Games considerable reservations! reservations! 'When the the Father Father [the [the head head of of the the community] community] considerable considers that the the minds minds wearied wearied by by work and and study study need need the the relaxation relaxation considers that afforded by recreations, [indu(gebit].' Certain Certain games these [indulgebit]. tolerate these he will will tolerate games afforded by recreations, he are neither neither are decent games which are tiring decent the common places, in the tiring allowed in are allowed games places, scholarstudents: nor At Montaigu, there were two groups of students: scholarwere there At nor dangerous. groups Montaigu, dangerous. the pauperes, called the ship boys who, as in other other foundations, as in foundations, were called pauperes, and ship boys who, boarders for board and lodging. The two groups lived apart and for board who paid apart groups boarders who lodging. paid the scholars scholars must not that the from stipulate that The regulations another. The one another. from one stipulate regulations play so often or for so the boarders, as the so long boarders, no doubt because they they were long as play so often or for harder. therefore under to better and therefore had to work harder. and be better pupils to be an obligation under an pupils obligation in 1452, Paris in ofParis The the University of 1452, decrees inspired by inspired by decrees reforming The decrees reforming the University tradiall the tradimaintain all what a modem desire maintain for discipline, desire for modern a was already discipline, what was already their allow their not allow will not 'The masters tional the colleges] masters [of colleges] will tional severity: [of the severity: 'The and immodest immoral and immodest dance immoral to dance students, at trade festivals or elsewhere, to students, at trade festivals or elsewhere, But without aa robe]. dances, or to wear indecent lay coats [short coats, without coats coats, indecent robe]. But wear or to [short lay dances, and a relaxation as and enjoyably, they will allow them to decently and to play enjoyably, as a relaxation and play decently they will allow them of course in the allow them, not allow just recreation after will not them, in the course of work/ 'They after work.' 'They will just recreation 83 This house/ to house from house to house.'63 This to go or to these to drink in the town town or go from these festivals, festivals, to drink in the collections, ban by collections, door-to-door greetings, the door-to-door accompanied by at the aimed at ban isis aimed greetings, accompanied festivals. seasonal festivals. the seasonal which people during the to young conceded to during tradition conceded people which tradition young in in Paxis in the situation situation in Paris sums up In Vivfcs sums his scholastic scholastic dialogues, up the ofhis In one one of dialogues, Vives no the terms: 'Among the in the following terms: students, no 'Among the students, sixteenth century the sixteenth century in the following but masters' permission, the masters' with other with the but be played can be permission, tennis can than tennis other game than played 9
game
88 88
THE IDEA OF OP CHILDHOOD
sometimes play cards and chess, the little children the students students secretly sometimes the secretly play cards and chess, the little children 64 In fact the students, play garignons, and the naughtiest boys play dice.'" the and naughtiest boys play dice/ In fact the students, play garignons, like other boys, made no bones about visiting taverns and brothels, like other boys, made no bones about visiting taverns and brothels, Yet the strictness of the regulations was playing dice and going and dice dancing. Yet the strictness of the regulations was going dancing. playing their inefficacy, the authorities showing never modified modified in in the the light light of of their never inefScacy, the authorities showing the modem mind, which which is is more more aa stubbornness astonishing to to the modern stubbornness quite mind, quite astonishing than principle. concerned than concerned about about efficacy principle. efficacy Magistrates, police officers and jurists, all enamoured of order and Magistrates, police officers and jurists, all enamoured of order and good administration, discipline and authority, gave their support to the discipline and authority, gave their support to the good administration, schoolmasters For centuries end, an an uninterrupted uninterrupted on end, centuries on and churchmen. churchmen. For schoolmasters and succession was published published forbidding forbidding the the admission of students students admission of succession of of decrees decrees was of this kind were still the to Decrees were still appearing in of this kind Decrees to gaming-rooms. appearing in the gaming-rooms. eighteenth century; witness this edict issued by the Lieutenant-General issued the this edict Lieutenant-General witness by eighteenth century; of Police of Moulins on on March 27th, 1752, of which which aa copy intended for for of Police of Moulins March 2yth, 1752, of copy intended public display is the Musee des Arts et Traditions Populaires: 'It is et 'It is in the Muse des Arts Traditions is kept in Populaires: public display kept forbidden tennis-courts and billiard-rooms to to allow and billiard-rooms allow of tennis-courts forbidden for for the the masters masters of students to play play during hours, and masters of and for the masters of school hours, for the and servants servants to students and during school bowling and skittle alleys to allow students and servants to play at any to and servants to at skittle allow students and any alleys play bowling time.' The reader reader will have noted the linking of servants with students: noted the servants with students: time/ The will have linking of they were often often of the same gave similar similar grounds for fcaring their same age and gave of the age and grounds for fearing their they were high spirits and lack of self-control. Bowls and skittles, nowadays quiet and of lack Bowls and self-control. skittles, nowadays quiet high spirits pastimes, used to inspire so many brawls that in the sixteenth and sevenpastimes, used to inspire so many brawls that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries centuries the the police police magistrates sometimes banned them completely, teenth magistrates sometimes banned them completely, trying to extend to the whole of society which the the churchchurchextend to the whole of the restrictions to restrictions which society the trying to impose impose on clerics and these champions champions of of and students. Thus these wanted to students. Thus men wanted on clerics social discipline to all intents intents and purposes classified classified games among quasi to all and purposes social discipline games among quasi criminal prostitution, which which could be such as as drunkenness drunkenness and and prostitution, could be criminal activities activities such tolerated pinch, but but which had to to be the slightest sign of a pinch, forbidden at at the at a which had be forbidden tolerated at slightest sign of excess. excess. This attitude modified in in the the course of outright condemnation was was modified course of of This attitude of outright condemnation the however, largely owing to the influence of the to the influence the of seventeenth century, the seventeenth however, century, largely owing Jesuits. humanists of of the the Renaissance, their anti-scholastic reaction, in their anti-scholastic reaction, The humanists Renaissance, in Jesuits. of games. But it was the had noted the educational possibilities of But noted the it was the had already educational games. already possibilities Jesuit colleges which gradually induced the authorities to assume a more to assume a induced the authorities which gradually Jesuit colleges tolerant attitude towards games. Fathers realized realized from the the start that attitude towards start that tolerant games. The Fathers it was neither neither possible possible nor nor even to suppress suppress them them or or to to make it even desirable desirable to them dependent occasional, precarious precarious and and shameful shameful permission. permission. They They dependent on occasional, to proposed to assimilate them, to introduce officially into their them assimilate to introduce into their them, proposed officially curricula and regulations, on condition that they chose and controlled chose curricula and that and controlled condition regulations, they them. Brought under discipline in this this way, those pastimes which were them. Brought were way, those pastimes which discipline in
HISTORY HISTORY OF OF GAMES GAMES AND AND PASTIMES PASTIMES
,89 ,89
deemed and recommended, and were deemed to to be be wholesome wholesome were were accepted accepted and recommended, and were henceforth study. henceforth regarded as means means of of education education no no less less respectable than regarded as respectable than study. Not only of dancing, but there no more more talk talk of of the the immorality of only was there immorality dancing, but dancing harmonizing the movements of in school, because by the movements of school, because dancing was taught taught in by harmonizing the body it eliminated the a boy a good bearing, eliminated awkwardness awkwardness and and gave a a body it gave boy good bearing, 'a moralists 'a fine fine air', air'. Similarly play-acting, which the seventeenth-century Similarly play-acting, which the seventeenth-century moralists condemned out school. The Jesuits began with out of of hand, found its its way into into school. The hand, found way Jesuits began with Latin dialogues Latin then went on to French plays on sacred subjects, then went on to French dialogues on sacred subjects, plays on profane was allowed, despite the opposition was the allowed, profane subjects. subjects. Even ballet-dancing ballet-dancing despite opposition of the writes Pere the authorities authorities of of the the Company: 'The taste taste for for dancing', Company: 'The dancing', writes Pre de Dainville, of the Roi 'so pronounced the contemporaries Dainville, 'so pronounced among among the contemporaries of the Roi Soleil, over in 1669 was to to found found the the Academie Academic dela dela Danse, Soleil, who in 1669 was Danse, prevailed prevailed over the a single the edicts edicts of of the the Fathers Fathers General. General. After After 1650 there was was scarcely a 1650 there scarcely single tragedy did not not have have a a ballet ballet in in the the interval.'65 interval.' 65 tragedy which did An album of engravings scenes of de Pas, dated 1602, Pas, dated 1602, depicts by Crispin engravings by Crispin de depicts scenes of school'life The class-rooms and the library are school "life 'in a Batavian 'in a Batavian college'. The class-rooms and the college*. library are 66 66 shown to to us, us, but lesson, a game of tennis and a ball game. but so so is is a a dancing a of tennis and a ball lesson, dancing game game. A new attitude attitude had had thus thus made its its appearance: education had adopted appearance: education had adopted games which it hitherto forbidden or else tolerated as aa lesser it had had hitherto forbidden or else tolerated as lesser evil. evil. games The Jesuits Jesuits published published Latin treatises on on gymnastics giving the rules of the Latin treatises the rules of the gymnastics giving The need for physical exercise was admitted to an recommended games. for need exercise was admitted to an games. physical ever greater extent. extent. Fenelon Fenelon wrote: wrote: 'The games which which children children like like best best ever greater 'The games are those in in which which die the body body is is in in motion; motion; they they are are happy happy provided provided they they are those can change change position.' position.' The The doctors doctors of of the the eighteenth eighteenth century, century, taking taking as as can their inspiration inspiration the the old old 'exercise 'exercise games' games' in in the the Jesuits' Jesuits' Latin Latin treatises, treatises, their 67 In the of bodily bodily hygiene: hygiene: physical physical culture. culture,6? elaborated aa new technique teclmique of elaborated In the Traite de de l' Education education des des enfants enfants of of 1722, 1722, by by de de Crousaz, Crousaz, aa professor professor of of Traitl philosophy and mathematics at Lausanne, read: 'While it is growing, at we it is and read: 'While mathematics Lausanne, growing, philosophy it is is essential essential for for the the human body body to to be be greatly greatly agitated agitated ... ... II consider consider it games affording exercise to be preferable to all others.' Tissot's to be all others.' Tissot's to exercise preferable games affording Gymnastique medica Ie et chirurgicale recommends physical games as the the recommends et midicale chirurgicale physical games as Gymnastique best exercises: exercises: 'They 'They exercise exercise all all the the parts parts of of the the body body at at the the same same time time ... best quite apart from the fact that the action of the the lungs lungs isis constantly constantly stimustimuquite apart from the fact that the action of calls of of the the players.' players.' lated by by the the shouts shouts and and calls lated ofthe the eighteenth eighteenth century, century, games games found found another anotherjustification, justification, At the the close close of At this time time patriotic patriotic: they they prepared prepared aa man for for war. war. This This was was the the time time when this the training training of of aa soldier soldier became became what what was was virtually virtually aa scientific scientific technique, technique, the the time time too too which which saw saw the the birth birth of of modern modem nationalism. nationalism. A link link was was the established between between the the educational educational games games of of the the Jesuits, Jesuits, the the gymnastics gymnastics established of the the doctors, doctors, the the training training of of the the soldier soldier and and the the demands demands of of patriotism. patriotism. of I*
. . .
:
THE IDEA OF CHILDHOOD
9O
the Consulate there appeared appeared aa Gymnastique Je la Jeunesse, ou the Consulate there Gymnastiaue de la Jeunesse, ou Traite eUmentaire desjeux Jes jeux d'exercices J' exercices consiJeres sous le Ie rapport Je leur utilite Traitt tUmentaire considMs sous rapport de leur utilitf physique et morale. The authors, authors, Duvivier Duvivier and J:tuffret, stated bluntly that that and Jauffret, stated bluntly physique et morale. Under Under
military drill military drill
is 'the drill which has been been the the basis basis of from the 'the drill which has of gymnastics gymnastics from the is particularly particularly suitable for the the period period is suitable for [the year XI] and the country in which are writing'. 'Dedicated in [the year XI] and the country in which we are writing'. 'Dedicated in advance to the by the the nature of condie common defence defence by and spirit of our our conadvance to nature and spirit stitution, our children are soldiers before they they are are born/ born.' 'Everything children are soldiers before stitution, our 'Everything military breathes something great and noble which raises a above military breathes something great and noble which raises a man above himsel£' himself/ Thus, under the the successive influence of the humanist humanist pedagogues, pedagogues, the of the the successive influence Thus, under doctors of the the Enlightenment Enlightenment and and the the first come from doctors of first nationalists, have come from nationalists, we have the violent violent and games of the Middle Ages to gymnastics and and suspect the suspect games of the Middle Ages to gymnastics and military training, from popular from to gymnastic tussles to societies. military training, popular tussles gymnastic societies. is
beginning of time and which beginning of time and which
* * * This evolution evolution was was dictated by considerations considerations of health and dictated by and This of morality, morality, health common weal. weal. A parallel parallel evolution divided up up according to age and to evolution divided according age and rank games which were originally common to the whole of society. rank which the of were to whole society. originally games the the
In his history history of of classical classical literature literature Daniel Daniel Momet wrote of parlour In his of parlour Mornet wrote games: the young people of the middle classes of my generation the of the of middle classes 'When games: my generation young people [Mornet was born born in in 1878] played "parlour the matintes matinees at the [Mornet was "parlour games" games" at 1878] played Jansantes of families, they they rarely suspected that these games, more of their their families, that these dansantes games, more rarely suspected of high numerous and than in their time, had been the delight in and complex than their of numerous had been the time, complex delight high 68 Much earlier than that in society two hundred and fifty years before.'68 and than in hundred earlier that before/ two fifty years society fact. the fifteenth-century book of hours of the Duchesse de Bourgogne of In the book of the de hours Duchesse fact. In fifteenth-century Bourgogne an example lady is is sitting sitting with with aa basket a 'paper a lady have an of a basket in in we have 'paper game': game': a example of 69 At the 69 her lap in which some young people are putting slips of paper. in are of her At which the lap young people paper. putting slips end of the the Middle Middle Ages Ages 'selling games' were very fashionable. 'A lady end of 'selling games' were very fashionable. 'A lady would would give give aa lady the name of a gentleman or a a gentleman of would give lady the gentleman would give a gentleman or some flower and the other had to respond immediately and and the other to or object, and flower or respond immediately object, without moment's hesitation hesitation with a compliment a rhymed or a with a a moment's without a rhymed epigram.' compliment or epigram/ It is the the modern modern editor editor of de Pisan's Pisan's poetry poetry whom we have have to of Christine to It is Christine de - Christine thank for this description of the rules of the game de Pisan de thank of of Christine for this the rules the Pisan game description wrote seventy seventy epigrams games'. 70 70 This This procedure procedure doubtless wrote for 'selling doubtless epigrams for 'selling games'. originated in courtly manners. It then passed into popular song also into in manners. It then originated courtly popular song and also passed into children's the game of crambo which, as we have seen, into children's games: as the have of which, seen, games: game amused Louis Louis XIII the age three. But But it it was kept kept up by adults or at the XIII at too by adults or up too age of three. youths had left far behind. nineteenth-century sheet of had who left childhood childhood far A behind. of sheet youths nineteenth-century
HISTORY HISTORY OF OF GAMES GAMES AND AND PASTIMES PASTIMES
.91 pi .
,'tuppence-coloured' tuppence-coloured' pictures but it bears the still shows shows the the same same games, pictures still games, but it bears the title 'Games title' Games of that fashion was dropping them, and ofold', which suggests that old', which fashion was suggests dropping them, and that they that or childish hot cockles, the were becoming either provincial or childish hot they were becoming either cockles, the provincial whistle game, whistle hide-and-seek, forfeits, sweet in the the water-jug, sweet game, the knife in hide-and-seek, forfeits, water-jug, the^knife knight, the love-pot, blind-man's buff, the little little man man who doesn't buff, the doesn't laugh, knight, blind-man's laugh, the love-pot, the sulker, the stool the stool of of repentance, the kiss kiss under sulker, the under the the chandelier, the cradle cradle repentance, the chandelier, the of love. love. Some would become children's of while others would retain children's games, while others would retain games, the ambiguous the far from from innocent innocent character character which which had had previously ambiguous and far previously earned them the the condemnation earned condemnation of of the the moralists, even the the more more tolerant tolerant moralists, even moralists moralists such such as as Erasmus.71 Erasmus. 71 Sorel's Maison Sorel's Jeux enables Maison des enables us us to to study this evolution evolution at at an an interesting desjeux study this interesting 72 Sorel makes a disin the the first stage, first half half of of the the seventeenth seventeenth century.72 Sorel makes a disstage, in century. tinction of tinction between parlour of exercise' exercise' and and 'games parlour games, games, 'games 'games of 'games of chance'. common to sort of person, chance'. The last last two, he observes, are 'common to every sort of two, he observes, are' every person, for the vulgar being valets as as much as as by masters ..• ... as as easy being played played by by valets by masters easy for the vulgar and the die ignorant as for for the the clever clever and and the the learned'. learned'. Parlour Parlour games on the the ignorant as games on other of wit and conversation'. In principle 'they can other hand are are 'games of wit and conversation'. In can 'games principle 'they bred on civility and gallantry, quick at appeal to persons of quality, appeal only only to persons of quality, bred on civility and gallantry, quick at repartee knowledge and judgment, and and full full of of knowledge and judgment, and cannot cannot repartee and speeches, speeches, and be played by opinion: this is what what he be played others. This This at at least least is is Sorel's Sorel's opinion: this is he would would by others.' like parlour games to be. In fact, at this time parlour games were also like parlour to be. In at this time were also fact, games parlour games popular with children and people of humble birth, 'the vulgar and the with children and of humble 'the and the birth, popular people vulgar ignorant'. Sorel has to admit this. 'To begin with, shall consider the Sorel has to admit this. 'To we shall consider the with, ignorant'. begin children's games games ... .. , There There are are some some which which are are exercises' exercises' -hockey, - hockey, children's 'trying to to spinning the the top, top, ladders, ladders, ball, ball, battledore battledore and and shuttlecock, shuttlecock, and and 'trying spinning catch one one another another with with one's one's eyes eyes open open or or blindfolded'. blindfolded'. But But 'there 'there are are catch others which which depend depend rather rather more more on on the the mind', mind', and and he he cites cites as as an an example example others the 'rhymed 'rhymed dialogues', dialogues', Christine Christine de de Pisan's Pisan's 'selling 'selling games', games', which which still still the guesses at at the the origins origins of of these these amused grown-ups grown-ups and and children children alike. alike. Sorel Sorel guesses amused games: 'These children's games games in in which which there there are are aa few few rhymed rhymed words words These children's games (crambo, for instance) are usually couched in very old and very simple for are couched in old and usually instance) very (crambo, very simple words, and and these these are are taken taken from from some some history history or or romance romance of of olden olden days, days, words, which shows shows how people people amused amused themselves themselves in in the the past past by by means means of of aa which of what what had had happened happened to to knights knights or or to to ladies ladies of of high high naive imitation imitation of naive degree.' degree.' Sorel finally finally observes observes that that in in the the lower lower classes classes these these children's children's games games are are Sorel by adults, adults, an an observation observation of of great great interest interest and and importance importance for for also played played by also us: 'As 'As these these are are children's children's games, games, they they also also serve serve for for rustic rustic persons persons whose whose us: not more more advanced advanced than than children's children's in in this this respect.' respect.' Yet Yet at at the the minds are are not minds Sorel has admit of the seventeenth century Sorel has to admit that 'sometimes beginning to that of the seventeenth 'sometimes century beginning '
'
:
92 92
THE IDEA IDEA OF OF CHILDHOOD THE
persons of quite high rank rank could could play play these these games games for for recreation', recreation', and and persons of quite high public opinion sees nothing wrong in this: these 'mixed' games, those in those this: these 'mixed' sees wrong games, nothing public opinion
common to to all all ages ages and and conditions, conditions, 'are 'are deemed deemed respectable respectable on on account account common of the the good good use use to to which which they they have have always always been been put'. put'. 'There 'There are are certain certain of kinds of of games games in in which which the the mind mind isis not not very very active, active, so so that that the the very very kinds young can play them, although it is true that aged and very serious is it and serious true that can them, very although aged play young persons also engage in them on occasion.' But But some some people people -- Ariste Ariste in in persons also engage in them on occasion/ Sorel's Maison Maison des Jeux, for for instance instance - consider consider these these pastimes of of children children Sorel's desjeux,
pastimes
and villeins villeins unworthy unworthy of of aa respectable respectable man. man. Sorel's Sorel's speaker speaker isis reluctant reluctant to to and ban them them so so completely: completely: 'Even 'Even those those which which seem seem lowly lowly can can be be elevated elevated ban by giving giving them them aa different different application application from from the the first, first, which which II have have by
described so so that that described
it can can be be used used as as aa model.' model.' And he he then then tries tries to to raise raise the the it intellectual level of of the the parlour parlour games games played played indoors. indoors. Truth Truth to to tell, tell, the the modern reader, reader, after after studying studying Sorel's Sorel's description description of of the the game game of of mora moramodern in which which the the leader leader raises raises one, one, two two or or three three fingers, fingers, and and the the company company have have in to repeat repeat the the same same gesture gesture immediately immediately -- finds finds it it hard hard to to see see in in what what to respect mora is more elevated and and intelligent intelligent than than crambo, crambo, which which Sorel Sorel respect mora is more elevated dismisses as as fit for children. But he finds it even more surprising that that it even more But he finds for children. fit only dismisses surprising only a novelist novelist and and historian historian such as Sorel should devote devote aa monumental monumental work Sorel should such as a of these these pastimes; pastimes; here fact we have to the description description and and revision have here in in fact revision of to the further proof of importance which which games games occupied occupied in in the preoccuthe preoccuthe importance of the further proof pations of the society of of old. old. pations of the society Thus between the the distinction was was made between a distinction seventeenth century in the die seventeenth Thus in century a games. of adults and noblemen and the of children and yokels. and of children and the games and noblemen adults of yokels. games games The in Middle Ages. back to to the the Middle an old old one, was an distinction was The distinction one, dating Ages. But in dating back the from the twelfth century to be precise, it it applied only to to to twelfth be the from Middle Ages, the Middle century applied only precise, Ages, certain few in number and distinctive in character: the courtly certain games, games, few in number and distinctive in character: the courtly games. Before that, before the final constitution of the the idea idea of of nobility, nobility, games. Before that, before the final constitution of games were common to their rank. Certain games rank. Certain their whatever to all all people, whatever were games people, games I and Henri II II did did not retained for a long time: Fran~ois I not Franois time: for a their universality retained their long universality regard wrestling as beneath them, and Henri II to in ball games to join in ball II used used and Henri as beneath them, join games regard wrestling in the something the next next have been been accepted would no longer which would accepted in longer have something which at the the court of century. Richelieu vaulted in like Tristan at court of King like Tristan in his his gallery vaulted Richelieu King gallery century. Mark, traditional games these traditional tennis. But these Louis XIV played while Louis Mark, while games were played tennis. to in the the eighteenth in their turn in their turn be dropped to be century by by people people of quality. quality. eighteenth century dropped in reserved for As certain games had been been reserved for certain twelfth century, as the the twelfth back as far back As far games century, 73 73 a nobility and specifically for adults. Thus while wrestling was a common while for adults. and wrestling nobility specifically sport, the tournament and Villeins were and the the ring were knightly games. Villeins knightly games. ring were sport, the tournament denied and no children, even of noble noble birth, to tournaments, and admission to denied admission children, birth, tournaments, the first in them: for what was perhaps the first time, were in for to take take part them: allowed to were allowed time, perhaps part intellectual level
HISTORY HISTORY OF OF GAMES AND PASTIMES GAMES AND PASTIMES
.93 ,93
tradition to participate in tradition forbade forbade children, and at at the the same same time time villeins, children, and villeins, to participate in collective collective games. The result result was was that that the the children children amused amused themselves themselves by games. The by imitating the forbidden forbidden tournaments: tournaments the the calendar calendar of ofthe the Grimani Grimani breviary imitating the breviary us some shows us some grotesque shows children's tournaments, in which which one one participant tournaments, in grotesque children's participant isis^thought _thought to astride to be be the the future future Charles Charles V, with the the children children sitting V, with sitting astride barrels barrels instead instead of of horses. horses. This marked the This the beginning of the the idea idea that that noblemen noblemen should should avoid avoid beginning of mixing among them: an idea which villeins and taking their sport an them: idea which mixing with villeins taking their sport among did not succeed did in imposing succeed in itself everywhere, at least until until the the eighteenth imposing itself everywhere, at least eighteenth the nobility as a class with a social function century, as a class with a social function century, when the nobility disappeared disappeared and was replaced the bourgeoisie. In the the sixteenth sixteenth and and at at the the beginning replaced by by the bourgeoisie. In beginning the seventeenth seventeenth century, of the documents bear a great century, a great many many iconographic iconographic documents bear witness to witness to the the mixing of the the classes classes at at the the seasonal seasonal festivals. festivals. In In one one of of mixing of 74 a sixteenththe dialogues the Balthazar Castiglione,7' in The The Courtier Courtier by Balthazar a sixteenthdialogues in by Castiglione, century the subject arouses various classic translated translated into into every century classic every language, language, the subject arouses various opinions: Pallavicino, we do 'In our our land land of of Lombardy, do not not hold hold opinions: 'In Lombardy, says says Pallavicino, this opinion this only with other noblemen]. the courtier courtier should should play with other opinion [that [that the play only noblemen]. Thus there there are are several several noblemen noblemen who at at festival-time festival-time dance dance all all day in day in the sun sun with the the peasants, and with them at throwing the bar, the peasants, and play with them at the bar, play throwing wrestling, running and vaulting, and I see no harm in this.' A few of and and I see no in harm this.' few of wrestling, running vaulting, those present protest; protest; they they concede concede that that at at aa pinch pinch aa nobleman nobleman may may those present play with with peasants, peasants, but but only if he he can can 'win the day' day' with with no no obvious 'win the obvious play only if effort: he must must be be 'practically 'practically sure sure of of winning'. winning'. 'If 'If there there is is anything effort: he anything which is is too too ugly ugly and and shameful shameful for for words, words, it it is is die the sight sight of of aa nobleman nobleman which being defeated defeated by by aa peasant, peasant, especially especially in in wrestling.' wrestling.' The The sporting sporting spirit spirit being did not not exist exist at at that that time, time, except except in in knightly knightly games, games, and and then then in in aa did different form form inspired inspired by by the the feudal feudal concept concept of of honour. honour. different At die the end end of of the the sixteenth sixteenth century century the the tournament tournament died died out. out. Other Other At games took its place in the gatherings of young noblemen at court, and in its the took of noblemen at and court, games gatherings young place in the the classes classes in in military military training training at at the the academies academies where, where, during during the the first first in half of of the the seventeenth seventeenth century, century, noblemen noblemen were were given given instruction instruction in in half riding and the use of arms. There was the quintain: the player, on horseThere was the the on horseand of arms. the use quintain: player, riding of the the living living target target back, tilted tilted at at aa wooden wooden target, target, which which took took the the place place of back, ofthe the old old tournaments, tournaments, aa Turk's Turk's head. head. And And there there was was the the ring: ring: the the player player of had to to unhook unhook aa ring ring as as he he rode rode past. past. In In the the book book by by Pluvinel, Pluvinel, the the principal principal had of one one of of these these academies, academies, an an engraving engraving by by Crispin Crispin de de Pas Pas shows shows Louis Louis of xm asas aa child child tilting tilting at at the the quintain. quintain.757& The The author author writes writes of of the the quintain quintain XIII was something something between between 'the 'the ferocious ferocious pleasure pleasure of ofbreaking breaking aa lance lance that itit was that with an an adversary adversary [the [the tournament] tournament] and and the the gende gentle pastime pastime of of tilting tilting the the with student Felix so the Platter medical ring'. At Montpellier in the 15505, so the medical student Felix Platter in the At 15505, ring'. Montpellier :
THE IDEA OF CHILDHOOD
94 94
tells us, us, •On June June yth 7th the the nobility nobility played played at tilting the the ring; the horses were at tilting tells ring the horses were richly caparisoned, covered with cloths and decked with plumes of all richly caparisoned, covered with cloths and decked with plumes of all colours.'76 Heroard, in in his his diary of Louis XIII's childhood, makes frequent colours.' 78 Heroard, diary of Louis Kill's childhood, makes frequent mention of ring-tilting contests at the the Louvre Louvre and and Saint-Germain. 'The mention of ring-tilting contests at Saint-Germain. 'The practice of tilting at the ring is engaged in every day', observes the practice of tilting at the ring is engaged in every day', observes the specialist Pluvinel. The quintain and the ring, as games reserved for the for the specialist Pluvinel. The quintain and the ring, as games reserved nobility, took the place of the tournaments and knightly games of the nobility, took the place of the tournaments and knightly games of the did not not disappear Middle Ages. Ages. But then what to them? Middle But then what happened them? They disappear happened to They did completely might imagine; but nowadays nowadays you you will not find them as one one might will not find them imagine; but completely as on the sports grounds of upper-class districts but at the fair, where you on the sports grounds of upper-class districts but at the fair, where you can at Turks' Turks' heads and where where the the children, children, on the wooden heads and still shoot shoot at on the can still horses of of the the roundabouts, roundabouts, can tilt at ring. This is what what remains of still tilt at the the ring. This is remains of can still horses the knightly tournaments of the Middle Ages: children's games and and tournaments of the Middle the children's knightly Ages: games popular amusements. amusements. popular There is lack of of other evolution which which gradually of this is no no lack other examples this evolution There gradually examples of of old into the repository of childish and popular transfers the games and of old the of childish into transfers the popular games repository games. Take the hoop for instance. In the late Middle Ages the hoop was the for In the late Middle the Take instance. hoop was hoop Ages games. not aa children's children's monopoly. In a sixteenth-century tapestry can see see a can In we not monopoly. sixteenth-century tapestry adolescents with hoops; one of them is just about to start his his start one of about to with is adolescents playing them hoops; just playing 77 In a woodcut by Jean Leclerc dating from the late 77 rolling with a stick. the late a In a from with stick. woodcut Leclerc by Jean dating rolling sixteenth century century there there are are some big children who, not content with some quite sixteenth quite big children who, not content with bowling their their hoops hoops along, along, are jumping through them as as if if they are jumping they were through them bowling 78 The hoop was used for acrobatics, difficult 78 playing with a skipping-rope. difficult a was for used with acrobatics, hoop skipping-rope. playing figures on occasion. It was familiar enough to young people, and old and old familiar on occasion. It was to enough young people, figures as that at A vignon in enough too, to be used in traditional dances such in in be at Avignon used traditional as that to dances such too, enough 1596 described for us by the Swiss student Felix Platter: on Shrove Shrove us Platter: for the Swiss student Felix described 1596 by Tuesday, young men gathered gathered together, wearing masks masks and and of young together, wearing Tuesday, groups groups of as pilgrims, pilgrims, peasants, peasants, seamen, seamen, Italians, Alsatians, or dressed or dressed as Alsatians, Italians, Spaniards, Spaniards, women, and and escorted by musicians. musicians. •*In In the the evening evening they danced in the in the danced escorted by women, they street the dance dance of of the the hoops, hoops, in in which which many youths and of the and girls street the girls of the many youths nobility took part, dressed in white and covered with jewels. Each person Each in and with dressed white covered took person jewels. part, nobility he danced. danced. They went into the held aa white-and-gold white-and-gold hoop hoop in in the the air into the as he air as held They went see them from close close to. It was was wonderful wonderful to to inn followed them them to to see to. It inn where where II followed see passing backwards backwards and under those those rings, bending and and forwards forwards under see them them passing rings, bending to the the straightening up and and passing passing one one another another in in time, time, to the sound of the straightening up the repertory instruments.' Dances of of this this kind are still be found in in the repertory of kind are still to to be instruments/ Dances villages in the Basque country. country. the Basque villages in By the end of the seventeenth century it it seems in the the towns towns the the that in seems that of the end the seventeenth By century hoop had been left to the children: an engraving by Merian shows us aa Marian us left to the had been an shows children: engraving by hoop his hoop hoop as little children the whole of little child bowling bowling his the as little whole little child children would during during '
;
HISTORY OF GAMES A'ND AND PASTIMES
95 95
the century and and part part of of the the twentieth. being the the playplaythe nineteenth nineteenth century twentieth. 79 From From being thing of all and an an accessory used in dancing and acrobatics, the all ages, and thing of ages, accessory used in dancing and acrobatics, the hoop be confmed to smaller and smaller children until it would gradually hoop would gradually be confined to smaller and smaller children until it was fmally abandoned illustrating once again the truth that, was finally abandoned altogether, altogether, illustrating once again the truth that, in order to retain the favour children, aa toy toy must must have have some in order to retain the favour of of children, some connection connection with world of with the the world of adults. adults. We saw the beginning beginning of this chapter that Louis XIII as a child was saw at at the of this chapter that Louis XIII as a child was told M6lusine, fairy-stories. But these stories were told stories, the stories stories of of Melusine, stories, the fairy-stories. But these stories were also intended for 'Mme de Sevigne', observes M. E. also intended for grown-ups. de observes M. E. Storer, Storer, Sevigne', grown-ups. the the fashion fashion for at the end of the seventeenth the historian historian of of the for fairy-stories fairy-stories at the end of the seventeenth 80 Though amused by M. de century, 'was brought brought up de on fairy-tales.'80 century, 'was up on fairy-tales.' Though amused by Coulanges's witticisms about about aa certain certain Cuverdon, she did respond to to did not not respond Cuverdon, she Coulanges's witticisms 'for fear a toad toad might jump up at her face to punish her for her them 'for fear that her for that a at face to her her punish might jump up ingratitude'. Here she was referring to a fable by the troubadour Gauthier ingratitude*. Here she was referring to a fable by the troubadour Gauthier de had been been handed handed down by tradition. de Coiney which had Coincy which by tradition. On August August 6th, writing: 'Mme de de de Sevigne fi11 ^ Mme de 6th, 1677, 1677, we fmd Sevigne writing: Coulanges ... was kind enough to tell us the stories with which the ladies the ladies kind tell stories with which was to us the Coulanges enough of amused: this is known as them. So us she coddled coddled us of Versailles this is as coddling So she Versailles are are amused: coddling them. and told us us about a green island on which a princess was brought up a was who and told island on which about a brought up green princess was lovelier It was the fairies who breathed breathed on her her all the all the was lovelier than than the the day. day. It was the fairies This story went on for a good hour.' know too that Colbert time too that Colbert for a hour/ We on time ... This went story good 'in leisure moments employed to to tell tell him had servants 'in his servants specially his leisure moments had specially employed 81 stories very similar to fairy-tales'. 81 stories very similar to fairy-tales'. However, half of the century, people began began to to consider consider of the in the second half the second However, in century, people these stories too simple, while at the same time a sort interest was of interest was a sort of new at same time the while these stories too simple, taken in in them them which which tended tended to make aa fashionable genre out of oral oral fashionable literary to make taken literary genre out naive, traditional traditional character. recitations taste found expression This taste character. This of a a naive, recitations of expression both in publications intended for children, children, at at least least in principle, such such in principle, intended for both in publications as Perrault's tales, tales, and works meant meant for for grown-ups, serious works in more serious as Perrault's and in grown-ups, evolution from which children and the orders were excluded. The evolution were excluded. lower orders the lower children and from which This above. described of recalls that of the parlour game described above. This the of that of the recalls the fairy-story parlour game fairy-story old fairies, is Mme de Murat speaking to the modern fairies: 'The old fairies: modern to the fairies, your is de Murat your speaking very frivolous frivolous creatures compared to to you. you. Their Their predecessors, now seem creatures compared seem very predecessors, amuse only occupations were menial and childish, and could only servant-girls could and menial were childish, servant-girls occupations and only interest was in sweeping out the the house, house, putting in sweeping interest was and nannies. nannies. Their Their only putting them and the children on stew, doing the washing, rocking the children sending to on the the the stew, sending washing, rocking doing thousand a sleep, milking the cows, churning the butter, and a thousand other the butter, the cows, churning sleep, milking trivialities of that kind kind ... That is why why nothing nothing remains remains to to us us today of That is of that trivialities today of but their activities but fairy-tales... fairy-tales ... They were nothing but beggar-girls ... their activities but beggar-girls... nothing They But you, my my ladies modern fairies], have have taken aa new road. road. You busy busy ladies [the But you, [the modern fairies], . . .
. . .
. . .
THE IDEA OF CHILDHOOD
96
yourselves only with great things, of which the least important are to give yourselves only with great things, of which the least important are to give wit to to those those who have have none, none, beauty beauty to to the the ugly, ugly, eloquence eloquence to to the the ignorant, ignorant, wit
and wealth wealth to to the the poor.' poor.' and
But some some authors authors continued continued to to appreciate appreciate the the flavour flavour of of the the old old stories, stories, But which they they had had listened listened to to in in the the past, past, and and sought sought rather rather to to preserve preserve it. it. which Mile Lheritier introduces her stories in the following way: 'A hundred in hundred the following way: 'A Mile Lheritier introduces her stories
times my my nanny nanny or or my my love love told told me this this story story at at night night beside beside the the fire; fire; all all times I am doing doing is is adding adding aa little little embroidery. embroidery. You may may well well think think it it surprising ... that these tales, incredible though they are, should have been that incredible should have been these tales, are, surprising though they handed down to to us us from from century century to to century century without without anyone anyone taking taking the the handed trouble to to write write them them down. down. They They are are not not easy easy to to believe, believe, but but as as long long as as trouble there are are children children in in this this world, world, mothers mothers and and grandmothers, grandmothers, they they will will be be there remembered.' remembered/ People began began to to consolidate consolidate aa tradition tradition which which had had hitherto lutherto been been oral: oral: People certain tales tales 'which had been been told told me when II was was aa child ... have have been been child... certain 'which had put on paper by ingenious pens within the last few years'. Mlle Lhcritier the Mile Lheritier within last few on years'. put paper by ingenious pens thought that that the the sources were very very old: old: 'Tradition tells me that that the the Tradition tells sources were thought of Provence invented Finette a long time troubadours a time invented Finette or story-tellers of Provence troubadours or long story-tellers before Abelard Abelard or de Champagne produced the famous Thibaud de or the famous Comte Thibaud before Champagne produced their romances.' Thus Thus the the story became aa literary to their romances.' literary genre approximating to genre approximatmg story became the philosophical tale, or else affecting an old-fashioned style, like Mlle Mile like or an old-fashioned else affecting the philosophical tale, style, Lheritier's work: work: 'You 'You must that the the best best stories stories we have have are those are those must admit admit that Lheritier's which the style and simplicity of our nannies.' of nannies.' and our most closely the which imitate imitate most simplicity closely style At the story becoming aa the seventeenth while the At tJ:1e the end end of of the seventeenth century, story was becoming century, while new form recitation of of stories stories was oral recitation the oral of serious serious written written literature, form of literature, the being abandoned by the very people for whom the fashion of the written of the fashion written the for the abandoned very being by people story was intended. Colbert and Mme de to the the stories stories listened to de Sevigne Sevigne listened story was intended. Colbert and as somewhich fact as the fact of stressing and nobody told them them and were told which were stressing the nobody thought thought of thing like reading recreation like the ordinary; it was was aa commonplace out of of the reading ordinary; it commonplace recreation thing out aa detective today. In 1771, however, this was no longer the case, this In detective story case, 1771, however, longer the story today. and stories of the the in good the old, and among adults in old, half-forgotten half-forgotten stories society the good society among adults oral of a curiosity of an archaeological an a of the object oral tradition tradition were sometimes the were sometimes curiosity archaeological object or in folklore interest in folklore and modern interest the modem or ethnological nature foreshadowing foreshadowing the ethnological nature slang. We find the Duchesse de Choiseul writing to Mme du Deffand to de the Duchesse Choiseul find writing slang. all day. that are all all to him all 'is having fairy-stories read that Choiseul Choiseul 'is day. We are having fairy-stories read to reading just as as present-day as probable them now. now. We fwd find them them just present-day history.' history/ reading them probable as This after a a political This was was as as if if one of our our twentieth-century one of statesmen, after political twentieth-century statesmen, defeat, started reading Tintin or Mickey Mouse in his retirement. The in his retirement. started Tintin or defeat, reading Mickey Duchesse and wrote two stories; she adopted she de Choiseul Duchesse de wrote Choiseul was tempted, and stories; adopted tempted, the the beginning tone of of the the philosophical the tone if we judge tale, if by the judge by beginning of Le philosophical tale, I
. . .
*
facing: BUllGOMASTER BURGOMASTER MAYER AND HIS FAMILY facing:
by Holbein by Holbein
.A citeurs aux etteurs, toilette aux A lala toilette, ,
croull': quelque place ,(fez neece, c crmiuequelquc place aflcz ncccc, la fo(fccce, i 10. A beaux oltouf, ioucnc ?t cftcufs joilcnc foflccce, Plus ils sea vont fur J. la gL1cc griller: Plus vonc Cur ilss'cu ghee gcillcr:
,
amres leux.
C{ oc autres icux.
Ou bien (otluenc Ie mannoll(ec ii, b,i(cm, Oubienfouucnclc marrtioufctilsbaifcnr, lit copcnd"nc[Qu, Ie, aucres (0 fe plai(ent lesaucrcs Etccpcndanctous plaifcnc Au ieu Jc CIoce, a~ lieu de {olUmeillcr, Auicudccroccjawlicudcfommcillcr.
V. V.
HISTORY OF GAMBS GAMES AND PASTIMES
9'] 97
"*
Prince sent me to sleep Prince enchant': enchante: '''Sweet Sweet Margot, in my Margot, you you who in my study study sent me to sleep or tell me some with or woke me up with pretty some sublime sublime story up with pretty fairy-tales, fairy-tales, tell story with "nothing which II can can entertain entertain the the company." said Margot, "No," said company." "No," Margot, "nothing sublime. sublime. All All that that men need need is is fairy-stories.'" fairy-stories."' According to another anecdote of a lady in a moment to another anecdote of the the same same period, According period, a lady in a moment of boredom experienced the same curiosity as the Choiseuls. She for the same as the Choiseuls. She rang experienced curiosity rang for her of Pierre de Provence and the fair her maid and asked asked for for the the story of Pierre de and the fair Provence story Maguelonne, today but for be completely Maguelonne, which would be completely forgotten forgotten today but for Brahms's astonished maid had to Brahms's admirable admirable Lieder. Lieder. 'The 'The astonished maid had to be be asked asked three three times order with obvious contempt; however, times over, heard this this strange order with obvious over, and heard strange contempt; however, she she had to to obey; she went down to to the the kitchen kitchen and and came came back back with with the the obey; she pamphlet, scarlet/ pamphlet, blushing blushing scarlet.' There were in especially at Troyes, who in in fact fact certain certain publishers, in the the publishers, especially at Troyes, eighteenth for the rural issued printed editions of of fairy-stories eighteenth century century issued printed editions fairy-stories for the rural public learnt to to read read and and whom they reached by means of of public who had learnt they reached by means hawkers: (known as the Bibliotheque Bleue or hawkers: But these these publications as the Bleue the or the publications (known Bibliotheque 'blue 'blue tales' tales' because because they were printed on blue blue paper) owed nothing the to the they were printed on paper) owed nothing to literary they transcribed, fashion of of the the late late seventeenth seventeenth century; as faithfaithtranscribed, as literary fashion century; they fully permit, the as the the inevitable inevitable evolution of taste evolution of taste would would permit, the old old stories of stories of fully as the the oral oral tradition. tradition. A 1784 of the the Bibliotheque Bleue contains, 1784 publication contains, publication of Bibliotheque Bleue as as well well as as the the story of Pierre Pierre de de Provence Provence and and the fair Maguelonne, the the fair story of Maguelonne, the stories sons, Perrault's tales of Robert Ie stories of le Diable and the the four four Aymon Diable and Perrault's tales and and sons, Aymon those Aulnay. those of of MIle Mile de de la la Force and Mme d' Force and d'Aulnay. the Bibliotheque Bibliotheque Bleue, Bleue, there Apart from from the the books books of of the there were still were still Apart occasional to while the long winter evenings, occasional story-tellers while away and also also story-tellers to away the long winter evenings, and professional the heirs of the reciters, singers and jongleurs of professional story-tellers, story-tellers, the heirs of the reciters, singers and jongleurs of old. the paintings and engravings the seventeenth and eighteenth old. In of the In the and seventeenth and engravings of paintings eighteenth of the early nineteenth century, centuries, and the picturesque lithographs of the nineteenth the picturesque centuries, and early lithographs century, the story-teller story-teller or or charlatan charlatan is is aa popular popular subject. subject.S82! The charlatan charlatan is is shown the perched on on aa platform, platform, telling telling his his story story and and pointing pointing with with aa stick stick to to the the perched text written written on aa big big board board which aa companion companion is is holding holding up up in in the the air air so so text that the the audience audience can can read read while while they they listen. provincial towns towns the the In some provincial listen. In that lower middle-class middle-class had sometimes kept kept this this pastime pastime alive. alive. A memorialist memorialist lower had sometimes tells us us that that at at Troyes, Troyes, towards towards the the end end of the the eighteenth eighteenth century, century, the the men tells of the the town town would would gather gather together, together, in in winter winter in in the the taverns, taverns, in in summer of 'in the the gardens gardens where, where, taking taking off off their their wigs, wigs, they they would put put on their their litde lime 'in 88 This was called a caps'.88 cotterie. 'Each cotterie cotterie had at at least least one one storystoryie. 'Each This was called a cotter caps'. teller on on whom each each person person modelled modelled his his talent/ talent.' The memorialist memorialist recalls recalls teller one of of the the story-tellers, story-tellers, an an old old butcher. butcher. 'Two days days II spent spent with with him him when one I was was aa child child were were given given up up to to stories stories whose charm, charm, effect effect and naivety naivety I D
facing above: above: A GAME OF CHUCKS by by S. S. Leclerc Leclerc facing below: THE CRAFTSMAN AND HIS IDS CHILD by by Lagniet Lagniet . below:
98
THE IDEA IDEA OF OF CHILDHOOD CHILDHOOD THE
could scarcely scarcdy be, be, II will will not not say say rendered, rendered, but but appreciated appreciated by by the the present present could generation. '
generation/ Thus the the old old stories stories which which everyone everyone listened listened to to in in the the time time of of Colbert Colbert Thus
and Mme Mme de de Sevigne S6vignc were were gradually gradually abandoned, abandoned, first first by by the the nobility nobility and and and then by by the the bourgeoisie, bourgeoisie, to to the the children children and and the the country-dwellers. country-dwellers. The The then latter in in their their turn tum abandoned abandoned them them when when the the newspaper newspaper took took the the place place of of latter the Bibliotheque Bibliotheque Bleue; Bleue; the the children children then then the
not for for long, long, for for children's children's reading reading not evolution as as games games and and manners. manners. evolution
became their their last last public, public, but but became is at at present present undergoing undergoing the the same same
is
Tennis used used to to be be one one of of the the most most common games; games; of of all all the the physical physical Tennis games, it was the one which the moralists of the late Middle Ages tolerated tolerated the late Middle of moralists the which one the was it Ages games, with the the least least repugnance: repugnance: it it was was the the most most popular popular game, game, common to to all all with of society, society, to to kings kings and and villeins villeins alike, alike, for for several several centuries. centuries. But ranks of ranks towards the the end end of of the the seventeenth seventeenth century century there there was was aa swift swift decline decline in in the the towards of tennis with the nobility. In Paris in 1657 there were one popularity in there were one Paris In the with of tennis 1657 nobility. popularity hundred and and fourteen fourteen tennis-courts; tennis-courts; in in 1700, in spite spite of of the the growth growth of of the the hundred 1700, in population, their number had fallen to ten; in the nineteenth century there there the nineteenth to in fallen had number their ten; century population, were only only two two left, left, one one in the Rue Mazarine Mazarine and and the the other the terrace terrace other on the in the were 84 of the Tuileries, it was was still to be be found in ipoo. I900. M In seventeenth In the the seventeenth found in still to where it of the Tiiileries, where century, according to Jusserand, the the historian historian of of games pastimes, games and pastimes, century, according to Jusserand, Louis for tennis. tennis. Though enthusiasm for of enthusiasm lack of marked lack shown aa marked had shown XIV had Louis XIV Though the the child child (even the peasant this game, abandoned this adult abandoned the well-bred well-bred adult (even peasant and the game, the the· remained faithful to rounders different forms forms of rounders it in in different to it well-bred child) the well-bred child) remained faithful or or battledore and it lasted in the lasted the Basque and shuttlecock; or pdQta shuttlecock; in country it Basque country pelata or battledore of grand or little until forms or little chistera. chistera. of forms in the the improved revival in its revival until its grand improved late seventeenth seventeenth century by Merian dating from the An the late An engraving century engraving by Merian dating the adults: the shows that has brought together children and adults: children has that a ball ball game us a shows us brought together game 86 80 that time the ball game, ball up in the picture. But at that time the ball at the in blown is being blown ball is game, picture. up being rough in nature, was already suspect to to experts good experts on etiquette etiquette and good rough in nature, was already suspect it. manners. and Shakespeare Thomas Elyot manners. Thomas against it. Shakespeare warned noblemen against Elyot and to it. According to England forbade his to it. du Cange, James I his son to play son forbade I of of According Cange, play England James each player kicks only peasants played it: ball which each a kind kind of ball 'The chole, it: 'The chole, a player kicks only peasants played in the our played by the peasants in our hard in a a game used in is still still used which is and which hard and peasants game played by as late as the ninefor provinces.' A game played in for example, as late as the ninein Brittany A example, Brittany game played provinces/ into the the midst midst of of would throw into teenth 'The lord of the manor would teenth century: century: 'The lord of the from the men different cantons the crowd a ball full of bran which the men from the different cantons the bran which of full ball a the crowd was aa child child [the author When II was would to snatch from one another another ... When from one would try [the author try to snatch a his ventilator 1749] I saw a man break his leg jumping through a ventilator was born in a man break saw I in born was leg jumping through 1749] and courage, to the ball. These games fostered fostered physical but, to get strength and courage, but, physical strength get the ball. These games as I have already said, they were dangerous.' were as I have already said, they dangerous/ . . .
HISTORY HISTORY OF OF GAMES GAMES AND AND PASTIMES PASTIMI-S
,99 ,99
other •'games Many games of like this into the province ofexercise' exercise* were were to to pass Many other pass like this into the province and the children and of of children the lower lower classes. classes. Mall, for instance, of which which Mme Mme de de Mall, for instance, of in aa letter wrote in Sevigne letter of of 1685 to her her son-in-law: 'I have son-in-law: 'I have had had two two Sevign wrote 1685 to of mall mall with with the the players games Les Rochers]. Oh, my dear Count, games of players [at [at Les Rochers]. Oh, my dear Count, of 1I keep of you and the grace and the with which which you hit the the ball. ball. 1 I wish wish keep thinking thinking you grace with you hit 86 All these games of bowls, skittles such a you ~ such a fine alley at Grignan.'88 fine at ted All these of skittles you alley bowls, Grignan.' games and and the bourgeoisie, were and croquet, abandoned by the nobility croquet, abandoned by the nobility and the bourgeoisie, were in the the nineteenth relegated for adults, to the nineteenth century to the the country relegated in century to country for adults, to the nursery for children. for children. nursery The survival hitherto survival among children and and the the lower lower classes classes of of games among children games hitherto to the the whole community common to is responsible for the preis likewise likewise for the community responsible preservation of one of the servation types of amusement in former the most most widespread of in amusement former widespread types times: fancy times: century, novels dress. From the the sixteenth sixteenth to to the the eighteenth fancy dress. eighteenth century, novels full of stories were full girls, princesses as stories of disguise -- boys disguised as as disguise boys disguised girls, princesses as shepherdesses, and so on. Literature reflected a taste which found so on. Literature reflected a taste which found exexshepherdesses, pression at every opportunity provided by the seasonal or occasional at the seasonal or occasional pression every opportunity provided by festivals: Twelfth Night, Shrove festivals: the November November festivals. festivals. For For Night, Shrove Tuesday, Tuesday, the aa long it was customary, especially among women, to wear wear aa mask mask long time it customary, especially among women, to to painted in to go out. The well-born well-born were fond fond of of having their portraits go out. having their portraits painted in their costumes. After the eighteenth century, their favourite favourite fancy-dress costumes. After the fancy-dress eighteenth century, fancyfancydress festivals became rarer rarer and discreet in society; the dress festivals and more discreet in good the good society; carnival became became aa lower-class lower-class amusement amusement and and even even crossed the seas seas to to carnival crossed the America. Today, Today, with with few few exceptions, children are the only ones who put America. children are the exceptions, only ones put masks at at carnival carnival time time and and dress dress up up for for fun. fun. on masks
* * * In every every case case the the same same evolution evolution takes takes place place with with repetitious repetitious monotony. monotony. In At first first the the same games games were common to to all all ages ages and and all all classes. classes. The The phenomenon which needs to be emphasized is the abandonment of these needs to be emphasized is the abandonment of these phenomenon games by by the the adults adults of ofthe the upper upper classes classes and and their their survival survival among among both both the the games lower classes classes and and the the children children of ofthe the upper upper classes. classes. It It isis true true that that in in England England lower the upper upper classes classes have have not not abandoned abandoned the the old old games games as as they they have have in in the France, but but they they have have completely completely transformed transformed them, them. and and itit isis in in ununFrance, recognizable modern modem forms forms that that the the games games have have been been adopted adopted by by the the recognizable middle-class middle-class sportsman. sportsman. It isis important important to to note note that that the the old old community community of ofgames games was was destroyed destroyed It at one one and and the the same same time time between between children children and and adults, adults, between between lower lower at class and and middle middle class. class. This This coincidence coincidence enables enables us us to to glimpse glimpse already already aa class connection between between the the idea idea of ofchildhood childhood and and the the idea idea of ofclass. class. connection
v FROM IMMODESTY TO INNOCENCE
O ONE
NE of of the the unwritten unwritten laws laws of of contemporary contemporary morality, morality, the the strictest and best respected of all, requires adults to avoid any strictest and best respected of all, requires adults to avoid any reference, above above all all any any humorous humorous reference, reference, to to sexual sexual matters matters reference, in the the presence presence of of children. children. This This notion notion was was entirely entirdy foreign foreign to to the the in society of old. The modem reader of the diary in which Henri IV's IV's in Henri modern reader of the which of old. The diary society physician, Heroard, recorded the details of the young Louis XIII's life physician, Heroard, recorded the details of the young Louis Kill's life is astonished astonished by by the the liberties liberties which which people people took took with with children, children, by by the the is the jokes jokes they they made, made, and and by by the the indecency indecency of of gestures gestures made coarseness of coarseness of the in public public which which shocked shocked nobody nobody and and which which were were regarded regarded as as perfectly perfectly in natural.1 No other other document document can can give give us us aa better better idea idea of of the the non-existence non-existence natural. of modem idea idea of at the beginning of the seventeenth seventeenth of the of the the modern the beginning of childhood childhood at
century. century. Louis XIII XIII was not yet yet one laughed uproariously was not Louis one year old: 'He 'He laughed year old: uproariously when his nanny waggled waggled his his cock her fingers.' An amusing trick which which the the his nanny cock with with her amusing trick fingers.' 'he shouted "Hey, there!" and pulled child Calling a page, and child soon a 'he there!" soon copied. shouted pulled "Hey, copied. Calling page, up robe, showing his cock.' his robe, him his cock/ up his showing him notes Heroard, 'he He was was one 'he made one year 'In high old: 'In year old: high spirits,' spirits,' notes Heroard, everybody all. Similarly his cock.' This amused them all. kiss his cock.' This amused them Similarly everyone everyone everybody kiss considered two visitors, and de Bonieres Bonieres and his behaviour a certain considered his behaviour towards certain de towards two visitors, a his highly amusing: 'He laughed at him, lifted up his robe his daughter, daughter, highly amusing: 'He laughed at him, lifted up his robe and for then, to his his daughter, and showed his cock, even more showed him him his but even more so so to then, cock, but daughter, for his little laugh, he shook the whole of his holding it and giving his body of the whole and his shook it he little body holding giving laugh, up to child took took care care to and down.' this so the child down.' They that the so funny up and They thought funny that thought this repeat a gesture which had been such a success; in the presence of a 'little a of 'little in the a had such a which been success; presence repeat gesture lady', 'he lifted up his coat, and showed her his cock with such fervour lady', 'he lifted up his coat, and showed her his cock with such fervour that to show it to her.' it to her.' back to his back he was that he on his was quite beside himsel£ himself. He lay lay on quite beside the When he over a year old he was engaged to the Infanta of Infanta to he was a he was was just old over engaged just year Spain; to him what this and he underunderthis meant, his attendants attendants explained to what meant, Spain; his explained stood well. 'They asked him: "Where is Infanta's is the the Infanta's stood them them fairly fairly well. 'They asked him: darling?" hand on his his hand his cock.' cock.' darling?" He put put his During or saw his first reluctance or first three three years any rductance years nobody During his nobody showed any any harm in jokingly touching the child's sexual parts. 'The Marquise sexual 'The in child's the any parts. Marquise jokingly touching [de his nanny his coat; he got to lay often put her hand hand under under his coat; he lay [de Vemeuil] got his nanny to Verneuil] often put her his with him, putting her hand under his him on her her bed bed where she her under she played with him, putting played 100
FROM IMMODESTY^ IMMODESTY~ TO '1'0 INNOCENCE INNOCENCE FROM
,101 IOI
,
'Mme de de Verncuil Verneuil wanted wanted to to play play with with him him and and took took hold hold of of 'Mme his nipples; he pushed her away, saying: "Let go, let go, go away." his nipples; he pushed her away, saying: "Let go, let go, go away." his nipples, nipples, because because his his nanny nanny He would would not not allow allow the the Marquise Marquise to to touch touch his He him: "Monsieur, "Monsieur, never never let let anybody anybody touch touch your your nipples, nipples, or or had told told him: had your cock, or they will cut it off." remembered this.' Again: 'When your cock, or they will cut it off." He remembered this.' Again: When he got got up, up, he he would would not not take take his his shirt shirt and and said said: "Not "Not my my shirt, shirt, II want want to to he all some milk from my cock." held out our hands, and he give you he held out our and cock." We all some milk from hands, my give you pretended to give us all some milk, saying: "Pss, pss," and only then pretended to give us all some milk, saying: "Pss, pss," and only then agreeing to take his shirt.' agreeing to take his shirt/ was aa common joke, joke, repeated repeated time time and and again, again, to to say say to to him: him: It was It "'he replied: replied: "Hey, "Hey, here hereit is!" 'Monsieur, you you haven't haven't got got aa cock/ cock.' Then Then 'he it is! 'Monsieur, fOlger.' These jokes were not limited laughing and lifting it up with one were not These limited one with it and jokes finger/ lifting up laughing or to to women of of easy easy virtue virtue such such to the the servants, servants, or or to to brainless brainless youths, youths, or to as the the King's King's mistress. mistress. The The Queen, Queen, his his mother, mother, made the the same same sort sort of of as joke: 'The Queen, touching his cock, said: "Son, I holding your am I said: his 'The "Son, cock, your holding Queen, touching joke: is this this passage: passage: 'He 'He was was undressed undressed and and spout.''' Even more astonishing is spout."' Even more astonishing sister], and they were placed naked in bed with the Madame too too [his in with the naked bed were and Madame placed they [his sister], kissed and twittered and gave great amusement to the King, where they the to amusement and and twittered kissed where gave great they King, asked him: "Son, where is the Infanta's bundle?" King. The King He the Infanta's bundle?" is where him: asked The "Son, King King. is no bone in it, Papa." Then, as it was showed it to "There as it in is bone "There to him, showed it Then, it, him, saying: Papa." saying: slightly distended, he he added: added: "There is now, now, there is sometimes.'" sometimes/" there is "There is slightly distended, to see up The first erections: erections: 'Waking see his his first in fact, was amused, Court was The Court fact, to amused, in 'Waking up at o'clock, he called MIle Bethouzay and said to her: "Zezai, my to her: said and Mile he called "Zezai, at eight o'clock, my Bethouzay eight it goes cock he raised raised and down." down." And he see how it like a a drawbridge; is like cock is up and goes up drawbridge; see it it/ lowered it.' and lowered it and of four, By the age to the the Queen's 'he was taken to was taken of the four, 'he Queen's apartments, apartments, where age By bed and said to him: "Monsieur, Mme de said to bed the Queen's him the showed him "Monsieur, de Guise Guise showed Queen's asked were made." He replied: "With Mamma?'" 'He asked this Mamma?" made." were is where where you this is replied: you ' h b d "Wh . tha?" "Th" th I ". hi "is the s nanny s us an : at 1S t. at, came e rep y, IS one is that?" "What husband: his "That," reply, nanny's of silk stockings." "And those? " [after the manner of parlour-game the those?" silk of my parlour-game [after stockings." my of?" are they questions] "Those are breeches." "What are are my they made on" my breeches." questions] "Those is inside?" inside?" "Velvet." "What is "I "I a cod-piece." is a "That is that?" "That "And that?" "Velvet." "And cod-piece." don't is it it for?" for?" don't Monsieur." "Why, a cock. Who is "I don't know, a cock. know, Monsieur." don't know, know, "Why, Monsieur." for Madame Doundoun [his Monsieur." "Why, nanny]/" [his nanny].''' "Why, for a very de 'He stood between the legs of Mme de Montglat of the 'He stood between very governess, a Montglat [his [his governess, legs did not seem to be dignified, highly respectable woman, who however did woman, dignified, highly respectable all these these jokes put out -- any more than Heroard was -- by jokes which we by all put out any more than Heroard at Madame "Look said: would consider insufferable today]. The King said: "Look at insufferable would consider King today]. birth." she has just given birth." He went straight de Montglat's son: she has de Montglat's son: away straight away just given and stood between the Queen's legs.' and stood between the Queen's legs/ coat.' coat/
*
:
'
102 IO2
THE THE IDEA IDEA Of OF CHILDHOOD CHILDHOOD
When he talking about his he was was between between five five and and six, six, people people stopped stopped talking about his sexual while he started talking more about other people's. Mlle sexual parts, parts, while he started talking more about other people's. Mile up late the night Mercier, one of of his his chambermaids chambermaids who had had stayed Mercier, one stayed up late the night next to his bed (his servants, who before, was still still in in bed bed one one morning, next to his bed before, was morning, (his servants, who were in his bedroom and do not appear to were sometimes sometimes married, married, slept slept in his bedroom and do not appear to 'He played with her, have have allowed allowed his his presence to embarrass embarrass them). presence to them). 'He played with her, of her legs, and told his nanny to toyed with her her toes and the the upper toes and of her toyed with upper part part legs, and told his nanny to go and get some birch birch twigs so that he could that he could beat beat her, which he did ... he did her, which go and get some twigs so His seen of Mercier's?" He replied asked him: His nanny him: "What have have you seen of Mercier 's?" He nanny asked you replied calmly: "I have have seen seen her her arse." arse." "what "What else else have have you seen?" He He replied calmly: "I you seen?" replied On another calmly and without without laughing he had that he had seen seen her her private.' another calmly and laughing that private.' occasion, 'after playing with Mlle Mile Mercier, he called called me [Heroard] and occasion, 'after Mercier, he playing with [Heroard] and as big as that (showing told told me that that Mercier Mercier had had a a private as as that his two two private big (showing me his fists) and and that that there there was was water water inside.' inside.' fists) After After 1608 this kind kind of 1608 this ofjoke he had had become become aa little little man man -joke disappeared: disappeared: he - and of seven at this age he had to be taught attaining the fateful fateful age of seven and at this he had to be attaining the age age taught was asked decency he was in language and behaviour. behaviour. When he asked how children children decency in language and were born, born, he Agnes, 'through he would reply, like Moliere's Moli&re's Agns, the ear'. ear'. reply, like 'through the scolded him when he 'showed his cock to the little Mme de de Montglat him scolded he 'showed his cock to the little Montgkt he awoke in the morning, he was still put Ventelet girl'. if, And Ventelet when he in the he was still if, girl*. morning, put in Montglat's bed bed between between her her and husband, Heroard waxed in Mme de de Montglat's and her her husband, Heroard waxed of his his diary: diary: insignis insignis impudentia. impudentia. The The indignant and noted noted in in the the margin margin of indignant and of ten was forced to behave with a modesty which nobody had boy of ten was to behave forced a with which boy modesty nobody had thoug~t of expecting of the boy of five. Education scarcely began before of of the of five. Education before thought expecting boy scarcely began of seven; seven; moreover, moreover, these these tardy tardy scruples scruples of of decency decency are are to to be be the age age of the of aa reformation reformation of of manners, manners, aa sign sign of, of the the attributed to to the the beginnings beginnings of attributed religious and and moral moral restoration restoration which which took took place place in in the the seventeenth seventeenth religious It was as if education was held to be of no value before the the century. It was as if education was held to of no be value before century. of of approach manhood. approach was fourteen, fourteen, however, however, Louis Louis XIII XIII had had nothing nothing more more By the the time time he he was By of fourteen fourteen years years two two months months that that he he was was to learn, learn, for for it it was was at at the the age age of to put almost by force into his wife's bed. After the ceremony he 'retired almost his force into wife's bed. After the he 'retired put by ceremony in bed bed at at aa quarter quarter to to seven. seven. M. de de Gramont Gramont and and aa few few and had had supper supper in and lords told asked for young lords told broad stories to encourage him. him some to broad stories him. He asked for young encourage his his slippers slippers and and put put on his his robe robe and and went went to to the the Queen's Queen's bedchamber bedchamber at at where he was put to bed beside the Queen his wife, in the eight o'clock, where he was the to beside bed his in o'clock, the Queen wife, eight put of the the Queen Queen his his mother; mother; at at aa quarter quarter past past ten ten he he returned returned after after presence of presence for an sleeping for about an hour and performing twice, according to what he about hour and to what he twice, sleeping performing according told he arrived arrived with with his his cock cock all all red.' red.' told us; us; he The of aa boy boy of of fourteen fourteen was was perhaps perhaps becoming becoming something something The marriage marriage of . . .
PROM IMMODESTY TO INNOCENCE IMMODEST? .TO
. 103 103 ,
of rare occurrence. marriage of girl of was still a rare of a occurrence. The The marriage of a a girl of thirteen thirteen was still very very common. common. is no no reason to believe that the moral climate was any There There is reason to believe that the moral climate was different any diJferent in whether of of nobles nobles or practice of in other other families, or commoners; the practice of families, whether commoners; the associating children with the sexual ribaldries of adults formed part of associating children with the sexual ribaldries of adults formed part of contemporary manners. In Pascal's family, Jacqueline Pascal at die the age In Pascal's Pascal at family, Jacqueline contemporary manners. age of was writing a poem about the Queen's pregnancy. a twelve was about the of twelve Queen's writing poem pregnancy. his memoirs of life a medical medical student the end Thomas Platter, Platter, in in his life as as a Thomas student at memoirs of at the end of century, writes: played this this the sixteenth a child sixteenth century, met a child who played of the 'I once once met writes: 'I trick a girl's aiguillette when she married, so that her husband a she so trick [knotting that her husband when married, [knotting girl's aiguillette became on his parents' maidservant. She begged him to break became impotent] impotent] on his parents' maidservant. She begged him to break the spell by undoing the aiguillette. agreed and the bridegroom, the spell by undoing the aiguillette. He agreed and the bridegroom, recovering his potency, was immediately cured.' Pere de cured.' his Pre de Dainville, was the Dainville, the immediately recovering potency, historim of of the of Jesus and of humanist pedagogics, also writes: and of humanist the Society of also historian writes: Society pedagogics, Jesus 'The respect due children was was then then [in the sixteenth century] completely due to to children 'The respect [in the sixteenth century] completely unknown. was permitted permitted in their presence: presence: coarse in their coarse language, unknown. Everything Everything was language, scabrous had heard everything had heard and seen and situations; seen scabrous actions actions and situations; they they everything and everything.'J everything.'* This lack with regard to children us: raise our children surprises of reserve reserve with This lack of surprises us: we raise our regard to eyebrows at the outspoken talk. but even at the bold gestures, the at but even more the bold talk the at gestures, the outspoken eyebrows physical contacts, about which it to imagine what a modem is easy to it is a about what which modern contacts, easy imagine physical psycho-analyst would say. The psycho-analyst psycho-analyst would would be be wrong. wrong. The The psycho-analyst would say. attitude to sex, itself, varies according to environment, varies according to environment, and doubtless doubtless sex sex itself, attitude to sex, and and to period period and Nowadays the and mentality. the and consequently mentality. Nowadays according to consequently according physical contacts described by Heroard would strike us as bordering on Heroard strike us as would described contacts by bordering on physical sexual perversion and nobody would would dare to indulge in them publicly. in dare to and nobody them sexual perversion indulge publicly. This was not not the the case beginning of the seventeenth of the seventeenth century. at the the beginning There case at This was century. There is of ISII depicting a holy family: St Anne's behaviour a St Anne's behaviour of is an an engraving 1511 depicting holy family: engraving strikes us as is pushing the child's thighs she is as if if odd -- she as extremely strikes us pushing the child's thighs apart apart as extremely odd she wanted to to get at its privy parts and tickle them. It be a mistake and would be a tickle them. It mistake its at she wanted privy parts get to see this as ribaldry.33 of ribaldry. as a a piece to see this piece of The practice practice of playing with with children's children's privy privy parts parts formed part a of playing part of a in widespread tradition, which is still operative in Moslem circles. These still circles. is These which operative widespread tradition, have remained aloof aloof not not only progress but but also also from the scientific progress the from scientific have remained only from later which great moral reformation, at first Christian, later secular, disciplined first at moral Christian, secular, reformation, disciplined great eighteenth-century and particularly nineteendi-century society in eighteenth-century and particularly nineteenth-century society in find features England and France. in Moslem society features which strike strike Thus in France. Thus society we fmd England and us as peculiar but but which the worthy worthy Heroard would not not have have found so so us as peculiar which the a novel entitled surprising. Witness this passage from a novel entitled The Statue of Salt. Statue from Salt. this Witness of passage surprising. is a a curious The author author is Tunisian Jew, his book is curious Albert Memmi, and his is a a Tunisian Jew, Albert
104 104
THE THE IDEA IDEA OF OF CHILDHOOD CHILDHOOD
document and the mentality of the young document on on traditional traditional Tunisian Tunisian society society and the mentality of the young people who are are semi-Westernized. semi-Westernized. The The hero hero of of the the novel novel is is describing a people who describing a scene scene in in the the tram tram taking him to to school school in in Tunis: Tunis: taking him 'In little boy with 'In front front of of me were were aa Moslem and his Moslem and his son, a tiny son, a tiny little boy with aa miniature miniature tarboosh tarboosh and and henna henna on on his his hands; on my left a a Djerban hands; on my left Djerban grocer to market, with a basket between his legs and a his way to with a basket between his market, grocer on his way legs and a pencil affected by the warmth and behind his his ear. The Djerban, ear. The affected the warmth and pencil behind Djerban, by peace inside the the tram, stirred in in his his seat. seat. He smiled smiled at at the the child, who tram, stirred peace inside child, who smiled smiled back back with with his his eyes and looked looked at at his his father. father. The The father, father, grateful eyes and grateful and flattered, "How old reassured him and and smiled smiled at at the the Djerban. old flattered, reassured Djerban. are the grocer asked the child. "Two and a half," replied the are you?" the asked the child. and a half," you?*' grocer replied the father. your tongue?" the grocer asked the child. father. "Has the the cat cat got the asked the child. got your tongue?" grocer "No," but he the father, "he hasn't hasn't been been circumcised circumcised yet, "No," replied father, "he replied the yet, but he will He had found something to be soon." will be soon." "Ah!" said said the the grocer. had found grocer. something to talk sell me your little animal?" talk about about to to the the child. child. "Will "Will you sell little animal?" you your "No!" said said the the child child angrily. knew what what the the grocer angrily. He obviously obviously knew grocer meant, been made to him. II too the same same offer offer had had already been made to him. too [the meant, and the already [the Jewish in it in familiar with this scene. with this scene. II had had taken taken part Jewish child] child] was familiar part in it in my time, by other people, with with the of shame other people, the same same feelings time, provoked my provoked by feelings of shame and desire, desire, revulsion revulsion and complicity. The child's eyes and inquisitive The child's inquisitive complicity. eyes shone with the the pleasure pleasure of incipient virility virility [a modem feeling, shone with of incipient modern [a feeling, attributed to die the child child by by the the educated educated Memmi who is is aware aware of of recent recent attributed to discoveries discoveries as as to to early early sexual sexual awakening awakening in in children; children; in in former former times times believed people believed that before puberty children had no sexual feelings] that before children had no sexual people puberty feelings] and also revulsion revulsion at at this this monstrous monstrous provocation. provocation. He looked looked at at his his and also father. father. His His father father smiled: smiled: itit was was aa permissible permissible game game [our [our italics]. italics]. Our Our neighbours watched watched the the traditional traditional scene scene with with complaisant complaisant approval. approval. neighbours "I'll "I'll give give you you ten ten francs francs for for it," it," said said the the Djerban. Djerban. "No," "No," said said the the child. child. "Come now, now, sell sell me your your little... little ... "" the the Djerban Djerban went went on. on. "No! No!" "I'll "I'll give give you you fifty fifty francs francs for for it." it." "No!" "No!" "I'll "I'll go go as as "No! as II can: a high as can: a thousand francs!" "No!" The Djerban assumed an thousand francs!" "No!" The assumed an high Djerban expression of ofgreediness. greediness. "And "And I'll I'll throw throw in in aa bag bag of ofsweets sweets as as well! well! "" expression " No! No!" No!" "You " You still still say say no? no? That's That's your your last last word?" word?" the the Djerban Djerban "No! shouted, pretending to be angry. "You still say no?" he repeated. to be "You still no?" he shouted, pretending angry. say repeated. "No!" "No!" Thereupon Thereupon the the grown-up grown-up threw threw himself himself upon upon the the child, child, aa terrible terrible expression expression on on his his face, face, his his hand hand brutally brutally rummaging rummaging inside inside the the child's child's fly. fly. The The child child tried tried to to fight fight him him off off with with his his fists. fists. The The father father roared roared with with laughter, laughter, the the Djerban Djerban was was convulsed convulsed with with amuseamusement, while while our our neighbours neighbours smiled smiled broadly.' broadly.' ment,
FROM IMMODESTY IMMODESTY TO TO INNOCENCE INNOCENCE FROM
,
. IO5 lOS
This twentieth-century twentieth-century scene scene surely surely enables enables us us to to understand understand better better the the This seventeenth century century before before the the moral moral reformation. reformation. We should should avoid avoid seventeenth anachronisms, such such as as the the explanation explanation by by Mme de de Sevign^'s Sevigne's latest latest editor editor anachronisms,
We
Mme
that the the baroque baroque excesses excesses of ofher her mother mother love love were were due due to to incest. incest. All All that that that was involved involved was was aa game game whose whose scabrous scabrous nature nature we we should should beware beware of of was exaggerating: there was nothing more scabrous about it than there is is there than it scabrous about was there more nothing exaggerating: about the the racy racy stories stories men men tell tell each each other other nowadays. nowadays. about
This semi-innocence, semi-innocence, which which strikes strikes us us as as corrupt corrupt or or naive, naive, explains explains the the This popularity of the theme of the urinating child as from the fifteenth the fifteenth from as child the of theme the of urinating popularity century. The theme is treated in the illustrations of of books books of of hours hours and and century. The theme is treated in the illustrations in church church pictures. pictures. In In the the calendars calendars in in the the Hennessy Hennessy book book of of hours hours44 and and in the Grimani Grimani breviary, breviary,55 dating dating from from the the early early sixteenth sixteenth century, century, aa winter winter the month isis represented represented by by the the snow-covered snow-covered village; village; the the door door of of one one month house isis open, open, and and the the woman of of the the house house can can be be seen seen spinning, spinning, the the man house warming himself by the fire; the child is in full view, urinating on to to the the warming himself by the fire; the child is in full view, urinating snow in in front front of of the the door. door. snow Flemish''Ecce Ecce homo' homo' by by P. P. Pietersz, Pietersz,66 doubtless doubtless intended intended for for aa church, church, A Flemish shows quite aa few children in in the the crowd crowd of of onlookers: onlookers: one one mother is is few children shows quite have a that he can holding her child above the heads of the so that can a so crowd of the the heads above child her holding the doorposts. better view. view. Some quick-witted boys boys are doorposts. A are shinning Some quick-witted better up the shinning up the child urinating, held mother. The magistrates his mother. held by seen urinating, be seen can be child can magistrates of the by his in their their in the High Court of Toulouse, when they heard in the chapel heard Mass in of Court Toulouse, chapel they High distracted by own could have attention distracted their attention have had their of Justice, Palace of own Palace by aa Justice, could the story similar them aa great before them had before scene. They story similar scene. depicting the triptych depicting great triptych They had 7 On the of the Baptist. centre volet was shown preaching. the Baptist volet the centre the the ofJohn preaching. Baptist Baptist. John There in the the crowd; child; children in were children There were crowd; aa woman was suckling suckling her child; the magistrates, there up a tree; a little away, facing the a a little way a was aa boy tree; there was magistrates, facing away, way boy up child up his robe and urinating. and robe his was holding child was urinating. holding up in crowd scenes, The with which one children in finds children one fmds scenes, and the The frequency frequency with which child repetition of certain themes (the child being breast-fed, the child child breast-fed, themes certain of being (the repetition clear are clear sixteenth urinating) in the fifteenth the sixteenth century, are the and especially fifteenth and in the century, especially urinating) of a new and special interest. signs interest. and a new of special signs ofreligious scene of one scene It time one this time at this that at too that is noteworthy iconography It is religious iconography noteworthy too in almost almost is depicted in scene is This scene recurs the Circumcision. This Circumcision. the depicted recurs frequently: frequently: in the the of the the Virgin Presentation of the Presentation surgical detail. in in that the fact that in fact seems It seems detail. It Virgin surgical and sevensevensixteenth and in the the sixteenth treated in Temple and the Circumcision were were treated Circumcision the and Temple of festivals of the only teenth childhood: the of childhood: festivals of as festivals centuries as teenth centuries religious festivals only religious In the the Communion. In. First Communion. of the the First childhood celebration of solemn celebration the solemn before the childhood before see an an early can see parish church of Saint-Nicolas we we can seventeenth-century early seventeenth-century parish church of Saint-Nicolas of painting which comes from the of Saint-Martin-des-Champs. the Abbey from comes which Saint-Martin-des-Champs. Abbey painting
106 IO6
THE THE IDEA IDEA OF OF CHILDHOOD CHILDHOOD
The scene of the the Circumcision scene of Circumcision is is surrounded surrounded by crowd of of children, children, by aa crowd some others climbing the pillars to of them with some of with their their parents, others the parents, climbing pillars to get a better view. For us, surely, there is something strange, almost a better view. For there is almost us, get surely, something strange, shocking, about the the choice of the the Circumcision choice of Circumcision as as a a festival festival of of childhood, childhood, shocking, about depicted in the midst of children. Shocking for us, perhaps, in the midst of children. for for but not not for us, perhaps, but depicted Shocking aa present-day Moslem or for a man of the sixteenth or early seventeenth or for a of the sixteenth or seventeenth present-day early century. century. Not only admittedly of were children children associated associated with with an an operation, only were operation, admittedly of aa religious nature, on the male sexual organ, but gestures and physical the male sexual but nature, religious organ, gestures and physical contacts and publicly allowed which were forbidden as contacts were were freely and allowed which were forbidden as soon soon freely publicly as of puberty, or in other words was practically as the the child child reached the age reached the of or in other words was age puberty, practically adult. child under adult. There There were were two reasons reasons for for this. In the this. In the first first place the place the child under the the age of puberty was believed believed to to be be unaware unaware of of or or indifferent to sex. indifferent to sex. age of puberty was Thus gestures and allusions had no meaning for him; they became purely and allusions had for became him; they gestures meaning purely gratuitous Secondly, the idea did not and lost lost their their sexual sexual significance. gratuitous and significance. Secondly, the idea did not yet devoid of that references exist that references to to sexual sexual matters, even when virtually matters, even yet exist virtually devoid of dubious meanings, could either in fact or dubious meanings, could soil soil childish childish innocence, either in fact or in the in the innocence, opinion people had of it: this innocence really existed. had of it: nobody thought that that this innocence existed. opinion people nobody thought really
* * * Such Such
at least was was the the general general opinion: opinion: it it was was no no longer longer that that of the of the and pedagogues, pedagogues, or or at at least least of of the the better better ones, innovators and innovators who ones, found little little support support for for their their ideas. ideas. Their Their retrospective retrospective importance importance is is due due found to the the fact fact that that in in the the long long run run they they managed managed to to win win acceptance acceptance for for their their to ideas -- which which are are ours ours too. too. ideas This current current of of ideas ideas can can be be traced traced back back to to the the iiffceenth. ~ century, century, aa This period it was strong enough to bring about a change in the the was when it to a about period strong enough bring change in traditional discipline discipline of of the the schools. schoo1s.88 Qerson (k.r!.~ was was then then its its principal principal traditional his ideas ideas on on the the question question with with great great clarity, clarity, representative. He expressed expressed his representative. showing himself to be an excellent observer, for his period, of childhood an himself to be excellent for his of childhood observer, showing period, and and its its sexual sexual practices. practices. This This study study of of the the sexual sexual manners manners of of childhood, childhood, and the the importance importance which which he he attributed attributed to to them them by by devoting devoting aa treatise treatise to to and them, De confessione eonJessione mollicei, mollieei,1/9 reveal reveal aa novel novel attitude: attitude: this this attitude attitude can can be be them, compared to to the the indications indications we have have already already noted noted in in iconography iconography and and compared dress dress as as showing showing aa new interest interest in in childhood. childhood. Gerson Gerson studies studies the the sexual sexual behaviour behaviour of of children children for for the the benefit benefit of of confessors, to to help help the the latter latter to to arouse arouse aa feeling feeling of of guilt guilt in in the the hearts hearts of of confessors, their their little little penitents penitents (between (between ten ten and and twelve twelve years years of of age). age). He knows knows that that masturbation masturbation and and erection erection without without ejaculation ejaculation are are general general practices: practices: at least
moralists moralists
PROM IMMODESTY TO INNOCENCE FROM
,
107 IO7
if denies all masturbation then if someone someone is questioned and denies all experience of questioned and experience of masturbation then is
is lying. lying. For For Gerson, very serious serious matter. peccatum mollied, this is is a a very matter. The Gerson, this Thepeccaturn mollicei, 'even because of the child's age, it not been been accompanied by 'even if, of the child's age, has not it has if, because accompanied by pollution taken away away the the child's virginity even than if ... has has taken child's virginity even more the more than if the pollution ... child, at the the same had gone with a woman'. What is more, it borders same age, child, at age, had gone with a woman'. What is more, it borders on sodomy. Gerson's judgment is is closer modern teaching, teaching, which which on sodomy. Gerson's judgment closer to to modern regards masturbation masturbation as as an inevitable stage of premature sexuality, than an inevitable of regards stage premature sexuality, than are sarcastic remarks novelist Sorel, sees it it as the result result of of are the the sarcastic remarks of of the the novelist as the Sorel, who sees the boarding-school. the scholastic scholastic confinement confinement of of the the boarding-school. The child, to Gerson, not feel feel any sense of of guilt to does not child, according Gerson, does according to any sense guilt to begin with: with: 'Sentiunt ibi quemdam quemdam pruritum pruritum incognitum tum stat ereetio and Sentiunt ibi turn and stat erectio begin incognitum it is that se ibi et se palpent et se traetent they think think that that it is permissible that se {deent fricent ibi et se palpent et se tractent they permissible sicut aliis lods dum pruritus pruritus inest* inest.' This consequence of of original in aliis sicut in locis dum a consequence This is is a original ex corruptione naturae. are still long way from the corruption: a ex naturae. We are still a from the idea idea conuptione corruption: long way of childish innocence, innocence, but but we are are already quite close to an objective of childish an close to already quite objective of the child's behaviour, the originality of which is obvious kMwledge of the child's behaviour, the knowledge originality of which is obvious of what has been said above. is childhood to be safein the the light in light of what has been said above. How is childhood to be safeby guarded against this danger? By the confessor's advice, but also the this confessor's also by advice, but danger? By guarded against changing the way in which children are brought up, by behaving differin are the which children differway changing brought up, by behaving ently towards them. One should to them, them, using using only should speak decently to speak decently ently towards them. only chaste expressions. One should that when playing playing together they do see that should see do chaste expressions. together they kiss each each other, touch each other with Witll their their bare bare hands, look at not kiss each other or look at not hands, or other, touch each figerent oculi oculi in eorum decore. decore. One should guard against any in eorum should guard other figerent each other: against any promiscuity between children and adults, at least in bed: puer; capaces doli, promiscuity between children and adults, at least in bed: pueri capaces dolt, puellae, juvenes should not not sleep the same bed as as older people, even in the same bed older people, even of of sleep in puellae> juvenes should the the same same bed was aa widespread practice in the bed was cohabitation in same sex; the same sex; cohabitation widespread practice then in all all classes society. We have have seen that it it still still existed seen that existed at of society. at the the end end classes of then in of even at the French court: Henri IV's frolics with the French even at court: Henri IV's frolics with of the the sixteenth sixteenth century, century, his son, Louis XIII, brought to to his his bed bed together together with with his his sister, justified his sister, justified XIII, brought son, Louis Qt.<~' s prudence prudence of nearly two hundred hundred years years before. before. Gerson G~rson forbids forbids of nearly Gerson's people to touch each other in nudo, and warns his readers to beware 'a in nudo, warns his other readersf to beware 'a each touch to people sodetaliatibus perversis ubi colloquia prava prava et et gestus gestus impudid fiunt in Iecto in lecto ubi colloquia societaliatibus perversis impudid fiunt absque dormitione'. dormitione absque Gerson returns to the topic topic in in aa sermon against lechery for for the the fourth fourth to the Gerson returns against lechery others Sunday of Advent: the child must prevent others from touching or him the child must or of Advent: prevent touching Sunday kissing him, and if he has failed to do so, he must report this in every failed to must this in has if he and so, him, report every kissing needs to demand needs instance in to be be emphasized, in confession confession (this instance because, (this emphasized, because, generally speaking, people saw no harm in in caresses). Later on, on, he he suggests caresses). Later suggests generally speaking, people - he to separate that it 'would be be aa good good thing' thing' to children at night children at recalls that it 'would separate night he recalls boy of nine who begot begot aa child child -- but he the case cited by by St Jerome of but he St Jerome of a a boy the case cited he he
is
'
:
9
.
108 IO8
THE IDEA IDEA OP OP CHILDHOOD CHILDHOOD THE
does not not dare dare to to say more more than than 'it 'it would would be be aa good good thing', thing', for for itit was was aa does say general practice to to put put all all the the children children of of aa family family together together when when they they general practice
were not not sleeping sleeping with with aa valet, valet, aa maidservant maidservant or or relatives. relatives.10 were In the the regulations regulations which which he he drew drew up up for for the the school school of ofNotre-Dame-deNotre-Dame-deIn 10
he tries tries to to isolate isolate the the children, children, to to keep keep them them under under the the constant constant he supervision of the master: this is the spirit of the new discipline which we we of the new is the which this master: of the spirit discipline supervision l1 The shall study study in in aa later later chapter. chapter.11 The singing singing master master must must not not teach teach shall cantiienas dissolutas dissolutas impudicasque, impudicasque, and and the the boys boys must must report report any any of of their their cantilenas classmates who who isis guilty guilty of of misbehaviour misbehaviour or or immodesty immodesty (punishable (punishable mismisclassmates demeanours include include speaking spealcinggallicum instead of Latin swearing, lying, of instead Latin demeanours swearing, lying, gallicum cursing, dawdling in in bed, bed, missing missing the the Hours, Hours, and and chattering chattering in in church). church). cursing, dawdling night-light must must be be kept kept burning burning in in the the dormitory: dormitory: 'as 'as much out out of of A night-light devotion to to the the image image of of Our Our Lady Lady as as for for the the natural natural functions, functions, and and so so devotion that they they perform perform in in the the light light the the only only acts acts which which can can and and must must be be seen*. seen'. that child may may change change beds beds during during the the night: night: he he must must stay stay with with the the comNo child panion he has been given. Conventicula, vel vel sodetates societates ad ad partem partem extra extra alias alias panion he has been given. Conventicula, are not allowed allowed either either by by day day or or night. night. Every Every care care is is taken, taken, in to in fact, fact, to are not of the that avoid special friendships and dangerous company, especially that of the and avoid special friendships dangerous company, especially servants: must be be forbidden forbidden to to engage engage in any familiarity in any servants must 'The servants servants: 'The familiarity capellani, the church with not excepting the clerks, the the church staff staff the the not clerks, the children, with the children, capellani excepting [there is certain absence they must not speak to the the to must not trust here]: of trust absence of a certain is a speak here] they [there children except when the Masters are present.' Children not on the the not Children are Masters the when children except present/ foundation are not to be allowed to mix with the schoolboys, even to to with the to be allowed to not are foundation schoolboys, 'so study w~th them (except by special permission of the Superior), 'so the them with Superior), (except by special permission study that the example others habits from the bad habits contract bad do not not contract children do our children that our example of others'. life in the This is all quite new: it must not be imagined that life in the school was that school not be must it new all is This imagined quite time really like it like and how much time it was like later what see later what shall see this. We shall like this. really far and strict discipline. GgsO!l obtain strict to obtain needed to was needed effort was and effort discipline. Qerson was far ahead for the the are of the institutions of his time. His regulations are interesting His his time. of of the institutions interesting for regulations such formulated moral ideal which they reveal, which had not been formulated with such not which moral ideal which they reveal, Portthe Jesuits, clarity before, and ideal of the the ideal to become the was to and which which was Jesuits, of Portclarity before, all the moralists of the Brothers of Christian Doctrine, and of all the moralists Royal, Christian of Doctrine, Royal, of the Brothers and seventeenth century. of the the seventeenth strict pedagogues and strict century. pedagogues of more easygoing, for were more In the pedagogues sixteenth century the sixteenth In the easygoing, for pedagogues were century the bounds. We know this all that they took care not to overstep certain bounds. We know this certain not to care all that they took overstep which they learnt from which from the schoolboys, for the written for books written from books they learnt schoolboys, from the treatises on reading, writing, Latin vocabulary, and finally etiquette; the treatises on and finally etiquette; reading, writing, Latin vocabulary, the lesson to make more etiquette and the conversations which, to make the lesson more lifelike, conversations and the lifelike, which, etiquette master. These and aa master. These dialogues involved or aa schoolboy several schoolboys involved several schoolboy and dialogues schoolboys or In Vives's find we find life. In Viv&s's dialogues are school life. on school documents on excellent documents are excellent dialogues we Paris Paris
9
:
'.
:
FROM IMMODESTY TO TO INNOCENCE INNOCENCE FROM
109 I0p
.
-
certain passages passages which which would would not not have have been been to to Gerson's Gerson's taste taste but but which which certain is the more shameful part: the part in front were traditional: 'Which were traditional: 'Which is the more shameful part: the part in front [note the discreet euphemism] or the hole in the arse?' 'Both parts are [note the discreet euphemism] or the hole in the arse?' 'Both parts are because of of its its unpleasantness, unpleasantness, and and the the extremely improper, improper, the the behind behind because extremely 12 because of of lechery lechery and and dishonour/ dishonour .'12 other part part because other The coarsest coarsest jokes, jokes, as as well well as as topics topics of of anything anything but but educational educational value, value, The
13 these dialogues. dialogues. In In Charles Charles Hoole's Hoole's English English dialogues dialogues13 are to to be be found found in in these are have aa number number of of quarrels: quarrels: one one takes takes place place in in aa tavern tavern - and and taverns taverns we have
far less less respectable respectable places places than than the the modern modern public public at that time time were were far is aa lengthy lengthy argument argument about about which which inn inn sells sells the the best best beer. beer. is in Vives, Vives, aa certain certain modesty modesty isis observed: observed: 'The 'The third third However, even even in However, fmger is called the shameful one. Why?' 'The master has said that he finger is called the shameful one. Why?' 'The master has said that he he does does not not want want to to give give itit because because it it is is dirty dirty knows the the reason, reason, but but that that he knows press the the matter, matter, for Jor itit isis unseemly unseemly for Jor aa and unpleasant; tmpleasant; however, however, do do not not press and child of of good good character character to to ask ask about about such such unpleasant unpleasant things! thi1Jgs.' This This is is quite quite child was so so natural natural that that even even later later on on the the remarkable for for the the time. time. Broad Broad talk talk was remarkable to children children and and strictest reformers would would introduce introduce into into their their sermons sermons to strictest reformers seem shocking today. Thus Thus in students comparisons which which would would seem in 1653 students comparisons 1653 shocking today. we find fmd the the Jesuit Jesuit Father Father Lebrun Lebrun exhorting exhorting the the 'noble 'noble boarders boarders of of we Clermont College' to to avoid gluttony: 'They their fastidious about about their are fastidious avoid gluttony: Clermont College' 'They are praegnantes mulierculae.'l& food, food, tanquam tanquam praegnantes mulierculae^ But towards obvious a much more obvious sixteenth century end of of the the sixteenth the end But towards the century a ideas were to carry weight change took place: certain pedagogues, whose to were whose ideas certain took carry weight pedagogues, place: change their concepts and scruples on and and in imposing their succeed in would succeed and who would concepts scruples imposing others, books any indecent books to be be given children to allow children to allow refused to others, refused any longer. longer. given indecent the classics for of providing expurgated editions The editions of of the classics for idea originated The idea originated of providing expurgated stage, which may be the a very was a This was children. This of children. the use use of may stage, very important important This attitude as the ~eginning of respect for childhood. This attitude regarded for of childhood. the as marking respect marking Beginning regarded in France France and was and Protestants, Catholics and T?oth Catholics found among be fotmd Protestants, in was to to be among both to children England. Until then nobody had hesitated to give children Terence to to hesitated had then Until give nobody England. their removed him from their read, a classic. classic. The Jesuits was a for he he was read, for Jesuits 15 In England the edition by curriculum. an expurgated used an schools used In England the schools curriculum.15 by expurgated edition - Brinsley in 1674 Cornelius in 1592 and reprinted in in 1674 Cornelius Schonaeus, 1592 Schonaeus, published Brinsley reprinted published 16 recommends manual.16 schoolmaster's manual. his schoolmaster's in his it in recommends it conversations (1564), The Cordier's conversations used Cordier's schools used Protestant schools French Protestant The French (1564), which of the conversations of Erasmus, Vives, Mosellanus, conversations the Vives, Erasmus, of Mosellanus, the place which took took the place 17 desire to to avoid any etc. a new decorum, reveal a decorum, aa desire etc.17 They any word or They reveal indecent. The most offensive or indecent. expression which might be considered offensive considered be which might expression that uses of paper the uses about the a joke is a that is is allowed allowed is 'schoolboy paper', paper', paper - 'schoolboy joke about one a parlour in a 'envelope paper', 'blotting paper' in game. Finally one boy Finally boy parlour game. 'envelope paper', 'blotting paper' at that
house. There There house.
lIO 110
THE THE IDEA IDEA OF OF CHILDHOOD CHILDHOOD
gives the answer: 'paper used for wiping your the other but the other guesses gives up up but guesses the answer: 'paper used for wiping your bottom bottom in in the the privy'. innocent concession concession to to the the traditional traditional jokes. privy*. An innocent jokes. Cordier could be 'put into anybody's hands'. In case, his Cordier really could be into In any hands'. really 'put anybody's any case, his dialogues dialogues by a in conjunction were used used in with some some religious dialogues were conjunction with religious dialogues by a certain S. Castellion. certain S. Castellion. expurgated edition of Port-Royal in its its turn turn produced Port-Royal in produced aa heavily heavily expurgated edition of Terence: Terence made very decent while changing very little. 18 Terence: Comedies Comedies of Terence made decent while of very changing very little. As for colleges introduced new for modesty of behaviour, the Jesuit behaviour, the modesty of Jesuit colleges introduced new precautions, duly recorded in the regulations, regarding the adminisrecorded in the precautions, duly regulations, regarding the administration punishment. It was laid down that of corporal tration of It was laid that the the breeches breeches of of corporal punishment. the 'whatever the boy's the victims, were not to be not to be removed, 'whatever the victims, adolescentum, adolescentum, were removed, boy's rank rank or or age' of the the skin skin was was to to be be exposed as was was necessary age*.. Just Just enough enough of exposed as necessary 19 to to inflict inflict the die punishment, but not not more: more: non non amplius. punishment, but amplius. A great: in manners manners took took place in the the course course of of the the seventeenth seventeenth ~* great change change in place in century. The least of the liberties permitted at the court of Henri least of the liberties at the court of Henri IV IV century. permitted would not Mme de Maintenon with the King's have been not have been allowed allowed by de Maintenon with the by King's children, or illegitimate, than they would have have been been children, legitimate legitimate or illegitimate, any any more than they would in was no a case of a few isolated in the of the the free-thinkers. the homes of It was free-thinkers. It no longer a case of a few isolated longer moralists which manifested manifested itself itself of a moralists like like Gerson, but of a great Gerson, but great movement which on all all sides, not only in a rich moral and pedagogic literature but also in in not a rich moral and literature also but in sides, only pedagogic devotional practices and and aa new religious religious iconography. iconography. devotional practices essential concept concept had had won acceptance: acceptance: that that of of the the i!!nocence of, An essential innocence of/ childhood. was already already to to be be found found in Montaigne, for all that that he he had had It was childhood. It in Montaigne, for all few illusions illusions about about the the chastity chastity of of young young students: hundred schoolboys schoolboys few students: 'A A hundred 2* have catight caught the the pox pox before before getting getting to to Aristotle's Aristotle's lesson, lesson, On Temperance.' Temperance.'2o have But he also tells an anecdote which reveals a different attitude: an he also tells anecdote But which reveals a different attitude: Albuquerque, 'in 'in great great danger danger of of shipwreck, shipwreck, took took aa young young boy boy on on his his Albuquerque, shoulders, so that in their association in danger his innocence would serve in their association in danger his innocence would serve shoulders, so that him as as aa surety surety and and aa recommendation recommendation to to obtain obtain God's God's favour favour and and bring bring 21 him safely to land'.21 A hundred years later, the idea of the innocence hundred years later, the idea of the innocence him safely to land'. of childhood childhood had had become aa commonplace. commonplace. Witness Witness the the caption caption to to an an of engraving by by F. F. Gurard Guerard showing showing children's children's toys toys (dolls (dolls and and drums): drums): engraving the age age of of innocence, innocence, to to which which we must must all all return return in in order order to to •This isis the 'This enjoy the the happiness happiness to to come which which isis our our hope hope on earth; earth; the the age age when when enjoy one can can forgive forgive anything, anything, the the age age when hatred hatred isis unknown, unknown, when when one notlling can can cause cause distress; distress; the the golden golden age age of of human life, life, the the age age which which nothing defies Hell, Hell, the the age age when when life life isis easy easy and and death death holds holds no terrors, terrors, the the age age defies to which which the the heavens heavens are are open. open. Let Let tender tender and and gentle gentle respect respect be be shown shown to to to these young young plants plants of of the the Church. Church. Heaven Heaven isis full full of of anger anger for for whosoever whosoever these 22 scandalizes them.' them.'22 scandalizes 4
FROM IMMODESTY TO INNOCENCE
III III
What aa long long way way we have have come come to to reach reach this this point! point! It It can can be be traced traced What by means of an abundant literature, a few works of which we shall shall now by means of an abundant literature, a few works of which examine. examine. L' Honneste gargon, garfon, described described as as 'the art of of instructing instructing the the nobility nobility in in the art L'Honneste virtue, learning and all the exercises suitable to its rank', and published virtue, learning and all the exercises suitable to its rank', and published 28 is a good example. The author had by M. M. de de Grenaille Grenaille of of Chatauniers, Chatauniers,23 is a good example. The author had by already written L' Honneste fille. The interest in education, in 'the already written L'Honneste filk. The interest in education, in 'the institution of of childhood', childhood', is is worthy worthy of of note. note. The The author author knows knows that that he he is is institution not the the only only writer writer on on the the subject subject and and apologizes apologizes in in his his foreword: foreword: 'I •I do do not 24 in dealing not believe believe that that II am encroaching encroaching on on M. Faret's Faret's province province" in dealing not with aa subject subject on on which which he he has has only only touched, touched, and and in in speaking speaking of of the the with those 'whom 'Whom he he has has depicted depicted in in their their finished finished condition condition ... education of those education of Here II lead lead the the Boy Boy from from early infancy as far as youth. I deal first with his Here early infancy as far as youth. I deal first with his birth and and then then with with his his education; education; II polish polish his his mind mind and his manners manners at at and his birth the same time; II instruct instruct him him in in both both religion religion and and the the proprieties, proprieties, so so that that same time; the he .shall be neither neither impious impious nor nor superstitious.' superstitious.' Treatises Treatises on on etiquette he .shall be etiquette were already in print which which were were simply simply manuals savoir-vivre, books books of savoir-vivre, manuals of in print were already on good manners, manners, and and they to enjoy enjoy widespread widespread favour favour until until continued to on good they continued the early nineteenth nineteenth century. century. In addition to to these books which In addition these etiquette books which the early etiquette were meant meant for children, in the early early seventeenth a pedagogic in the seventeenth century for children, were century a pedagogic literature for the use of teachers came came into being. Although Although it into being. it and teachers of parents the use literature for parents and referred was something and Erasmus, it was new. So So Plutarch and to Quintilian, referred to Erasmus, it Quintilian, Plutarch something new. new M. de those to defend defend himself himself against called upon feels called de Grenaille Grenaille feels that M. new that against those upon to who the education for as a a practical a subject and not not a of youth matter and education of see the who see youth as practical matter subject for aa book. ... but there is and so so on on... but there is something else, is Quintilian, There is book. 'There Quintilian, and something else, and has a special seriousness ... Since for a a Christian Since the the Lord seriousness for Christian... the subject and the subject has a special of to Him, not believe that any innocents to believe that little innocents summons little Lords summons Him, II do not of Lords any of His has the right to repulse them, nor that men should show to nor that should has the them, His subjects repulse right subjects in doing reluctance that in so they are simply educate them, to educate them, seeing reluctance to doing so seeing that they are simply imitating the angels.' The to of angels with children children was to The comparison angels with comparison of imitating the angels.' in the the 'It is said said that that an angel It is become of edification. edification. • theme of become aa common theme angel in the other but on the other hand he took shape of a child enlightened St St Augustine, Augustine, but shape of a child enlightened in his to his works we pleasure in communicating his wisdom to children, and in his children, in communicating pleasure as others others for for the the greatest find as well well as for them as intended for treatises intended find treatises greatest a directive directive for for his his son. son. theologians.' He cites who wrote a St Louis, cites St Louis, theologians.' for children.' children.' Richelieu, •'Cardinal Cardinal Bellarmin that a catechism catechism for wrote a Bellarmin wrote Richelieu, ''that to the smallest as well well as instruction great prince of the Church, gave instruction to the smallest as as of the Church, gave great prince counsel Montaigne too, whom one hardly expected to to the greatest'. too, to the counsel to hardly expected greatest'. Montaigne concern about bad teachers. find teachers, especiin such such good find in especicompany, showed concern good company, ally pedants. ally pedants. '
. . .
*
II2 112
THE IDEA OF CHILDHOOD
M. de de Grenaille Grenaille continues: continues: 'It 'It must must not not be be imagined imagined that that when when one one M. speaks of childhood one is always speaking of something weak; on the one is on the childhood of of weak; always speaking something speaks contrary, I going to show here that a condition which certain people here that a I am to show condition which certain contrary, people going consider contemptible contemptible is is positively positivdy illustrious/ illustrious.' It It was was in in fact fact at at this this time time consider that people people did did talk talk of of the the weakness weakness and and imbecility imbecility of of childhood. childhood. Hitherto Hitherto that they had had tended tended to to ignore ignore childhood, childhood, as as aa transitional transitional period period soon soon finished finished they with and and of of no no importance. importance. This This stress stress laid laid on on the the contemptible contemptible side side of of with childhood may may have have been been aa consequence consequence of of the the classical classical spirit spirit and and its its childhood insistence on on reason, reason, but but it it was was above above all all aa reaction reaction against against the the importance importance insistence which the the child child had had assumed assumed in in the the family family and and the the idea idea of of the the family. family. which That feeling feeling of of irritation irritation with with childishness childishness thus thus arose arose which which is is the the modern modem That reverse of of the the idea idea of of childhood. childhood. With With it it went went the the contempt contempt which which that that reverse society of of the open air and of the world fdt for the professor, the for the air and men of world felt of men of the professor, society open the college college regent, regent, the the 'pedant', at a time the colleges were the 'pedant', at a time when the colleges were becoming more more numerous numerous and and better better attended, attended, and and when childhood childhood was was becoming already beginning to remind adults of their schooldays. In reality, the of their In adults to remind schooldays. reality, the already beginning antipathy to children shown by solemn or peevish spirits is evidence of of or is evidence solemn children shown to peevish spirits by antipathy the importance, in their eyes the excessive importance, which was was in the which excessive their the importance, eyes importance, attributed to childhood. childhood. attributed to For the the author of L* L'Honneste Honneste gar$on, garfon, childhood is illustrious illustrious on on account account childhood is For author of of This, he he points points out, was sometimes interpreted as sometimes was of Christ's childhood. This, Christ's childhood. out, interpreted as aa token by Christ in adopting not only the in not the Christ humiliation accepted token of of the the humiliation only adopting accepted by human condition but the the state himself on of childhood: state of childhood: thereby condition but thereby putting putting himself aa lower according to the other other to St St Bernard. Bernard. On the than the the first first Adam, level than lower levd Adam, according hand tliere are the holy children: the Holy Innocents, the child martyrs child the the children: hand there are the holy martyrs Holy Innocents, who refused St Gregory of and the the little little Jew of the idols, to worship refused to idols, and Gregory of Jew of St worship the Tours whose father tried to burn him in an oven because he had turned he had turned an oven in because Tours whose father tried to burn Christian. has had had its its Faith has in our the Faith too that our own days that in show too 'I can can show Christian. 'I days the child martyrs as in past ages. The history of Japan tells of a little Louis a little Louis of tells child martyrs as in past ages. history Japan who, than grown men/ showed greater of twelve, at the the age twelve, showed who, at grown men.' courage than greater courage age of A woman died at the same stake as Dom Carlo Spinola, together with Carlo Spinola, together with died at the same stake as 'her his praises the draws his that 'God draws shows that which shows 'her little little child', child', which praises from the mouths up the examples afforded afforded by author piles the author of children'. children'. And the mouths of by piles up the examples a further the further example, the two Testaments, children of of the the holy Testaments, adding adding a example, holy children the courage not forget drawn 'I must not French medieval medieval history: drawn from from French forget the courage of history: 'I those Nauclerus has has sung, took the the those French whose praises French boys sung, and who took boys whose praises Nauclerus cross time of Pope Innocent III III the time in the of twenty thousand in to the the number cross to number of Pope Innocent twenty thousand infidels/ The children's to and deliver Jerusalem from the hands of the infidels.' the children's from the hands and to go deliver go Jerusalem crusade. crusade. We know that medieval verse-chronicles in the the medieval verse-chronicles and that the the children children in
FROM PROM IMMODESTY TO INNOCENCE IMMODESTY TO INNOCENCE
II3 113
romances affording proof, in romances of of chivalry behaved like like true true knights, chivalry behaved knights, affording proof, in
M. and good sense of children. He M. de de Grenaille's Grenaille's eyes, of the the courage eyes, of courage and good sense of children. He
cites the champion of the cites the the case case of of aa child child who appointed himself appointed himself the champion of the Conrad, against 'a famous gladiator'. Empress, the wife wife of of the the Emperor Conrad, Empress, the Emperor against 'a famous gladiator'. in the 'Read in what the Rinaldos, the the romances romances of of chivalry what the the Tancreds Tancreds and and Rinaldos, chivalry all those all are said to have done: legend does not attribute those other other knights are said to have done: does not attribute knights legend to them in than true History grants that little Achilles.' more to in a a single single fight fight than true History grants that little Achilles/ comparable, indeed 'After 'After that, can anyone that the the first first age is that, can anyone deny deny that age is comparable, indeed all the rest?' 'Who would dare to that God often to often preferable, to all the rest?' would dare to say preferable, say that God favours more than children? He favours them on account favours older older people more than children? favours them on account people of their They have their innocence, which comes comes close close to to impeccability.' innocence, which impeccability/ They have nor vices: 'Their lives seem to be most reasonable at neither neither passions nor 'Their lives vices: seem to be most reasonable at passions seem least capable of using their reason.' Obviously aa time time when they seem least of their reason/ they capable using Obviously peccatum mollied, there is no mention there is mention here here of of the the peccatum and in in this this respect the mollicei, and respect the worthy nobleman of of 1642 strikes the the modem modern reader, familiar with with 1642 strikes reader, familiar worthy nobleman as more old-fashioned than Gerson. The explanation is psycho-analysis, as more old-fashioned than The Gerson. psycho-analysis, explanation is that very idea and sensuality in a child embarrasses that the the very and idea of of immodesty in a child embarrasses immodesty sensuality being an used by by those M. de de Grenaille, as being an argument those who consider consider Grenaille, as argument used childhood and 'corrupt'. childhood to and to be be 'silly' 'silly' 'corrupt'. was to to be be found found again exemplified This This new attitude attitude was at Port-Royal, again at Port-Royal, exemplified His Jansenist biographers all tell us of the first of all His all tell first of all by Saint-Cyran. us of the lofty by Saint-Cyran. Jansenist biographers lofty of childhood childhood and of the the respect respect due due to to children: 'He admired idea he had had of and of idea he children: 'He admired of God, God, who, who, in in the the most most august functions of of His His ministry, ministry, the Son the Son of august functions would not not allow allow children children to to be be prevented prevented from from coming coming to to Him, Him, who would kissed and and blessed blessed them, them, who commanded us us not not to to despise despise or or neglect neglect kissed of them in terms so favourable and so so them, and fmally spoke in them terms so of favourable and and who them, finally spoke are capable of dumbfounding those scandalize astonishing that they of those are who that scandalize dumbfounding capable they astonishing ones. Accordingly Accordingly M. de de Saint-Cyran Saint-Cyran always always showed showed children children the little little ones. the of respect, respect, in in order order to to do do honour honour a kindness kindness which which amounted amounted to to aa sort sort of a 26 in them them and and the the Holy Holy Ghost Ghost which which inhabits inhabits them/ them.'26 to the the innocence innocence in to de Saint-Cyran Saint-Cyran was was 'very 'very enlightened' enlightened' and and 'far 'far from from approving approving M. de as he he was was aware aware these worldly worldly maxims maxims [contempt [contempt for for pedagogues], pedagogues], and and as these of the the importance importance of of die tlle care care and and education education of of youth, youth, he he regarded regarded it it in in of a totally totally different different light. light. However However disagreeable disagreeable and humiliating humiliating people people a less employed employed persons persons of of merit merit for for it it who never never might find fmd it, it, he he none none the the less might to felt that they had any right to complain.' felt that they complain/ any right was the the formation formation of of that that moral moral concept concept which insisted insisted on on The result result was The M. de on what Grenaille than of childhood rather tllatl on what de Grenaille called the weakness called rather the weakness of childhood its 'illustrious 'illustrious nature', nature', but but which which associated associated its its weakness weakness with with its its its and which divine education of divine purity, and which placed education innocence, the true reflection of pkced purity, innocence, the true reflection
II4 114
THE IDEA OF CHILDHOOD
in the front of man's man's obligations. It reacted at one and the same in the rank of front rank obligations. It reacted at one and the same time indifference towards childhood, against an excessively time against against indifference towards childhood, against an excessively affectionate which turned the child a plaything and selftsh attitude which selfish attitude turned the child into affectionate and into a plaything for adults and and encouraged caprices, and against the reverse of this last last and against his caprices, of this for adults the reverse encouraged his feeling, the contempt of the man of reason. This concept dominates late the of of reason. This the late dominates contempt feeling, concept seventeenth-century literature. This is what Coustel wrote in his rules seventeenth-century literature. This is what Coustel wrote in his rules for the education education of of children children on the need need to children and and to to overcome on the to love love children for the overcome 26 'If one considers the repugnance repugnance which which they men: 26 in thinking arouse in the 'If one considers they arouse thinking men: the child's child's exterior, which is weakness and of is nothing but and inftrmity the exterior, which nothing but weakness infirmity of either body or mind, it it cannot be denied denied that is no no apparent reason that there there is or mind, cannot be either body reason apparent for high esteem. esteem. But looks But one one changes one's opinion it in in high if one for holding one looks changes one's holding it opinion if into future and the light light of Faith.' Beyond child one of Faith.' and acts in the the child the future acts in one will will into the Beyond the then be able able to magistrate', 'the good priest', 'the great 'the to see see 'the 'the good 'the then be magistrate', good priest', good great lord'. But above all it must be be remembered remembered that that children's it must children's souls, still lord'. But above all souls, still of their baptismal innocence, are the dwelling-place of Jesus possessed are the of of their innocence, dwelling-place baptismal possessed Jesus Christ. us an by commanding Angels to to accompany accompany an example sets us Christ. 'God 'God sets commanding Angels example by them all their without ever leaving them.' them.' ever leaving their errands, them on on all errands, without That is why, why, according according to children is 'the education to Varet, education of of children is one one of of That is Varet, 'the 27 And Jacqueline Pascal, in the the most important things things in world.'27 in the the world.' the in the most important Pascal, Jacqueline regulations for the little boarders of Port-Royal, writes: 'Looking after regulations for the little boarders of Port-Royal, writes: 'Looking after children is so important that that we are bound to to prefer prefer that to all all are bound that duty so important children is duty to others when obedience it us, and what is more, to our it on us, and is more, to obedience imposes what our others when imposes 28 personal pleasures, even if these are of a spiritual nature.'28 personal pleasures, even if these are of a spiritual nature.' This a case case of of isolated but of a real real doctrineof a isolated observations is not observations but doctrine This is not a - which generally accepted by Jesuits as by Oratorians or Jansenists which partly as or Oratorians by Jansenists partly generally accepted by Jesuits educational institutions, institutions, colleges, little accounts for the the profusion profusion of of educational accounts for colleges, little of school life the schools and special establishments, and the evolution and the evolution of school life in in the schools and establishments, special direction of stricter stricter discipline. direction of discipline. A few general principles principles that that were were deduced this doctrine doctrine were deduced from this were few general cited as commonplaces commonplaces in in the literature of children For example, the literature the time. of the time. For children cited as example, must never never be be left left alone. principle dated dated back back to to the the ftfteenth alone. This This principle fifteenth must century and originated in monastic experience, but it was never really but it was in never monastic and experience, really originated century time put into practice until the seventeenth century, by which time the logic the the seventeenth until into century, by logic practice put to a of was obvious obvious to to the the public public at and not simply to a handful of not at large handful of of it it was simply large monks and 'As far as possible, all the apertures of the 'cage all the far as 'As and 'pedants'. monks the apertures possible, "cage 'pedants'. the child must be be closed will beleft beleft open open to to allow child to to live allow the ... A few few bars bars will live closed ... must and to enjoy enjoy good health; this is is done with nightingales to make this is is with to what and to nightingales good health; 29 This was done them and with parrots to teach them to talk.'29 done with with them sing sing and with parrots to teach them to talk.' This the for both schools aa certain certain subtlety, subtlety, for both the the Jesuit Jesuit colleges and the schools at Portat Portcolleges child psychology. In the Royal had increasingly familiar psychology. In familiar with child the had become increasingly Royal
FROM FROM IMMODESTY. IMMODESTY 10 INNOCENCE JO INNOCENCE
IIS 115
regulations we have Jacqueline Pascal for the the children children at at Port-Royal regulations for Port-Royal we have Jacqueline Pascal on the children, must writing: close watch watch must must be be kept on the and they writing: 'A close children, and kept they must never be left never are ill in good health.' left alone alone anywhere, whether they are ill or in or health/ anywhere, whether they good 'this constant But 'this and with a constant supervision should be be exercised exercised gently supervision should gently and with a certain trustfulness certain trustfulness calculated calculated to to make make them them think think that that one one loves loves then& then$> that it it is is only to and that their company that one is with them. their one that is with This them. This. only to enjoy enjoy company 30 than fear it.'30 makes them love love this this supervision rather rather than fear it/ supervision This principle This universal, but it was carried out to the was absolutely principle was absolutely universal, but it was carried out to the letter only in the letter boarding-schools, the Jesuit in the the schools schools at at Port-Royal only in Jesuit boarding-schools, in Port-Royal in some private and in in other words it affected only a in other words it affected private boarding-schools; boarding-schools; only a small number of small rich children. The object was to avoid the promisof very rich children. The to was avoid the very object promisthe colleges, cuity though which for for a a long time had load a a bad bad reputation, cuity of the colleges, which long time reputation, though - thanks as long in in not as France to the Jesuits as in England. Coustel France thanks to the as in Coustel long Jesuits England. writes: [the writes: 'As 'As soon soon as as the the young set foot in that foot in that sort sort of of place young people people set place [the college], they rapidly lose that innocence, that simplicity, that modesty lose that that that innocence, they college], rapidly simplicity, modesty to God and which hitherto hitherto made them them so so pleasing and to men.' 81 There to men.'31 There was was pleasing to aa general reluctance to entrust a child to a single tutor: the extreme reluctance to a entrust child a to tutor: the extreme general single sociability was opposed to this was held held that of manners manners was this solution. solution. It It was that the the sociability of opposed to child to get to know people and converse with them from an child ought to to and converse with them from an ought get people early a.ge; this was very important, even more necessary than Latin. It this was even more than Latin. It early age; very important, necessary was better better 'to put five or two in a 'to put five or or six six children children with with a a good man or in two a good private house', an idea which Erasmus had already put forward. an idea had which Erasmus forward. house', private already put second principle principle was was that that children children must must not not be be pampered pampered and and The second be accustomed accustomed to to strict discipline early early in in life: life: 'Do not tell tell me that that must be must strict discipline 'Do not they are are only only children children and and that that one one must must be be patient patient with with them. them. For For the the they effects of of concupiscence concupiscence appear appear only only too too clearly dearly at at this this age.' age.' This This was was aa effects the''coddling' coddling' of of children children under under eight, eight, and and against against the the reaction against against the reaction opinion that they were too small to it worth-while finding fault make small it that were too to worth-while fault they opinion finding with them. them. Courtin's Courtin's manual manual of of etiquette etiquette of of 1671 1671 explains explains at at some some length: length: with 'These little little people people are are allowed allowed to to amuse amuse themselves themselves without without anyone anyone 'These troubling to see whether they are behaving well or badly; they are or are well to see whether behaving badly; they are they troubling permitted to do as they please; nothing is forbidden them; they laugh is forbidden as to do them; they laugh they please; nothing permitted they ought ought to to cry, cry, they they cry cry when they they ought ought to to laugh, laugh, they they talk talk when they they ought ought to to be be silent, silent, and and they they are are mute when good good manners manners when they require them them to to reply. reply. It It isis cruelty cruelty to to allow allow them to to go go on living living in in this this require will are be way. The parents say that they are bigger they will be corrected. when corrected. that The they bigger they way. parents say it not not be be better better to to deal deal with with them them in in such such aa way way that that there there was was Would it 82 nothing to correct?'32 to correct?' nothing was modesty. modesty. At At Port-Royal: Port-Royal: 'As 'As soon soon as as they they The third third principle principle was The have retired retired for for the the night night the the girls' girls' beds beds are are faithfully faithfully inspected inspected to to see see if if have
THE IDEA OF CHILDHOOD
Il6
and also to see if they are properly they are lying with fitting modesty, covered up in winter/ 38 A real propaganda campaign was launched to 1
habit of sleeping several to a bed. The same try to eradicate the age-old advice was repeated all the way through the seventeenth century. Bhd it, for instance, in La Civilite chrttienne by St Jean-Baptiste de La
We
*
Salle;
one
which was
first
married
[this
is
Above all, one must not, unless published in 1713 is a reservation which nobody would dream of :
intended for children, but at that introducing nowadays into a book time books intended for children were not read only by children], go to
bed in the presence of a person of the opposite sex, this being utterly It is even less permissible for persons contrary to prudence and decency. of different sexes to sleep in the same bed, even in the case of very young of the same sex to sleep children, for it is not fitting for even persons These are two things which St Francis of Sales especially together.
recommended
to
Mme
'Parents
must teach
another
when going
de Chantal with regard to children.' And:
their children to conceal their bodies
from one
to bed/
on decency was to be found again in the matter of Teach them to read books in which purity conversation: and reading are combined/ 'When they and wholesome of language subject-matter be to them allow do not start writing, given examples full of unseemly 34 We are a from the outspoken talk of the here long way expressions/ the even amused which child Louis XIII, worthy Heroard. Naturally were banned, and adults too and theatre-going novel-reading, dancing A close check was distractions. in these were 'advised
The
insistence
*
against indulging
recommended on songs, an important and necessary precaution in a was so popular: 'Take particular care to prevent society where music 85 But the old songs were not from learning modern songs/ your children known everywhere and are which the 'Of rated any more highly: songs to talk... there are start as as soon to children which are taught they and calumnies, slanders horrible most of the full are not scarcely any which sacred the neither which satires persons of and which are not biting spare the sovereigns nor those of the magistrates, nor those of the most innocent and pious persons/ These songs were described as expressing 'dissolute 86 and as being 'full of indecent expressions'. passions' St Jean-Baptiste
de La
Salle
maintained
this mistrust
of entertainments: 37
puppet-show [than a must theatrical performance]/ 'A respectable person regard entertainand ments of this sort with nothing but contempt parents must never allow their children to attend them/ P&ys, balls, dances, and the 'more 'It is
no more seemly
for a Christian to attend a
. . .
FROM IMMODESTY TO INNOCENCE
llj
ordinary entertainments' provided by jugglers, mountebanks and tightrope walkers' were forbidden. Only educational games, that is to say,
games which had been integrated in the educational system, were all other games were and remained suspect. Another recommendation recurs frequently in this pedagogic literature, with its insistence on 'modesty': a warning not to leave children in the company of servants. This is a recommendation which went against an Leave them as little as possible with absolutely universal practice: servants, and especially with lackeys [' servants' had a wider significance then than it has now, and included what we would call companions]. These persons, in order to insinuate themselves into children's good graces, usually tell them nothing but nonsense and fill them with a love of gambling, amusement and vanity/ 38 permitted;
*
Again, in the eighteenth century, we have the future Cardinal de Bernis recalling his childhood -he was born in 1715: 'Nothing is more
dangerous for the morals and perhaps also for the health than to leave children too long in the care of the servants.' 'People take liberties with a
man! z * This last sentence in discussing clearly refers to the mentality which we have analysed above the court of Henri IV and the scene between the Moslem boy and the child
which they would not
risk with
a young
in the lower Djerban in Tunis in the twentieth century. It still existed classes, but it was no longer tolerated in enlightened circles. The stress laid by the moralists on die need to separate children from the varied world of 'the servants' shows how well aware they were of the dangers of children and servants (the servants presented by this promiscuity
themselves were often very young). The fourth principle was simply another application of this insistence on decency and 'modesty': the old familiarity must be abandoned and its place taken
manners and language, even in great moderation of This policy took the form of war on the use of the familiar
by
life.
everyday tu form. In the
little Jansenist college of Le Chesnay: 'They had been so accustomed to treat each other with respect that they never used the tu form of address, nor were they ever known to make the slightest remark which they might have considered likely to offend certain of their
40
companions.' A 1671 manual of etiquette recognizes that good manners call for the vous form, but it has to make some concessions to the old French usage this it does with a certain embarrassment: 'One normally says vous, and one must not say tu to anybody, unless it is to a little child and you are much older and it is customary for even the most polite and well-bred
THE IDEA OP CHILDHOOD
Il8
persons to speak thus. However, fathers with their children up to a certain age (in France until they are emancipated), masters with their and others in similar positions of authority, seem, according to pupils,
common
usage, to be allowed to say tu
and
tot.
For close friends too,
when they are conversing together, it is customary in certain places for them 41 to say tu and toi; in other places people are more reserved and civilized/ Even
in the
Baptiste de La
little
Salle
schools,
where the children were younger, St Jeantu form of address:
forbade the masters to use the
'They must speak to the children with reserve, never saying tu or toi, which would be showing too much familiarity/ It is certain that under this pressure the use of vous became more widespread. From Colonel Gerard's memoirs one learns with surprise that at the end of the eighteenth century a couple of soldiers, one aged twenty-five and the other twenty-three, could actually say vous to one another. And Colonel Gerard himself could use the vous form without feeling ridiculous.
At
Mme
de Maintenon's Saint-Cyr, the young ladies were told to tu and toi, and adopting manners contrary to the pro-
avoid 'saying 42
prieties'.
'One must never adapt
oneself to children
by means of them to
childish language or manners; on the contrary, one must raise one's own level by always talking reasonably to them/
Already, in the second half of the sixteenth century, the schoolboys in Cordier's dialogues were saying vous in the French text, whereas they naturally said tu in Latin. In fact, the campaign for greater seriousness would triumph only in the nineteenth century, in spite of die contrary evolution of child welfare
and more L.Wylie, France,
liberal, realistic
who
pedagogics.
An American professor
of French,
year 1950-1 in a village in the south of the seriousness with which the masters at the
spent his sabbatical
was astonished by
and the parents, who were peasants, American attitude struck him as enormous: 'Every step in the child's development seems to depend on 'The child is now the development of what people call its raison... considered to be raisonnable, and it is expected to remain raisonnable.' This raison, this self-control and this seriousness, which are required of the French child at an early age, while he is working for his certificate of study, and which are no longer known in the United States, are the final result of the campaign launched at the end of the sixteenth century by monks and moralists. It should be added that this state of mind is beginning to disappear from the French town: it remains only in the country, where the American observer met it.
primary school treated their children.
The
their pupils,
contrast with the
'
FROM IMMODESTY TO INNOCENCE idea
of
by
life,
among
and
particularly
adults;
and reason.
two kinds of
childish innocence resulted in
behaviour towards childhood:
by
firstly,
lip
safeguarding
it
attitude
and
against pollution,
the sexuality tolerated if not approved of it by developing character
and secondly, strengthening
We
may
see a contradiction here, for
on
the one
hand
preserved and on the other hand it is made older than its years; but the contradiction exists only for us of the twentieth century. The association of childhood with primitivism and irrationalism or pre-
childhood
is
logicism characterizes our contemporary concept of childhood. This concept made its appearance in P^ousseau, but it belongs to twentieth-
century history.
It is
only very recently that
of psychologists, pedagogues,
passed from the theories and psycho-analysts into
it
psychiatrists
it is this concept which Professor Wylie used as a standard of comparison by which to gauge that other attitude which he discovered in a village in the Vaucluse, and in which we can recognize the survival of another concept of childhood, a different and older concept, which was born in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and which became
public opinion;
general and popular from the seventeenth century on. In this concept, which seems old to us in relation to our contemporary the Middle Ages, the ideas mentality, but which was new in relation to ' of innocence and reason were not opposed to one another. Si puer prout decet, vixit\ is translated into
'If the child has lived like a
In this
new moral
French in a manual of etiquette of 1671
man...
climate, a
from books
whole pedagogic
for adults
as:
>43
made
literature for children 44
It is extremely with the countless manuals of etiquette produced from the sixteenth century on, to distinguish between those intended for adults and those intended for children. This ambiguity is due to factors con-
as distinct
its
appearance.
difficult,
nected with the structure of the family and the relationship between the last part of this study. of etiquette or took over manuals new Fathers published Jesuit same way as they expurgated the classical writers existing manuals, in the witness Bienstance de la to treatises on or their
are examined in the family and society, which
The
gave
patronage
of the Society
gymnastics:
hommes^ written in the early i6oos for the boarders ofJesus at Pont4-Mousson and La Fleche. The Regies de la
conversation entre
les
bienstance et de la civilitf chrttienne for the use
schools of St Jean-Baptiste de La Salle
of the Christian boys'
was published in 1713 and reprinted
THE IDEA OF CHILDHOOD
120
through the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth: this was a work for a long time and its influence on manners was probably considerable. However, even this work was not yet addressed directly all
classic
and openly to
of advice were intended rather for was a book from which children learned how to read, which provided examples of handwriting, which taught them how to behave, and which they learned off by heart), or even for adults children. Certain pieces
parents (for all that
it
inadequately versed in good manners. This ambiguity was dispelled in the
new
editions
of the manuals of
etiquette published in the second half of the eighteenth century. Here for instance is a 'simple and decent' manual of 1761: 'For the instruction of
children, containing at the beginning the way to learn to read, pronounce and write correctly, newly revised [for all the manuals claimed to be new
of the old manuals by Cordier, Erasmus or della Casa: it was a and any new ideas were cast in an old form, whence the continuation of certain notions which had undoubtedly gone out of fashion] and enlarged at the end with a fine Treatise on orthography. Drawn up by a Missionary with precepts and instructions for the education of Youth/ 48 The tone of the book is new; the author addresses himself specifically to children and writes in a sentimental style: 'This book will not be useless to you, dear children, it will teach you Note, none the less, dear children... 'Dear child, whom I regard as a child of God and as a brother of Jesus Christ, begin early in life to look for the good... I intend to teach you the rules of a decent Christian.' 'As soon as you rise in the morning, make the sign of the cross/ 'If you are in the bedchamber of your Father and Mother, bid them good morning/ At school: 'Do not be disagreeable to your schoolfellows... 'Do not talk in school/ 'Do not use the words tu and toi too often/ But this sweetness, this very eighteenth-century tenderness does not detract in any way from the ideal of character, logic and dignity which the author is trying to instil into the child: 'Dear children, do not be among those who talk incessantly and who do not give others time to say what they think/ 'Keep your promises; that is the duty of a man of honour/ The spirit is still that of the seventeenth century, but the manner is already that of the editions
traditional genre,
. . .
'
'
nineteenth: 'Dear children/
from
The
child's
province
is
clearly distinguished
of the adult. There still remained some strange survivals from the old indifference to the matter of age. For a long time Latin, and even Greek, had been that
taught to children in couplets wrongly attributed to Cato. The pseudoCato is quoted in Le Roman de la Rose. This practice continued throughout
FROM IMMODESTlf ,TO INNOCENCE
121
the seventeenth century at least, and there was still an edition of Cato's couplets in existence in 1802. But the spirit of these extremely crude moral
recommendations is the spirit of the Byzantine Empire and the Middle Ages, which were totally devoid of the delicacy of Gerson, Cordier, the Jesuits, Port-Royal, and in fact of seventeenth-century opinion as a whole. 47 Thus children continued to be given maxims of this kind to translate: 'Do not believe your wife when she complains about your servants, for the wife often detests those
'Do not attempt
who love
the husband/
Or
else:
to discover the designs of Providence by means 'Flee the wife who seeks to rule virtue of her wizardry/ by dowry; not retain her if she becomes unbearable', etc.
of do
True, at the end of the sixteenth century these lessons in morality had been judged inadequate, and children were given Pibrac's quatrains, written at that time in a more Christian, more edifying and more modern spirit. But Pibrac's quatrains did not replace the pseudo-Cato; they simply joined him until the beginning of the nineteenth century: the last editions still contained both texts. The pseudo-Cato and Pibrac then
sank together into oblivion.
Corresponding to teenth century, a
this
new
evolution of the idea of childhood in the seven-
tendency appeared in religious devotion and
iconography.
From
the beginning of die seventeenth century, religious painting, engraving and sculpture gave considerable importance to representation
of the Infant Jesus, by himself, no longer with the Virgin or as one of the Holy Family. As can be seen from the Van Dyck at Dresden, the Infant Jesus is usually shown in a symbolic attitude: He has His foot on the serpent, is leaning on a globe, is holding a cross in the left hand, and with the other hand is giving a blessing. This dominating child is also shown standing erect over the doorways of certain churches (the Dalbade in Toulouse for instance). A special devotion was now offered to the Holy Childhood. It had been prepared for, in religious iconography at least,
by
all
cision
the pictures of the Holy Family, the Presentation and the Circumof the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. But in the seventeenth
was given a different emphasis. The subject has been thoroughly explored. All that I would do here is to stress the connection which was immediately established between this devotion to the Holy Childhood and the great development of interest in childhood, of the provision century
it
THE IDEA OF CHILDHOOD
122
of little schools and colleges, and of educational theory. Juilly College was dedicated by Cardinal de B&ulle to the mystery of die Infant Jesus. 48 In her regulations for the little girl boarders at Port-Royal, Jacqueline Pascal inserted two prayers, one of which was also 'in honour of the 49 mystery of the Childhood of Jesus Christ'. It deserves to be quoted here: 'Be like new-born children . . Grant, Lord, that we may always .
O
be children in our simplicity and innocence, as people of the world are always children in their ignorance and weakness. [Here we find once more the two aspects of the concept of childhood in the seventeenth century, the innocence which has to be preserved, and the ignorance or weakness which has to be suppressed or modified.] Give us a holy childhood, which the course of the years may never take from us, and
from which we may never pass into the old age of old Adam, or into the is sin; but which may make us increasingly new creatures in
death that
and lead us to His glorious immortality/ the Carmelite convent at Beaune, Marguerite du SaintSacrement, was well known for her devotion to the Holy Childhood. Nicolas Rolland, the founder of several little schools at the end of the
Jesus Christ
A
nun of
seventeenth century, made a pilgrimage to her tomb. 60 On this occasion the prioress of the convent gave him 'a statue of the Infant Jesus which the venerable Sister Marguerite used to honour with her prayers'. The teaching institutes dedicated themselves to the Holy Childhood, as did Cardinal de Bundle's Oratorian colleges: in 1685 Pre Barr
registered
the Statuts Jesus.
Reglements of the Christian charity schools of the Holy Infant Dames de Saint-Maur, the paragon of the teaching orders,
et
The
assumed the adopted by
official title: Institute
of the Holy Infant Jesus. The first seal of the Christian Schools, the
the Institution of the Brothers
Ignorantine Friars, showed the Infant Jesus being led by St Joseph. The moral and pedagogic literature of the seventeenth century frequently quotes those passages in the Gospel in which Jesus speaks of children. In L'Honneste garfon: 'Since the Lord of Lords summons little children to Him, I cannot see that any of His subjects has die right to 61 them.' The which Pascal inserts in her reject prayer Jacqueline regula-
of Port-Royal paraphrases expressions used by new-born children... Unless you become like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.' And the end of this prayer recalls an episode in the Gospel which was to obtain new favour in the tions for the children
Christ:
'Be
like
seventeenth century: 'Lord, permit us to be among those children whom you summon to you, whom you allow to approach you, and from whose
mouths you draw your
praises.'
FROM IMMODESTY* TO INNOCENCE
,
123
The scene in question, in which Jesus asks little children to be allowed come to Him, was not absolutely unknown in the iconography of former times; we have already had occasion to mention that Ottoman miniature in which children are depicted as adults, but on a smaller scale, to
62 gathered around Christ. Pictures of this scene are also to be found in the
moralizing Bibles of the thirteenth century, but they are fairly rare and are treated as commonplace illustrations, devoid of any real fervour or
On the other hand, from the end of the sixteenth century on, this scene recurs frequently, especially in engraving, and it is obvious that it corresponds to a new and special form of devotion. This can be
significance.
seen
well is
from a study of a fine print by Stradan, whose engravings, as is known, were an inspiration to the artists of his time. 58 The subject
given by the caption: 'Jesus parvulis
eis* .
Jesus
Him;
is
other
A woman
seated.
women
is
oblatis imposuit
manus
et benedixit
presenting her children naked putti to
and children are waiting
their turn. It
that the child here
is
them
the children were alone with Christ.
is
significant
mother; in the medieval to in the letter of the text, a text closer which were conformity pictures, which did not appeal sufficiently to the artists' imagination to prompt to embellish
it,
accompanied by
his
Here the
child
not separated from his family: an indication of the fresh importance assumed by the family in the general sensibility. A Dutch painting of is
1620 shows the same scene. 54 Christ
is
squatting
on the ground,
middle of a crowd of children pressing round Him. mothers' arms. Others,
who
theme of putti fighting was a
Some
in the
are in their
are naked, are playing or fighting (the one at the time), or crying and
common
shouting. The bigger children are more reserved, and have their hands folded in prayer. Christ's expression is smiling and attentive: that
mixture of tenderness and amusement which grown-ups of modern times, and the nineteenth century in particular, assume when speaking to children.
He
is
holding one hand above one of the
little
heads,
and
is
bless another child running towards Him. This scene raising the other to became extremely popular: the engraving was probably given to
children as a devotional picture, just as they would later be given First Communion pictures. The catalogue of an exhibition at Tours in 1947
devoted to the child in the
same
mentions an eighteenth-century engraving on
art
56
subject.
Henceforth there was a religion for children, and one new devotion was to all intents and purposes reserved for them: that of the guardian angel. 'I men are
would
add',
we
accompanied by
read in L'Honneste gargon, 'that although all which minister to them in
these blessed spirits
THE IDEA OF CHILDHOOD
124
order to help them to make themselves fit to receive the inheritance of it seems that Jesus Christ granted only to children the privilege
salvation,
of having guardian angels. It is not that we do not share this privilege; 66 but manhood derives it from childhood/ For their part, he explains, the angels prefer the 'suppleness' of children to the 'rebellious character of men'. And Fleury in his 1686 treatise on studies maintains that 'the for the excellent reason that they Gospel forbids us to despise children 57 have blessed angels to guard them.' The soul guided by an angel, and of a child or a youth, became a familiar feature of depicted in the form iconography in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. There religious are countless examples, for instance a in a flared skirt
is
Dominiquin
in
which a
little
child
being defended by an angel, a rather effeminate boy of
thirteen or fourteen, against the Devil, a middle-aged man who is 58 The angel is holding his shield between the child in wait for him.
lying and the middle-aged man, providing an unexpected illustration of this sentence in L'Honnestegarfon: 'God possesses the first age, but the Devil in many persons the best parts of old age as well as of the age possesses which the Apostle calls accomplished.' The old theme of Tobias led by the angel would henceforth symbolize the soul-child and its guide, the guardian angel. Witness the fine painting by Tournier shown in London and Paris in 1958, and the engraving by
Abraham child,
Bosse. 59 In an engraving by Mariette the angel is showing the 60 it leads, other angels carrying the cross in the sky.
whom
the guardian angel and the soul-child was used in the decoration of baptismal fonts. I have come across an example in a baroque church in the south of Germany, the church of the Cross at Donauworth.
The theme of
surmounted by a globe with the serpent wound somewhat effeminate young man, the soul-child. This depiction is not simply a symbolic repreis guiding sentation of the soul in the traditional form of the child (incidentally, it
The
lid
around
of the font
it.
On
is
the globe, the angel, a
is a curiously medieval idea to use the child as the symbol of the soul), but an illustration of a devotion peculiar to childhood and derived from
the sacrament of baptism: the guardian angel. of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries The
period
was
also that
of
the child paragons. The historian of the Jesuit college of La Flche recounts from the annals of the Congregation of La Fleche for 1722 the
born on January ipth, i657. 61 In 1671, edifying life of Guillaume Ruffin, at the age of fourteen, he was in the third class. He belonged of course to the Congregation (a pious society confined to the good pupils and dedicated to the Virgin: it still exists, I believe, in the Jesuit colleges).
FROM IMMODEST^ TO INNOCENCE He
used to
125
the sick and he gave alms to the poor. In 1674 he had first year in the philosophy class (there were two at
visit
nearly finished his
he fell ill. The Virgin appeared to him twice. He was of the date of his death, 'the day of the feast of my good Mother', the feast of the Assumption. While reading this text I found myself unable to banish a recollection of my own childhood, in a Jesuit college where some of the boys undertook a campaign for the canonization of a little pupil who had died some years before in the odour of sanctity, at least so his family maintained. It was quite easy to attain sanctity in a short schoolboy's life, and that without any exceptional prodigies or particular precocity: on the contrary, by means of the mere application of the childish virtues, by the mere preservation of one's initial innocence. This was the case with St Louis of Gonzaga, often cited in seventeenth-century works dealing with the problems of education. Apart from the lives of little saints, schoolchildren were given as of full-grown subjects of edification accounts of the childhood years saints - or else of their remorse at their misspent youth. In the annals of the Jesuit college of Aix for 1634 we read: 'Our young people did not fail to have their sermons twice a week in Lent. It was Pere de Barry, that time) when told in advance
the Rector,
who
addressed the aforesaid exhortations to them, taking as deeds of the saints in their youth.' The previous
his subject the heroic
Lent, in 1633, 'he had taken as his subject St Augustine's regrets for his 62
youth.' In the Middle Ages there were no religious festivals of childhood, often pagan rather than apart from the great seasonal festivals which were Christian.
From
die fifteenth century on, as
we have
already seen,
artists
and depicted certain episodes, such as the Presentation of the Virgin in die midst of a throng of children, the Circumcision, particularly more than were usually present in the crowds of the Middle Ages
many
Old Testament festivals, for all that they of childhood in religious iconography, could no
or the Renaissance. But these
had become longer play
festivals
this role in religious life, especially in the
refined religious
life
of seventeenth-century France. First Communion gradually became the which it still is today, even where the great religious festival of childhood, Christian observance is no longer practised regularly. First Communion has also taken the place of the old folklore festivals. Perhaps it owes its continuation, in spite of the de-Christianization of the modern world, the child's individual festival, celebrated collectively in private, within die family the most in particularly have disappeared most rapidly. which those are collective festivals to the fact that
it is
church but more
:
THE IDEA OF CHILDHOOD
126
The the
increasingly solemn celebration of First Communion was due in place to the greater attention given, especially at Port-Royal, to
first
the necessary conditions for the proper reception of the Eucharist. It seems probable that previously children took communion without any special preparation, much as they started going to Mass, and probably quite early in life, judging by the general precocity of manners and the
mingling of children and adults in everyday life. Jacqueline Pascal, in her regulations for the children of Port-Royal, stresses die necessity of carefully gauging the moral and spiritual capacity of children before allowing
them to take communion, and of preparing diem for it a long time ahead: 'Young children, and especially those who are mischievous, frivolous or wedded to some considerable defect, must not be allowed to take communion. They must be made to wait until God has effected some change in them, six
and
it is
wise to wait a long time, a year for instance or at least if their actions are followed up. For I have never
months, to see
regretted making children wait: on the contrary, this has always served to advance in virtue those who were already well disposed and to bring about a recognition of their unreadiness in those who were not. One
many precautions where First Communion is concerned: for often on that first one/ 63 Communion was delayed at Port-Royal until after Confirmation:
cannot take too
the rest depend
all
First
'When we
who have not been Communion either, we
are given children
have not made
their First
Confirmation, so that being filled with the better prepared to receive His Sacred Body/ after
confirmed... if they usually defer
spirit
it
until
of Jesus, they are
By die eighteenth century, First Communion had become an organized ceremony in the convents and colleges. Colonel Gerard recalls for us in 64 He was his memoirs his recollections of a difficult First Communion. born in 1766, one of six children in a poor family. Left an orphan, he worked as a servant from the age of ten until the curate of his parish, taking an interest in him, sent him to the Abbey of Saint-Avit where he had become assistant chaplain. The first chaplain was a Jesuit who took a dislike to the boy. He must have been about fifteen when he was - to the First Communion: 'admitted* - this was the current expression
'It
had been decided
that
I
should
The day
make
my First Communion at the same
was playing with the farm dog before, to the N., pass by. "Have you forgotten," Jesuit, happened he exclaimed, "that it is tomorrow you are due to receive Our Lord's time as several hoarders.
I
when M. de
Body and Blood?" The Abbess would not be
sent for
me
and informed
taking part in the ceremony next day...
me
that I
Three months
FROM IMMODESTY, TO INNOCENCE after
doing penance
... I
made
my
First
Communion.
After
12?
my
second,
was ordered to take communion every Sunday and Holy Day.* First Communion had become the ceremony which it has remained. As early as the middle of the eighteenth century it was customary to commemorate the occasion with an inscription on a devotional picture. At Versailles in 1931 an engraving was exhibited showing St Francis of Assisi. 65 On the back was written: *To certify the First Communion made by Francois Bernard, on April 26th, 1767, Low Sunday, in the parish of Saint-Sebastien of Marly. Barail, parish priest of Saint-S6bastien.' This was a certificate inspired by the official documents of the Catholic
I
Church. All that remained to be done
occasion
by
was
to
add to the solemnity of the was done in the
prescribing a special costume, and this
nineteenth century.
The First Communion ceremony was the most visible manifestation of the idea of childhood between the seventeenth and the late nineteenth century: it celebrated at one and the same time the two contradictory aspects of that idea, the innocence of childhood on the one hand and on the other its rational appreciation of the sacred mysteries.
*
THE
CONCLUSION
TWO CONCEPTS
o
OF CHILDHOOD
medieval society the idea of childhood did not
exist; this
is
not to
were neglected, forsaken or despised. The idea of childhood is not to be confused with affection for children: it corresponds to an awareness of the particular nature of childhood, that particular nature which distinguishes the child from the adult, even the young adult. In medieval society this awareness was lacking. That is why, as soon as the child could live without the constant solicitude of his mother, his nanny or his cradle-rocker, he belonged to adult society. That adult society now strikes us as ratheifpuerile^no doubt this is largely a matter of its mental age, but it is also due to its physical age, because it was partly made up of children and youths. Language did not give the suggest that children
IN
word 'child* much as we
the restricted
meaning
we
give
it
today: people said 'child'
say 'lad' in everyday speech. The absence of definition to every sort of social activity games, crafts, arms. There is
extended not a single collective picture of the times in which children are not to be :
found, nestling singly or in pairs in the trousse hung round women's 1 necks, or urinating in a corner, or playing their part in a traditional or as apprentices in a workshop, or as pages serving a knight, etc. who was too fragile as yet to take part in the life of adults 'did not count': this is the expression used by Moliere, who simply bears witness to the survival in the seventeenth century of a very old
festival,
-The infant
attitude of mind. Argan in Le malade imaginaire has two daughters, one of marriageable age and little Louisoii who is just beginning to talk and walk. It is generally known that he is threatening to put his elder daughter in a convent to stop her philandering. His brother asks him: 'How is it, Brother, that rich as you are and having only one daughter, for I dont 2 count the little one, you can talk of putting her in a convent?' The little one did not count because she could disappear.
The quotation from Moliere shows the continuance of the archaic But this survival, for all that it was stubborn, was the fourteenth From century on, there had been a tendency precarious. attitude to childhood.
128
THE
TWO CONCEPTS
OF CHILDHOOD
129
to express in art, iconography and religion (in the cult of the dead) the personality which children were seen to possess, and the poetic, familiar have followed the significance attributed to their special nature.
We
evolution of the putto and the child portrait. And we have seen that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the child or infant - at least in - was the upper classes of society given a special costume which marked him out from the adults. This specialization of the dress of children and
of little boys, in a society in which clothes and outward appearances had considerable importance, bears witness to the changa which had taken place in the general attitude towards children: they counted much more than Argan's brother imagined. In fact, Le malade imaginaire, which seems as hard on little children as do certain remarks by La Fontaine, contains a whole conversation between and little especially
Argan
Louison: 'Look at me, will you!' 'What is it, papa?' 'Here!' 'What?' 'Haven't you anything to tell me?' 'If you wish, I can tell you, to amuse you, -the story of the Ass's Skin, or else the fable of the Fox and the
Crow which I was taught not so long ago.' A new concept of childhood had appeared, in which the child, on account of his sweetness, simplicity and drollery, became a source of amusement and relaxation for the adult. To begin with, the attitude was held by women, women whose task it was to look after children - mothers and nannies. In the sixteenthcentury edition of Le Grand Proprittaire de toutes choses we are told about the nanny: 'She rejoices when the child is happy, and feels sorry for the child
he
when he
she picks him up when he falls, she binds him when and she washes and cleans him when he is dirty.' 3 She up and teaches him to talk: 'She pronounces the words
is ill;
tosses about,
brings the child as if she had a stammer, to teach
him to talk better and more rapidly him in her hands, then on her shoulder, then on her lap, to play with him when he cries she chews the child's meat for him when he has no teeth so that he can swallow profitably and without danger; she plays with the child to make him sleep and she binds his limbs to keep them straight so that he has no stiffness in his body, and she bathes and anoints him to nourish his flesh... Thomas More dwells on the . . .
she carries
;
'
of the schoolboy being sent to school by his mother: 'When the boy will not rise in time for her, but lies still abed and slugg, and when he is up, weepeth because he hath lien so long, fearing to be beaten subject little
at school for his late
early days, and he
thither, she telleth him then that it is but come time enough, and biddeth him: "Go, good
coming
shall
I warrant thee, I have sent to thy master myself, take thy bread and butter with thee, thou shalt not be beaten at all."' Thus she sends him off
son,
THE IDEA OF CHILDHOOD
130
not to burst into tears at the idea of leaving her at home, but she does not get to the bottom of the trouble and the late arrival will be well and truly beaten when he gets to school. 4 Children's little antics must always have seemed touching to mothers, nannies and cradle-rockers, but their reactions formed part of the huge domain of unexpressed feelings. Henceforth people would no longer hesitate to recognize the pleasure they got from watching children's sufficiently reassured
antics
a certain affectation,
her granddaughter: discovery of the
portrait
and
straight
away/
she
is
'I
am
me
caresses it 6
find
Mme
how much
de Sevigne admitting, not time she spends playing with
reading the story of Christopher Columbus's
entertaining me greatly; but your do so love her ... she strokes your in such an amusing way that I have to kiss her
Indies,
daughter entertains
now;
We
and 'coddling* them.
without
which
is
even more.
I
have been playing with your daughter for an hour she delightful/ And, as if she were afraid of some infection, *I
adds, with a levity which surprises us, for the death of a child is something serious for us and nothing to joke about: 'I do not want her to die/ For, as we have seen from Moliere, this first appreciation of childhood went with a certain indifference, or rather with the indifference that was
traditional.
us 'coddling* attitude towards children is even better known to the critical reactions it provoked at the end of the sixteenth century
The by and
found particularly in the seventeenth century. Peevish persons insufferable the attention paid to children. Montaigne bristles: *I cannot 1
abide that passion for caressing new-born children, which have neither
nor recognizable bodily shape by which to make themand I have never willingly suffered them to be fed in my presence/ He cannot accept the idea of loving children Tor our amusement, like monkeys', or taking pleasure in their 'frolickings, games and mental
activities
selves lovable,
6 infantile nonsense'.
this state of mind, a century later, is to be seen 7 de Sevigne's cousin. He was obviously exasperated Couknges, by the way his friends and relatives fussed over their children, for he
Another example of
in
Mme
composed a song dedicated
to 'fathers of families', urging
to eat with adults. spoil their offspring or allow them to this feeling of exasperation note that It is important
them not was
as
to
novel
to the indifferent 'coddling', and even more foreign than 'coddling* attitude of people in the Middle Ages. It was precisely to the presence of children that Montaigne and Coulanges, like Mme de Sevigne, were and Coulanges hypersensitive; it should be pointed out that Montaigne as
TWO CONCEPTS OP CHILDHOOD 13! were more modern than Mme de S6vign in so far as they considered it THE
,
necessary to keep children apart from adults. They held that it was no longer desirable that children should mingle with adults, especially at table; no doubt because if they did they were 'spoiled* and became
ill-mannered.
The
seventeenth-century moralists and pedagogues shared the dislike
by Montaigne and Coulanges for 'coddling'. Thus the austere Fleury, his treatise on studies, speaks very much like Montaigne: 'When litde
felt
in
children are caught in a trap, when they say something foolish, drawing a correct inference from an irrelevant principle which has been given to them, people burst out laughing, rejoice at tricked them, or kiss
having
and
them
they had worked out the correct answer. It is as if the poor children had been made only to amuse the adults, like little 8 dogs or little monkeys/ caress
as if
The author of
Galatte, the manual of etiquette commonly used in the best colleges, those of the Jesuits, speaks like Coulanges: 'Those persons are greatly at fault who never talk of but their wives, their
anything
litde children
and
their nannies.
Just listen to this...
'" 9
"My little son made me laugh so much!
M. d'Argonne, in his treatise on education, L'ducation deMonsieur de Moncade (1690), likewise complains that people take an interest in very small children only for the sake of their 'caresses' and 'antics'; too many parents 'value their children only in so far as they derive pleasure
and
entertainment from them*.
important to remember that at the end of the seventeenth century coddling* was not practised only by people of quality, who, in fact, were beginning to disdain it. Its presence in the lower classes was noted It is *
this
and denounced. J.-B. de La Salle in his Conduite des holes chrfriennes (1720) of the poor are particularly ill-mannered because
states that the children '
they do just as they please, their parents paying no attention to them, in an idolatrous manner: what the children want,
even treating them they want too/
In the moralists and pedagogues of the seventeenth century,
we
see
special nature no longer found in and amusement expression 'coddling , but in psychological interest and moral solicitude. The child was no longer regarded as amusing or
that fondness for childhood
and
its
1
*
Every man must be conscious of that insipidity of childhood disgusts the sane mind; that coarseness of youth which finds pleasure in scarcely anything but material objects and which is only a very crude sketch of die man of thought/ Thus Balthazar Gratien in agreeable:
which
THE IDEA OF CHILDHOOD
132
Discrete, a treatise on education published in 1646 which was still 10 being translated into French in I723. *Only time can cure a person of childhood and youth, which are truly ages of imperfection in every
El
To be understood, these opinions need to be put back in their temporal context and compared with the other texts of the period. They have been interpreted by some historians as showing ignorance of respect/
childhood, but in fact they mark the beginning of a serious and realistic concept of childhood. For they do not suggest that people should accept the levity of childhood: that was the old mistake. In order to correct the
behaviour of children, people must
first
of
all
understand
it,
and the
century and the seventeenth century are full of comments, on child psychology. 11 The authors show a great solicitude texts
of the
late sixteenth
for childreh,
who are seen as witnesses to baptismal innocence, comparable
to the angels, and close to Christ who loved them. But this interest calls for the development in them of a faculty of reasoning which is still fragile, a
determined attempt to turn them into thinking men and good The tone is sometimes grim, the emphasis being laid on as opposed to the laxity and facility of contemporary manners; is not always the case. There is even humour in Jacqueline
Christians. strictness
but
this
and undisguised tenderness. In the texts published towards the end of the century, an attempt is made to reconcile sweetness and reason. Thus the Abbe Goussault, a counsellor at the High Court, writes in Le Portrait fune honn&efemme: 'Familiarizing oneself with one's children, getting them to talk about all manner of things, treating them as sensible people and winning them over with sweetness, is an infallible secret for doing what one wants with them. They are young plants which need tending and watering frequently: a few words of advice offered at the right moment, a few marks of friendship and affection given now and then, touch them and bind them. A few caresses, a few little presents, a few words of cordiality and trust make an impression on their minds, and they are few in number that resist these sweet and easy methods of 12 making them persons of honour and probity.' Pascal,
The first concept of childhood - characterized by 'coddling' -had made its appearance in the family circle, in the company of little children. The second, on the contrary, sprang from a source outside the family: churchmen or gentlemen of the robe, few in number before the sixteenth century, and a far greater number of moralists in the seventeenth century,
THE
TWO CONCEPTS
OF CHILDHOOD
133
rational manners. They too had become alive eager to ensure disciplined, were to the formerly neglected phenomenon of childhood, but they as charming toys, for they saw them as children to regard unwilling creatures of God who needed to be both safeguarded and reformed. fragile
This concept in its turn passed into family life. In the eighteenth century, we find those two elements in the family, a new element: concern about hygiene and physical together with
Care of the body was not ignored by seventeenth-century and pedagogues. People nursed the sick devotedly (at the same to unmask malingerers), but any interest
health.
moralists
time taking every precaution
shown
in healthy bodies
had a moral purpose behind it: a delicate body - all the vices in fact!
encouraged luxury, sloth, concupiscence idea General de Martange's correspondence with his wife gives us some de Mme after a of a family's private life and preoccupations about century shows He 13 in 1754. Martange was born in 1722 and married Sevigne.
in everything concerning his children's life, from 'coddling* great interest to education; he watches closely over their health and even their hygiene. to do with children and family life has become a matter
Everything
and
his
but his presence a central place in the has taken the child very existence are of concern:
worthy of attention. Not only the family.
child's future
PART
TWO
SCHOLASTIC
LIFE
MEDIEVAL SCHOLARS YOUNG AND OLD is
impossible to grasp the particular nature of school life in the past, at the end of the ancien regime, without some idea of what
even
ITeducation
was like in the Middle Ages. No doubt the humanist Renaissance has had greater influence than the Middle Ages on curricula
as on culture, in the upper regions of knowledge and the transmission of knowledge. But the schoolboy's life, in school and out of school, depended for a long time - until the beginning of the nineteenth century - on habits contracted in the Middle Ages. These habits depended on a whole
system which it is difficult for modern man to visualize, because for a long time medievalists have studied the organization of the universities and the movement of philosophical ideas in university society rather than the conditions of life in the school and
its
environment. 1
There is a way ofunderstanding the medieval school
:
first of all
by getting
to know its origins, but also by discovering what it has become in the course of history, for at bottom a phenomenon is characterized not so much by its
origins as by the chain of other phenomena which Only then shall we be able to distinguish some life
in the
it
has directly determined.
of the
Middle Ages which can help to shed
light
features
of school
on our
subject.
The origins are well known. There is some controversy as to whether, in Italy, certain law schools and certain private schools dated back to antiquity. It is known that in Byzantium the ancient system had continued Marrou has shown, had triumph of Christianity, even in theocratic Byzantium. 2 The heir of a Hellenistic tradition, it was characterized by stages more or less comparable to our stages of primary, secondary, and higher education. But in the Gallo-Roman eyrie the educational institutions and techniques of the Byzantine Empire had completely disappeared. It is of no importance to us here if certain Latin subjects and authors, unknown to the Middle Ages, were later reintroduced into without interruption. This system, retained
its
as
H.
I.
secular character after the
curricula: they did not determine the composition of the school. In this between the ancient school and the respect, there was a radical break
medieval school. The latter came into existence to of ecclesiastical recruiting. 137
satisfy the
requirements
SCHOLASTIC
138
LIFE
the HellenPreviously the Church had entrusted the secular school of a of its education the with literary education literary pupils, type
istic
which was indispensable for the acquisition of sacred knowledge in a learned religion - as Christianity, the religion of the Book and its patristic commentaries, had rapidly become. After the fifth century, the Church
would no longer depend on
that traditional institution,
which had been
of the ancient culture and ruined by the decadence of the urban way of life (for the ancient school belonged to and did not exist in the country). But the exercise of the priestthe
dragged down
in the collapse
city
hood
still
called for a
minimum of knowledge: knowledge which one
call literary (the liturgical texts
might which one might
of the divine
office)
and knowledge
the computation of Easter) or this knowledge, the celebration of
call scientific (such as
(such as plain-song). Without Mass and the distribution of the sacraments would become impossible and religious life would become arid. It was therefore necessary for the the bishops (sometimes, in certain countries clergy and particularly
artistic
such as England and Ireland, the monasteries) to organize the instruction of the young clerks themselves. This instruction, contrary to the ancient tradition, was given in the church itself: for a long time the habit remained of saying, 'ajuventute in ista ecclesia nutritus - in gremio sancte matris ecclesie enutritus'* and the Church signified not only a society a\> annis puerilibus
but a place, the porch of a church or its cloister. 4 This instruction was therefore essentially professional or technical.
M. Majrrou calls it 'choir-school education'. The pupils learned what they needed to know in order to say and sing the offices, namely the Psalms and the Canonic Hours, in Latin of course, the Latin of the manuscripts which these texts had been established. Thus this instruction was to the memory, like the instruction predominantly oral and addressed in Moslem countries anyone who Koran schools in the at present given has heard the alternating recitation of the verses of the Koran in the great in
:
not only as mosque at Kairwan will have an idea of the medieval school, it was in its distant sixth-century origins, but as it would remain, at least at its elementary level, for centuries. The pupils all chanted in unison the phrase spoken by the teacher, and they went on repeating the same exercise until they had learnt it by heart. The priests could recite nearly Henceforth reading was no all the prayers in the office from memory. longer an indispensable tool of learning. memory in the event of forgetfulness.
It It
only served to aid their only allowed them to
6 and not to discover something 'recognize' what they already knew that the result with the new, importance of reading was greatly reduced.
MEDIEVAL SCHOLARS YOUNG AND OID
.
139
This extremely specialized instruction was given in the cathedral churches, under the supervision of the bishops, for the clerks of their households. It soon passed into the hands of their auxiliaries, who kter
became their rivals: the canons of the chapter. But the councils of the Middle Ages also laid an obligation on the priests of the new country churches to train their successors - that is to to teach them the
early
say,
Psalms, the Canonical Hours and plain-song. For the parish priests were not appointed as they are today by the bishop, but by a patron, and the cathedral school did not necessarily provide incumbents for the rural parishes. Here we can see the distant origins of the country school, an institution
unknown
to the ancient world.
In so far as rural education existed in these early times, it remained at this elementary level. But, at least in the Carolingian period, the cathedral
school
went beyond
these limits,
and
it is
the cathedral school
which
is
the original cell of our entire scholastic system in the West. The teaching of the Psalms and plain-song continued, the 'choir-school* aspect scolasticus, was were added, and subjects these were none other than the Latin artes liberates, inherited from Hellenistic culture and brought back to Gaul from Italy, where they had probably never stopped being taught in some private schools, and from England or Ireland, where the tradition had been preserved in
remained, and often the canon in charge of the school, the also
the choirmaster.
However, some new
the monasteries. Henceforth in the medieval schools the teaching of the
Psalms and plain-song would be complemented by that of the arts - the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, dialectics) and the quadrivium (geometry,
- and arithmetic, astronomy, music) finally by that of theology, that is to say, of the Scriptures and canon law. As a result the canon in charge of the school sometimes called in the help of assistants: one for the elementary work -the Psalter -and others for certain subjects such as branches of the arts or theology or law. But this multiplication of masters was not universal, and probably took place only in a few schools which acquired a considerable reputation and began to attract teachers or students, sometimes from distant parts, as was the case at Chartxes or Paris. In all probability most of the cathedral schools existed for a long time with one or two masters teaching most of the subjects, or at least the arts. But by the twelfth century they were no longer sufficient. The chapters were obliged to authorize other churches to main-
They had to allow teaching by private masters, on condition that they authorized them, and the reluctance they showed in agreeing to of an association this arrangement resulted in the formation
tain schools.
SCHOLASTIC
140
LIFE
and pupik directed against them, namely the university. Little by little, in the course of the twelfth century, a network of schools was established, some of them famous and giving rise in a few cases to universities, the others
more modest.
A final phenomenon,
the specialization of theology and law, gave the its definitive form. Theology ceased to be
medieval educational system
taught in the same schools as the
arts.
This led to a remarkable system of
to last until the nineteenth century: from the specialization thirteenth century on, there was separate instruction in the arts, which in the university towns gave its name to a Faculty - the Faculty of Arts and which, like a propaedeutic, prepared pupils for admission to the
which was
civil law and medicine. The higher schools: theology, canon law, universities of the thirteenth century finally established this hierarchy of knowledge. They generally consisted of at least two Faculties: a Faculty
of Arts and one or more higher Faculties (in Paris, for example, theology and canon law) they were never confined to the Faculty of Arts alone. For the arts were not sufficient in themselves and merely prepared the way for a different sort of education. The influence of the universities ;
concerns us here in so far as
between the
arts
on
the one
it
helped to effect a complete separation
hand and theology and law on the
other.
more
specialized subjects tended, in fact, to be concentrated not unnaturally in university towns inhabited by famous the other teachers and the students attracted by the latter's prestige.
Instruction in the higher,
On
hand, the
relieved of parasitic subjects such as theology and law, too were taught by certificated masters of the universities,
arts,
though they were not always absorbed by the universities; arts schools were set there was no up wherever the latter existed, and even in places where to multiply at the end of tended doubtless schools and these university, the Middle Ages.
was that instruction in the arts, both inside the universities obedience here of the was out, given all over the country, under the and covering in its of the there the of there abbot, again bishop, chapter,
The
result
and
curricula Latin (including the Psalter), but not theology, canon or civil law, or medicine. It is this instruction in the arts, in the definitive form
which
it
took in the thirteenth century, which concerns us here.
There is a hiatus between the ancient school and the medieval school, but without any interruption, by means of imperceptible alterations,
we pass
MEDIEVAL SCHOL^BS YOUNG AND OLD
141
to our present educational system. The the two of seems a priori a monstrous anachronism, systems comparison but this apparently unthinkable comparison is in fact inevitable. are struck first of all by the differences. The medieval school was confined to the tonsured, to the clerics and the religious. From the end of the Middle Ages it extended its teaching to ever wider sections of the a population. However, up to the mid-eighteenth century, it remained Latin institution, and when it became French (when the use of the
from
the medieval school
We
vernacular ceased to be punished), centre of
its
secondary curricula.
it
For
retained the study of Latin in the we have to look
this characteristic
further back than those periods which practised a deliberate cult of Roman Antiquity; we have to look to the Middle Ages, when Latin
was
of
first
all
For centuries
it
the language of the clerks and their professional schools. was taught as a living language rather than as a cultural as necessary to the clerk as to the man of law and the
language, a language administrator. that
its
It
modern
was only at the beginning of the eighteenth century function as an element of general education became
predominant. A second difference between medieval and modern education is the absence of primary education in the earlier period. Primary education as we understand it today is neither a technical education nor an education in general culture. It teaches reading, writing, use of the mother tongue, and what it is essential to know in order to be able to get along in life, whatever one's trade or station. But in the Middle Ages and at the and empirical knowledge was beginning of modern times this elementary not taught in school: it was acquired at home or in apprenticeship to a 6 trade. The usefulness of the school began with Latin, and it stopped at the level of Latin studies necessary for the purpose to which the pupil intended to put them. The incumbent of a country parish could be the liturgical texts by heart; a future attorney had satisfied with
learning
to be
more demanding. True,
the medieval school provided elementary
- the Latin of the Psalter from which pupils were - and no doubt this instruction formed the inspiration for taught reading modern primary education at the beginning of the seventeenth century, 7 as we shall see later. But the Psalter represented only the rudiments of instruction in Latin
the Latin school. school', the
When
whole
spirit
it was transferred to the French of the 'little of it changed and it became something entirely
different.
The
and the were Faculties of Theology, Law and Medicine,
third difference: the lack of higher education in letters
sciences. Admittedly there
SCHOLASTIC
142
LIFE
have continued to the present day under the same names. But was nothing in medieval France to be compared with either higher education in the Hellenistic world, which was essentially scientific, rhetorical and philosophical in character, or the Faculties of Letters and the Sciences which were born at the beginning of the nineteenth century with the Napoleonic university. This is a surprising gap when one considers the importance of philosophy in the intellectual life of the Middle Ages. The discovery of the unknown works of Aristotle and the
and
these
there
in separate instruction in great Thomist synthesis should have resulted the liberal arts and theology. In fact, ethics and metaphysics assumed
such an important position in the curricula that parts of the arts were absorbed by philosophy. Thus the old dialectics of the triviurn disthe trivium from appeared in favour of logic, which permanently ousted scholastic terminology; and logic then became synonymous with coexist with
or whether
this philosophy would question then was whether forms of grammar, the and with rudimentary grammar,
The
philosophy.
it
would break away
to
become
a
form of higher education.
In this respect education developed differently in France and England. In England, the Latin schools became affiliated to the universities; the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge were markedly different from the other, non-university Latin schools. It became customary to begin the could be, for instance, study of the arts at the nearest Latin school which
the cathedral school of St Paul's in London. Later these schools,
were
schools in France, just like the Latin
would be
called
which
'grammar
was only on leaving the grammar school, at about fourteen, young Englishman was sent to Oxford or Cambridge. The
schools'. It
that the
difference in age corresponded to a difference in curricula: philosophy sciences were reserved for the universities, in principle at least, for the distinction was not really strictly observed until the eighteenth
and the
First of all because century. In reality the borderline was much vaguer. in the university colleges, apart from philosophy, the pupils also had to had already studied at study all over again the precepts and authors they
school, in accordance with the principle
the
grammar
to
medieval pedagogy. Then again,
fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries
it
of repetition dear
sometimes happened in the
that logic
was read
in the
grammar
a long time in dispute such as rhetoric, which Brinsley claimed for the universities although it was on the curriculum of the grammar schools and stayed there. The
schools.
The place of certain subjects remained for
seventeenth century. argument was still going on at the beginning of the with what was in accordance were However, things finally arranged
MEDIEVAL SCHOLARS YOUNG AND OLD
,
143
already ancient usage: the grammar schools prepared pupils for the and the universities had the monopoly of the instruction in
universities,
philosophy which was regarded as the necessary complement of the ordinary studies, before admission to the specialities of law, theology or medicine. Philosophy then became the embryo of a higher cultural education in the modern sense. The same evolution occurred in Germany. 8 In France,
on
the other hand, die schools of
*
artists'
(pupils studying
the arts) attached to the universities did not succeed in distinguishing themselves, either by their recruitment or by their curricula, from the
schools of
No
*
artists' in
other towns which did not give birth to universities.
in thirteenth-century Paris, in the Paris of St Thomas's time, conditions could have developed in the same way as at Oxford and
doubt
Cambridge. The Parisian schools were who had already been taught
students
the twelfth century,
it is
attracting from distant parts in other schools. Already, in
recorded that once they had reached the age
of -puberty the better students used to leave their schools to go to 9 However, these schools, Chartres, Tournai, Orleans and Bologna. did the not famous than more rest, teaching young boys, stop though
and it did not become customary for diem to take in only students who had already received a preliminary education, as it did at Oxford and Cambridge. In Pans, this state of affairs may have been due to the presence of a far bigger native population than that of the little English towns, so that the schools had to satisfy the requirements not only of a foreign clientele, similar to that of the present Faculties in France, but also of a local clientele like that of the colleges or lyces. However that may be, philosophy was not separated from grammar and its rudiments; accordingly the curriculum was the same in the schools of the university towns as in those of the non-university towns, provided that the latter were sufficiently important. The consequences are still perceptible today. Philosophy remained on the curriculum of the grammar schools, and when, after the fourteenth of century, education was divided into parts according to the difficulty the subject and the age of the pupil, philosophy was pushed to the very end of the cycle of Latinity; it formed the subject-matter of the last two classes under the name of logic and physic - which were to become the modern philosophy classes. The logics and physics classes of the sixteenth century corresponded both to the English university colleges and to the the Sciences in France. The existence present-day Faculties of Letters and of a second baccalaureate in France today is due to the fact that in France
philosophy has not detached
itself
from
the rest of the
arts.
In England,
SCHOLASTIC
144
LIFE
never contrary, there is no second baccalaureate because there was in the English or never in instruction physics, logic any philosophy, any grammar schools.
on the
England became part of university education was absorbed by what became secondary education. Thus the creation by Napoleon of a Faculty of Letters was not based on any French tradition, and the inspiration for it had to be sought in foreign, and particularly
What
in
in France
German, models. That
is
why,
in France,
it
has not
become customary
to
as the necessary regard university education in Letters and the Sciences of the nineteenth century, end the At education. a to good complement the social equivalent in France of Oxford or Cambridge was not the Sorbonne but Louis-le-Grand or Stanislas or else a Jesuit college. Nowa*
days
So
it is
the
far,
cole des Sciences Politiques, the
Sciences Po',
the comparison of medieval education with our own has out differences. By difference I mean the impossibility
chiefly brought for us of finding in the
one the origins of the other: thus neither our
descended from the primary nor our university education is directly medieval system. But in French secondary education in the nineteenth when that century and at the beginning of the twentieth century, education was
still
culmination of the
predominantly Latin, liberal arts
we
can recognize the natural arts had been
of the Middle Ages. The
at two points: under the considerably modified in the interval, notably humanist influence of the sixteenth century, when the classical Latin authors were substituted for the authors of the Byzantine Empire, and
in the 'eighteenth century, when the use of French was introduced into the schools together with a few new scientific ideas. But they still remained was still used. True, the recognizable, and their traditional terminology word 'artist', as applied to students, went out of use after the sixteenth century, although it remained in the administrative, non-spoken language
to denote the Faculty of Arts, as opposed to the other higher Faculties. But the expressions which served, almost to the present day, to denote
the principal divisions of secondary education or of what became education - still belong to the traditional vocabulary of the
secondary arts.
During the
last
two
centuries
of the ancien regime and
in the nine-
teenth century too, the normal cycle was divided in the following way: or humanities grammar classes up to the third form, then the fifth form class,
then the sixth form or rhetoric
Grammar and former
rhetoric are
dialectics, raised to
class,
then logic and finally physics.
two branches of the old trivium. Logic is the a more philosophical than oratorical level by
the Aristotelian renaissance of the Middle Ages. Physics
is
simply the
MEDIEVAL SCHOLARS, YOUNG AND OLD
145
former quadrivium. The humanities represent the contribution of the humanist thought of the sixteenth century, effected by the Jesuits in
and physics were replaced by of philosophy and mathematics. The mere enumeration of the names of these classes, from the sixteenth century to the present day, summarizes the entire history of the Latin school: the original trivium and quadrivium, the philosophical deposits of the Middle Ages, the humanistic contribution of the Renaissance, and the
particular. In the nineteenth century, logic
the
present-day
classes
modernization of the old logic and physics into the modern philosophy and mathematics. The stages are clearly defined, but they are the stages
of a
We
can trace it back from the modern French which brought secondary education into a closer relationship with primary and technical education) to the college of the ancien regime and from the college to the medieval Latin school which taught 'grammar and the arts'. This does not mean that in the Middle Ages the teaching of the arts corresponded to the teaching of the arts in the modern French secondary school, but simply that it was the starting-point of the development which resulted in our secondary single evolution.
lycee (before the reforms
education.
We both
have tried to
its
origins and
situate the
medieval school by linking
Now
its
that
it
has
become
posterity. go on to consider certain features
familiar to us, let us
of
it
up with
rather it
more
which
are
concerned with our study of the relationship between the ages: the lack of gradation in the curricula according to difficulty of the subject-matter, the simultaneity with which the subjects were taught, the mixing of the ages,
and the
liberty
of the
pupils.
The
lack
ofgradation
Nobody thought of having a graduated system of education, in which the subjects for study would be distributed according to difficulty, The most striking example is that of grammar. regard grammar as we have done ever since the fifteenth
beginning with the
Today we century the
-
as
easiest.
an elementary
more elementary
science,
and a
philology.
difficult
subject,
and the further
we
advance in time,
becomes. But in ancient times grammar was a science at that, corresponding rather to our modern it
The Middle Ages
from ancient times this concept of of the trivium; advanced of it beneath them. Thus study John of
inherited
grammar, which was one of students did not consider the
the branches
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
146
Salisbury, in the twelfth century, attended classes in grammar for three years, between the ages of sixteen and twenty. Students read over and
over again the Commentarium grammaticorum libri XVII by Priscian, a fifth-century Latin grammarian. In 1215 the University of Paris issued a decree stipulating that in the arts schools one of Priscian's books should be
two
10
Later Priscian was replaced by Alexandre de Villedieu's Doctrinale pueromm, a thirteenth-century work of twelve chapters: the declensions, the eteroclites or irregularities, the degrees of comparison, the articles or the genders, the preterites and supines, the studied for at least
years.
and abnormal verbs, the four types of verb, transitive, inand long syllables, stress and figures of speech. The Doctrinal would be the manual of grammar until the end of the fifteenth century, when it would be replaced in France by Despautere's manual, which was scarcely any easier but defective
transitive or reciprocal constructions, short syllables
which
at least, for the first time, described itself as a
pedagogic
initiation
rather than a scientific summa. also what was taught just after reading or at the same time, to boys of ten. No doubt they did not begin with Priscian or the Doctrinal. Their first book was Donat,
grammar was
This scientific
from the that
is
Psalter,
to say the It
De
was
octo partibus orationis by Donat, a fourth-century called Donatus minor to distinguish it from other
grammarian. books by Donat, or else Ars minor, which suggests that it was an elementary work, but an elementary work which formed part of the general study of the arts. Later on, Donat became synonymous with the rudinients of
grammar: when one knew
one's Donat,
one could find
way about. Certain private masters had been given permission the chapter to teach Donat but not other authors. one's
by
manuscripts Donat is followed by extracts from Priscian, one would have thought to be an author for more advanced students. At the beginning of the eleventh century, the Anglo-Saxon Aelfric wrote a Latin dialogue with a juxtalinear translation intended for beginners at the Donat level; he accompanied this with Excerptiones de In
many
whom
Prisciano minore vel majore, a sort
and
Priscian.
To
of condensation or anthology of Donat
take another document,
we
find a
Donat included
in
Bologna student's luggage stolen in 1393, and this work is mentioned next to a Doctrinal and a Boethius (an author who dealt with dialectics, music, the quadrivium) as if a little French grammar the inventory of a
:
were found today among the schoolbooks of a boy in the philosophy class. Thus grammar was at once a science and a rudimentary subject, studied by both the big clerk aged from fifteen to twenty and the little
MEDIEVAL SCHOLARS YOUNG AND OLD
,
147
of ten. And it was always the same grammar, with examples from same authors of the Byzantine Empire. 11 Another example of the lack of gradation is provided by John of Salisbury's cycle of studies in the middle of the twelfth century. John of Salisbury was born about 1 137. He arrived in Paris at the age of fourteen. By this time he had already received a primary education: the Psalter, Donat, and a smattering of the liberal arts. He came to Paris to complete his education at the feet of famous masters. These could be, as in the thirteenth century, specialists in certain branches of the arts - one master teaching grammar, another rhetoric, a third dialectics or logic and a fourth the quadrivium - but this was not always the case. Generally speaking, the same master taught all the arts, laying special emphasis on a favourite discipline. Thus in the sixteenth century Odon de Tournai, who was in charge of two hundred pupils, taught all the arts, although 'praecipue tamen in dialectica eminebat And if, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in Paris and the university towns, the most famous of the clerk
the
9
.
masters sometimes specialized to a certain extent, this specialization tended to diminish later on. On his arrival in Paris, the fourteen-year-old
John of Salisbury did not address himself first of all to a grammar master. He took a course of dialectics - that is to say, he spent most of his time studying the commentaries on Aristotle's Organon by Boethius and Porphyrus. He remained on this course for two years, but when he returned after a long absence, he found the same classmates under the same master, still doing these exercises in dialectics which by that time he considered useless but which none the less offered sufficient interest to retain a faithful public for about five years at a time. Thus in the thirteenth century it was still a common thing for a student to linger over the study of one of the liberal arts. Dialectics did not distract John of Salisbury from grammar, which he had no intention of neglecting, for
that
all
he had begun
his studies in Paris
with
dialectics.
He
returned
for three years, until he was about twenty, providing another example of the medieval antiquity of grammar, at once a rudimentary to
it
subject studies.
of the
and a
He
science.
At twenty, John of Salisbury went ahead with his who went through the whole cycle
enrolled with a master
cuncta
and
over again (ab eo [Richard I'fiveque] relegf) the quadrivium, that is to say the sciences, of which he was Then he went ignorant (et inaudita quaedam ad quadrivium pertinentia). to rhetoric, with which he was already familiar (relegi quoque arts all
taught him still
on
rhetoricam),
with
and finished with logic, in which he resumed acquaintance which he had already studied in dialectics.
Aristotle's Organon,
SCHOLASTIC
148
LIFE
After that he in his turn taught the arts, to earn his living, and when he returned to the schools, it was in a higher Faculty, in order to study
of Salisbury had not theology. During his long years as an 'artist', John followed any plan, and there is no sign of any gradation in his studies: dialectics, grammar, review of the trivium, the quadrivium, review of The order could have been entirely different: it does not rhetoric, logic.
his correspond to any traditional succession. Every master arranged and one at and masters his to taught preferences, programme according the same time subjects which general opinion placed on the same level
and importance. 12 However, the reform of the University of Paris in 1366 by Cardinal de Saint-Marc and Cardinal de Saint-Martin showed signs of a tendency in favour of a gradation of the curricula, a tendency very foreign to the
of
difficulty
reform of 1215 by Robert de Coupon. 13 This text gives the programme of the university examinations. First of all, for the determination the future baccalaureate, the requirements were: (i) grammar -sint in grammatica - veterem artem et Doctrinale et Graecismum audiverint\
edocti,
(2)
totam, to wit Aristotle's
Organon and
also his
De
logic anima. For the licencia
docendi: physics and Aristotle's scientific treatises, de generatione et corruptione, de caelo et mundo, parva naturalia. For the mastership of arts Aristotle's :
and Meteors. Here one might be tempted to see the elements of a the system of gradation: grammar and logic which together occupied the arts curriculum, the quadrivium and moral philosophy. in biggest place But this gradation remained very vague, for it left grammar and logic Ethics
same level: what we really have here is a classification correspondof examinamore to systematic teaching, to a better planned system ing tions designed to impose subjects for the licentiate's degree and the
on
the
for the baccamastership which were not also required of the candidate Moreover this distribution of the various subjects between the
laureate.
three examinations prejudged neither their difficulty - for the Organon or the De Anima were no easier than the Physics or the Ethics - nor the would be taught, for the dates of the examinations order in which
they
for the baccalaureate, the licentiate's degree and the mastership came closer together until they concurred at the beginning of modern times,
when
to
all
intents
and purposes they became
different formalities
of one
and the same examination. 14 Simultaneity
grammar and logic, were not ranked in a progressive order. However, if the subjects were not graduated in order of difficulty,
The
arts, at least
MEDIEVAL SCHOLARS YOUNG AND OLD they could have been distributed
i.e.
149
each could have been taught to
the pupil at a different time. In fact this distribution became inevitable in the twelfth- and thirteenth-century schools, such as those attended in the arts: but Salisbury, which gave advanced instruction that in France this hierarchy of the arts schools changed fairly
by John of
we know
quickly. It was compromised children of the town, and also
by the junior clientele made up of the by the tendency to cut short the duration
of the course of studies. John of Salisbury's university career lasted twelve years, and to these we must add the five or six years at his first school which preceded them. His companions in the dialectics this there
was
also a contrary tendency, to
class
But as early as which the same John of
remained in that branch of study for nearly ten
years.
the Metalogicon, directed against Salisbury bears witness in a treatise called those who wanted to cut short the duration of the course of studies, and 15 Three years even, so he maintains, reduce it to two or three years. instead of ten or twelve! John of Salisbury heaps contempt on these and Cornificius, the it was they who eventually triumphed, people. Yet to us as the precursor of modern education, object of his derision, appears characterized as far back as die fifteenth century by a shorter cycle than that of the Middle Ages. None the less it was a case of anticipation, and
the Middle Ages retained a long cycle of studies which can be explained of clerks who were often by the fact that education was the monopoly
in no hurry to settle down. It was shortened when already beneficed and the Latin school began drawing more of its pupils from the laity. But even then the long cycle of studies remained for a long time as a model. The humanists, for all that they were so hostile to medieval pedagogy,
to extend a long way into life, thought that an ideal education ought of which they could distinguish beyond childhood and adolescence neither the age limits nor the existential character. short the duration of the course of studies was to The effect of still
cutting
rob the university schools (which were already attended by beginners from the town) of their character as institutions of complementary
more or less specialists. The education, provided by masters who were invaded at course of studies at these schools was cut short at the top and became the bottom. The result was that the university schools rapidly had always been. of the non-university arts schools polyvalent, as most The same master taught all the arts (like the modern primary-school Some of these or at least logic, the quadrivium. teacher),
grammar,
subjects,
which did not belong
for a long time the object
of
to the basic grammar-logic cycle, were course in Paris: ethics was still a special
SCHOLASTIC
ISO
LIFE
taught separately in the kte fifteenth century,
charge of the course. arts
when Standonc was
in
He
complained, incidentally, that the bachelors of were no longer taking it. Between 1492 and 1517 it was finally 16
suppressed. Even in the case
of
these distinct
and
special lessons, instruction
still
remained simultaneous, in accordance with the tradition which we find described in the reform of the University of Paris in 1215 by Robert de Coupon, and which was wholly in keeping with the spirit of medieval pedagogy. From this text we learn that the arts were divided into two cycles: one given in the scolae ordinariae grammar and logic, in other words Priscian and the Organon and the other ad cursum. In these cursariae, the pupils studied rhetoric,
the quadrivilia (physics
from
Aristotle,
music from Boethius, etc.), but also a grammatical treatise, Donat's Barbarismum (whereas the De octo partibus formed part of the ordinary cycle) and finally a sort of optional subject: ethics. To the first cycle belonged the basic disciplines, and the reformer of 1215 saw to it that they were not extended too far. The second cycle consisted of the
complementary another:
subjects.
But
these
two
cycles
did not follow one
on
the contrary, they were, in effect, taught simultaneously: the ordinary classes were held on weekdays, while the cursariae were
given only on holidays, which were, of course, frequent. It was as if the time-tables had been arranged so that the same pupils could follow both cycles at the same time. It can now be seen why the Bologna student possessed both a Donat and a Boethius. The older students were distinguished from the new not by the subjects they studied they were the
same - but by the number of times they had repeated them. Moreover the scarcity of manuscript books, and the need to rely on memory above all, also made this wearisome repetition inevitable. The mixing of the ages and the liberty of the students The lack of gradation of the curricula, the simultaneity of the teaching, the oral method of repetition: the features of this pedagogy have to be kept in
mind
if
we
are to understand the astonishing demographic
of the medieval school. At what age did the medieval child
structure
start
school?
On
this
point the
answer given by the historians varies, because, when the historians are French, it is not clear whether they are talking about the elementary school or about the higher school as it existed only in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. If, on the other hand, they are English, then we have a better idea of what they are talking about, because in England the
MEDIEVAL SCHOLARS YOUNG AND OLD distinction
*
15!
between elementary schools and higher schools providing
instruction in the arts survived the thirteenth century and has lasted down to the present day. But even in what appear to be the clearest cases an
ambiguity remains. In the fourteenth century, in England, Chaucer in 'The Prioress's Tale* depicts a little schoolboy: 'Now among the children there was a widow's son, a litde cleric seven years of age who was accustomed to 17 go to school every day/ He was precocious for his time. In Paris, in 1339, at the Ave Maria College, the youngest pupils were eight years 1* old. 18 Boys entered Winchester College between eight and seventeen.
The age given by Adamson, the English educational historian, seems to have been the usual one: from nine to twelve. It can be assumed that on the average it was at about the age of ten that the little cleric began his Psalter. It should be noted that at that age, nowadays, he would be or five years at a entering the first form and would already have four - more if he had been to nursery school. The behind him school primary
medieval cleric was four or five years behind the boy of our own and those four or five years represented at that time a much longer day, than today. So the medieval child started period, comparatively speaking, school fairly late. How long did he stay there? Here again, we must be careful to distinguish one period from another. Until the twelfth century have stayed on much after thirteen approximately, a pupil can scarcely or fourteen, the age of puberty. Then, in the twelfth and thirteenth a centuries, with die university movement, it became customary to have little
the elementary school finished long cycle of studies which started where and, taking the student at thirteen or fourteen, accompanied him to about the age of twenty. This would be the English system: until fourteen, the as it was later called, and the elementary school or the grammar school, after which the student to fourteen from eighteen, university college or spent a period reading law. in
specialized
theology
two stages did not survive Paris university schools must have had a proover fourteen who raised the average age-level,
In France the teaching of the arts in thirteenth century.
the
The
portion of pupils aged students attracted by the
fame of the city's masters. But these same schools did not succeed in in took younger beginners, since they undoubtedly as complementary schools which pupils could themselves establishing enter only after receiving a preliminary education. That was the great difference between them and the English schools. The students often in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, so stayed at school a long time that the long cycle of studies, lasting to the age of twenty and beyond,
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
152
became customary; there is reason to think that the teaching of the arts and retained many masters: famous teachers preferred the arts to law and theology because they were more remunerative - their arts courses were better attended, and attended for a longer period by adults. We know on the other hand that from the fourteenth century on the
attracted
masters taught the liberal arts only while waiting for something better. Soon they were no longer, as in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
Anselm or Abelard, but occasional teachers same time as they were studying for examinations in the higher Faculties: theology, law or medicine. And this latter formula carried the day until the Jesuits restored to the teaching body a prestige which was, however, very relative; the masters in the Jesuit colleges were more often than not students in the higher Faculties who earned their living by teaching, just as students in the Faculties of Letters and the Sciences now give private lessons or teach in private schools. This drop in the quality of the teaching body suggests a change in the composition of the classes. It corresponded in fact to the transition from the long cycle to a shorter cycle, to the shortening of the course of studies. As the average age of the pupils dropped, the master giving eminent
who
specialists
taught the
such
as
arts at the
instruction in the arts stopped being a scholar or a thinker, a dialectician or logician famed for the originality of his thought, and became a pedagogue, a pedant, a mere labourer treated with scant respect. This
evolution started at the end of the Middle Ages with the victory of a programme that ended when the student was
shorter cycle of studies, a
about
fifteen.
However,
we
should beware of giving
this speculation
about ages
more importance than it deserves. No doubt we are introducing into this analysis a totally modern concept, namely that of the correspondence between age and studies - a concept foreign to the Middle Ages. It is only very rarely that one comes across a precise reference in a text to the pupils' ages. When, despite the opposition of the chapters, the private schools multiplied and threatened the monopoly of the cathedral schools, the canons in self-defence tried to set limits to their rivals' activity. These were never age limits. The canons confined themselves to
limits
forbidding the private schools to teach anything more advanced than Donat, which was synonymous with elementary grammar. And this absence of any reference to age continued for a very long time the lack may be noted very often in the seventeenth-century moralists. The lodging contracts something like articles of apprenticeship by which families fixed the terms of accommodation of their schoolboy sons :
MEDIEVAL SCHOLAtS YOUNG AND OLD rarely mention the boy's age, as if that as a general rule the
153
.
We
it were of no know importance. youngest pupils were about ten years old. But
their contemporaries paid little attention to their age, and considered it perfectly natural too for an adult who was anxious to learn to join a class of children, for it was the subject being taught that mattered. An adult could listen to the work of Donat at the same time as a
precocious
boy
was studying the Organon. In the medieval school
all the ages were mixed together in the same At that time the school did not have huge buildings at its The master installed himself in the cloister after it of
classroom. disposal. parasitic
clearing
commercial
But later on,
as the
or else in the church or at the church door. of authorized schools increased, he sometimes
activity,
number
when he was short of money, and Thomas occasionally shows a touch of contempt for these impoverished creatures who speak coram pueris in angulis'. Generally die master contented himself with a street corner St
'
hired a room, a schola at a fee which, incidentally, was fixed by regulation in the university towns; and in Paris these schools were concentrated in
one
street,
the
Rue du
Fouarre: vicus straminis. These schools were, of
course, independent of one another. The floor was strewn with straw, and the pupils sat on the floor. In the fourteenth century a few benches
were provided, although
innovation encountered some opposition come to him, as a shopkeeper waits for customers. Sometimes one master would entice away the pupils of another. In this classroom boys and men of all ages were at first.
Then
this
the master waited for students to
gathered together, from ten years of age to twenty or more. 'I saw the 21 students in the school', wrote Robert of Salisbury in the twelfth century. *
Their numbers were great [there could have been two hundred or more].
saw there men of diverse ages: pueros, adolescentes, juvenes, senes* - that to say, all the ages of life, for there was no word to denote an adult and one went straight (romjuvenes to senes. I
is
In die fifteenth century
we
find the masters in Pierre Michault's
young and the old who made with up pupils open minds, whether you be old or young, mature or green... 'And this school, with a great multitude of pupils, was reading the chapter on constructions [in the Doctrinal by Doctrinal addressing themselves to both the their public: 22
'Good
'
Alexandre de Villedieu, Priscian's successor and Despautere's predecessor].' How could things be otherwise, seeing that there was no gradation of the curricula, and that the older students had simply repeated
more often what the younger pupils had heard only once ? The mixing of the ages continued out of school. The solitary
master,
SCHOLASTIC
154
LIFE
and with only one building at his on the everyday life of his pupils; they escaped from his authority as soon as lessons were over. Now, to begin with, this authority, the master's for was the only one they recognized. 'Old or young, mature or green', they were left to their own devices. A very few lived with their parents. Others lived in lodgings, either with the master himself or with a priest or a canon, on terms arranged in a contract similar to articles of apprenticeship. These pupils were the most closely supervised or at least the most closely watched; they belonged to a household, to the family of the clerk to whom they had been entrusted, and here there was a sort of compromise between the education by apprenticeship and academic education of the modern type. This was the only form of boarding-school. Most of the pupils lived where they could, in private lodgings, several to a room. And here too, old and young were mingled together initiatory traditions bound the younger pupils closely to their elders. This mingling of the sometimes helped by an
disposal,
was
in
no
assistant,
position to keep a check
,
;
ages surprises us today if it does not actually shock us but at the time people were so indifferent to it that they did not notice it, as is the way with very familiar things. How could they be expected to notice the :
mixing of the ages when they were so indifferent to the very fact of age? As soon as he started going to school, the child immediately entered the world of adults. This confusion, so innocent that it went unnoticed, was one of the most characteristic features of medieval society and one of the most enduring features too. At the end of the Middle Ages, we can make out the first signs of a contrary evolution which would result in our present very conscious differentiation of the ages. But until the end of the ancien regime at least, something of the medieval state of mind would remain. Its resistance to other factors of mental transformation marks it as a fundamental attitude to life, common to a long succession of generations.
*
NEW
A
II
INSTITUTION: THE COLLEGE
of the pontifical reformers of the University of Paris and (of 1215 1366) spoke only of the school: the room in which, twice a day for die ordinary lessons and on free days for the the master who had lured it gathered his pupils lessons, extraordinary and read or commented on the authors prescribed custom. together texts
THE
by
The
reformers' intervention
traditional curricula
and
was limited
to enforcing observance
of the
fairness in the examinations. In 1452 another
reformation took place, carried out by Cardinal d'Estouteville: this was 1 the last time pontifical authority was exerted by its legate. The next reformation of the University of Paris was the work of Henri IV and his officers, in
1598,
and established the conditions of education
mid-eighteenth century. The reformation of 1452 bears witness to a that
of the
earlier period. In this text,
spirit
some new
until the
very different from
made their Some new characters
expressions
appearance: collegium, pedagogium, domus artistorum. take the place of the former master: magister
prindpalis, pedagogus, regens.
document, the Faculty of Arts was now composed of domus artistorum, entities which had been unknown or collegia, pedagogia, had gone unmentioned in the older texts. The institutions referred to in
According to
this
all the teaching of the arts, and the Cardinal was legislating them alone, addressing himself directly to the magistri principales, who had become the chief cogs in the educational machine. This new organization had come into being between the reformations of the thirteenth and
these terms did
for
fourteenth centuries and the reformation of 1452 the old-type schools, the cathedral school or the school in the Rue du Fouarre, was replaced :
by
the college or the pedagogica. Cardinal d'Estouteville speaks of diem as of institutions so familiar that it does not occur to him to mention their
though they were, or to compare them with the previous Yet his system. contemporaries were well aware of the importance the in university life and occasionally they provided an had assumed college indication of it. Thus in 1445 the University of Paris, in an address to the admitted that it now resided almost iota - in its origins, recent
King,
entirely
quasi
colleges,
and that it would have perished in the recent troubles -during the Hundred Years War - if it had not been safely established inside these colleges.* 155
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
156
In the sixteenth century, tienne Pasquier gave a precise description of transformation, which had taken place just over a hundred years before. He began by reviewing the places where the students were given this
of the colleges. The disorderliness of medieval education shocked him: at that time 'studies were in a jumble ... the rooms on one side were leased to students and on the their lessons before the introduction
other to whores, so that under the same roof there was a school of learning 8 together with a school of whoring/ Pasquier expressed surprise that 'at
was no more discipline than that, and that the University of Paris had none the less acquired such a high reputation*. His comments show to what extent medieval freedom was no longer understood or tolerated: freedom for the graduate master to teach where he liked, as he liked; freedom for the pupil to live free of supervision outside school hours. People now saw nothing in the old state of affairs but licence and anarchy. Revulsion had brought about 'the institution of the colleges which put a new complexion on things'. According to Pasquier, the institution took place in two stages. First of all, 'certain lords and particularly ecclesiastics decided to build houses in this University, which were called colleges, for the benefit of the poor students whom they wanted to be lodged therein under the name of Scholars, and to be fed and taught at the expense of the revenue set aside for this purpose*. Next, well-to-do families got into the habit of sending their sons to these colleges for scholars, which had acquired a good reputation for discipline, and thus came to desert the 'jumble' in the Rue du Fouarre: 'The in discipline kept by these poor Scholarship Students who were confined the colleges was considered so good that the majority of fathers and mothers, sending their children to study in Paris, also wanted them to lodge in the colleges in order to avoid debauchery.' Thus with the institution of the college appeared a feeling unknown to the Middle Ages and which would go on growing in strength until the end of the nineteenth century revulsion at the idea of the mingling of the ages. Henceforth schoolboys would tend to be separated from adults and submitted that time there
:
to a discipline peculiar to their condition, for the good reputation of the poor scholars was chiefly due to their 'confinement' (delusion). Incidentally,
we
should beware of taking
pendence enjoyed
by
Pasquier's
this
'confined'
word
literally:
students
the inde-
would alarm
present-day parents! However, they were none the less submitted to a supervision, or rather an attempted supervision, such as their thirteenth-
century predecessors had never known.
An
important stage had been passed. The transition from the free
A
NEW
INSTITUTION: THE COLLEGE
.
157
school of the Middle Ages to the disciplined college of the fifteenth
century was the sign of a parallel movement in the world of feelings: expressed a new attitude to childhood and youth.
The
colleges,
founded
century onwards, started
it
in the hospices from the end of the twelfth as homes for poor students. Thus in 11 80 an
Englishman back from Jerusalem took a place in the Hotel-Dieu in which to house eighteen poor students maintained by an endowment. 4 This was the origin of the College des Dix-huit which in 1231, when the old Hotel-Dieu was destroyed, installed itself in an independent house. Later the College des Dix-huit was combined with Louis-le-Grand. Starting as a hostel, the college soon became an institution for scholars
:
a prelate or an abbot would give a university an endowment to maintain a few poor students from his diocese or native land, specifying the way in
which the fund was
to be applied.
college with a permanent financial
permanent
installation in premises
bigger than the limited
Thanks
The endowment provided the made possible its
basis: in particular it
which
number of
to our eyes often seem far seemed to require.
beneficiaries
to this permanence, the institutions for scholars absorbed all arts, which continued to be given in them until the
the teaching of the
home for scholars was still a long way from the of the ancien regime. However, it came closer to it in die course college of the thirteenth century with the institutes founded by the mendicant orders for their members at the universities. According to the English historian Rashdall, the regular college may have done a great deal to Revolution. This
such as suggest the idea of secular foundations of a more organic nature, as the far As of thirteenth middle the in the to century. appear began arts were concerned, they increased in number at the beginning of the it was no longer just a question of of living in a university town: means providing poor a way of life which would shield on them to it was also impose proposed them against secular temptations, and they were submitted to a community life inspired by monastic practices and governed by perpetual
fourteenth century.
From
then on
students with the
For example they were compelled to take their meals together, and sometimes to remain silent at table or to take part in exercises of devotion and piety. According to their statutes, which are extremely least about administration and moral and social precise and detailed, at conduct, these communities governed themselves under the distant and statutes.
SCHOLASTIC
158
LIFE
of the founder or of the person he had nominated to They were managed in a very democratic fashion by one of the older scholars chosen by his fellows, usually from among the theology students. Thus these foundations rescued the poor students, who otherwise had to live on charity, from the poverty and promiscuity of hospices and casual lodgings, and installed them within the bounds of an organized community with its own revenue, regulations and hierarchy. We can, of course, recognize in these communities the origins of the type of ineffectual control
succeed him.
society
which would
However, they
later characterize the scholastic
environment.
lacked three of the specific features of the modern place, they were simply hostels or lodging-houses,
still
college. In the first
and no instruction was given
in
them the :
scholars
to the traditional schools, the schools in the
went
Rue du
for their lessons
Fouarre. Secondly,
number of scholars, whereas and eighteenth centuries had a large academic population: it was a difference between a few dozen scholars and several hundred or even several thousand pupils. Finally, the system of self-government in these communities remained a long way these communities contained only a small the colleges of the sixteenth, seventeenth
from the
authoritarian discipline
which was imposed
after the fifteenth
century.
But now let us consider the stages by which the transition was made from the scholars' college of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to the college providing a 'full course' -the college in which there were masters to give lessons - of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
In the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the real exercise of education passed from the traditional schools of the Rue du Fouarre to the colleges which had begun as mere hostels for scholarship boys. The transfer started with the younger pupils, for whom it was made possible by the beginning of a gradation within the liberal arts in favour of grammar. There was a feeling - which began, rather timidly, towards the end of the thirteenth century - that grammar was a subject for beginners which ought to be finished with before starting on philosophy.
For a long time academic jargon, in its stereotyped formulas, would go on combining grammar with logic. In the statutes of the choir-school of 6 Notre-Dame, Gerson
stipulated that the children were to be instructed although we know that this was a grammar
in grammaticalibus et logicalibus
school of the
new
sort.
In fact the term most
commonly
used would be
A
NEW
INSTITUTION: THE COLLEGE
.
159
parva logicalia. The statutes of Seez College in 1450 stated that the scholars should already have received instruction in grammaticalibus et in summulis et
parvis logicalibus*
One
can sense here the authorities' difficulty in
accepting a gradation which had been hitherto unknown. Yet henceforth the tendency would be towards the specialization of grammar. In 1315 Navarre College, the most important of the Paris colleges before Louisle-Grand, was, according to
its
foundation
statutes,
divided into three
7 quite separate groups under the authority of three different masters. One group consisted of theologians, the second of logicians, the third of
group was directed by a grammaticus of good by a submagister, and he was given the task of instructing the children in primitivis scientiae grammaticae - grammar here being regarded and taught as an elementary subject. Thus, early in the fourteenth century, in Navarre College, there was an independent grammarians. This
last
character and morals, assisted
school. Similarly in England, at Winchester (1379), next to a students of law, of the arts (logicians) and of theology, William of college of Wykeham founded a 'grammar school' with seventy scholarships. 8 In the text of Cardinal d'Estouteville's reformation of 1452, the and their place in a new gradation of specialization of the grammarians
grammar
is very clearly specified. The reformer forbids the masters to allow their pupils to attend the logicaks lectiones if they have not been in grammar and prosody (in arte metrificandi). sufficiently instructed
the curricula
to the formation of a school for beginners, Specialization in grammar led the Latin grammar school. In the allegorical iconography of the fifteenth
century, arts,
and
It is
of all
grammar is depicted with younger is armed with a whip or a birch.
children than are the other
probable that the lessons in elementary
in private schools in the vicinity
schools,
by
the
same masters
ized to teach the Donat.
A
of the
grammar were given
first
universities or the cathedral
whom the canons or die universities authorstatute
of the University of Paris of 1276
in grammaticalibus et logicalibus prohibited lessons in locis privatis, except 9 to understand parvis logicalibus). These schools would are we which (by instruction only in the rudiments of grammar. and would not
grow They would pedagogicas
give take their place in the Parisian university system to become or halls, which Cardinal d'Estouteville distinguishes from
the colleges or foundations for scholars. Thus we have Maltre Guilkume Verlet's pedagogica for instance, where parvi scholares, tanquam in collegia,
These pedagogicas were private, unendowed grammar schools, his assistants and a number of day-boys. Only these consisting of a master, aluntur.
institutions
had no statutory
existence.
SCHOLASTIC
160
A
1IFE
word
'pedagogica' had changed its meaning, and no longer denoted a school in which lessons of residence which gave no instruction but provided, sent its pupils for lessons in another college. This was because by the sixteenth century the pedagogica had joined an endowed college, intro-
century
later,
the
in the sixteenth century it but a hall were
*
ducing the provide
The
complete course* of teaching to
introduction of the teaching of
place in
it
if it
did not already
it.
very
grammar
into the colleges took
different ways.
Generally speaking, the masters at private pedagogicas were senior scholars from the colleges, and they lived in the colleges. The grammar school therefore became a sort of annex of the college, for which no In Cardinal Lemoine College, provision was made in the statutes.
founded in 1315, part of the premises was leased to a scholar who held 11 In this case, then, a college of scholars who were given no tuition was juxtaposed with a pedagogica providing tuition and installed in the college itself. The principal of the pedagogica assumed such importance in the life of the college that he laid claim to the office of Grand Master and used every possible means to obtain recognition of his as the result of arbitration, the authority. But it was only in 1647 that, classes there.
'
Grand Master of the College was
finally
confirmed
until the
end of his
of the college'. This is one days' in 'the principality and pedagogica of a fusion the of private pedagogica with an endowed college example which thereafter provided a 'complete course* of tuition.
Another case which was probably similar was that of Harcourt 12 Some seventeenth-century documents indicate that tuition in College.
grammar was given there in the fourteenth century. According to an audited inventory of 1434-50, one of the college buildings was assigned to the school of the 'grammatists'. Some of the college's senior scholars kept the grammar school. -a It could also happen that a free pedagogica pedagogica without - became a as the result of an endowment resources college statutory
any
or the foundation of a scholarship. Sainte-Barbe is an example of this. About 1450 a grammar teacher at Navarre College, M. Lenormant, in a building which he together with his brother, founded a pedagogica 13 a college scholar - for the of instance another the for purpose: bought
masters, principals, etc., were scholars on the same grounds as the students - who ran a was worried about the private school. But Navarre College who Navarre and the governed the community theologians competition raised difficulties. They tried to compel the Lenormant brothers to sleep
NEW
A
INSTITUTION: THE COLLEGE
161
in the college, in accordance with the statutes, so as to prevent them their pupils - which shows, incidentally, that these
from supervising pedagogicas were
also boarding-schools.
But the Lenormant brothers
succeeded in keeping their independence. The pedagogica carried on a precarious existence, like that of a church school in present-day France, until 1576, when an endowment of fifty scholarships by the King of Portugal gave it the same stability as an endowed college. *
was not always the private pedagogica that introduced the complete course' of tuition to the college. The statutes of certain fourteenth14 century colleges suggest that they provided tuition from the start. a and that a Thus the statutes of Navarre College stipulate grammaticus It
submagister arc to instruct the junior es in primitives scicntiae grammaticae. Similarly the statutes of Dormans-Beauvais College, founded in 1370
for the scholars of the district of
Dormaiis (twelve
in 1370, twenty-four
in 1373), state that a master and an assistant master are to 'initiate die 15 children in at least the elements of grammar'.
Tuition was therefore introduced into the communities of scholars by the grammarians, the parv i scholares. This tuition depended on a gradation of the curricula which itself corresponded to a differentiation of the ages:
schoolboy was the first to be distinguished from the heteroclite academic population of tlie medieval university. the
little
Instruction in philosophy and the sciences cannot have moved into the grammar did. In 1456 we still find references colleges as early as tuition
m
to 'regents' or form-masters taking their pupils to logic classes in the Rue du Fouarre: rcgens habens proprios scolares quos continue ducat ad 16
There must have been a vicum straminis et quibus legat libros logicales. and part of the fifteenth century period in die late fourteenth century was still taught in the schools in the Rue du Fouarre, while when logic instruction in
This
state
grammar was limited to the colleges and pedagogicas. continued in England, with the first things, as we know, schools and the second cycle in the cycle m the grammar
of
educational
on the other hand, the logicians joined university colleges. In France, lessons were already the in the grammarians colleges where private the logic lessons of the traditional schools, to beginning
which were with only
supplement with only the monopoly of the quadrivium, and soon
left
ethics.
At Cardinal Lemoine
College,
we can
find traces of the beginnings of p
facing above: :
THE TAVERN by Lagniet AN EVENING BY THE FIRE by
Stella
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
162
17 In the 1320 statutes - which make no mention of the logic tuition. grammarians, pupils of the private pedagogica attached to the college it
two scholars who are masters of arts are to give lessons in two scholars who need not be masters are to give extralogic, The difference in grade between the tutors is interesting. lessons. ordinary The more highly qualified man taught logic, which seems to suggest that his tuition tended to be more comprehensive; on the other hand, the reader in physics and ethics was exempted from being a master of arts, doubtless because he had to take his pupils to receive tuition from the accredited masters of the Rue du Fouarre. Already we can see here
is
stated that
and
that
the outline of a complete cycle of the arts. At Navarre College, the logicians were grouped in a separate section, under the direction of a magister in artibus: 18 at this time in logico and in
had become synonymous. The statutes stipulated that no logician classes in the Rue du Fouarre before his determinance. Therefore tuition in logic must have been given in the college itself, until determinance, while tuition in physics and ethics was still confined to die Rue du Fouarre and was reserved for bachelors who were candidates for the mastership. Another example is provided by Seez It was College, a little foundation of six scholars dating from 14.27 intended for boys of fifteen or over who had been at a grammar school: artibus
should attend the
nullus recipiatur nisi sufficienter fuerit in grammaticalibus eruditus, et in summulis
This parvis logicalibus.
was a
survival
from the time when
little grambe no There could kept apart. question of providing tuition on the spot for such a small number of scholars. Were they to go then to the classes in the Rue du Fouarre? Not directly. They were first of all to go every day to the nearest college: aedat with paedagogium satis prope (in this text 'pedagogica' is synonymous
et
marians and big logicians were
still
and the founder uses the two words indiscriminately). But this must have been comparatively crowded, did not entirely which college, take the place of the schools in the Rue du Fouarre. It was assumed that the scholars' education would be sufficient to allow them to attend the classes in the Rue du Fouarre: adeo quod ad vicum straminis eumdem ad audiendum libros sufficienter sit doctus. However, if they went ad vicum, it was not alone and independently, but with their schoolmates from the under the supervision of their principal, in college, cum sociis pedagogii, accordance with the custom of the college juxta morem bursariorum dicti would attend the ordinary classes, the ethics classes on collegii. They and the disputations. No doubt private lessons and disputations holidays, in the held also were college. 'college',
:
NEW
A
INSTITUTION: THE COLLEGE
163
These examples enable us to understand how the teaching of logic was transferred to the colleges. First of all there were only private lessons, which did not take the place of the classes to which the pupils were taken under the supervision of their form-masters; then the tuition in logic was given in the college itself. The pupils still went to the Rue du Fouarre for certain disputations or for the classes in ethics which in disappeared
their turn at the
The
beginning of the sixteenth century. transfer took place all the more easily in that
of the
scholars
colleges
who
also taught in the
Rue du
it
was the senior
Fouarre: in 1452
Cardinal d'Estouteville asked the form-masters of the colleges to go to the Rue du Fouarre to their lessons as usual at the stated times. A give text of 1456 mentions form-masters who not took their pupils to only the Rue du Fouarre but also lectured to them on the books. 20 logic
Despite the objections of the traditionalists, there would come a time when the form-masters would consider it simpler to stay in college to give all their lessons there, thus avoiding excursions which provided the occasion for squabbles and brawls. tienne Pasquier has left us an excellent account of this evolution which installed in the colleges of Paris the teaching first of grammar, then of philosophy. He remembers that when the colleges were first founded the scholars attended the classes of the traditional schools:
'When
rendezvous was at the great Schools in the Rue du He recalls that though tuition was gradually transferred to the the Rue du Fouarre still retained a certain activity: 'Neither then
their general
Fouarre/ colleges,
[under the reign of Charles V] nor for a long time afterwards were the which were given in the great Schools in the Rue
lessons discontinued
du
Fouarre, especially in philosophy in order to become a Master of He recognizes that the transfer has begun with the youngest pupils
Arts.'
and with the subject-matter that will henceforth be called the humanities: But as the lessons in Humanities had gradually moved into the colleges, those in Philosophy did the same, something of which Cardinal d'Estouteville complained in his reformation of our University there *
. . .
being nothing Master of Arts
left to is still
us of this ancient institution save that the cap 21 given there/
of
Thus in France the grammarians, that is to say the youngest pupils aged from eight to fifteen at die most, did not remain segregated from the philosophers, aged about fifteen. The latter were soon installed in the as the age groups were concerned, colleges, with the grammarians. As far the situation obtaining in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries seemed to have been restored, at least in the case of the shorter cycle of studies, that
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
164
of John of Salisbury's Cornificius. However, if it had been restored, it had also been turned upside down. By that I mean that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, children of ten and boys of fifteen were mixed up with adults; in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, children and adolescents continued to study together but were separated from adults. This separation of the ages existed only in the colleges. In the society of the same period, a boy aged between thirteen and fifteen was already a full-grown man and shared in the life of his elders, without causing any this state of affairs was to continue for a long time. Thus surprise. And the college was out of step with society, and at the same time ahead of it,
and would gradually encourage a new sensibility. The separation of the ages, in the colleges, combined in one and the same group children of about ten and adolescents of fifteen or so. Cardinal all the arts students together in the regimen die better to distinguish schoolboys from adults, it were puerorum even of the necessary to exaggerate the puerility of their characters, can see here the origins of a tendency which oldest among them.
d'Estouteville
- as
grouped
if,
We
would become habitual for pedagogues and of
features
constitute
one of the essential but not before
their professional psychology. Eventually,
die nineteenth century, it would spread to the parents. True, in the nineteenth century, when it triumphed, this tendency would also corre-
spond to a secret desire to postpone the dreaded triumph of puberty. Any such idea of sexual morality was completely foreign to the reformers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
But the
desire to treat
Very young children does not always spring the contrary it precedes puritanical impulse. as
On
from a it: it
modern idea of distinguishing which they had become confused.
a manifestation of the in
all pupils sexual taboo, a
seems in
fact to
be
the ages in a society
now given in institutions which had originally been of residence: income from endowments or payment for simply board and lodging assured them of revenue and consequently of stability and permanence. What is more, the boarding-school system benefited from community life, from a discipline inspired by the example of the owed their success of course regular orders. The colleges and pedagogicas Tuition was halls
boarding-school was did not correspond to eminendy the sociological conditions of the time. Educational historians used to to
their
residential
character.
suitable for a small
However,
if the
number of clerks,
it
A
NEW
INSTITUTION: THE COLLEGE
attribute excessive importance to
written documents which have
it,
165
misled by the fact that the only to us - the college statutes -
come down
describe a boarding-school system, and that the only institutions which have survived stem from boarding-schools: the colleges for scholars. In fact, the boarding-school system merely gave the institution a financial and structural basis. The number of boarders remained absurdly small: particularly the number of scholars, the only one we know for certain.
At Navarre,
was provision for only twenty scholarships in in arts and grammar, thirty twenty in theology. At Dormans-Beauvais, in in 1373. At Harcourt College, twenty-eight in grammar twenty-four arts and twelve in in 1311. At Winchester, seventy in grammar in 1304, there
theology
other colleges there were only about a dozen scholarships and sometimes fewer than that. Admittedly the principals and form-masters in 1375.
At
their private boarders, but they could not take in more than they could accommodate. These figures are insignificant in relation to the mass of Parisian students. Are we to suppose that the day-boys remained faithful to the masters
had
of the Rue du Fouarre? No, they too made their way to the colleges and pedagogicas, and with their numbers swamped the boarders on the foundation and the principal's boarders. The colleges, which were in which masters originally boarding-schools, became huge day-schools lived where of who numbers immense they could, and in pupils taught which the boarders were reduced to an insignificant privileged minority. The statutes of Dormans-Beauvais College give us an idea of the boarders and the day-boys in I373. 22 There respective positions of the were twenty-five scholarships financed by the foundation, and others often happened that these scholarships, intended for over at a price by well-to-do beneficiaries, who taken were poor pupils, held diem as they would a living, without receiving any tuition from the also provided for other boarders apart from the college. But the statutes
were added
later. It
*
If some good and respectable students, strangers to the college, wish to live in the college at their own expense with our scholars, under the authority of the Masters [it will be noticed that there is no according to the custom of certain Paris colleges, question of tuition] we give permission for them to be admitted on condition that their admission does not inconvenience in any way the titular scholars, does
scholars:
. . .
not deprive them of their room, does not interfere with their usual way of life, and does not prejudice in any way the general order of the house.' Dormans-Beauvais was a college for grammarians, but its boarders could also study law or theology. All that was asked of them was that
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
166
they should be students, and even this was not required of the priests: 'These extraneous students must pursue studies in theology, law, logic, or grammar, or else they must be priests, and in that case they must celebrate Mass from time to time in chapel/ The statutes went on to fix the cost of their board and lodging and stipulated that they were to submit to the college regulations and in particular to eat at the common table. Thus they were not necessarily young boys wishing to attend the classes in
of the
grammar and
scholars'
extremely
rare,
and moral advantages of case must have been for most of the boarders were advanced students, or to share in the material
community. Indeed
this sort
who lodged in the college as present-day students in Paris in Universitaire. Living in the college, they would perhaps the Cite lodge attend the Sorbonne classes, for example, the classes in the Faculty of beneficiaries
at any time have been a great many of them: were eighteen, including one Benedictine monk. The college still remained a community governed by a rule, and it was still regarded in that light at the beginning of the sixteenth century in 23 thefamilia pauperum studentium of Standonc at Montaigu. It took some time for this original, pseudo-religious character to be finally effaced. However, another article of the Dormans-Beauvais statutes authorized the extension of the college's tuition to day-boys. This does not mean that the founder had the definite intention of providing tuition for all and sundry, as the Jesuits were to try to do in the late sixteenth century. He was merely authorizing the masters of the junior scholars, who were themselves senior scholars, to admit to their classes pupils who were not members of the college, and to charge them a fee: 'We also gladly permit the masters and assistant masters, present and to come [who taught in the college] to undertake the instruction of any good children who present themselves, and to admit them to our scholars' classes, on condition that these children stay in the college only during the day, and that they do not detract from the cleanliness of the house.' Thus these outside were forbidden to live in the college. Far from pupils from a boarding-school for grammarians, die tendency was rather to creating reduce the number of grammarian boarders to the schokrs, and to exclude in the college. This pupils from outside by preventing them from living reasons of for doubtless was attitude discipline, in order adopted strange to preserve the clerical character of the community. In reality this prohibition was not strictly obeyed. A certain number of pupils were lodged with their form-masters, and these form-masters also lived in the college. Accordingly, boarders, masters and scholars inevitably lived together.
Theology. There cannot in 1496, there
A
NEW
INSTITUTION: THE COLLEGE
,
167
The same confusion
existed at Navarre, where furthermore some of the took their meals in the college and became day-boarders. In day-boys 1459, as a consequence of the inevitable incidents which punctuated the life of these societies of young people, a royal commission decided that
no longer being respected and that the life was being disturbed. Their attitude educational institution was like that of the reformers
the founder's intentions were tranquillity
of the community's
with regard to this of a religious community: another consequence of the ambiguous nature of the college. The commissioners therefore tried to exclude the formmasters' pupils from the college by forbidding the masters to lodge them with the scholars: this implies that previously boarders and scholars lived together. Similarly they confined partial board to those who lodged in
the college or in the neighbouring house: a house which must have been hired by a master for his boarders. This idea of separating the scholars
from the other
pupils,
an idea which
we find
again in the statutes of the
poor students of Standonc at Montaigu, more or less disappeared from France, in the face of the massive invasion of the day-boys, who were soon to be
numbered not
in dozens but in
hundreds and then thousands.
attending the senior scholars' classes, they became the principal element of the academic population of the colleges: they swamped the colleges, which, from the end of the fifteenth
Tolerated at
first as pupils,
completely
century at least, became to all intents and purposes big day-schools. It was the day-boys who, together with the provision of full teaching facilities, gave the college, once a scholars' foundation, the character of a
modern
educational establishment.
Henceforth the college embraced the whole scholastic population in the arts. Where it did not exist, in the non-university towns, the big cathedral school of the Middle Ages changed to follow its example, and it in the foundations they created in the fifteenth city magistrates copied and sixteenth centuries. This in fact was the time when academic education
ceased to be limited to cultured clerical habit of
circles,
and
families got into the
at least a sending their children to a college for
few
years.
The
a deal of the monastic development of the day-boy system removed great and which would be the which had inspired college's origins
spirit
replaced
by
a
more
authoritarian discipline.
This crowd of day-boys could just as well have simply attended the form-masters' classes and taken no part in the life of the college. These
SCHOLASTIC
LIFE
would have retained in college the same freedom that had once enjoyed in the schools. This was in fact what happened: to the end of the sixteenth century there were students elders
their first
complaints
about the 'martinets' or 'old fogies' (galoches) who, as Pasquier puts it, 'go to the classes of one Regent or another as the fancy takes them'. This is how Buchanan describes their entrance into a classroom: noisy
*Here come the bands of idlers that the town has sent us; their arrival is heralded by the clatter of their hobnailed pattens. They come in and open ears as intelligent as those with which Marsyas listened to Apollo. They are annoyed at not having seen notices of the classes at the posted up
street corners [the reaction
of a big student, such
would
still be met with in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries], furious that the lesson is not being devoted to Alexandras Doctrinal [Alexandra de Villedieu], and shocked by a master who does not read out of a bulky book loaded with marginal glosses [they are wedded to tradition and of the
as
suspicious
new methods of the humanist
up and go off
in an uproar to Montaigu or some of those sanctuaries scented with the 24 perfume of white beet.' These gyrovagous students did not disappear
masters].
They
get
completely until the early seventeenth century. However, in the fifteenth centuries, though there might be some left, perhaps even
and sixteenth
good many, they were no longer accepted by public opinion. The university authorities tried to suppress them or discipline them, either by keeping a check on their lodgings or by forbidding them to change masters in the course of the year. These prohibitions were anything but
a
and
new, repetition tended to confirm their ineffectiveness. They would not be obeyed until public opinion refused to tolerate such independence on the part of the students. The authorities then took to their
compelling the students, that is to say the day-boys, not only to attend the classes but also to take part in all the activities. college
We have seen that the scholars of Seez used to go to the nearest college.
25
They could have gone there simply for classes or private lessons. But the statutes insisted that they be present in the college and given tuition all the omni die. This custom became established through day: everywhere, because the superiority of the college, in the eyes of parents and pedagogues alike, lay above all in the regulations which governed it. Thus Gerson, one of the first modern educationalists, stated explicitly when he was reorganizing the grammar school of Notre-Dame de Paris: 'Above we want the children to have regulations sicut habent communiter in - that is to domibus in the not but in all the all
paedagorum'
grammar
say, only colleges schools. Submission to collective regulations had
become an
A
NEW
INSTITUTION: THE COLLEGE
.
169
The rules formulated in the early fourteenth century by the founders of the scholars* communities no longer satisfied the strict requirements of fifteenth-century pedagogues such as Gerson. The older statutes, which for a long time were copied and essential educational principle.
reproduced, fixed the details of the administration, the number and the duration of the scholarships: at Cardinal Lemoine, eight years for the artists
and ten for the theologians. The statutes
also prescribed the appoint-
ment of the
dignitaries: at Navarre, the three masters of the grammarians, logicians and theologians were elected by an electoral college composed of student delegates (three grammarians, six artists and six at Seez the bursar was elected for one or two years by the whole community. Also arranged by the statutes was the administration of the chapel and the household, and particularly of the stewardship, an office which was not permanently entrusted to one person, but which each scholar in turn occupied for a week - he was called the praepositus handing over the keys and accounts to the scholar who succeeded him. These statutes endeavoured to regulate the life of the scholars and to sanction it with a penal code: it was forbidden to go drinking in taverns
theologians)
or to
visit
;
places of
ill
repute; forbidden to sleep out, to
play noisy games, to sing; and forbidden to bring
make
a din, to
women
into college 'unless [states a reservation at Harcourt] they are so respectably escorted that the Prior of the house and the scholars are convinced that no evil
suspicion can result*.
At Seez
was even
have carnal knowledge of a woman who might have been brought into the college on the pretext of providing water or lighting fires. It was forbidden to go out without it
explicitly forbidden to
nisi causa lectionis, sermonis (the sermon was a method of like the lesson, especially for the theologians), aut praeposlturae instruction,
good (i.e.
reason:
on an errand
for the steward or the bursar).
It
was forbidden
to
damage the kitchen utensils or the property of the community, parti*let nobody deposit cularly the library of manuscripts. At Harcourt, refuse at the foot of the walls of the house, but only in the place provided for that purpose.' At Narbonne, it was forbidden to throw straw or hay * into the latrines. All members of the college' or of the 'household* were
urged to dress decently, especially for mealtimes: they were to take care not to go barefoot, not to stay in rags, and not to put on short or indecent
Above all -and this was the essential principle on which the whole of this code of behaviour was based - they were to live together in friendship, amicaliter, and consequently to respect the customs of the meals in common clothes.
community life,
especially
always being punctual,
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
I7O
not bringing in guests too often, and never bringing in women, even if they were respectable. At Narbonne: 'There shall be no separate table in die house, and all are to eat in the same room/ Horseplay was to be avoided and respect was to be shown to the senior scholars and graduates. None of these regulations had any reference to the scholar's academic condition, except for an occasional mention of the obligation to speak Latin at table - when silence was not imposed. None of these regulations studies. Moreover they were inspired by religious which applied to adults, and therefore by their very nature and children. If, in the they made no distinction between grown men
concerned the scholar's constitutions
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, they represented a considerable advance on the almost unlimited freedom of the student population, by as monks, they remained too egalitarian, treating the students more or less
too inadequately hierarchized for the needs of the fifteenth century.
They
were therefore modified by custom and given a more authoritarian bias: a chain of command was established. The lectores had at first been regarded
whom certain statutes admittedly urged the scholars to respect, but who were often treated to a copious meal, or more economically to a drink: the drink of friendship, potum atnicabilem, is what the official charter as friends,
of Harcourt College
calls
it.
Henceforth the gap between the teacher and
would widen. The oldest schoolmate would become the formmaster who would govern his people with cane or birch. Similarly the a bursar chosen by his college would no longer be administered simply by inter pares. It would also be governed from above by a a primus peers, would have the 'principality*. This master chose his formprincipal, who
his pupils
masters and supervised them, while they in turn supervised and punished their pupils.
The new regulations, such as those ofdiefamilia pauperum studentium at Montaigu in 1501, were no longer content with fixing the general 26 conditions of the college's life. They went into die details of everyday life
and
as the habits
down
a daily routine. Standonc even gave a timeto night, with as much precision the time allowed. And this precision, which strikes us
carefully laid
table for the
whole day, from morning of
only approximate, with obvious gaps here and there, was quite remarkable and almost revolutionary for the time. It introduced a new concern for time, and enmeshed the pupil in a network of obligations as
was was a lesson until Mass at movements were governed by
which covered the whole day and reduced fixed at about
(circa)
four o'clock.
Then
six o'clock: the text informs us that these
a
bell.
his initiative. Reveille
there
Standonc describes the order of assembly:
when
the bell rang,
A the pupik
came
in.
NEW
INSTITtTTION: THE COLLEGE
IJI
went down adpMica loca, to the classrooms. The form-master The monitors assisting him inspected the pupils and made a
note of any absentees and delinquents. Everything here is provided for with a strictness unknown to the old statutes. After Mass, from about eight to ten, there was a lesson, the big morning lesson (it was customary to have one big lesson in the morning and another in the afternoon). At eleven o'clock the community gathered together in the refectory for dinner.
At
three o'clock the big afternoon lesson began and
went on
till
six o'clock.
A The
was in force at Sainte-Barbe at the same period. of the ancien regime kept to roughly the same system until
similar time-table
colleges
the Revolution.
from regulations laying down and a way of life to regulations of the day was to be occupied, from a collegiate administration to an authoritarian system, from a community of masters and pupils to the strict government of pupils by masters. This separation of masters and pupils, this progress made by the on the first spirit of authority, conflicted with the old traditions based statutes. But the evolution corresponded to the general movement of society, which was carrying it towards the political forms of absolutism that were taking shape in the fifteenth century, in the time of Louis XI, Commines and Macliiavelli. It would reach its final consummation when the masters were recruited from a religious community and were thus naturally separated from their pupils, and when the government of the college coincided with the government of the masters' religious community, a fortiori if this teaching order was particularly concerned to develop the spirit of obedience and gave the age-old principles of of semi-military efficiency. discipline a new character This development took place with the Jesuits, at the end of the sixteenth century, and their ratio studiorum, the rule governing their colleges, marks the culmination of the evolution towards an authoritarian system and the not so complete segregation of the young though the segregation was as it would be in die nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In these last years of the sixteenth century, an important stage was reached. The success of the Jesuit colleges was due to the same factor that ensured the success of the scholars' communities in the early fourteenth century: the existence of a rule, the Jesuits' rule being the stricter and more effective of the two. Just as the first colleges had taken over the This is the way the change took place the basic principles of a code of behaviour dictating the manner in which every part
tuition given
by
the schools, the Jesuit colleges absorbed the middle-class
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
172
and even the lower-class clientele, and their success, due to the strictness of their discipline, threatened the colleges of the university, where respect for the old statutes, even when they had been improved on in practice, maintained an excessive liberty which was now regarded as licence. As a result, in order to fight against the victorious competition of the the University of Paris reformed itself in the first years of the Jesuits, 27 The object of this reformation was to give all seventeenth century. the old colleges of the university the principles of order and discipline which parents admired in the Jesuit colleges and no longer found to a sufficient degree, to a degree corresponding to the new exigencies of French manners, in the university. These leges et instituta in usum academiae of the
were a plagiarization regulations adopted in the Jesuit colleges, just as the latter were the result of an evolution of which Standonc's statute at Montaigu or the statute of the Freres de la
et Universitatis parisiensis
marked one of the stages. With this document the Paris colleges received what their statutes had failed to give them: a code of studies and a code of discipline, un rlglement de discipline. We find in the this new and significant expression, which made its appearance Vie
Commune
at Liege
A
seventeenth century, applied to the College de Bourgogne in 1680. code of regulations for this college had been drawn up in 1624. previous 28 In these regulations of i624 certain paragraphs still recall the particularfor instance it is stipulated istic spirit of the old fourteenth-century statutes has no right to appoint the porter without the agreethat the :
principal
ment of the first chaplain of scholars
(it
is
'as co-administrator',
or even of the
community
true that the college had only higher classes in logic and not so easy to suppress what remained of the traditions
was handed down from the thirteenth century, and it took time for the reformation of 1598 to penetrate the old-established colleges in which a good the habit of regarding scholarmany abuses had taken root: for example as saleable pensions. As much time, in fact, as it took for the spirit physics). It
ships
of the Council of Trent to penetrate the religious communities, at the serious monastic upheavals. We must regard the text of 1624 as price of of introducing into the reformation of this particular college, a means of the University of the college the spirit of the 1598 laws and statutes were these encountering. Paris and overcoming the opposition which in order and suppressing It was aimed simply at putting the college for it was certain abuses. This reformation must have been successful, of discipline* which followed -though not until 1680 -by a 'code a time-table which was established a strict time-table for the boarders, similar to that in force at Montaigu or at Cardinal Lemoine, and very
A
NEW INSTITimON: THE COLLEGE
,
173
which we is
also find in the late sixteenth century in the Jesuit colleges. It interesting to note that, in the matter of school hours, the code of
simply refers to the practice adopted in the colleges of the University of Paris ever since 1598, thus affording proof that it was now the general rule: School will begin at the same times as the University/
discipline
*
The 1598 reformation
thus prescribed for the colleges, whatever their or their statutes, a scholastic code and a time-table. This does not origins mean that it violated the old statutes, which remained in force despite their antiquity,
but which contained no detailed provisions such
university authorities ratio
now
laid
as the
down - on
studiomm. In other words the
the pattern of the Jesuits' reformation 1598 completed the
by adding to them a code of discipline. The 1598 text briefly recapitulates the traditional prescriptions - the ban on swearing, on fighting, the meals at the common table, and so
statutes
on -without dwelling on them.
It then tackles the real questions of and the immobilization of the of the system punishments, discipline: in his master to avoid a order is no free to who change longer pupil, all it lays down regulations regarding the order of the intermediate examinations, the times for recreation, the studies,
punishment. Above
supervision of pupils in school and out of school, the checking of attendances, the principal's authority, the curricula and the time-tables: six hours' tuition every day in the classrooms - in auditoriis, three in the
morning, three in the afternoon. In addition, every day at ten o'clock in the morning and at five o'clock in die afternoon there was an exercise in disputation or versification. Every Saturday there was a recapitulation and die weekly presentation of the marks to die principal. Both in the Jesuit colleges and in the old-established, newly reformed a formula had now been perfected, a formula colleges of the university, which would remain unchanged for nearly two centuries, to be copied by other teaching communities such as the Oratorians. This was the
of the ancien regime, an institution still further removed from than from the French colleges of the fourteenth century it is the direct ancestor, of which of die and day, present lycces colleges in of obvious differences (particularly the absence of the boardingcollege
first scholars'
spite
school system). The final establishment of a code of discipline completed an evolution which led from the medieval school, a mere classroom, to the modern college, a complex institution, designed not only for the tuition but also for the supervision and care of youth.
SCHOLASTIC
LIFE
with a This evolution of the educational institution is bound up evolution of the concepts of age and childhood. To begin with, parallel
had no difficulty in accepting the mixing of the ages. public opinion of all in favour Later occurred a certain revulsion in this respect, first first to be of the youngest children. The grammarians were the the for special attention; subsequently, the older pupils, distinguished some of the physicians and all the artists, even though the age logicians, the of them would have allowed them, out of school, to carry out already to to apply them, functions reserved for adults. Yet there was no attempt of in order to distinguish them from adults, a genuinely juvenile system that All follow. no example to education, of which indeed there was secular life, a was intended was to protect them from the temptations of The their morals. pedagogues life which many clerks led too : to safeguard monastic therefore took as their model the spirit of the thirteenth-century the retained which foundations of the Dominicans and the Franciscans, reclusion of the monastic tradition while abandoning enclosure, principles of the cenobitism of old. Admittedly the students
Me
and all that remained the period were not bound by any vow. But they were submitted during communities. new of their studies to the way of life peculiar to these set apart from the rest of was student of this to life, youth Thanks way the which remained faithful to the mixing of the ages, as also to society,
the classes. Such was the mixing of the sexes and century.
.
Later, the object
monastic that a
situation in the fourteenth
life,
young
of this
altered.
At
cleric led a
way of life,
first it
half-way between secular
lite
and
had been regarded as a means of ensuring life. It now assumed an intrinsic value,
decent
even for and became the necessary condition of a good education, fourteenth idea was foreign to the concepts of the early layman. The of the in 1452 we find Cardinal d'Estouteville speaking century. But and the moral responsibilities of the masters in charge regimen puerorum of 'forming' the pupil as much as of instructing matter a of souls. It was to submit schoolchildren was it thought necessary him, which was why a
but made more to a strict discipline: the traditional college discipline, now became an instrument for authoritarian and hierarchical. The college in general. the education of children and youth in the sixteenth, fifteenth the in century and still more At the same time, recruitment. its composed of a Formerly the college altered and enlarged its doors to an increasing it opened small minority of scholarly clerics, the middle class, but number of laymen, chiefly from the nobility and social institution: essential an became thus It also from lower-class families.
A
NEW
INSTlftrriON: THE COLLEGE'
175
the college with a separate teaching large classes, in which the educated
staff, a strict code of discipline, and people of every generation under the
ancien regime received their schooling. In the opinion of pedagogues, monks and magistrates, the college constituted a massive age group, ranging from pupils of eight or nine to those of fifteen or over, who were submitted to different laws from those adults. parents,
governing
*
4
III
THE ORIGINS OF THE SCHOOL CLASS the everyday language of our contemporaries, at least of those connected with secondary education, public or private, the class or
INform
the essential unit
is
A man
which
characterizes the situation
does not say that his son
of the child
a college or lycee, he is in the fifth form. this being too vague a statement: he says that The children themselves refer to their place in their everyday world
or youth.
by
which they belong. There
the class to
nowadays, and
it is
so familiar that
we
is
is
at
no more
familiar notion
tend to think that
it is
a
very
old notion, as old as the college itself and secondary education as a whole. But this structure, without which it is hard to imagine school
life,
dates
back no further than the sixteenth or
century, and did not assume seventeenth.
its
final
form
until the
late fifteenth
beginning of the
No doubt the ancients were not completely ignorant of the distribution The word
*
which was adopted in various of influence, was taken by the humanists from Quintilian-;?er05 in classes distribuere - and those
of pupils
in classes.
countries, and particularly
authors
who
used
it
knew
class' itself,
in the Jesuit sphere
its
origins; witness ftaenne Pasquier,
who
in
of education writes of the 'class*: 'Word used by book of his Institutio with regard to Pupils.' 1 However, in the ancient school, division into classes remained a superficial disciplinary practice. H. L Marrou wrote a bulky volume on the in ancient times without mentioning classes once history of education proof enough that they scarcely counted in the structure of the school. his brief history
Quintilian in the first
Moreover, the few which might have existed in Quintilian's time disthe principles of simultaneity and appeared in the Middle Ages, when in constant resulted mixing and prevented any attempt at repetition to age or capacity. separating children according cell of the school structure, presents the constituent Today the class, certain precise characteristics which are entirely familiar: it corresponds to a stage in the progressive acquisition of knowledge (to a curriculum), to an average age from which every attempt is made not to depart, to a for each age physical, spatial unit,
premises (and the very
word
group and subject group has its special denotes both the container and the
'class*
176
THE ORIGINS Of
*
TBtE
SCHOOL CLASS
and to a period of time, an annual period at the end of which complement changes. The extremely close connection between the age of the pupils and the organic structure which gathers them together gives each year a personality of its own: the child has the same age as his class, and each class acquires from its curriculum, its classroom and its master a distinctive complexion. The result is a striking differentiation between age groups which are really quite close together. The child changes his age every year at the same time as he changes his class. In the past, the span of life and childhood was not cut up into such thin slices. The school class has thus become a determining factor in the process of differentiating the ages of childhood and early adolescence. Where it does not exist, or where it is reduced to a vague division with no structural value, as is still often the case in the primary school and consequently in the lower classes of society, the ages have kept a great deal of their former uncertainty. Hence the importance of the school class for our subject. We have to consider how it developed from medieval vagueness to the strictness of the modern concept, how and when the school class acquired its presentcontents), the class's
day appearance of an
age-class.
The reformation of
the University of Paris of 1452
by Cardinal
d'Estouteville, so important for the study of the colleges and pedagogicas, does not mean that they ignored the existence of classes. This silence
were
entirely
d'Estouteville,
considered to
it
unknown; but pedagogues though
useless to
familiar
with
new
as
well-informed
as
Cardinal
institutions such as the college,
record details of pedagogical practice and a fortiori,
impose and codify them.
But
less
than a century later the
ance, not in 1539 since Thurot, but
modern word
'class'
made
its
appear-
have been in the habit of repeating ever 1519, in the letter from Erasmus to Justin
as historians
as early as
2 which the humanist described St Paul's School in London: and the first classis every class, he wrote, had sixteen pupils quaeque in his class occupied a little seat which dominated the rest qui in sua classe. The idea had preceded the word by a long margin, and it was was established. At the end of already familiar when the terminology the sixteenth century, in the Jesuits' ratio studiorum and the leges et statuta of Paris, the cycle of classes had acquired its present-day of the
Jonas in
University The evolution had therefore taken place during die fifteenth
periodicity.
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
178
century, and at the beginning of the sixteenth century, in the colleges providing a full course of tuition.
Like the complete course of tuition, the class originated in the grammar is why the enumeration of the classes began with the
schools: that
rhetoric class (the first class in France, the seventh form in England), while the classes in philosophy, logic and physics remained outside this
reckoning.
At
the beginning of the fifteenth century, the grammaticus and his he had one, gave instruction together on the same premises
assistant, if
dozen or several hundred children, all mingled together in of the difference in their ages. In the course of the fifteenth century
to several spite
new distinguishing principle appeared. The heterogeneous body remained in a single room under the common supervision of the masters, but it was broken up into groups according to the extent of the pupils' knowledge, and the masters got into the habit of addressing each of a
these groups separately. This pedagogic practice was the result of the - from the simultaneous passage an incomplete passage pedagogy of
medieval tradition to the progressive pedagogy which would carry the day. The order of this division, as yet in a very embryonic stage, was dictated
by the
succession of the chapters in the Donat or in Alexandre basis of all instruction in grammar. An
de Villedieu's Doctrinal, the Italian
and
its
gives us an idea of how a school was organized contract entered into between the town of Treviso
document of 1444
at that time.
3
The
schoolmaster fixes the scale of remuneration for the
can be seen that
this
latter,
and
it
remuneration varies according to the pupil's degree
of attainment. The document provides for four categories. The first goes from the Table (i.e. the alphabet) to the beginning of the Donat: this is elementary stuff, and worth half a ducat. The second goes from the beginning of the Donat, or of grammar, to the beginning of the Articles: first four chapters of the Doctrinal - the declensions, the
these are the
degrees of comparison, the genders, and the demonstrative and possessive - and this category is worth a ducat. The third category, which adjectives brings in a ducat and a half, finishes grammar.
worth two
The
fourth category,
devoted to
or rhetoric. This text ducats, stylistic exercises division to us the it fixes the schoolmaster's because only explains pay. Cardinal d'Estouteville's silence with regard to the class can therefore is
be explained by the fact that in a document on the general aspects of discipline he could not be expected to go into die details of salaries.
also
THE ORIGINS Of* THE SCHOOL CLASS'
179
we
can which must have already become traditional, of our cycle of classes. There is a connection between the four categories at Treviso and those class curricula which we know, such as Melanchthon's at Basle4 and Baduel's at Nimes 5 in the first third of the sixteenth century, or again, at the end of the same century, the curricula adopted by Narbonne College in Paris when it started a complete course of tuition in I599. 6 The first category at Treviso corresponded to the lowest of the four classes at Basle, to the sixth at Nimes. In 1599 at Narbonne College the youngest pupils already knew the rudiments of grammar, or were In this division,
see the distant origins
supposed to know them. The second category at Treviso corresponded to the fifth at Nimes, the sixth at Narbonne: in half a century, the rudiments had been pushed
back beyond the sixth
class.
The
third category at Treviso corresponded to the two intermediary classes at Basle, to the fourth and third at Nimes, and to the fifth, fourth
and third
at
Narbonne.
Finally, the last category at Treviso corresponded to the highest class at Basle, to the second and first at Nimes, and to the first at Narbonne,
where, curiously enough, the second was missing.
between the subdivision of the from it. The subdivision was entirely empirical and depended on the master, even if certain traditions were beginning to impose themselves. For a long time to come, this uncertainty would continue, and the curricula and the order of the classes would vary from one college to the next: thus at Guyenne and Navarre there was a proliferation of little classes, and at Narbonne there was no second class. In the last years of the sixteenth century, a Montpellier student visiting Tournon would write from the college: 'It has about 7 that the class became the eight classes/ About! It was only gradually constituent element of a regular cycle, adopted by schools over the whole area of Western civilization. First of all it had to receive a name of its
However,
there
was
Treviso school and the
a
difference
classes
which
resulted
own. In 1466, in his Doctrinal du Temps Present, Michault gives a descripof the school, no doubt touched up for the purposes of his allegory, but based on reality. He has no name, or at least no French name, to tion
with pupils' surrounding each a class: 'in this parquet the cases master's chair, and the parquet clearly second this in are declined', 'the regent parquet'. However, in 1477 we in a sense which might well used lectio find the Latin expression being ubi lectio contra lectionem clericorum in be that of the school class: prato
denote the 'parquet of 8
little
benches is
filled
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
180 insurgere solebat*
This does not appear to be a case of one college
com-
school against school. peting with another, lectio had imposed itself on Parisian usage. In the word the 1501 By 10 statutes of the new Montaigu College it denoted an organic unit. behaved best These statutes stipulated that in every lectio one of the caeteros suae lectionis. A head monitor should be pupils should supervise artium lectione, which incidentally means that the the chosen arts
suprema by themselves, logic and physics, were divided, at least at Montaigu,
into
lectiones.
The
statutes also tell us that
each
lectio
had
its
own excitator.
Montaigu College was divided into lectiones, although some detail, do not specify their number or composition. The drafters of statutes no longer passed over Thus
it is
clear that
the statutes,
which
fix the time-table in
in silence the division into a
commonplace,
lectiones:
they
now
referred to
it
as
to
familiar idea.
The word lectio would soon be dropped in France in favour of the modern term 'class'. We have already seen this term being used by was introduced by the humanists who were fond of terms that borrowing from die ancients (in this case from Quintilian) were unknown in medieval Latin. Protestant humanists such as Baduel
Erasmus
in 1519. It
and Sturm, founders of model colleges, used it in their turn, and their texts of 1538 and 1539 are generally regarded as the first examples of the modern use of the word 'class' in the sense of a school class. The Jesuits and the University of Paris were to adopt it in their turn. Thus the fifteenth-century
lectio
became the
After being equipped with a
late sixteenth-century class.
name of its own,
the class
would go on
to
element
be recognized by the pedagogical theoreticians as the essential of any educational organization. For example, Baduel's biographer Gaufres has analysed the prospectus which Baduel published in 1538 for the establishment at Nimes of a 'college, school and university in all the faculties
11 In of the Grammars and die Arts alone'.
this
prospectus
Baduel points out that the division into classes is indispensable for the of the school: hitherto 'everything had been mixed proper organization and confused/ Henceforth, 'the school will be divided into various
up
of the pupils/ At the same according to the age and development time Sturm was introducing this system to Strasbourg; the system was in force in the Paris colleges and in the houses of the Freres de la
classes
already
Vie
Commune,
at
which Standonc of Saint-Jerome de Liege, from
Montaigu and Sturm of Strasbourg hailed. However, Baduel did not consider that this system could be applied the rhetoric class, he writes, the beyond the teaching of grammar. After
THE ORIGINS ol *THB SCHOOL CLASS
l8l
'
lessons and initiates himself in the higher pupil 'attends the public sciences and the arts', in accordance with the humanist idea that study was no longer reserved for youth but could be prolonged kte into life. divided into Therefore, 'his studies are less organized and cease to be studies between distinction find the same different classes/ pursued in
We
classes
bourg:
curriculum pursued in lectures in Sturm's to the four here there are six classes correspondbg
and 12
studies
grammar, the humanities
class
and the rhetoric
at Strasclasses in
(Baduel had the same away in the fourth
class
in fact his pupils started straight
plan in theory, but 'After that,' writes Sturm, 'the second
is
class).
reserved for public
humanities fashion] and the first for theology.' after the It will be noticed that Sturm does not use the numbering has continued which and Paris in used rhetoric class which was already lessons [lectures after the
be used in France to the present day. Like Baduel and the humanists, Sturm made a distinction between the fifteen or so, classes reserved for the school population up to the age of and open lectures of form in the instruction, and the public to
given
higher
left like this, it is
probable that only the
would have remained, subjects taught the seventh form or with schooling stopped
rhetoric class. Pere de
to adults. If things
had been
as in
in class
England, where
to logic, Dainville rightly maintains that the extension of the class system who French the of work die was Jesuits physics and sometimes theology their revived colleagues, scholasticism a alive to Spanish wanted by keep
from humanist criticism. half of the sixteenth century, the modern French second Thus, sixth or fifth class to the first class, completed by the from cycle going at the end of an evolution of about philosophy, was finally established, and so to save
it
in the
a
hundred and
fifty years.
For a long time die
Italian school retained die
form described
in the
sixteenth century mid-fifteenth century contract at Treviso. As late as the at Venice, a of establishment the college Rapinius, in his advice regarding 1* If to children, adolescents and adults. merely assigned separate places a subdivision of single in other schools the class, from being the mere who master the to thanks was that unit, auditorium, became an organic
was in charge of it.
At first
the
grammar
two of them, one was
schools
had one or two masters.
When there were
other the submagister called the grammaticus, and the
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
182 (in
English the high master and the usher). Often the submagister had to
look
after the
youngest and the most ignorant pupils, to
whom he taught
the rudiments of grammar, while the grammaticus kept die higher range of schooling for himself. However, this specialization did not go far, and
did not represent the whole of the
two
masters' responsibilities. In the
fifteenth century, in the cathedral school of Paris, Gerson, for all that he seemed to recognize that the two masters specialized respectively in
grammar and mission: ambo
singing, none the less charged them with a collective 1 ordinent horas diurnas et nocturnas. *
taliter
John Colet's school, the cathedral school of St Paul's in London, gives some idea of the way in which the master and his assistant were led to share the cksses between them. We know this school from different texts, in particular from the letter from Erasmus to Justin Jonas quoted above. We know too that this school took in one hundred and fifty-three free pupils. According to Erasmus they were divided into three classes. The first was reserved for the beginners, whom Erasmus compares to catechimens - as yet they did not really form part of the school. They were entrusted to the chaplain. We know of other cases where it was the porter who taught the rudiments of grammar: for instance at Gray in 15 The second class was in the care of the usher: Erasmus calls him I583. the hypodidascalus, a word taken from Cicero's letters. The third was reserved for the master, whom Erasmus calls the Superior. Thus the two masters whom we found in charge of the grammar school when it came into being in the fourteenth century had arrogated two classes to themselves. A little extra teaching had been allotted to the chaplain, whose office already existed, as in all teaching communities, and thus the need to create a third master's post had been avoided. us
The English grammar schools in fact hesitated for a long tune to number of masters. In 1560 there were still only two masters at Eton - the master and the usher - who shared between them not two classes but two groups of several classes. The usher's lower school conincrease the
sisted of the first three forms, the master's upper school of die fifth, sixth and seventh forms a survival of the first period of the history of the school cycle, with its division into two parts, outmoded by the multiplication of classes in the sixteenth century. The fourth form, the last grammar class, corresponding to the third class in France, had lessons now from the master, now from the usher, in any case probably in the same room. The master entrusted each individual form to a monitor chosen from the :
pupils in that form. In France the specialization
of the masters and the increase
in their
THE ORIGINS OF* f HE SCHOOL CLASS
183
>
numbers began much earlier, at least in the more important schools. This can be seen from a study of Pire Michault's Doctrinal du Temps Present, a work published in I466. 18 We have already seen that the Doctrinale puerorum was the grammar used in the Middle Ages. From the thirteenth century on, moralists gave the classic form of the Doctrinal to allegorical manuals, 'breviaries' of etiquette or 'good living* or plain didactic Simples Gens, Doctrinal de la Messe, Doctrinal des Chambriers ou de Noblesse, Gerson's Donatus moralisatus, treatises (Doctrinal de Nature, Doctrinal de
etc.).
In his Doctrinal du Temps Present, Michault imagines two schools, that Falsity and that of Virtue, in which instruction is given on
of Vice or
Thus
life.
the school of Falsity has twelve masters
(as
many
masters as
there are chapters in Alexandre de Villedieu's Doctrinal and months in the year), and each master symbolizes a vice: Boasting, Vainglory, Rapine,
While we cannot take an
etc.
allegorical description
of this
sort literally,
we must
assume a basic likeness without which the allegory would have been incomprehensible. In this school 'there were thirteen masters; to wit a rector general and twelve subalterns.' Obviously we have a round dozen here simply to make possible twelve moral discourses. Moreover the school of Virtue has the more usual number of four masters. What
we
all here is the hierarchy of the rector and the which we have already seen in the almost contemporary document to which we have often referred: Cardinal d'Estouteville's reformation of the University of Paris. Here in fact we have a college
should note above
master,
or a pedagogica with
A
its
authoritarian hierarchy.
of 1539, the curriculum for Sturm's gymnasium at Strasbourg, tells how it was found necessary at Saint-Jerome de Liege, to impose the had hitherto been free. 17 Originally authority of a rector on masters who 'each master tried to attract the pupils, teaching not what was best but text
what gave the more pleasure, and consulting not so much the students' minds as their tastes.' These masters 'read from authors above the age of their pupils,
even when these readings could prove harmful to morals An authority accordingly had to be imposed on these
and judgment'.
was
studies placed
under
his control.'
drawand had a already
in order to counter these
'It excessively independent masters: backs that a rector was appointed, and
all
the lessons, exercises
But the school of Falsity
rector in 1466.
In this school every master had his own class or lectio: 'At the door was a Porter who scarcely glanced at those who entered ... At the there was a parquet of little benches filled with pupils. foot of there
every
pillar
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
184
And at the top of the pillar there hung a board describing the subject which was being read in that spot/ In the humbler schools, a single master looked after several classes, as at Eton in the sixteenth century. Even in the seventeenth century, when the class system had been finally established, in the school in the little town of Belley 18 three masters shared the six traditional classes between them: one taking the rhetoric and humanities classes, another the fourth and third, another the fifth and sixth. Curiously enough, these three masters were not under a higher authority, but formed as it were three associated schools, financed by grants from three different sources the tutorial prebend, the town magistrate and the provincial States. But in France, from the end of the sixteenth century on, the principle of a master to every class was generally recognized - even if this sometimes meant that not all the classes were in one college, if it was not big at the end of the enough. The principle was so thoroughly recognized which was introduced at that time had that a sixteenth :
century
practice
be forbidden: the practice of having not one master for several classes but two masters for one class; in other words the same class was sometimes entrusted to two masters, one for die morning lesson, the other for
to
19 As early as 1539 we find Sturm insisting in his the evening lesson. curriculum that the first six classes at Strasbourg (corresponding to the to die rhetoric class) must have only one master cycle from the sixth class he gives permission for recourse to the authority hand other the apiece.
On
of several
the subjects specialists for
on taught in the public lectures
philosophy and theology.
The
class
now had
its
master.
It still
lacked one feature which
would
our present-day schools: special premises. bring For a long time the masters and their lectiones were gathered together in a room, which was called the schola. There was only one teaching it
closer to the class in
single in each school,
and people used the same word for both room and later with the class. This was die case in Pfere Michault's school of Falsity: 'The school was inordinately big and there were twelve pillars down the length of it/ The pupils sat around their master 'at the foot of each pillar'. The school of Virtue was 'round', as
room
institution, as
they would
would be later, 'and there were four big chairs there... the school, like a quadrangle/ were which placed against the walls of School was a single round St Paul's to Erasmus, In London, according St Paul's School
THE ORIGINS
OF'
THE SCHOOL CLASS
-
185
floor in tiers on which the pupils sat. Erasmus explains that arrangement was designed to prevent beds and tables being
room, with a this circular
which were doubtless current in the divided into four parts - that is to say the three classrooms and a sort of chapel with an altar by curtains which could be opened or drawn at will: a sign of a penchant for isolation which did not go as far as complete separation. The custom of setting up an altar in the classroom lasted a long time: it was still observed in the eighteenth century in the little college at Mauriac described by Marmontel. At Eton in 1517 there was still only one schoolroom. About the same time the Swiss Thomas Platter was leading the vagabond life of a mendicant student in Germany. He stopped for some time at a grammar school in Breslau (there was one in each parish). He slept in the schoolroom with the youngest of his companions, which was doubtless what John Colet of St Paul's wished to prevent. This is Platter's description of installed in the corners, practices
schools of the time. This
room was
St Elizabeth's School: 'Nine baccalaurii gave their lessons there at the same hour and in the same room/ With nine baccalaurii we are not far from the twelve masters in the school of Falsity it is easy to imagine the din there must have been. 20 In England, the school kept this form for a long time. In 1612 John 1 Brinsley in his Ludus Litterarius* a sort of schoolmaster's manual, reserved the right of punishment for the master; the usher was not to mete out punishment himself, unless he taught 'in a place separate from 22 As late as 1894 Max that of the master', which was rarely the case. Leclerc saw some English schools consisting of a single room occupied :
master's rostrum and, in the four corners, the assistant masters'
by the
platforms
-
very
like
Pere Michault's school of Virtue in 1466.
early on to give each be that as early as 1501 the lectiones at well may premises. Montaigu had their own rooms. The 1501 regulations state that after breakfast in the common refectory the pupils must return to the scholae:
But
in Paris
class its
the
own
word
is
and Liege
it
was endeavoured very
It
definitely in the plural
and
refers to the classrooms.
memoir of I538 23 on
die plan to establish a gymnasium at of the discusses separate classrooms, and the curious provision Strasbourg raises show at least that the question was a topical he which objections one. 'It is better', he writes, 'to gather the classes together in a single
Sturm's
over several. It would be senseless, if one had place than to disperse them ten sheep, to assign a shepherd and a field to each sheep, when a single meadow is sufficient. It would be just as senseless to entrust to several isolated masters the pupils
which
a single master can teach
. . .
Bringing
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
Ig6
force to the example of together pupils in large numbers gives greater Unless an excessive desire to learn . the to learning, greater opportunity multitude of children necessitates the provision of more than one room, instruction must be given in one room only.' . .
In the institutions of the Freres de la Vie
Commune,
*
at Liege, Deventer,
Zwolle and Wesel, only one room is provided for all the classes.' Sturm continues: 'When I was at Liege, a dispute arose between the masters and some of them started teaching separately. If this practice had been continued, it would have been the end of the famous gymnasium of Saintdid in fact result in the established Jdr6me.' This show of independence order of the classes and their curricula being overthrown by the emulation between the masters and their endeavours to attract a more learned audience. 'The old order
was
finally restored',
Sturm
says,
but
we
are
simply to the curricula of the classes, or know whether the classes were also reinstalled in a single room. from another source that in spite of his preferences Sturm finally had
not told whether
this refers
We
at Strasbourg. In 1540 separate classrooms task of founding a school at Basle. He
Thomas
Platter
was given the
went
to Strasbourg to study Sturm's school, which was regarded as something of a model establishreturn to Basle, I divided the pupils into four separate ment 'On
my
four classes of Melanchthon], whereas hitherto, in view of the small number of pupils, they were all kept in the downstairs room, classes [the
the only one
which was
heated.'
The provision of separate rooms forced
upon
Saint-Jerome
for each class
would seem
to have been
by the increase in the school population: at there were over two hundred pupils in each class and the the schools
Louis-le-Grand were of
classes in the big colleges such the end of the eighteenth century. Litde as
this size until
by little the disciplinarian less crowded premises became apparent; there was little of advantages or no mention of the matter in texts and theoretical writings, but the of having separate rooms became an established custom in the
practice
seventeenth century. At the end of the sixteenth century, in Cordier's tells the rector: Master, there is nobody in the sixth dialogues, a pupil *
'What's that? Where is MaJtre Philippe?' 'He is ill in bed.' 'Tell - that is to the master of the second class to send one of his people' say
class.'
one of his older pupils. 24 This conversation shows that the various classes were installed in separate rooms. Similarly, in Francion's time, the word 'class' began to be used for the room. In the Oratorian schools, where the
room there
was called the 'chamber', a choicer word than 'class', same tendency to use one term to denote place, curriculum
in question
was
the
THE ORIGINS and
25
pupils.
-THE SCHOOL CLASS
187
.
In both the Jesuit colleges and the University of Paris the
separation of the
This
CMP
classes
last stage
had become an accomplished
has finally brought us
all
the
fact.
way from
the
mixed
audience of the Middle Ages to the modern class. Starting at least at the beginning of the fifteenth century, the school population was divided
of equivalent capacity, but under the same master and in a single (a transitional formula to which Italy remained faithful for a long time). Then, in the course of the fifteenth century, a particular master was allotted to each of these groups, though they were still kept within the same four walls, an arrangement which was still to be found in England in the second half of the nineteenth century. Finally, on an initiative originating in Flanders and Paris, the classes and their masters were isolated in special rooms, which resulted in the present-day structure of the class. We have here a change corresponding to a desire, new as into groups
room
yet, to adapt the master's teaching to the student's level. The desire to bring education within the pupil's understanding was in direct opposition
not only to the medieval methods of simultaneity or repetition, but also to humanist pedagogy which made no distinction between child and
man and
(a preparation for life) and culture (an from life). The separation of the classes therefore revealed a of the special nature of childhood or youth and of the idea
confused schooling
acquisition realization
youth a variety of categories existed. The creation of the hierarchized college in the fourteenth century had rescued schoolchildren from the hotchpotch in which, in the outside world, the that within that childhood or
ages were
mixed up. The
institution
of
classes in the sixteenth
century
established subdivisions within that school population. What then were these categories, roughed out sometimes for reasons
of expediency, which at first bore no relation to what would later be expected from them in the way of order, discipline and educational Baduel in 1538 saw in the efficacity? Were they age groups? Admittedly out of a means class system pupils according to 'their age and sharing same the In period Thomas Platter, at the end of a development*. a Schlestadt school which was attended by to went vagabond youth, nine hundred disdpuli at once. He already considered it not entirely normal that his ignorance should thrust him at the age of eighteen among
a lot of children: he
'When
I
felt
the need to record the incident as an
entered the school,
I
knew
nothing,
I
anomaly
-
could not even read
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
188
was eighteen years old. I took my place in the midst of the hen in the midst of her chickens.' However, we should beware of being misled by isolated anecdotes. Age and development sometimes but not always coincided, and when they did not, people were only slightly surprised, often not at all. They still paid much greater attention to development than to age. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the class had not yet attained the demographic homogeneity which it has possessed ever since the end of the nineteenth century although it was constantly drawing nearer to that homogeneity. School classes had come into existence to separate students according to their capacities and the difficulty of the subject-matter, not Donat, yet little
I
children, like a
to separate students according to their ages. The new penchant for and division -which characterized the birth of modern conscious-
analysis ness in
its most intellectual zone, namely pedagogics inspired in its turn further distinctions and divisions. The desire to separate the ages
was only gradually recognized, and separation asserted as a principle, separation had already been established in practice after lengthy empirical experiments. And this leads us to make a closer study of schoolchildren's ages and their relation to the class structure.
when
THE
PUPIL'S
AGE
know from personal experience, if we recall our schooldays, the importance which a difference of a few years had in our know how we set our schoolmates' childhood and youth.
WE
We
class, which was our only standard of comparison; our understanding of childhood or youth or adolescence depended on an academic hierarchy, first a succession of classes, then the
ages against the average age of our
passage
from secondary to higher education. I had these distinctions in I was collecting the documentary material for this chapter
mind while on
First among these sources pupils' ages before the nineteenth century. are the memorialists' recollections of their childhood and schooldays, the
If one or other of these writings in which they were perhaps most sincere. writers should be not entirely typical of the great majority of people, then
a few
more
general
statistics
perspective and to observe
will enable us to put
him
in his proper
certain overall developments.
was born in 1499 in a village in the Valais. 1 He was one of a large family (one of those nurseries of Swiss mercenaries from which the armies of Europe were recruited: two of his brothers died in battle). After the father died, leaving the mother penniless, the children soon left home. At the age of six, Thomas, who had not yet been attracted by camp At the age of eight, he was still a life, was keeping a relative's goats. in the on summer, and in winter on a mattress hay goatherd: 'Sleeping full of fleas and even lice, such is the common lot of the little herdsmen whom the peasants send up into the mountain solitudes.' Seeing him in our modern perspective, we imagine him permanently committed to manual occupations. And yet, when he was nine and a half, his mother, who dreamt of making a priest of him, entrusted him to one of her the rudiments of relatives, himself a priest, who was to teach him did not one if give up hope of a grammar. It was not indispensable, even as one had got as soon scholastic career, to go to school straight away,
Thomas
Platter
of mother or nanny at the age of five or six. People accepted the idea of a pre-school period which sometimes postponed die acquisition of the rudiments until after the age of ten. School was^ not yet regarded it was still confused with ways unambiguously as a preparation for life:
free
189
SCHOLASTIC
190
of life which we
LIFE
now tend to postpone until after school, with apprentice-
the age at ship for instance. Consequently remained indefinite for a long time.
Thomas he used to
left this
seize
brutal master:
me by
'My
the ears and
which
a child started school
master used to beat
me
me
off the ground/ through the village. He lift
A
horribly; cousin of
had already happened to pass endless attended the schools at Ulm and Munich and was living the roving life of the medieval student. When he left on another scholastic journey he took with him young Thomas, who must have been about ten years old and had learnt nothing from his priest except to sing the Salve. For Thomas this was the beginning of a long vagabondage often years or so, and Alsace, which took him through the schools of Germany, Switzerland to the age of twenty. Never staying long in one place, he travelled across Silesia and Saxony, stopping at Halle, Dresden and Breslau. At Breslau, 'we first of all attended the school of the Holy Cross, near the cathedral;
Thomas
Platter's
but having heard that there were some Swiss in the next parish, St Latin schools. At St Elizabeth's, we went there/ These were, of course,
pr-acceptor
where nine bachelors taught in the same room, only the or else a monitor chosen from the pupils) (one of the masters,
possessed
a printed Terence.
Elizabeth's,
'distinguished*,
The
others copied
it
at his dictation,
then
'expounded*. Thomas and
next 'construed', and finally Dresden, and settled down in Munich. of this vagabondage the cousin took it into his head to
his cousin left Breslau, returned to
'
After five years return to the places
we had not seen for five years and we
travelled to the
Munich. There Thomas, who with his fifteen years had acquired a spirit of independence, left his cousin and went off by himself. Going by way of Passau, Ulm and Constance, he arrived at Ziirich, where for a few months he went round asking older students him lessons - but all in vain: 'I did not study at all/ Setting off to Valais'.
They then went back
to
give
once more, he landed up
at Schlestadt
where
his studies
took a more
serious turn; Johannes Sapidus admitted him to his school, a prosperous establishment where 'there were up to nine hundred discipuli [not as a scholar gipsy had taught Thomas separated into classes]/ Long years he could not read. 'When I entered the of the at eighteen age nothing:
could not even read Donat, yet I was eighteen years old. I took my place in the midst of the little children, like a hen in the midst of her at Schlestadt, doubtless because he did not chickens/ Yet he did not
school
I
stay
have the means to
live there.
He then returned to his native Valais, by
doing ten years before
-to
to
do what he should have begun
learn the rudiments at a
little
school:
THE *trm 'There
what
found a
I
else
. . .
priest
who
taught
AGE
s
me
a
'
191
writing and I know not the ABC in one day/ At the
little
My other aunt's son taught me
age of nineteen, at the end of his long schooling, we find him learning to read and write. It is true that before being able to read he knew the Donat
by heart: one of the last survivals of a time when more important than communication by writing.
He
returned to Ziirich, where 'rumour had
who was
it
oral transmission
was
that a schoolmaster
had
be very learned, but very strict': Myconius, Pater Myconius, whose pupil, boarder and even disciple he became. Thomas Platter, who had waited until he was nineteen before learning to read, was arrived...
now
said to
conquered by humanism and displayed a monstrous appetite for two or three years he learned Latin, and Greek and Hebrew
erudition. In
After giving private lessons in his turn, he was then able to open a school in his native Valais. When he was in his forties, he was offered as well.
the rectorship of an important school in Basle, the new system of separate classes.
where he was
to introduce
Thomas Platter's student life in the early sixteenth century takes us back to the Middle Ages, with studies at countless schools where results were of no account, classes did not exist and curricula were not arranged in any order.
The essential part of Thomas's store of knowledge was accumulated two years of a cycle of ten years or so, between the ages of
in the last
eighteen and twenty, after eight years which may seem sterile to our modern eyes, but during which the illiterate youth had kept coming up in accordance with the against the subjects of the trivium, taught orally
old customs. his active life
We must note above all that Thomas Platter did not begin with school - he was a goatherd until the age of nine - that in the company of older or younger companions, with
he was constantly
no age
distinctions,
and
that
humanism
grafted itself easily
on to
his
old medieval stock of knowledge: as we have observed several times, humanism, for all that it introduced new methods of learning and
new
authors, maintained the long-drawn, simultaneous teaching system
of the Middle Ages. emphasizes the archaic nature of school life in the German-speaking countries; it does not, however, represent the typical
Thomas
Platter's case
student's life in France.
Le Fivre d'Ormesson belonged to the following generation: he was born in 1525 of a father who was a clerk in the record office of the High Court, and a mother who was the daughter of an attorney in the Audit Office. 1 He had two brothers and three sisters, who all died except Olivier
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
192
He lost his father when he was five. At the age of went to Navarre College. In France, the medieval schools of the type Thomas Platter went to in Germany were to be found only in small provincial towns, and they taught only the rudiments of Latin. Colleges teaching a wider range of subjects had taken their place and were attracting an ever greater number of pupils. In Paris, until Louis-le-Grand was founded, Navarre College was patronized by the children of the upper nobility and even of royal blood. However, the Le Fevre family was not rich, and the widow could not afford to keep her two children at school. They had to start work early in life: 'They were both taken away [from school] after three years, for want of the means to maintain them there.' Thus Olivier stayed at school only from the age of eight or nine to the age of eleven. At eleven 'he was lodged with an attorney in the for his brother Nicolas.
eight, Olivier
Audit Office to learn to write [that is to say to 'write to perfection', to write deeds, die equivalent of typing today] and to earn his living'. He then became clerk to the Treasurer of the Dauphin, the future Henri II,
who In
helped him and
his
medieval
family in their careers.
we
Thomas
Platter's schooling saw the prolonged cycle of the was also a cleric; like die humanist later on, he scholar
who
considered that study formed a notable part of his active life, and did not reduce it to the educational function of a preparation for that life: it did not separate the child from the adult. Olivier Le Fevre's cycle had an entirely different significance. In his day
was no longer reserved for the lengthy studies of clerks or was becoming an instrument of education which preceded and prepared for the pupil's entry into active life. However, it had not yet become a substitute for the other method of education which had been that employed by laymen before they had taken to going to college, an the college
humanists.
It
institution hitherto reserved for the clerks: apprenticeship. Until the end of the Middle Ages, and in many cases afterwards too, in
order to obtain initiation in a trade of any sort whatever - whether that of courtier, soldier, administrator, merchant or workman -a boy did not
amass the knowledge necessary to ply that trade before entering it, but threw himself into it; he then acquired the necessary knowledge through everyday practice, from living and working with adults who were already fully trained. Thus Olivier was 'lodged with an attorney in the Audit Office to learn to write' and no doubt to count as well.
When academic instruction was extended to laymen, apprenticeship ceased to be a noble function and was gradually driven back towards the mechanical trades - the manual occupations - to the point where, in our facing above:
Mow:
THE WEDDING PROCESSION by GRACE by Stradan
Stella
THE PUPIL
S
AGE
193
own
day, the development of technical and professional training, slow and tardy though it has been, is reducing it still further to a relic or a stage of practical instruction. But this replacement of apprenticeship by academic instruction, in the upper and middle classes of society, was not
Children began by spending two or three years at school, the big classes still being reserved for Latin careers such as the Church or the law. This stay at school did not dispense a boy from serving his apprenticeship between about twelve and fifteen in the at first universal.
in the
little classes,
writing professions which were the qualification for work in law. Little by little, the school cycle lengthened at the expense of the period of apprenticeship.
The noble
which remained faithful the longest to the the profession of arms. The military paintings was apprenticeship system of the seventeenth century depicted young boys, whom we should describe as children, in the midst of rascally-looking old soldiers. As late as the end of the seventeenth century, it often happened that a young nobleman, destined for the service, would spend only two or three years at school. Thus Claude de Bonneval, born in 1675, entered a Jesuit college 3 at the age of nine. He left at eleven - at the same age as Olivier Le Fevre a century earlier to sign on as a marine in the King's Navy. At the age of thirteen he was a sub-lieutenant. Similarly Chevert, born in 1695, joined the service at die age of eleven, as his memorial tablet at Saint-Eustache reminds us. The creation of academies in the seventeenth century, and more especially of army schools in the eighteenth century, would the disappearance of these soldiers of eleven and gradually bring about twelve from camp life. In the nineteenth century, the university and the profession
of instruction even further. big schools would extend die period Another calling, which nowadays stands half-way between trade and also maintained the practices of apprenticeship for the liberal
professions, a long time pharmaceutics. In the eighteenth century the pharmaceutical of fourteen, and his contract was for four apprentice started at the age studied have to had enough grammar to be able to read a years. But he :
Latin prescription: consequently he had already attended the little classes of a college. His schooling was still wedged in between his early childhood and the beginning of an apprenticeship which plunged him into the world
of adults. In the nineteenth century this sort of apprenticeship still existed: Claude Bernard began his at the age of thirteen. the prolongation of the school cycle had Generally speaking, however, almost eliminated the apprenticeship by the late eighteenth century: after to working classes, excluded from the Latin colleges G
that time only the
facing above: BLIND
MAN'S BUFF
below : THE PAPER
GAME
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
194
which they were
still
admitted at the end of the ancien regime, continued
to practise apprenticeship. The school career of Henri de
Mesmes was
also a short cycle, 4 but not case : the latter was an example
for the same reasons as in Olivier Le Kvre's of the coexistence of college and apprenticeship. Henri de Mesmes did not serve an apprenticeship, but he was typical of certain cases of precocity. He was born in 1532, the son of a lawyer. 'My father gave me as a tutor J. Maludan, a disciple of Dorat's and a learned man, chosen for the innocence of his life, and of an age suitable for the guidance of my youth ... he relinquished his post only when I started my career/ In other words he stayed with Henri de Mesmes until he was eighteen. A tutor at that time was not responsible for all his charge's tuition: he was not a
substitute for school. During the first few years, from five to seven or nine years of age, he taught his charge reading and the rudiments of
grammar. When his pupil started school, the tutor accompanied him to school, where he served him as a private coach, while he too studied on his own account, possibly with his young master's valets. Thus in the regulations for the boards at the college of La Fleche, it is laid down that the pupils' famuli must be of an age and education to enter the fourth class.
5
So Henri de Mesmes started school with his tutor and his brother: was sent to the College de Bourgogne in the year 1542.' He was then about ten years old, and he went straight into the third class, the last of 'I
the grammar classes, leaving out the lower classes. After the third class, he skipped the second and entered the first: 'Then I did one year, no less, in the first class.' This course does not seem to have been unusual at the 6 time: it was also that of Nicolas de Beauvais-Nangis. The latter, born in 1582, was twelve years old when he entered Navarre College at the beginning of 1595. 'I entered the third class, where I remained until St
went from Easter when I went up into the first class, where I remained until the month of May 1596, when the plague infected the aforesaid and I was college, brought back to where I studied under a tutor.' Nangis philosophy Thus, at the end of a year in the first class Henri de Mesmes finished a schooling which had lasted no more than eighteen months. At the age of twelve he had finished with the arts: however, though he had completed his schooling in a hurry, it was not in order to enter an attorney's office
R6my's Day [October 2nd, 1595: generally to St Rmy's Day or from St Remy's Day
the pupil
to Easter],
any sooner; he had been quick, thanks to his natural precocity and to his tutor's coaching. These cases of child prodigies were very common
THE lUPILs AGE
195
and seventeenth centuries. Pere Ange de Joyeuse entered the rhetoric class at the age of ten, though admittedly 'to the astonishment of his masters', to quote his biographer Cailliere. 7 Baillet in 1688 also speaks of children who 'by the age of twelve or thirteen had completed the ordinary course of college studies by means of extraordinary between the
fifteenth
8
activity'.
make it possible to start one's active career at the usual age, and to catch up with youths who had not been to school. But in the sixteenth and the early seventeenth century, it also enabled little This precocity could
prodigies to pursue advanced studies over a long period. This was the case with Henri de Mesmes: after his eighteen months at school, he set off at the age of twelve, still with his brother and his tutor, to enter the Faculty of Law at Toulouse (civil law was not taught in Paris), where they spent six years of hard study: 'After that, having taken our degrees as Doctors of Civil and Canon Law, we took the road for home.' He was eighteen years old, and he was now appointed to a post as counsellor to the Board of Excise because I was so young that I would not have been admitted anywhere else'. Of eight years of study, two had been devoted to grammar and the arts, the rest to law. Cases of this type were to become rare in the seventeenth century, not only because precocity would strike public opinion as an anomaly, but also because the higher branches of study would disappear in favour of *
the college's classes, which would take over the whole cycle of instruction and thus take a young man up to the threshold of his future career. In the mid-sixteenth century, the Faculties of Law still enjoyed their old - indeed this was their - and a continuous series of greatest period as a necessity in higher education: a student could easily skip a class or else spend only one semester in a ckss. The curriculum came to an end in fact at the end of the semester. Students
prestige classes
had not yet been accepted
were moved up to the next class either at Easter or on St Rmy's Day, that to say at the end of every semester. In reality school started twice a year, it has on the above dates - whereas ever since the nineteenth
is
century once a year, in October. This custom of arranging the curricula in semesters continued until the end of the ancien regime. 9 It was provided for in Henri IV's reformation started only
of the University of Paris. In England, it was still in force in the midnineteenth century: the author of Tom Brown's Schooldays reckons in halfyears what we count in annual classes. Even then the system of half-yearly promotions favoured a certain precocity. But this was no longer the precocity of the sixteenth century, which can be explained by the same
Ip6 pre-scholastic spirit
SCHOLASTIC
LIFE
which I mentioned with regard
We
to apprenticeship. in die mid-sixteenth recent very cases either to a few years of study or to a
should not forget that schooling was
still
century and restricted in many few people or classes. Outside school, in the
army camps, in the offices of or in the courts where administrators, lawyers politics and diplomacy were conducted by grandees or statesmen, and in the workshops where crafts-
men plied their trades, boys between the ages often and fourteen mixed with adults in everyday life and above all in the fellowship of a common occupation. Some of them could show a precocious skill without causing excessive surprise to technicians used to cultivating professional values without regard to age: the precocity of an apprentice was accordingly barely distinguishable from other natural inequalities, such as the exceptional skill of an adult. In these psychological conditions, the precocity of a schoolboy did not seem any more extraordinary than the skill of a little artisan, the agility and courage of a child acrobat, or the virtuosity of a
young musician. The school had not yet
established a sufficient distinction
between its pupils and the rest of the child population. These performances would no longer be tolerated once they were regarded as infractions of the special nature of childhood, and that special nature would be recognized in middle-class schoolchildren before it was extended to the children of the lower classes.
With the future Marechal de Bassompierre, in the late sixteenth century, approach the normal modern cycle.
we
Btissompierre was born in 1579. He stayed at home until he was twelve, except for five months when his mother was away and he was entrusted to an aunt who was an abbess. In the course of this period of education at
home he learnt to read and write, 'and then the Rudiments', with a tutor who was joined in 1588 by 'two young men called Clinchamps and de la Motte, the former to teach us to write well
to [that is to say 'writing
Clinchamps being a 'scribe'] and the latter to teach us dancing, 10 This prolongation to the age of twelve of lute-playing and music'. education at home was not exceptional, but the moralists of the sixteenth
perfection',
and seventeenth centuries condemned it because they feared the promiscuity of the servants, from whom the tutor was not very clearly distinguished, a fortiori when the child was left with the women of the house: 'How reprehensible', wrote the Jansenist Coustel in 1687, 'is the cruel and foolish affection of certain parents who think that they are doing a great deal for their children by leaving them until the age of twelve or thirteen in the arms and the often rather indecent embraces of nannies and
THE
PtfPIL
S
AGE
,
197
governesses/ However, except in the case of the King's children, nobody ever considered extending this home education beyond twelve or thirteen:
everybody went to school. At the age of twelve, Bassompierre went to the Jesuit college at Freiburg
im
Breisgau, accompanied by his brother, the tutor, the writing-master and the dancing-master. They entered the third class. For a child of good birth and average wealth, twelve years old was a normal age for the third class. However, the murder of the dancing-master by the tutor reduced the Bassompierres* stay in the third class to five months, and sent the boys back home, 'whence the same year [1592] my mother took us to the Jesuit college at Pont-i-Mousson to continue our studies there. We stayed only six weeks in the third class [they had thus spent a complete semester in die third and could regard it as finished], then spent the holidays with the family at Harouel. On our return we went up into the second class where we spent a year/ In 1593 'we went up to the first class*. The next often year, after the holidays, 'we returned to the same class'. Boys were made to stay a second year in the same class, not so much because they were weak as in order to prolong their schooling. Here we have evidence
of a
man
new attitude to
schooling, a tendency to leave the child or the young school a long time; whatever the division of the classes, and
at
were now quite distinct, progress through these than the length of the pupil's stay at school. Bassompierre's second year in the first class was interrupted at the beginning of Lent by a tour of Germany and Austria. At that time people
despite the fact that they classes
mattered
thought that value;
less
travel, especially in
young
Germany and Italy, had great educational by their parents' correspondents,
noblemen, entertained
learned other languages and were initiated in the life of courtiers, diplomats or soldiers: this was another aspect of apprenticeship. On his return from Germany, Bassompierre was about sixteen: 'We
came back
to continue our studies [at Pont-i-Mousson] until October, when we had reached the De anima: the Philo-
leaving the Physics class
sophy year/ Many pupils left school before the philosophy class, which was generally reserved for future lawyers and churchmen. Next, Bassomhe calls a 'course', whose purpose I cannot quite pierre did something have been a sort of substitute for advanced studies, in It to seems grasp. of Civil Law, Canon Law and Medicine: 'And Faculties of the place
we had
another seven months of the course to do, I started same time [i.e. with a tutor] the Institutes of the Law of I spent one hour in class, another hour on cases [Justinian], on which on one hour and of the on hour one conscience, Hippocrates, aphorisms
because
studying at the
SCHOLASTIC
LIFE
and politics/ He thus provided himself with a smattering of law and medicine, as well as scholastic philosophy. 'I continued for the rest of that year, 1595, and the course beginning of the year 1596. Aristotle's ethics
My
finished at Easter/
This gives
us,
very roughly: 1591-2: 12-13 years old, third
1592-3
class.
13-14 years old, second ckss.
:
1593-4: 14-15 years old, first class. 1595-6" 16-17 years old, physics and logic.
The
points to note here are the late entry into the third class, the continuity of the classes, and the repetition of the first class. The relation
between ages and
classes
approximates to a pattern sufficiently
common
in the seventeenth century for Sorel to adopt it for one of his characters, Dorilas, who is in the rhetoric class from fourteen to sixteen. 11
We
find a similar cycle and the same ages in the case of Andre Le Fevre 12 d'Ormesson, the son of that Olivier whom we met earlier. In the year 1586, when he was ten years old: 'I was sent to Cardinal Lemoine College under M. Le Dieu, a native of Picardy, the master of my class, with seven
of
my
master
who were
cousins
M. Le
already there/ During the siege of Paris 'our us'. Thus the Le Fvres
Dieu' had not 'the means to feed
were not boarders
in the college,
which probably housed only its
but boarded with one of the masters It
was unusual
Andr
who
scholars,
perhaps lived in the college.
and lodging itself. His master, Maitre Jard, followed him,
for a college to provide board
entered the seventh
class.
was the custom at that time, into the sixth and the fifth: it is probable was a subdivision of the sixth, and possible that the seventh and the sixth were held together with the fifth, in the same room. In the fourth class he had a new master he went under M. Seguin who has since been doctor to Queen Anne of Austria'. M. Seguin was a schoolmaster while he was pursuing his medical studies grammarschool masters were often recruited from students in the Faculties of Law, Theology and Medicine. Andr6 was in the fourth class in 1589. This means that he had moved up one class a year from the seventh. 'The siege of Paris took place... and my father took us away from school' (because their master could not feed them). He kept his two sons at home until October 1590, 'when I went with my brother to Navarre College, under as
that the seventh
'
:
M. Raquin', third
in 'the first class'.
and the second. In
fact
therefore apparently skipped the they skipped only the third, for there was no
They
PUPIL'S AGE second
class at
Navarre - but there must have been two firsts. That at one can put on the following sentence: 'The
least is the interpretation
year 1591 beginning in October, M. Gauthier, who has since become a doctor of theology, took tine first and the later first for the second year/ So
Navarre there were two first classes, which presumably corresponded and the rhetoric class in other colleges. What is in is that Andre spent a second year in the first class, and certain, any case, that this seemed quite normal. 'In October 1592 I went to study in the Logic class at the Jesuit college under Pfere Gaspard Seguiran, who has since become an excellent preacher and confessor to King Louis XIII.' With the class in logic, Andr6 completed the arts cycle between sixteen and* seventeen. There then began for him, as for Henri de Mesmes, a lengthy period of law studies: first 'on the Institutes [of Justinian] under M. Marsibus [probably private lessons] and after that at the Universities at Orleans, under M. le docteur Luillier, the Dean and the most learned of all doctors in Orleans, until September 1595, then with M. Leclerc, doctor of Law, until my admission by the Grand Council, which took place on December lyth, 1598.' Andre had six years of law studies in all, the same time as was taken by Henri de Mesmes. This cycle of studies can, therefore, be summarized as follows at
to the humanities class
:
1586:
10 years old, seventh
1587:
ii years old, sixth class.
1588:
1589:
12 years old, fifth class. 13 years old, fourth class.
1590:
14 years old,
1591:
15 years old, first class.
class.
first class.
16 years old, logic class. 1592: 1593-8: 17-22 years old, law studies. If
we
except the omission of the third
class,
we
have here a normal
seven years at cycle: the sixth class at eleven, the rhetoric class at fifteen, school and six years studying law, before starting professional
life.
The cases we come across from the seventeenth century on are,
generally a certain precocity, tend to speaking, of a normal character and, despite approach the classic pattern established in the nineteenth century.
Descartes had an education that
was
entirely 'scholastic'
-
that
We
is,
the
know school were not supplemented by university studies. that Descartes entered the Jesuit college at La Flche in 1604, starting in the sixth class at the age of eight, that in May 1610 he was in his first year classes at
2OO
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
in the philosophy class, and that he finished his schooling in August 1612, end of his third year in the philosophy class: he was then fifteen years old.
at the
Thus he covered in five years, between 1604 and 1609, the cycle which went from the sixth class to the philosophy class: to do this he must either have skipped a class or covered two classes in two semesters. Eight years old was fairly young for the sixth class, but in every sixth or fifth there were a few pupils of eight or nine. A twelve-year-old in the rhetoric class was beginning to be a rarity, but we shall come across another case.
The period spent in the philosophy class here was three years, a period corresponding to a degree course at a university: it is easy to see how the college in France absorbed not only the grammar school but also the arts school which in England gave rise to a higher education distinct from and complementary to the grammar schools. In France the college came to offer tuition of every kind, sometimes even in theology: the young Jesuits at that time had no separate noviciate and did their three years of philosophy and their theology at school (none the less the Sorbonne, the name of the Paris Faculty of Theology, remained active until the end of the ancien regime). The importance attributed to the tuition given after the rhetoric class coincided with the decline of the when Faculties, higher it did not actually contribute to that decline, as in the case of the arts.
A
good academic education could be obtained by a long stay at school, particularly in the philosophy classes: these were in fact confined to a small number of pupils who specialized in philosophy and theology.
long school career (eight years) therefore consisted of a pseudo-secondary education of five years, up to the rhetoric class, and D'escartes's
a pseudo-higher education of three years. Eventually the normal school of cycle, corresponding to our secondary education, would annex a
year philosophy. The complete cycle would then go up to the logic class, while a few specialists, future churchmen or 'intellectuals', would extend it for
one
or, in exceptional cases,
two
years.
Let us interrupt the chronological sequence of our biographical examples to compare with Descartes's case another case which also illustrates the disproportionate place assumed by the college in the education even of 'men of law': that of Charles Perrault, the author of
the fairy-stories. 18
Charles Perrault, like Descartes, was a good pupil. He was born in 'My mother went to the trouble of trying to teach me to read, after
1628
:
which I was sent to Beauvais College at the age of eight and a half [the same age as Descartes, and in the same sixth class]. There I received all
my
THE PUPIL
S
AGE
201
,
schooling, as did
all my brothers, without a single one of us ever being A whipped/ noteworthy fact, which must have been exceptional. 'I was
put in the sixth class before I could read.' In this model family, in which the father used to teach his son Latin after supper, a boy of eight and a half
had not yet learnt to read! But the sixth was in fact an elementary class, sometimes divided into two on account of the number of pupils who were put into it just to learn reading, writing and the rudiments of grammar, and in this case a seventh class was formed which was taught in the same room. About Charles Perrault's schooling all we know is his age and class when he started school, and his age when he left, between seventeen and eighteen, at the end of his second year in the philosophy class. If we count a year for each class, we see that he has at least one year too many and probably two, whereas there was one year missing from Descartes's cycle. Charles Perrault must have stayed an extra year in one or two classes,
We shall
thus extending the average cycle by a year for each class. was the general rule. Charles Perrault did not go
see later that this
beyond
the second year in the philosophy class, for he did not intend to enter the Church. He wanted to read law, but it did not occur to him to go to a
Law
Faculty to study under one of its masters as Mesmes did at Toulouse Ormesson at Orleans about 1593 the times had changed. For
in 1545 or
:
three years he took private lessons in law in accordance with the custom of the times: the Law Faculties had declined, with the result that would-be
lawyers and magistrates studied the Institutes at home with a private tutor, presenting themselves at the Faculties only to obtain their diplomas, for the examination had become merely a tiresome, ridiculous
jurists,
'I went to obtain my two friends, one of whom was to become vicar-
formality. In July 1651, writes Charles Perrault,
diplomas
at
Orleans with
general of Sens/
minute;
as
soon
arrived at ten o'clock at night and did not waste a they arrived, they knocked at the door of the school:
They as
who came to the window to talk to us, on being told what we asked us if we had our money ready/ This was enough to get wanted, the three doctors out of bed, and they arrived 'with their nightcaps under their mortar-boards'. 'I imagine that the sound of our money being 'A
valet
counted out behind us while they were questioning us helped to make them consider our answers better than they were/ The next day, after going round the town looking at its famous monuments, like the statue
of Joan of Arc, they went back to Paris: Charles Perrault, at the age of twenty-three, was a qualified advocate. The coincidence between the decline of the higher Faculties and the
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
202
growing
time colleges cannot have been accidental. At less technical and people was instruction becoming specialist from the ideal of omniscience of the late Middle Ages a
of the
prestige
when even
were moving away and humanism, the college had become the only means of education, and the tendency was to prolong the schooling there rather than to supplement it,
except with private lessons.
cases of rapid, precocious studies of the sixteenth-century older than did not disappear completely. Bussy was only a few years type Charles Perrault. 'When I was nine years old, my father sent us, my elder 14 brother and me, with a tutor to the Jesuit college at Autun/ Bussy does
However,
class he started school. By tutor we must understand a and somewhat poorer companion. 'A little later [at the time of the war on the Huguenots in Languedoc] ... my father took my elder brother away from the college, where he was making much progress, and made him an ensign in his Company': the boy must have been about twelve, the same age as Bonneval and Chevert when they joined the army. This is another case of a brief stay at school before the direct apprenticeson of a family was not given a better ship of camp life. The eldest education than the rest; on the contrary, seeing that he was destined for the army, his schooling was cut short. One of my younger brothers, who was destined to become a Chevalier of Malta, was sent to join me. I quite studies and my masters were very pleased with me. However, liked
not say in what rather older
'
my
elder the fighting having moved from Languedoc to Piedmont, brother died of the plague at Brigueras and by his death left me the eldest
my
of the house/
At this point the family had to move to Paris, 'as much to settle a lawsuit as for anything else*. 'My brother the Chevalier and I were, father and mother in a lodging taken for the therefore, living with
my
year in the
Rue
Clermont.
started in the second class
I
such a good
de
la
we went to the Jesuit college of when I was only eleven, and I was
Harpe, whence
classical scholar that at the age
of twelve
I
was considered good
move up
into the Philosophy class without going through the enough Rhetoric class/ He did only the logic year: At the end of Logic year, been ordered to form his regiment again, gave me the father, to
*
my
command
having of the
first
company, and instead of
my
letting
me
finish
my
he had therefore already Physics [the second year of philosophy which in 1634 to the siege of La Motte in Lorraine with that sent me begun], as several of his brotherregiment/ He was thirteen years old, the same age officers. But he had covered the whole scholastic cycle except for the rhetoric class, which he had skipped thanks to the lead he had gained in the
THE PUPIL second
class. Later,
S
AGE
.
203
pupils would no longer skip the rhetoric class, which a very important, and sometimes the terminal, class.
would have become
With
Due
we have a normal 16 of studies. But in his case a new postvery precocious cycle though scholastic institution, the academy, made its appearance, an institution which was to assume considerable importance for the seventeenth-century nobility. His position as a prince of the blood did not disqualify him for a the
d'Enghien, the future Grand Conde,
still
college education, for only the King's children received all their education at home; boys from the greatest families in the land went to school,
of Clermont which, in the seventeenth took the of Navarre century, place College, where the high nobility had particularly to the Jesuit college
hitherto received their schooling. Conde, born in 1621, started studying Latin at the age of five with a tutor. At the age of eight he entered the Jesuit college at Bourges, but in
the fourth
class
and a term behind his
classmates,
whom he caught up with
At
the same age Descartes and Perrault were in the sixth class. His easily. masters recognized his merits: *A pupil in the second Grammar class in the fourth class], it is wonderful to see with what diligence [i.e. and assiduity he takes part in the exercises in construing, composition and diction. In the daily concertations [contests between the two halves of a class] it is he who inspires the rest.' He covered the normal cycle at the rate of a class a year, which brought him to the rhetoric class at the age of eleven (the same age as P&re Ange de Joyeuse in the sixteenth century), and to the physics class at thirteen: he spent six years at school and went through every class from the fourth to
the second philosophy class. In August 1635 he left the college: he was fourteen. Like Charles Perrault, he then studied law with a tutor. This young prince accepted the tuition provided in school, but he shunned the higher Faculties and substituted private lessons for them. At the same time as law, he took lessons in mathematics (a subject which was virtually untaught in school)
from a master who was an army
engineer, in order to prepare for his Academy for the
admission at the age of fifteen to Pluvinel's 'Royal
Young Nobility'. The academy was in character:
an
a
new
and semi-military of the seventeenth century, two-thirds of that century. It fulfilled a need which institution, semi-scholastic
institution characteristic
particularly of the first had not existed before.
In the sixteenth century, after a complete or
more
often an abbreviated
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
204
to make schooling, a young man went to a university only if he intended his career in law, the Church or medicine. And we know that the
of Law later went into a decline. If he wanted to follow any other he went straight away, as an apprentice, into an army company, into a noble house, or into commerce. Apart from the college, which was the growing in prestige, and a specialist university which was partially on Faculties career,
decline, there
One of
was nothing
left
but apprenticeship.
of apprenticeship,
especially in noble families, sent the boys to stay with other families, particularly abroad: then the formula of the stay with friends was gradually superseded by that of the
these traditions
in the case of Bassompierre). People came to (as as a complementary education in subjects ignored tour abroad the regard at school and in the Faculties. Certain of these arts or techniques had
tour abroad with a tutor
hitherto been taught at home and formed part of the traditional domestic education given to pages and squires: dancing (more important than it is instruments such as the lute was more widetoday), music (the playing of in the late nineteenth century), riding and than that of the
piano spread various sports. But other subjects, among those studied abroad, began to and sometimes scientific character: first of all, acquire a more didactic
modern languages - Italian and
but also Spanish, great cultural languages,
German, probably because mercenaries were recruited in the Germanit was to the interest of a future officer to speak speaking countries and the language; then geography and contemporary history, indispensable soldier as also for the ambitious courtier; and finally subjects for the mathematics, or 'fortifications' as it was called, a necessary subject at a time when warfare was becoming increasingly scientific. These tours abroad were very costly, and at a time when the nobility's income was tending
to diminish they could not satisfy a
a practical, non-Latin education.
growing need
for
The academy satisfied this need for a post-
between school and active
life, for young noblemen, future for not officers, whose families exclusively) (though could not afford to finance a stay abroad. This institution originated in Paris, in the second half of the sixteenth Nicolas de Beauvais-Nangis writes of his father: 'Antoine de
scholastic education,
and above
all
century.
Brichantcau, aged between eleven and twelve, was sent to Lisieux College in the year 1564 [the class is not specified], where he stayed until the
of the year 1567 and the Battle of Saint-Denis, when, being considered strong and brave enough to bear arms, he was sent to the Paris where he was trained for nearly a year.' Nicolas de Beauvais-
troubles
Academy
Nangis himself finished
his schooling at the
age of
fifteen.
His father
THE PUPIL him go
S
AGE
2O5
,
of Amiens; he wanted him to complete had reached the age of the traditional tour abroad. 'At the beginning of 1598, my father kept me with him for a time in Paris, where I began to accustom myself to the sight of companies of troops, and the following April I started training in Paris [i.e. at an academy], where I stayed until the end of September.' 'My father had intended to send me to Italy, for at that time young men were sent there to be trained'; but the journey was too expensive and the stay at the 16 academy took its place. The most famous of these establishments was Pluvinel's academy, founded in 1 594. A contemporary wrote of it in these terms 17 The whole of France is infinitely grateful to M. de Pluvinel who, with incredible refused to let
to the siege
his education first. Nicolas
'
:
generosity, has devoutly offered himself to the nobility to serve as a ladder and stepping-stone to the loftiest and most glorious things.' The college was never confined to the nobility; it was open to all classes. The academy,
however, was thought of as the province of the nobility, at a time when the nobles were becoming aware of their importance in military affairs and citing this importance as a justification of special privileges. The academy was the first of those institutes for young noblemen which Richelieu imagined and which the eighteenth century created. It provided the inspiration for Mme de Maintenon's ideas about the education of girls.
The contemporary account continues: 'He [Pluvinel] deprives us of the occasion of rushing off to Italy, where we go to buy at fantastic and whence we return with expense the mere shadow of good manners, the substance of vice.'
One notes a new interest, unknown in the sixteenth which were exposed to conAt Pluvinel's academy the pupils were was the author of a treatise on horseman-
century, in safeguarding adolescent morals, siderable
danger on
these journeys.
taught horsemanship (Pluvinel
de Pas), fencing, mathematics, fortifications, ship, illustrated by Crispin and social accomplishments such as painting, dancing and lute-playing.
our author discovered another advantage in the academy which strikes us as rather curious and shows that the modern idea of a complete
And
itself on the upper classes as a secondary education had not yet imposed the academy] as early as ten admitted be can [to necessity: 'Young lords and must not cannot or eleven, whereas they go to Italy until they are
seventeen or eighteen/ This means that the young nobleman could make do with one or two of the lower classes at school and then go straight into to be educated, whereas before he had been obliged either to the
academy
continue futile scholastic studies until he was old enough to travel, or else
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
2O6 throw himself straight
to
fact reluctant to
abroad.
into
camp
life at
about eleven. People were in
send children too soon in
The academy made
after their schooling
was
life
either into the
army or
possible to keep children under control over, by means of a discipline inspired by it
regulations. The period spent at the academy was an intermediary period between schoolboy life and adult life: the beginning of a recognition of adolescence. The academy was not an exclusively French phenomenon. The scholastic
and military
continued existence of a higher education, at the universities of Oxford
and Cambridge, where boys went from their grammar schools, would seem to have prevented the academy from developing in England. But educational historians such as
Adamson18
an important role in Germany, giving education whose
think that the academy played
rise to certain institutions
of higher
modern
character led to their being used as models for the university reforms of the nineteenth century, in both England and France. In France, the academies did not have the same enduring influence, all that they met no competition in the country's decadent higher education: once again it was the college which partially absorbed them, in the form of military preparatory schools in the eighteenth century,
for
while at the same time more highly specialized schools for officers and engineers were laying the foundations of the cole Polytechnique and the Staff College.
The academies occupied a very important place in French society in the seventeenth century. The Abbe Michel de Marolles owed it to himself not to leave them out of his description of Paris of 1677; he devoted a whole chapter to them, written in doggerel like the rest of the book, and entitled: * Academies for horsemanship and other decent occupations for the young 19
nobility'.
This note of moral concern
is to be found in other contemporary texts, 20 Nouveau Journal de Conversation published in 1675 example 'In the seminaries, one learns not only how to serve God but also how to govern morals [the author is comparing the first seminaries with the first academies] in the academies, one learns not only how to handle a horse, but also how to curb one's passions.' The need for moral discipline had been the original reason for the founding of the colleges and had inspired their authoritarian regulations in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Soon, especially with the Jesuits, moral education became one of the principal objects of school life, even more important than instruction.
in Bary's
for
:
;
Now
it
was spreading
institutions
in the seventeenth century to post-scholastic such as the academies, to the young noblemen whom their
THE PUPIL no longer dared of court and camp. parents
to turn loose
S
AGE
207
,
without any preparation in the world
the academies were some of royal foundation: the schools for shared out between the two Stables, the Hunt, the Chamber and pages, the Chapel. 21 The best known and the most popular with the nobility
Among
were the two
Stables.
The Great
Stable consisted
of a
tutor,
two
assistant
tutors, a preceptor, a chaplain, a bursar, and masters to teach fencing,
riding, dancing, drill, writing (that 'writing to perfection*
which
is
not
to be confused with ordinary writing), mathematics and drawing. In his Maison desjeux, Sorel tells the story of Dorilas. 22 Dorilas covered
the complete course of classical studies at school: 'I was classes called the humanities when I decided that to "arrive"
still
in those
was the most human of occupations/ Dorilas lacked the precocity of the Grand Conde, who started logic at the age of twelve: when he was studying the humanities he must have been fourteen, and at that time a boy of that age could understand the full significance of Ovid's Art of Love, which was taught with the aid of a whip: 'They whipped us when we missed a syllable/ In the rhetoric class Dorilas learnt 'the art of persuading by means of eloquence', then, at the age of sixteen he 'went up into the philosophy class* this was probably a more usual age than the very precocious cases we have met with in our biographical examples. 'When I had completed my course of philosophy at the age of seventeen, it was considered that I knew more than enough to be a soldier, like my father, who wanted me to follow the same profession/ He could in fact have extended his stay at school with a year of physics, but he 'knew more than enough': people went on saying, in conversation and books, that a college education was no use to future soldiers, but often they acted as if this were no longer the ;
case
and allowed
their children to
go
to
all
the classes, including the
first
class.
philosophy 'I was taken away from college and sent to a boarding-school, a house where I learnt fencing, dancing, lute-playing and mathematics', and also This was a modern education, and it is easy to understand why languages.
should have resulted in the teaching in the vernacular of new ideas, foreign to the traditional arts. 'And every morning I went to a riding-school to learn horsemanship/ This boarding-school had a and so on, but it had no riding-school. fencing-master, a music-master
in
Germany
it
Thus besides the great academies there were 'boarding-schools' which were less comprehensive, more modest and less expensive, like the one in this story.
This shows
how
essential
it
was considered
in the seventeenth century
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
208
of the go through an academy or a 'house* same sort. Even Antoine Arnauld, despite an already pronounced taste for literature and theology, spent six months at Pluvinel's academy. When Mme de Sevign wanted to emphasize a young man's chances of de Locmaria success, she wrote that he had 'just left the Academy': M. 'can set all the courtiers at defiance and confound them, upon my word.
for youths of good family to
28
He has an income of sixty thousand livres, and has just left the Academy/ the Sciences Po' Nowadays we would say in France that he had just left and in England that he had just come down from Oxford or Cambridge. '
Mme
de S6vign6 described a quarrel between the Prince d'Harcourt and La Feuillade, a silly quarrel between overgrown threw a plate at his head; the other schoolboys: 'Thereupon the Prince threw a knife at him; neither hit the target. They were parted and made to embrace. In the evening they spoke to each other at the Louvre as if de Sevign
Sevigne
correspondents
which would seem to have been borrowed from academy or used currently army slang; similarly barrack-room words are nowadays 9
campos
,
in middle-class conversation.
He stayed go back to the career of the future Grand Conde. *I have begun tracing fortificamonths: sixteen for academy tions on paper... I have finished studying proportional compasses and mensuration and started on fortifications. I am also studying the map of But
let
us
at Pluvinel's
the world/
He left the academy at the age of sixteen to
take
up
his post as
Governor of Burgundy; at nineteen he married Richelieu's niece, who was only thirteen. He had covered the whole of the scholastic cycle from the two years in the philosophy class which the fourth class up, including
he had complemented with private lessons in law and over a year at an was in the first class: an excepacademy. He was only eleven when he tional
example of precocity.
the Edict of Nantes was in force, the Protestant academies were to the Catholic colleges: the only difference was that somesimilar very times - not always - philosophy was dropped in favour of theological
While
On
24 the whole, the cycle of instruction (intended for future pastors). classes remained the same. Here are two examples of Protestant schooling.
taken from an entry in the Marquis d'Asson's journal, quoted 25 Waddington in a note in his edition of Rou's memoirs: *I began my
The by
first is
THE PUPIL
AGE
S
20p
of eight under the eyes of my late father. A few accompanied my three elder brothers to Saumur; I was so years have been between eight and ten] that it was thought fit must young [he to send our governess with me until bedtime so that the separation should be less of a wrench, and she went to bed with me as usual. I was soon studies before the age later, I
ready for the second
class
[presumably the humanities
class: it
would
seem that the Protestant academies had a different system of numbering], where I remained for three years under the learned M. Lefebvre.' We have already come across similar cases of a long stay in one class, which seems to have been a 'I
way of compensating
went up into the third
[rhetoric]
for an over-precocious start. Next finished schooling extremely
my
class. I
young' -presumably between thirteen and fourteen. He did not study the end of 1668, philosophy, but went to an academy for the nobility: At to trained/ be the Paris to I went from the Academy college *
The second
Protestant example
is
that
another remarkable case of precocity: 26 quickly that at the age after
supper
. .
.
of four
I
of Jean
Rou
(1638-1711),
and was able to read a chapter of the Bible *I
learnt to read so easily
my
This rapid progress resulted in
being sent to school
and age of five, in the care of a maidservant who took me there back every morning and evening.' The school was Harcourt College, where he was regarded as something of a phenomenon, for he had few schoolmates as young as he was, and it was more usual to be accompanied by a tutor, a sort of big schoolfellow, than by a maidservant. But Jean Rou, unlike his richer friends, never had a tutor. When he was a little older he at Harcourt with private coaching which he supplemented the classes shared with a few friends: he joined 'three or four young pupils' at the house of one of them, Lecoq, the son of a counsellor at the High Court, at the
for lessons
from a coach.
In 1652 he was sent to the Protestant college of Saumur. The principal, the pastor of the town, put him in the first class fourteen years old and in :
he had had to begin with; he was two in the same class. What is more, at de Conde Prince the than older years fourteen he was considered too young as yet to go into the philosophy the
first class,
he had
lost the lead
end of the year when it was usual to go up into the his master made him spend another year in the But philosophy first class, 'seeing that I was so young for studies which he considered Descartes had gone a beyond my understanding'. Yet few years before, class. 'I
was
at the
class.'
into the philosophy class at that age.
We
can see here a depreciation of
the modern schoolboy precocity which foreshadows
attitude. After his
SCHOLASTIC
210
LIFE
philosophy studies, Jean Rou took his diplomas as bachelor and doctor of arts (at that time the two of diplomas were taken together as two the
same examination), something which was no longer done
parts unless one
intended to enter a higher Faculty such as theology or medicine. to a study by a Jesuit Father who obtained access to die Society's we are familiar with the school careers of the Grand Conde's son and grandson who were both pupils of the Jesuits. 26 His son, born in 1643,
Thanks
archives,
started Despautere - Latin grammar -at the age of seven. 'He quotes Cato [Pseudo-Cato, a fourth-century author taken up by the Middle Ages which attributed his maxims to the Elder Cato] and Latin maxims, and
since reading Galatte [a manual of etiquette used in the Jesuit colleges] he notices all the offences against the proprieties which are committed/ Thus his tutor informs his father of his and progress. 'He composes
very prettily,
if
you wish he
will write to
you
terminology with Cicero's, standing of Latin/
his
I
occasionally in Latin; when I compare see that he already has a good under-
There is nothing very surprising about this familiarity with Latin shown by a child of seven; at that time Latin was learnt like a modern language, in conversation, and French parents gave their child a Latin tutor just as not long ago they entrusted him to an English or a German nanny. This was in the medieval tradition of oral culture: over a century before, in his
advice to
Queen Catherine on bringing up Mary Tudor, Vives had
suggested surrounding the
little
same age who spoke Latin; 27
eight-year-old with companions of the
to obtain the best results,
it
would have been
better to start a year earlier, at the age of seven Enghien's age. The same method was being used at the end of the sixteenth century in Calvin's Geneva, where Cordier was teaching. 28 Cordier has tion
between two
left
us this conversa-
pupils:
'How old is your brother?' 'Five years old/ 'Five years old? But he already speaks Latin!' 'Why does that surprise you? We always have a pedagogue at home who is learned and diligent. He teaches us to speak Latin all the time and we never say anything in French. Indeed we do not dare speak to our father except in Latin/ [The speaker is twelve years old.] 'Then you never speak French?'
'Only and at certain times when she summons us to her presence/ 'What do you do with the family?' [By the family he means the whole group of friends, clients, servants, and so on]. 'We scarcely speak at all to the rest of the family, and then only incidentally, yet some of the servants speak to us in Latin/ [He is presumably with
my mother,
THE PUPIL
S
AGE
-
211
referring not so much to servants as to what we would call 'companions'. But there were some valets who had accompanied their little Latin without too much - which shows, difficulty incidentally, that people were not too about the particular quality of this Latin. But let us return to the conversation between our two boys]. 'But what about the chambermaids?' 'If it ever happens that we have to speak to them, then we speak French, as we do with our mother/ 'Oh, how lucky you are to be taught so well!'
masters to school and could muster a
Thus, however remarkable Conde's achievement in Latin may seem, it was not exceptional and its equivalent was to be found in other milieux than that of the princes of the blood, although the teaching of Latin as a living tongue by means of conversation must have started growing rarer; it would cease altogether at the end of the seventeenth century. At the age of nine, young Conde* entered Bordeaux College, starting in the fourth class (this was at the time of the Fronde), leaving almost immediately to follow his father into exile in Namur. In December 1653 he entered the Jesuit college in Namur and was placed in the third The third was the biggest class in the school: ninety-seven pupils out of a total of four to five hundred. At the end of the year, the young prince class.
was placed seventh out of the ninety-seven pupils in his class. From the third class, Conde went up into the humanities class in 1654, into the rhetoric class in 1655. The University of Louvain did not allow the Jesuits of Namur to teach philosophy in their college (another example of the ambiguous character of the philosophy class, which
combined subjects belonging to higher education with what was to become secondary education). However, the difficulty was overcome by the philosophy course at Antwerp to the theologians ostensibly confining of the Society, in other words to the future priests. The prince took this course too; he was thirteen years old. On this course he spent his logic and physics years,
which he
finished a
little
older than his father.
9 years old, fourth class. 10 1653-4: years old, third class.
1652-3
:
1654-5: ii years old, second class. 1655-6: 12 years old, first class. 1656-7: 13 years old, logic
class.
1657-8: 14 years old, physics
The
regularity
class.
of the annual system of promotion
is
worthy of note.
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
212
His son, the Due de Bouillon, was seven years old in 1675 when he was taken away from the women who had been looking after him and given tutors 'in the interior of his home". The Conde family was to two Jesuit faithful to the Society
of Jesus. At the age of eight he entered Clermont into what might have been called the sixth class, seeing College, going that it preceded the fifth, but which had no number: 'a room in which to those children who were not fit to be put in a instruction was given
to be taught to read and write. Then he followed the at the rate of a class a year: cycle of classical studies
class*.
Many had
8 years old, sixth
1676-7:
9
1677-8:
1678-9:
10 years old, fourth
1679-80: ii years old, third 1680-1
:
class.
first class.
13 years old,
1682-3
14 years old, logic
1683-4:
class.
class.
12 years old, second
1681-2: :
class.
years old, fifth class.
class.
15 years old, physics class.
In the course of these three successive generations, each Conde finished his schooling a year later than his father. Conde entered the rhetoric class at eleven, his son at twelve, his grandson at thirteen. In this family which
took
its
studies seriously and completed them at an early age, of each successive generation began and left school at
the pupil
one
sees that
an older age.
Henceforth the cycle of classes became more regular and approached the classic pattern of modern secondary education in France. For the will suffice: one aristocratic, one eighteenth century, three examples
more popular and rural in character. Cardinal de Bernis was born in 1715. In his memoirs, he describes his childhood in the rosiest colours, with that easy conscience which is typical middle-class and the last
of
his time:
29
'The
distinctive feature
lived in the country,
where
of
my
his father, a
mind was
reflection/
He
former captain, had retired
because he had not been able to obtain a cavalry regiment. Between the five or six tutors his family had engaged ages of seven and ten, he used up for him: here we should note the development, compared with the seventeenth century, of education at was a medical student who soon left
home with him
'to
a tutor.
The
first
go and take degrees
tutor in the
He was followed by a seminarist who on the boy: 'This pious eccentric was dispenances
Faculty of Medicine in Paris'. inflicted incredible
missed, and
I
the domination of three or four passed successively under
THE PUPIL other tutors
who were
S
AGE
213
<
either ignorant, brutal or licentious
. . .
Without
being more mischievous than birch/
When
other boys, I spent three years under the he reached the age of ten he was sent to the Barnabites'
college, at Bourg-Saint-Ande*ol in Vivarais, a little provincial college
where he spent four years. At twelve he was tonsured (that was the usual his age, when a boy was destined for the Church). At the same time elder brother, who was destined for the army and was probably about fifteen,
joined 'the King's pages
in accordance with the tradition
entered the Stable] to be trained', of the academies, which were on the
[i.e.
decline.
At the age of fourteen, Bernis reached the end of the grammar or humanities classes at Bourg-Saint-Andeol. Either the college had no rhetoric class or the Bernis family wanted to give the boy a more Parisian education; in any case, they sent him to Louis-le-Grand: 'I arrived at the August 1729. I expected to enter the rhetoric class after did not the holidays; the prefect, having examined capabilities, consider me worthy of entering the third class [the tuition given by the
in Jesuit college
my
Barnabites of Vivarais must have seemed very inadequate to the Fathers of the Society]. amour-propre was wounded by this judgment;
My
I
started studying so intensively, giving up hours of sleep, and reading and two months moonlight, that after two months [presumably
writing by in the third
I was allowed to be examined for the rhetoric class, and class] was admitted to that class without any difficulty.' He adds: 'My amourachievement on my part: I arrived in propre was responsible for another Paris with a southern accent; my schoolmates' ragging made me get rid of
I
it
in less than three months.'
finished his year in the rhetoric class with a Latin discourse on the over philosophy. 'This discourse enjoyed a great superiority of eloquence of schism between the rhetoricians and the kind a caused and success discourse. I asked permission to to made was reply philosophers. a worsening of this dispute, Father the but Principal, fearing reply,
He
A
my
condemned me to silence. This quarrel finished with an exchange of blows. The philosophers were superior in strength, but not in numbers.'
By
half of the eighteenth century, the class had educational unit, and the schoolboys were well the organic
this time,
become
the
first
aware of it. Bernis does not say whether he studied philosophy for one or two that on two, because he was a cleric. He says only years
probably
to the Saint-Sulpice seminary, where his leaving school he sought entry Church was becoming particular about the not candidature was accepted:
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
214
the recruiting of priests, as a result of the increasing numbers of seminaries. Seminaries were coming to be regarded as the essential preparation for the ecclesiastical state.
Our second example of schooling in the eighteenth century is taken from the provincial middle class. 80 Grosley was born at Troyes in 1718 into a family of lawyers: his father was an advocate, his mother the daughter of a municipal magistrate. As soon as he was out of infancy, his grandmother took charge of his education, but in practice it was the old *
family housekeeper
who looked after him. At that time,
as schoolmaster,
had an old housekeeper/ 'Although she could not read [she must have guessed, or rather remembered from the shape and order of the letters, the sense of familiar Biblical stories], it was she who taught me to read, from the Bible/ Next, 'I went to learn the rudiments of Latin from an old schooltutor and preceptor
I
master': a former governor of the General Hospital of Paris who, on retiring to Troyes, had opened a little Latin school there. It seems that
few in number at the beginning of the seventeenth had century, subsequently multiplied. This preparation made it possible - classes which, moreover, the lowest classes in the to these Latin schools,
skip
colleges
sometimes did not
exist.
Thanks to
this
old schoolmaster's tuition,
'I
entered college at the age of seven, starting in the fifth class.' The college in question was the Oratory at Troyes, which we know rather better than
most, thanks to the preservation of
its
archives,
and
particularly
its
registers.
At the Oratory, Grosley followed the now regular cycle of a class a year But he spent an extra year in two classes, first the
as far as the rhetoric class.
rhetoric class, then the logic class (he does not mention the physics class). 'I had spent an extra year in the rhetoric class... I was unsatisfactory in
Logic' (on account of poor teaching). 'I spent another year in this class under Pre Verdier, who enabled me to maintain my thesis at the end of the year.' This maintaining of a thesis at the end of one's philosophy studies - not to be confused with the examinations for the baccalaureate
and the doctorate in
arts,
infrequent formalities at that
which had become mere formalities, and the last survival of the medieval
represented 'determination': the maintaining of the thesis consecrated the end of college studies for the better pupils.
Grosley 's cycle was another extremely precocious cycle, for in 1729 he entered the rhetoric class at the same age as the Prince de Cond nearly a century
earlier:
THE PUPIL'S AGE 7
215
,
years old, fifth class.
8 years old, fourth class.
9 years old, third class. 10 years old, second class. 11 years old, rhetoric class.
12 years old, rhetoric
class repeated.
class.
13 years old, logic 14 years old, logic class repeated.
He
the Oratory at the age of fifteen after eight years of classical
left
studies.
With Marmontel we enter a rural world, which the memorialist often covers with a varnish of sentimentality after the fashion of Greuze or Restif de la Bretonne: 'Oh, what a present Heaven gives us when it gives
us kind parents - and an eighty-year-old grandmother sipping her wine 81 beside the fire and remembering the good old days'. Marmontel, born in 1723, was the son of a village tradesman. 'I had '
'
!
little convent of nuns who were friendly with my of birth who for a time had lived in lady gentle long retirement in this house of refuge, had had the kindness to take me in
learnt to read in a
mother ... hand...
A
From
there
I
went
to a school kept
by a
priest
from the
city
of charge and from inclination, had dedicated himself to the instruction of children/ This was obviously a little Latin school of the sort
who,
free
which young Grosley went to
in Troyes; but
Marmontel presumably
stayed there longer, for he did not go to college until he was eleven. His father had no Latin and could see no advantage in learning it. But his *
mother was eager
that her eldest son at least should
go to
college'
:
there
something modern or
already 'nineteenth-century' about this case of a mother's influence at home and her role in the children's education and social progress, a province which had so far been exclusively paternal. is
Marmontel's father gave in to
his wife's insistence,
and took
his
son on
crupper to Mauriac. The boy was eleven years old when he started school, in the fourth class of the Jesuit college in the town; twelve his horse's
years old in the third and thirteen in the second; he reached the rhetoric He then had to leave Mauriac College after some incident
class at fourteen.
with
his master,
and
studies', in other
did his
The
two
we find him as a 'master of Clermont College in Paris, where he seventeen he had finished his education.
after various adventures
words a coach,
years' philosophy; at
last in this series
at
of biographies
is
a late eighteenth-century case
216
SCHOLASTIC
LIFE
taken from the provincial middle class which conveys the atmosphere of the last years of the ancien regime.
born in a little town on the Loire, possibly BeauJacques Lablee was married to a gency, between 1765 and 1772** His father, a sexagenarian his young woman of twenty-seven, ran a wine business. Jacques spent in the care of a housekeeper who taught him years with his brothers, to read from a Psalter: 'At the age of six, I was started on the study of first
Latin. Until then, church
books were the only books I had read/ He spent of Latin tuition had become
six years in a little Latin school: this first stage
general in the eighteenth century. At the age of twelve 'I was sent as a boarder to the seminary of native town.' In this seminary, not less than five miles from
Me
my
all
,
the
destined for holy orders. Here, in the years 1775 pupils were necessarily to 1780, we already have an example of the 'little seminary' which was to occupy an important place in the secondary education of the early nineteenth century and rival the colleges and lycees of the new educational
system. class at the seminary: coming from a Latin he was not afraid, he tells us, of the competition from his classmates. However he took a dislike to Latin, in which his masters 'wanted to initiate us to the exclusion of everything else'. There was a preference at that time for a more modern education. He even boasts of his incom-
Labile started in the fourth
school,
the second class, I could not construe or translate petence: 'Having reached authors Latin except by laboriously consulting my dictionary.' (Does my this mean that other pupils translated at sight?) He left the seminary at the class. 'I was fifteen years old when I studied rhetoric at Vendome... The next year I entered the seminary of O. He was expelled for giving his master's [Orleans?] to study philosophy.' favourite a thrashing and that was the end of his studies.
end of the second the Oratory at
Because they are recorded in memoirs, the cases we have just been rather out of the ordinary: the considering are, if not exceptional, at least are therefore dealing with his memoirs. not write does man ordinary nature. brilliant a of sometimes of social successes, examples
We
Taken in succession, starting in the sixteenth century, they enable us to follow the regularization of the school cycle. In the case of Thomas did Platter, the German-Swiss, in the early 15005, the division into classes not exist, and therefore neither did promotion from one class to the next.
THE PUPIL'S AGE
2iy
In sixteenth-century France the succession of classes existed but
not observed at the
all
strictly.
Boys passed
quite naturally
from the
was
third to
or from the fourth to die
first, or else started school kte, like in the third class. The Bassompierre college had not yet entirely replaced the old traditions of apprenticeship. In the seventeenth century, though these irregularities continued here and there, they became much rarer; the regular rhythm of a class a first,
year
became the general rule. A class was only very rarely skipped, and it often that a an extra in one of die higher classes, happened pupil spent year the rhetoric because there a tendency to was class, particularly prolong the at school: the with its classic period college cycle was beginning to take the place of the old forms of education by apprenticeship, at least in nonmanual occupations. At the same time as the system of promotion from class to class was a sort of between the various being regularized, hierarchy academic institutions was established: from the little Latin schools to the lowest classes
grammar
classes in the
small-town colleges, to the
last
grammar
-the humanities and sometimes the
colleges, to the rhetoric class or the sole reservation that the small-town
two
rhetoric classes (in the big - with the years of philosophy)
colleges tried to keep their pupils and to provide a complete education like the rest. 88 Finally, in the seventeenth century, with the academies, a post-scholastic
education was created, at least for the young nobility. However, it did not survive in the eighteenth century. And since the Faculties of Law declined and were replaced by private lessons for would-be lawyers, the college remained the only general institution of collective education, the sole
and youth. the of we have discussed ages pupils vary a good deal over this of two hundred the period years. However, pupils are always precocious, not only from our modern point of view, but in comparison with the setting for a differentiated childhood
The
contemporary average, as we shall see shortly. We have come across pupils in the rhetoric class aged between ten and fourteen or fifteen: not a single one was over fifteen. Yet fifteen was the theoretical age given by English
from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century for leaving school and entering the university. writers
grammar
The biographical examples analysed above characterize certain aspects of childhood and youthful manners, and many of their features can be generalized. However, they give a false impression of the age structure of
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
2l8
and of the correspondence between ages and -a point of capital importance they need to be corrected by documents from another source providing statistics of a more average character: the registers in which the headmasters and masters of the colleges listed their pupils according to age and class. These are fairly rare. Pre de Dainville has published registers, unfortunately, two in an important study, 'Effectifs des colleges et scolarits aux XVIIe 84 the registers for the 1618-20 period of the Jesuit et XVIIIe siecles': and CMlons that for 1638 for the Oratorian college of Troyes of college 85 had Carre already used at the end of the last century). Finally the (which Manuscripts Department of the Bibliothque Nationale has two registers for 1677 and 1692 from the Jesuit college of Caen, noted by Pre de Rochemonteix in his monograph on the Henri IV College at La Fl&che. 86 These samples provide us with the material for four soundings which extend almost the whole length of the seventeenth century. Let us examine first of all the demographic characteristics which remained constant in the seventeenth century. We shall be struck as soon as we look at these figures by the difference between the ages in these statistical samples and the ages of the biographical cases analysed above. All our young memorialists reached the rhetoric class between eleven and fourteen. Here the school population is situated at a higher age: there are no rhetoricians of eleven or twelve. There are only two of thirteen and three of fourteen; 91 per cent of the rhetoricians are over fourteen. In the the precocity of our memorialists is seen to be an light of this comparison, exceptional phenomenon. It is none the less significant for all that. It is as if precocity were a characteristic of brilliant careers, of social successes. It seems too to correspond to a sort of scholastic ideal of the late sixteenth century, since the age of our memorialists is the minimum age laid down 37 by the ratio studiorum of the Jesuits of 1586: the rhetoric class at eleven, like Pere de Joyeuse or the Grand Conde. In the second half of the seventeenth century the phenomenon of precocity seemed sufficiently remarkable, sufficiently characteristic of the most striking successes, to become a subject of study for the moralists. the colleges
classes.
On
and
this
their classes,
point at least
This was the case with the book by Baillet, Les Enfants devenus cffebres par leurs ttudes?* and that by Pere Niceron, Les Homines illustres." Baillet similar to those we have listed. There was a who dedicated Melanchthon, comedy to Reuchlin at thirteen, 'qualified
records a
as a
number of progresses
bachelor at fourteen and
Pierre de
Lamoignon, born
as
a doctor at seventeen'. There
in 1555: 'His father
carriage for the journey to Italy
...
he was only
was
also
provided him with
fifteen at the time'
a
- and
THE PUPIL
S
AGE
Ages of the pupils
at
Caen College
Ages of the pupils
at
Caen College
219
220
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
Ages of the pupils (according to
at
CMlons (1618-20)
Pre de
Dainville)
THE BUJIL
Ays of the pupils at (according to
S
AGE
Troyes (1638-9)
Pre dc
DainvUlc)
221
SCHOLASTIC
222
consequently eleven or twelve
LIFE
when he was
in the rhetoric class, Justus Cologne at the age of
his studies at the Jesuit college at
Lipsius completed fourteen. Pieresc also left the Jesuits at fourteen after completing his to fence, studies; at fifteen he went to an academy *to learn
philosophy
and dance'. Then there was the young rhetorician of thirteen or fourteen, a student at Toulouse, who wrote a general historical treatise. 'worked with such According to Pere Niceron, Raymond Merille his studies at the age of fifteen and rapidity that he had completed embarked on the Law when he was sixteen'. Franois de Clugny, born in 1637, 'entered the rhetoric class at the age of thirteen and at fourteen ride
studied philosophy at the Oratory*. There is a phrase of Baillet's which conveys very well the idea people had of precocity at school in 1688 he refers to children who 'by twelve or thirteen had done with the ordinary college course by means of extra:
this was the result of talent, as in the case of ordinary activity'. Whether a superiDescartes, or of forcing, as with the Condcs, precocity implied
ority
which opened
among had
the
the average run
'arrived'.
And
way
to a great career.
of schoolboys,
this
is
it
was
That
is
why,
if it
was
rare
common among people who
we remember that easy to understand if in the late sixteenth century - many of the who had completed a full
- and often still were not occupied by people course of studies but by people who had simply served an apprenticeship, sometimes combined with a brief stay of one or two years at a college. There could not be any excessive difference of age at the start in a period in careers connected with the army, old age and when, originally
posts at court
particularly before forty, and when the duration of active incapacity began very early, at life was very short indeed. Only pupils who had finished their studies a very early age could compete with the 'apprentices'. Consequently if, as we shall see later on, there occurred a relative ageing of die school affected die humbler classes most of all, population, this ageing process while on the other hand the medieval habits of precocity were maintained
longest in court
circles.
reveal an Though they include few cases of precocity, our registers class at Troyes, the overfourth the In old of number pupils. impressive cent of a total exceeding a hundred, conjuring eighteens represent 5 per of a class in which young men up a strange sight for our modern eyes sat with children between eleven and between nineteen and
twenty-four
CMlons, the proportion of over-eighteens reaches 20 per cent, including five aged twenty, three aged twenty-one, and two aged twenty-three. Similarly the ages of seventeen and eighteen thirteen! In the third class at
THE
PtfPIL
S
AGE
,
223
were spread out over all the classes. At Caen in 1677 we find as many pupils of eighteen in the fourth class as in the second (but the fourth class is three times as large as the second) at Troyes, more pupils of eighteen in the fourth and the third than in the second and the first. On the other hand, the ages between ten and fifteen tend to be concentrated in the grammar classes. This high proportion of old pupils in nearly every class from the fifth up to the first is the basic anomaly which separates the college of the ancien regime from our typical present-day secondary school. Our modern sensibility is revolted by this mixing of students and schoolboys, of young boys and adolescents in the same class. This revulsion was foreign to the seventeenth century, and even to die first half at least of the eighteenth. Who were these old pupils? The oldest, according to Pere de Dainville, were usually people tardily taking up a vocation, young monks from near-by abbeys who came to learn Latin in order to embark on the study of theology. Nobody hesitated to mix this tardy evening-school clientele with the mass of children pursuing their normal school studies. But these young men of twenty were not always those who were late in preparing for a vocation. The Chevalier de Mer is an example of a pupil who was old because his education was prolonged, which was 40 It is known that the Chevalier de Mere probably not exceptional. and himself on court town, at the beginning of Louis XV's reign, imposed as the arbiter of good manners, conversation and etiquette. Though he could not be described as a great success, he was not a complete failure either. He was born in 1607. He puts into the mouth of one of his characters a reference to his own youth, in which he condemns the disadvantages of an excessively long schooling 'In the past I studied more than I would have wished, because I had a father who, not having studied in his [although he was a nobleman: an example of a direct apprenticeship station in life], ascribed his lack of success in various ventures to his until I ignorance of the humanities. This obliged him to leave me at school was twenty-two, and after I had left school, I discovered from experience that apart from Latin,, which I was glad to know, everything I had been to me but was positively harmful.' We taught was not only of no use need not pay any attention to this criticism of school education, criticism made by every seventeenth-century gentleman, and which did not prevent ;
:
him from sending
his children to college.
Let us consider simply the
of age given by the author. Mer entered the Jesuit college at Poitiers when he was about nine or ten. He left at the age of twenty-two after a stay of twelve years or so, starting in the sixth or the fifth class.
indications
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
224
This stay implies an average of nearly two years in every class, and we that time and again he had to spend another year or another
must assume
semester in the same
class.
We have come across several instances of this
the memorialists, and also in the case of Descartes. In these was not always regarded as spending another year in the same class a sanction: and Mer tells us himself that he was considered a good pupil sort
among
cases,
'At the age of seventeen I used to hear people saying: "There is an excellent young man. I should like my son to be like him.'" Generally for the average duration speaking, it was considered perfectly legitimate of a college education to be over seven or eight years, depending on
whether
it
started in the sixth or the fifth class,
and including two
years'
devenus cttebrespar leurs tiudes, philosophy. Baillet in his book, Les Enfants in this respect: 'This is what the French of definition this practice gives
of Paris and the other French system and practice of the University now: a course in the Humanities [in the widest colleges have been until
grammar and rhetoric] and a course in Philosophy the entire occupation of our young people for nine constitute generally or ten years' in other words, from one to three years longer than the sense, including
Some of
the twenty-year-old rhetoricians in our catalogues must have been pupils who were kept on at school at the the best education. a request of parents who considered long schooling There must have been a third category of old pupils, in addition to that of the tardy vocation and that of die extended schooling. Among the
duration of annual
classes.
the lower grammar classes twenty-year-old rhetoricians some had entered when they were about fifteen or sixteen, and were not necessarily destined for the Church. They usually reached the rhetoric class when they were
over twenty. At Caen, 7 per cent of the pupils in the sixteen, the
fifth class
were
age when most
their schooling. pupils in the 19305 finished social class produced these adolescents who started
We
can guess which school at such a late age. The sculptor Girardon's father was a brassfounder. 41 This artisan wanted his son, who was born in 1625, to be an the same sort of ambition as the modern attorney, showing exactly wants his son to be a schoolmaster or an who miner or worker railway about this comparison: despite anachronistic is There nothing engineer. of time since the end of the seventeenth century, it has not the
kpse class by means of a post a changed either the desire to gain entry to higher which confers middle-class or noble standing, or the means of this ascension, namely schooling. What has changed is the age limit of this an ambitious father will try to get his son into a schooling.
Nowadays
secondary school
at the start. If he waits
too long, he will be too
late,
for a
THE boy who has passed There
the
rtrfclL S
normal age
is
AGE
'
not allowed to enter the
225 lyce*e.
therefore a legal or traditional age limit in our contemporary society, beyond which admission to the lower classes in a secondary school is
is
impossible. The idea of an age limit
eighteenth centuries.
It
was
was
entirely
unknown
in the seventeenth
and
age of sixteen that Girardon's father sent school in the sixth class, at a time when the
at the
his son (born in 1625) to start rudiments were still taught in the sixth and certain pupils learnt to read in that class. Probably young Girardon could already read and write, some-
from the Psalter by an old priest in a French school, but we cannot be certain and it is not indispensable for us to assume this. may quite reasonably suppose that he did not wait until he entered the sixth class at the age of sixteen to make himself useful:
thing he could have been taught little
We
he probably helped
his father or another artisan in the
workshop and
served his apprenticeship. Serving a manual apprenticeship until sixteen did not pledge his future, since at that age he could start his schooling again with the rudiments of grammar: an old medieval habit which we
have come across in the case of Thomas Platter in the early sixteenth there is today century. At that time there was much more elasticity than in the organization of life, even though that life was shorter and the various ages were crowded closer together. If Girardon had stayed at school, he would have reached the rhetoric class when he was about have twenty. Some of the pupils among the old ones in our registers must been in
this position.
In fact he
left
school at the end of his year in the sixth
class to apprentice himself to a carpenter; the two cases must have been common - that of pupils who continued their schooling, and that of late
Girardon who spent only one or two years at school before or resuming an apprenticeship. starting It is easy to understand why the living conditions of the time made it
starters like
to send their children to college early impossible for artisans and labourers in life: they had to wait until the boy was old enough to manage by
himself in the town, away from the family, with almost no resources now and then on market-day: at a except for a little food brought along tenderer age he would have had to be provided with better lodgings and attention. But public opinion given greater (and consequently costlier) did not oppose this delay in starting school.
than the cases of Although they seem more common and widespread are not recorded in our registers, the cases which precocious schooling, of tardy or extended schooling represent only a small proportion of the
SCHOLASTIC
226 total school population.
Let us
now
LIFE
examine the ages nearest
to the
cases.
average Let us note
first
of
all
the variations in
numbers from one
class to
another. Generally a drop in numbers is registered after the fifth class, and another after the third, due to the departure of pupils of passage such as Bonneval or Girardon. Sometimes there is a rise in the first ckss (Caen, 1677), caused classes.
by the
arrival
of pupils from other schools without higher
The oscillations due to departures would be even more pronounced
were not offset by the entry into classes all the way up the school of of all pupils ages, for admission was not restricted as it is nowadays to the bottom class. In these circumstances, it is easy to see why there was not one predominant age in each class, but several.
if they
is no age group representing number of pupils in the class. Five
In the fifth class at Chalons in 1618 there
more than 20 per
cent of the total
groups going from ten to fourteen are close together: 10 years old: 16 per cent. 11 years old: 15 per cent. 12 years old: 17 per cent. 13 years old: 12 per cent. 14 years old: 15 per cent.
Apart from the spread of the
ages,
we can
also
note a drop between two
successive age groups: the thirteen-year-olds in relation to the twelveyear-olds and the fourteen-year-olds. These characteristics are to be found
everywhere: not only is there a considerable distance in every class between the extreme ages (eight and eighteen, nine and nineteen), but the demographic kernel is made up of four or five more or less equal age groups.
On
the other hand, this astonishing heterogeneity in the
population of each class is offset by the minute difference between the various classes: the same ages are to be found, with very slight variations,
To consider again Chalons in 1618, the fourteen-year-old group constitutes 15 per cent of the fifth class, 13 per cent of the fourth, 11 per cent of the third, 4 per cent of the second. In each of these four classes there is an appreciable proportion of pupils of fourteen, fifteen and sixteen. While the class had established itself in the sixteenth century as the
in all the classes.
structural unit
of the
college, as a basic
element of differentiation between
a pupil's years of study, the connection between age and class very vague or loose.
*
*
*
still
remained
THE
PtJfcll/S
AGE
'
227
Between the beginning of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century, the demographic structure of the school class changed completely, and we are now going to try to discover the
of this evolution, even though it would be rash to make any dogmatic judgments on the basis of a documentation which is not only scanty but above all irregular and spasmodic. For the seventeenth century we used the registers of Chalons for 1618-20, of Troyes for 1638-9, and of Caen for 1677 and 1692. For the eighteenth century we shall be using a very incomplete document: the register of the pupils at Louis-le-Grand, which after the departure of the Jesuits had become a boarding-school and an institution for scholarship boys. Its drawback is that it does not always give both the pupil's age and the class in which he started school, when it is the coincidence of these two indications which interests us. This source has already been used by Dupont-Ferrier in his monograph on Louis-lesignificance
Grand. 42
The second document we
are going to
add to the
series is
much more
precise: the register of the pupils at Sainte-Barbe in Paris, in the first years of the nineteenth century. 48 After a good many changes Sainte-Barbe had
become
a boarding-school which either sent its pupils to attend classes at a lyce*e or else gave them tuition on the premises, in what is called 'internal classes'. The Sainte-Barbe registers are kept in the Seine Archives. They consist
of lists of pupils, divided into
classes,
with one paper for each pupil
on which are entered his marks for the year, and copies of the letters in which the masters reported to the parents on their pupils' progress and behaviour. Unfortunately we do not have the pupils' ages for the first years of the century:
nobody bothered
to record them. Later, though, the I have chosen the
school authorities took care not to leave them out. school year 1816-17.
The following table and the corresponding graphs enable us to compare the proportions of the various ages in the classes scaled
up to a
total
of one
hundred.
One change can be seen straight away: the disappearance between the seventeenth century and the nineteenth century of the extremely precocious and the extremely tardy cases. The indications of precocity diminish fairly soon and fairly quickly. The proportion of nine-year-olds in the fifth class, of ten-year-olds in the and of eleven-year-olds in the third drops sharply between Chilons in 1618 and Troyes in 1638. Then it remains roughly constant until the end of the seventeenth century. The ten-year-olds in the fifth class go from 16 per cent at Chalons to 6 per cent at Troyes, and they stay
fourth,
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
228
6 per cent and 8 per cent at Caen in 1677 and 1692. The eleven-year-olds about 15 per cent of the class throughout the seventeenth century. In the register of admissions to Louis-le-Grand for the 1760 to 1770, there are very few cases of precocity I have noted at
in the fifth class represent
:
years
of thirteen and a half in the second class. Among the in die fifth class whose age is given, the youngest is school pupils starting thirteen years old. The drop in precocity which one suspected occurred in the course of the eighteenth century is confirmed by the figures for only one
case, a child
1816-17 at Sainte-Barbe. The ten-year-olds in the fifth class, who still 8 per cent in 1692, disappear completely in 1816; the eleven-yearolds in the fifth go from 15 per cent in die seventeenth century to only
came to
4 per cent
in 1816.
struck Baillet as 'strange* in 1688 that there should be children who had 'done with' their schooling by twelve or thirteen. Strange but rather It
admirable.
On the other hand, at die beginning of the nineteenth century
precocity was regarded with
suspicion.
masters at Sainte-Barbe took care to avoid promoting pupils who were too young for their classes. Thus of a pupil in the sixth class aged eleven years seven months, whose father wanted him to go up into the rise fifth, we find the masters writing: 'We consider that such a rapid
The
have a solid sixth rather than prejudice his progress. Let us a mediocre fifth/ Another pupil, at thirteen and a half, was among the
would gravely
youngest in a third
class in
which 85 per cent of the boys were fourteen,
i per cent aged thirteen). The masters (as against only did not appreciate his childish high spirits in the midst of classmates who were two or three years older (and our modern experience tells us that at the age of thirteen a difference of two or three years counts a great deal)
fifteen
and sixteen
:
'He rather likes the quarrels and little civil wars between pupils, interfering in matters which do not concern him and trying to turn private arguments into public disputes. He likes fighting and boxing: this is unworthy of a big boy.'
With regard to somehow got into
a pupil aged thirteen years ten months who had the second class, the masters write: 'The extreme
of this pupil ... the habit of chattering [do not mark him out for his age, he should have been kept in the this] ... judging by third class.' This pupil would spend another year in the second. The masters hesitated to promote a pupil aged fourteen and a half from the third class to the second: 'The third is a sufficiendy advanced class,
frivolity
a
class
such as
one comes closer to the end of the school year; judgment is especially as called for, and the imagination begins to pky its part. The youth of this pupil
THE'^UPIL'S AGE
Ages of the pupils
at Sainte-Barbe
229
(1816-17)
THB means
ftJPII/S
AGE
'
that his faculties cannot be sufficiently developed?
231
Henceforth,
it
would
be recognized that there was a close connection between age, capacity and school class, and it would be considered inadvisable to modify this connection, especially in favour of children
who were too young.
If the child prodigies disappeared in the course of the eighteenth century, the old laggards had a harder time of it. They were still accepted without
any
when precocity was already regarded with The category of pupils between nineteen and twenty-one
hesitation at a time
suspicion.
remained, at least in the second class and the rhetoric class, throughout the ancien regime. True, their presence in the grammar classes was considered rather more exceptional: the proliferation of little Latin schools in out-of-
the-way rural areas had helped to reduce the overcrowding of the lower classes of those colleges which provided a complete course of tuition. But these colleges recovered their contingent of twenty-year-olds in the second class or the rhetoric
who
The second class at Caen in 1677 included
class.
registers of admissions to of the eighteenth century, there is not a great difference to be recorded in this respect; high ages continue to be
19 per cent
were over nineteen. In the
Louis-le-Grand in the second half
common:
eighteen, twenty, twenty-three in the rhetoric class; eighteen, nineteen, twenty in the second class; eighteen, nineteen in the third class;
At
the beginning of the nineteenth century, when people were giving considerable thought to the problems of education, in connection with the reorganization of secondary teaching and religious education, the specialists remembered the old collegians who
seventeen in the fourth
class.
had peopled the somewhat variegated classes of the ancien regime. Thus the Abbe Liautard, 44 the founder of Stanislas, wrote in 1829 in a memoir on 'public education in France' 'A college is not an Academy. We must take care not to repeat the folly of the old University of Paris which, in :
order to compete
more easily with the Jesuits
able expense pupils of in the rhetoric class/
The Abbe
[?],
maintained
twenty-five in the sixth class
at consider-
and forty-year-olds
Liautard's irritation proves that at the beginning of the this mixing of the ages was no longer tolerated. The
nineteenth century old laggards disappeared completely from the grammar classes at SainteBarbe. few isolated cases, aged nineteen or twenty at the most, remained in the second and first classes. But that could also be put down
A
to a modification of the curricula for the rhetoric
class.
At
that time there
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
232
was no longer any
trace
of a philosophy
class at
Sainte-Barbe, and
it
was
in the rhetoric class that the older pupils supplemented Latin or French rhetoric with lessons in logic, at the same time as they were preparing for
the entrance examination to either the
Law School or the Polytechnic. Be
may, the masters at Sainte-Barbe had no patience with these bearded, loud-mouthed pupils, who brought into the college the free and easy ways of young men. This is what they thought of a humanist aged eighteen years three months: 'Whatever his age may be, his youth is premature. His beard makes him look out ofplace on the college benches, and his language, which is all too often indiscreet and licentious, shows signs of worldly emancipation/ This pupil would leave school. We do not know the age of another humanist of 1807, but we find his masters that as
it
writing of him: 'This pupil is rather old in his studies/ As a result there could be no question of allowing him to go up into the rhetoric class: 'I beg you, Monsieur/ his master wrote to his father, 'to let me know what
of life you mean him to occupy, what your wishes and intentions not allow him to waste time in study!' The heyday of the old college boys was over: that of the university student was soon station
are... His age does
to begin.
now
how
the age structure of the classes was modified. and our sources may be, a comparison of spasmodic imperfect the curves of the percentages of age per class reveals certain interesting
Let us
see
However
tendencies.
The
thing to strike us is the difference in speed between the seventeenth-century curves and those of 1816-17. I^t us consider for a moment the seventeenth-century curves: we find them indicating first
phenomena we have already noted. They present two common characteristics:
the general spread of the curve and the positioning of several It is in the fifth class that the spread is most pronounced: in
maxima.
the four seventeenth-century cases considered, five ages go beyond 10 per cent. This means that in the four seventeenth-century fifths, the bulk of the class is aged between ten and fifteen, the under-tens and the
of the total. Except in of the other classes are curve remains the curves the where flat, 1618, very not spread out to the same extent: notably in the humanities of 1638 and 1677, where three ages-instead of five in the fifth-go beyond 10 per cent. One might conclude in favour of a certain demographic concentration in over-fifteens representing less than 10 per cent
the higher classes if another phenomenon did not sometimes contradict this: the high proportion of older pupils aged between eighteen and twenty.
THE
frtTPIL S
AGE
233
The admissions registers at Louis-le-Grand suggest that the spread of the ages was also maintained in the eighteenth century. Pupils are between thirteen and sixteen in the fifth and the fourth, between thirteen and eighteen in the third, between thirteen and nineteen in the second, and between fifteen and twenty-three in the rhetoric class. In these very spread-out curves, the positions of the maxima are very revealing. Sometimes it happens that there is as it were no maximum that :
is
the extreme case in 1618 in the
When apparent:
the
maxima
first
of all, and regions. Thus
different years at the
fifth,
fourth and third
classes.
are very pronounced, several features become the coincidence between the maxima of the curves of all
the curves of the fifth class culminate
age of twelve, while those of the third
class
culminate at the age of
fifteen, incidentally coming to a sharper point. This statistical maximum approaches the age which will become the average age of the class in the
nineteenth century: it indicates a tendency of the future rather than a characteristic of the present, as happens more often than is generally
supposed with so-called average It
may
also
like those
cases.
maxima of different curves do not coincide, classes: the maxima of the fourth-class curves go
that the
happen of the fourth
from
thirteen in 1692 to seventeen in 1638 (not counting the peculiarly flat curve of 1618 which has three maxima: ten, fourteen and eighteen). This means that from one time to another, or from one region to another,
the largest fraction of a fourth class - more than 20 per cent of the class can vary between thirteen and seventeen.
-
In the higher classes, in the third, second and first, another phenomenon it often happens that out of appears: the splitting up of the maxima. True, three successive ages, the one in the middle varies: the irregularity of admissions, due to economic conditions, and indifference to the connection
between age and class, are sufficient to account for this undulation of the upper section of the curve. But here I am referring to a more distinctive phenomenon. We have already noticed that the curves of the third and the higher classes were more pointed than those of the lower classes. But this is true only of that part of the curves corresponding to the ages from thirteen or fourteen to seventeen or eighteen.
Now
one on its way down, producing a rise towards a second maximum of eighteen, nineteen or twenty. This second maximum corresponds to a new intake, different from that of the annual promotions, and quite considerable: the intake of schools. tardy pupils, who had sometimes come from other Latin Let us turn now to the Sainte-Barbe curves for 1816-17; to what extent another curve often continues the
first
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
234
do they differ from those of the seventeenth century, whose characteristics, or so at least we suppose, remained roughly the same in the eighteenth century? Generally speaking, are
it
seems at
more pointed and go
first
glance that the Sainte-Barbe curves words that the ages around the
higher, in other
of pupils. represent a larger proportion of the total number in the fifth class, three ages go beyond 20 per cent as compared with a single age in the seventeenth century. In the third, second and first
maximum Thus
two or even
classes,
reached
three ages
go beyond 25 per cent whereas no age The population extends over a
this level in the seventeenth century.
smaller number of years and tends to concentrate around a characteristic age.
However, this rise and this regularization of the nineteenth-century curves are not equally pronounced for every age. In the fifth and fourth classes, they still have a bell-like shape which retains something of the In the fourth class, there are spread-out appearance of the ancien regime. almost as many pupils of seventeen as of twelve. In the fifth class, four ages
each represent over 15 per cent of the
upwards
that the
more than 80 per second
class,
modern
only from the third class predominate in the third class,
total. It is
characteristics
cent of the pupils are fourteen, fifteen or sixteen; in the and seventeen.
sixteen
Thus at the dawn of the nineteenth century, the correspondence between age and class reached its full rigour only in the higher classes. This would not be the case for long. But I do not think I am mistaken in the situation is reversed: suggesting that in the mid-twentieth century the pupils in the sixth class set off at a fairly homogeneous age, imposed by between the candidates for admission to a secondary the
competition
school, while failures in school examinations and in the baccalaureate set-backs and result in more pronounced age differences in the
produce
final classes.
must be admitted that even in the lower classes the masters mixing of the ages, although they could not entirely eliminate to create a new section of it. In 1816 they announced that they intended the sixth class which would be reserved for the laggards, who had their younger classmates: 'We are going previously been mixed up with
However,
it
disliked this
form a backward sixth ... to give these pupils special tuition correspond... a class composed almost entirely of ing to their needs and capabilities in their studies although advanced in age/ backward are children who very
to
A final question faces us now. We have just seen that at the beginning of the nineteenth century the population of each
class
concentrated
THE 'PUPIL'S AGE
235
around a specific age. Does the characteristic age which was fixed at that time represent a rejuvenation or an ageing, either in comparison with the traditions of the ancien regime or in comparison with the the early twentieth century? of usage
vague
stricter
Generally speaking, the class curves for 1816 cut across the curves of the ancien regime in such a way as to leave the lowest and highest ages outside their scope. They tend to bring their maxima (which are very pointed) close to the flatter, gentler maxima of the ancien regime. It is as if the
average ages of the ancien regime, which were not particularly characteristic at their time and which only a fairly abstract statistical analysis could determine, became the predominant, specific ages at the beginning of the nineteenth century. However, this phenomenon of the coincidence
of the old maxima and the new did not occur to an equal degree in the lower and higher classes. We have noticed that in the lower classes in the seventeenth century the maxima were often split up and always hard to distinguish from a gentle curve. The 1816 curves are more pointed but are further down than those of the seventeenth century, and their maxima correspond to the lower maxima of the seventeenth century. Let us take the fifth
an example. The fourteen-year-olds in the fifth classes of the seventeenth century represent only 12 to 16 per cent of a younger population, which culminates at the age of twelve. In 1816, the
classes as
twelve-year-olds are still at the top, seeing that they reach 30 per cent, but the fourteen-year-olds remain almost as numerous and reach 28 per cent.
The same is
true
of the fourth
class,
We must therefore recognize, in
the
with first
its
1816
grammar
maximum of fifteen. classes,
an increase in
the average ages in comparison with the ancien regime. This demographic composition gives us twelve to fourteen for the fifth class
and
thirteen to fifteen for the fourth class,
fourteen and fifteen in each of the
two
classes.
with a
The
maximum
of
fifteen-year-olds of
would normally enter the first class at eighteen, and all being well would become bachelors at nineteen and would get through their the fifth class
such as these must seem philosophy or their mathematics at twenty. Ages advanced to our contemporaries too, at least to those who, like the author of this book, finished their secondary schooling before 1940, for I believe that a new ageing process has since taken place, due this time to the the baccalaureate examination, competition which has transformed devalued though it is, into a sort of contest. But rivalry of this sort was as was to the nineteenth century and the foreign to the ancien regime as it early twentieth century
- at
least to this degree.
Study of the ages in the
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
236
conclude in favour of an ageing at the in comparison with the seventeenth nineteenth of the century beginning late nineteenth-early twentieth century. the and century
lower
If
classes thus enables us to
we
consider the Sainte-Barbe
statistics,
we
find that this ageing
the third class. In the curves from the third class to the process stops with maxima of 1816 coincide with the first first, the extremely pronounced maxima of the seventeenth century (the second maxima of the seventeenth century disappear with the category of the old pupils aged twenty
or over, which they depict in graphic form). This situation gives us: the third class, sixteen and seventeen in the fourteen-^een-sixteen in those of the second, and sixteen-seventeen in the first ages very close to nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
These data have a certain value. It is not certain that they were very either the school population or of the mentality of the representative of whose time; we must not forget that Sainte-Barbe was a boarding-school
numbers dropped sharply
in the higher classes.
On the other hand, a good
in the early school ages at Sainte-Barbe, the masters, in their reports
many indications suggest that the ageing noticeable
was often maintained. Even to their pupils' parents, revealed a mental attitude in favour of a certain have know that they were definitely hostile to precocity. ageing. the disliked also seen that like all the pedagogues of their time they
We
We
On the other hand, they displayed whom we would nowadays consider too
classes of grown men. presence in their
a
marked preference
for pupils
the second class we find them eighteen-year-old in at his studies, in which he is doing well/ And of his writing: 'Excellent classmate of seventeen and a half we are told: 'It must be remembered
backward.
Of an
he was put in a class for which he was too young and too weak* too seventeen and a half! young for the second class at that
Here we have a sixteen-year-old in the fifth class. His masters consider he has risen too fast: 'Always an interesting pupil ... His papa wanted his son to skip a class; we complied with his request [with a bad grace]. What happened? When he entered the fifth he lacked the necessary This we find astonishing: today we maturity to live up to this class/ would say either that he is incapable or that he must make up for lost time and rise quickly. But the masters at Sainte-Barbe approved of pupils' spending another in a class: they often recommended this, and if certain parents put up that
year
resistance to the idea, many anticipated the intentions: 'Congratulations on the decision to make him pedagogues' in the rhetoric class/ Pupils spent extra years in the spend another year
what was already a modern
THE 'PUPIL'S AGE
'
2J7
higher classes above all, and this was even recommended. In 1807 (a year which the Sainte-Barbe registers do not give any ages) it was recorded
for
crowded with from military to academic jargon].' Nowadays a critical view would be taken of the standard of a secondary-school class in which old pupils were in such a majority. The opposite opinion was held in 1807: 'This strengthens it [the rhetoric class] with experienced pupils.' But these 'veterans' of the lycee, not being boarders at Sainte-Barbe, do not appear in our statistics. However, some of the veterans showed signs of weariness, and their worthy master had to admit that this weariness might be justified: 'The pupil shows a certain reluctance to spend a third year in the rhetoric class. We consider that this would in fact be a waste of precious time for him, since he has nothing more to learn in this part of the school.' The presence of these advanced - or retarded - pupils accounts for the trouble which conscription caused in the lycees and colleges, as national service would today if students were not usually deferred. There was still a certain confusion between two notions which would henceforth be quite distinct: that of the schoolboy and that of the student. It is true that in the early nineteenth century the universities did not yet attract a large number of students, and post-scholastic education was almost as neglected as under the ancien regime. Only later, at the end of the nineteenth century, did preparation for the licentiate's degree or the doctorate of the Faculties of Law and Medicine, which had become the essential qualification for a career in the liberal professions, compel pupils to cut short the duration of at Sainte-Barbe that 'the rhetoric class
veterans [note the
word
of the \jcit
is
'veteran', transferred at this time
their secondary studies.
Consequently,
if the ages
of the higher
classes at
Sainte-Barbe were not
advanced as those of the lower classes would lead us to expect, this cannot be put down to the masters' policy. On the contrary, the masters tended rather to let their pupils grow old at school, and the masters' mentality seems to have matched the spirit of their time. as
Other documents show that people were aware that pupils' ages in the third of the nineteenth century were more advanced, at least in comthe same century. Witness F. Bouquet's parison with the second half of recollections of his childhood and of his schooldays at Rouen lycee
first
about iSso: 46 'At that time pupils
started in the sixth class
two or
three
their thirteenth year', in other words years later than today, before reaching 'The thirteen. between twelve and complete course of study ended at
about nineteen or twenty [which would correspond to the maxima of fifteen in the fourth class at Sainte-Barbe]. A bachelor aged under sixteen
SCHOLASTIC
238
LIFE
would have been a phenomenon which would not have occurred to anybody/ This ageing may account for the mutinies which became fairly common in the first half of the nineteenth century, coinciding moreover stiffening of discipline and an extension of the boarding system. therefore seems that the disappearance of the excessively precocious cases of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and of the ex-
with a It
(up to the end of the eighteenth century), of the school populations around ages a to concentration corresponded which were higher than both the average ages of die ancien regime and cessively
retarded cases
the typical ages of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
From these analyses, we can deduce some salient points. The precocity of certain cases in the sixteenth and early centuries struck us as a survival
of the practice
in
seventeenth
medieval schools, but
of the general customs of apprenticeship, in which the ages were mixed and a premature skill caused no more surprise than the exceptional nature of certain gifts; we also noticed that the more brilliant careers, those of our memorialists, were characterized by a certain precocity, and this precocity remained for some time an attribute of success. However, also
to admire child prodigies, in the course of the public opinion soon ceased the latest. The dislike of precocity marks the first at eighteenth century
breach in the lack of differentiation between children's ages. The educawhich eliminated children who were too young, however tional policy
might be -by refusing to admit them, or more often by in the lowest classes, or again by making them spend two them putting same class - reveals a new distinction between an extended in the years gifted they
mid-seventeenth century, people tended infancy and school age. Until the to stop infancy at the age of five or six, when a boy would leave his his nanny or the servant-girls; at the age of seven he could go to even start in the fifth class. Later on, school age, or at least the and college was postponed until the child of age entry into the three grammar classes, was nine or ten. It was therefore the first ten years which were pushed clear of college life. The result was that an infancy lasting until nine or ten
mother,
was separated from a period at school beginning at that age. The reason most commonly advanced to justify the postponement of admission to school was the weakness, 'imbecility* or incapacity of little children. It was rarely the danger incurred by their innocence, or at least this danger, when it was recognized, was not limited to infancy.
THE PUPIL The
S
AGE
239
of precocity therefore marks the differentiation by the infancy extended to the age often. But if infancy was segregated in this way, the old mixing of the ages continued in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for the rest of the dislike
college of a
first section:
school population, with children between ten and fourteen, adolescents between fifteen and eighteen, and young men between nineteen and classes. Up to the end of the eighteenth of century, nobody thought separating them. Even at the beginning of the nineteenth century, although the grown men, the 'bearded ones' of over twenty, were excluded for good, the presence of backward adolescents in college aroused no opposition, and the promiscuity of widely
twenty-five studying in the same
separated age groups did not shock people, provided that the youngest boys were not exposed to it. Indeed nobody felt the need to distinguish
childhood beyond the age of twelve or thirteen from adolescence or in the youth. These two age categories still remained confused: only later nineteenth century would they be separated, thanks to the spread of further education in the middle classes, Under the First Empire, even conscription,
break up
this
which was easy for the middle classes to avoid, did not long age-span in which our modern distinctions were not
yet recognized. It will be noticed that the tradition of not distinguishing between childhood and adolescence, a tradition which disappeared in die middle classes in the course
in the
lower
classes
of the nineteenth century,
where there
is
still
no secondary
exists
today in France
education.
Most primary
schools remain faithful to the old practice of simultaneous tuition. Once he has obtained his school-leaving certificate, if he does not go to a technical school or an apprenticeship centre, the young artisan goes which still ignores scholastic age straight into the working world
And there he will be able to pick his friends from a far wider the very restricted span of the lycee class. Late childthan age group and early maturity are not opposed as they are in adolescence hood,
distinctions.
middle-class society, conditioned
by
the habits of secondary and higher
education.
This period of childhood and adolescence was distinguished thanks to the steady though tardy establishment of a connection between age and school class. For a long time, in the sixteenth and even in the seventeenth The regularization of the century, this connection remained very vague. annual cycle of promotions, the habit of making all the pupils go through series of classes instead of only a few, and the requirements the
complete of a new system of teaching adapted to
smaller,
more 'homogeneous
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
24O classes, resulted at
the beginning of the nineteenth century in an increasbetween age and class. The masters then got
ingly close correspondence into the habit of making
up their classes to fit in with their pupils' ages. The age groups which had hitherto been confused began to split up in so far as they corresponded to different classes, for since the end of the had been recognized as a structural unit. But living cells, the middle class would not attach the the slightest differences in age between its children,
sixteenth century the class
for the college
importance
it
and
its
does to
and would share
in this respect the comparative indifference displayed
lower-class society.
by
THE PROGRESS OF DISCIPLINE of the University of Aix at the beginning of the century enable us to witness the initiation of a 'novice', or of what we would now call a freshman. The admission of a new student was an important occasion: in every 'nation* a promoter was appointed annually to organize it. The freshman had both to pay a statutes
fifteenth
THE
tax and to offer a banquet to some of his companions and masters; the promoter and the rector - who at that time was a student -
beadle, the
also attended the banquet. If risk
of purging
he
tried to
avoid
his noviciate in studio, in the
this
obligation he ran the
schoolroom, 'with a book
on
his behind in accordance with custom and tradition', and no doubt with other torments which the document fails to mention. 1 After the meal the purge of the freshman took place which turned
him
2 Germany, according to R. F. Seybolt and Rashdall, the freshman was washed, confessed and dressed, in a sort of crossing-the-line ceremony. At Aix every guest, starting with the promoter armed with a frying-pan, gave not more than three blows supra anum aut femora bejonarum: the ladies present could obtain a mitigation of the penalty. The official document obviously tries to tone down the ragging which often must have been more brutal than this and accompanied by licentious scenes. Certain universities, such as that of Vienna, went so far as to forbid practices known for their violence and immorality: the statutes mention debts, extortions, wounds and blows inflicted on freshmen. Similarly the 1379 statutes of Narbonne 4 College forbid the scholars to exact anything from the noviter intrentibus contrary to the honour or good of the college, or to indulge in 'vicious practices or other indecencies which they would be forbidden to reveal'. This ban almost certainly remained a dead letter: the vow of silence which the older pupils imposed on the newcomers is proof enough of the secret character of the initiation, and one is reminded of other customs of the same sort, like those of the Templars (assuming that there was a basis of truth in the confessions extorted from them at
into a full-blown student. In 8
their trial).
The
of the corporation of law students at Avignon in 1441, Fournier, mention these initiatory customs, the repugnance
statutes
published
by
241
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
242
which the
ecclesiastical
authorities
felt
for them,
and the students'
5
association responsible for this initiation. This association had a religious character:
was dedicated to St councillors Sebastian, and it was on St Sebastian's Day that the priors and were elected. It was not an old society, or rather it was obviously a new it
and reformed version of an association which, according to the religious authorities of Avignon, had deviated from its traditional mission. The remarks in fact on the laziness and lack of preamble to the document the members of the studium generate at Avignon; they discipline among are accused in particular of no longer praying for the dead, of believing and, on the occasion of the that the voluptates corporales bring happiness, admission of novices or purge of freshmen, of repeatedly indulging in 'forbidden acts of an unimaginable nature*. The new association would thus seem to have been an instrument of reform. However, at least as far the statutes were not as one can by the authorities but were
imposed
see,
fixed freely and unanimously by all the members of the student body: here we may recognize the democratic methods of medieval societies and
of peace; this had been common practice in the confused society of the Middle Ages, and only a few traces of it remained in the fifteenth century. and his councillors, who Every year the students elected the prior formed a sort of court of arbitration, and two promoters, whose essential function was to summon the society's members to students' funerals and their insistence
on unanimity
as the sole guarantee
of freshmen. to maintain the peace among its members both had corporation and supervise their behaviour. Nobody was to speak ill of his brother, but each was to try to correct by gentle methods anyone he knew had to organize the admission
The
was
sinned. If he did not succeed he
to refer the matter secretly to the would be expelled from the
last resort the black sheep prior; in the The members' principal duties were to confraternity by a majority vote. student who died at the university, to visit sick attend the funeral of
friends, to inquire
accompany
any on such occasions
after the state
of
their soul,
and to
the corpus domini.
down
the conditions for a
prior Regulations drawn up by freshman wishing to enter the corporation: no novice would be admitted ad purgationem suae infectionis and allowed to take die venerable tide of studens unless he presented himself with due humility and deference before the prior and his deputy and paid them sixgrossi for his admission to the the noblemen or beneficed clergyThe rich, that is to laid
the
say
confraternity.
men, were to pay more:
cases
of poverty would be examined by the
THE PROGRESS OP DISCIPLINE
'
24.3
Then the freshmen would be allowed to take his oath and would be received: volumus jocose et this benigne. What are we to understand prior.
by
joyous admission? The regulations contain a long paragraph which tries to persuade the members that the payment of dues takes the place of the traditional banquets which spelt ruination for body and soul. The cost useless banquet, superflue cene, would be paid to the confraternity
of the
honour of God and the patron saint. However, do not seem to have convinced the students. The for the
these arguments
prior admits, albeit
with a bad grace, that they 'prefer the belly to the mind', but in that case he insists that he or his deputy should be present at the banquet to safeguard the society's morals and avoid vidorum macula. In particular he stipulates that the freshmen are not to bring along any courtesans, lest the society's members be turned into pimps.
We
see here a tendency to substitute an admission fee in money or in kind for the banquets and ragging which used to accompany the freshman's purge. But nobody thought of reducing the importance of the actual principle of the initiation: the admission of the new students was
one of the chief responsibilities of the promoters of the confraternity of St Sebastian. There are other college statutes which recognize the importance of the admission ceremony while at the same time condemning ragging and excessive fines. The 1311 statutes of Harcourt College
stipulate: 'No newly arrived scholar shall give an admission banquet, either in his room or in the refectory/ 6 The tradition of the of wine
mug
common was not socius only one mug of wine, drunk
in
abandoned, however: 'He may give each and that wine must be at the current price/
hard to believe that the celebration always stopped mug of wine.
It is
In the 1427 statutes of Seez College
we
after the regulation
read that for his joyous entry
into the college, the student shall not be forced to pay more than twenty sous but shall instead pay 'according to his rank'. 7 The oath and the rule
of secrecy remain, but the secrecy here applies not to the events and gestures of the initiation ceremony but to the life of the community the pupil is going to enter. He takes an oath to observe the statutes and 'not to reveal to any outside person [nulli extraneo] the secrets of the college*. He becomes the de novo receptus. His oath is recorded in writing and signed. He then presents the community with two tables-cloths, in which it is difficult not to see a symbol of the traditional banquet. The documents we are quoting speak of drinking bouts and initiation rites at
a time
(the moralists
when
enlightened ecclesiastical circles
condemned them
and theologians have probably always condemned them,
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
244
and being tainted with paganism and vice, but without success) succeeded to some extent in curbing or suppressing them. However, the or else, as at Avignon, their eagerness they showed in forbidding them, as
was to resigned tolerance, shows how attached the student population far back into the past and still corresponded in the dated which practices fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to a state of mind which is difficult to
would
be a mistake to compare these admission on freshmen in a modern university. They were something very different and profound, bound up with the very structure of society. A. Varagnac has shown the survival in country districts under the ancien regime and up to the triumph of the agricultural revolution in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of an organization of collective life in age groups: a very old organization which can be 8 found in the Homeric world as also in the Negro societies of Africa. imagine today. rites
It
in fact
to the ragging inflicted
Entry into the adult world called for an initiation. Speaking more one had to undergo a sort of operation of generally, to enter a society a religious character, sometimes magical and always ritualistic, which
changed the very being of the novice, naturalized him and thus joined to his brothers with an inseparable bond. This was the case with the student-bodies and probably also with the trade guilds, and what remained of their customs in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries must have dated back to the Middle Ages at least. This operation consisted first of
him
all
of a drinking bout,
a potacio as
it is
called in the texts concerning the
9 then of violent ragging, sometimes guilds quoted by E. Coornaert, and The sexual orgies. ragging broke the former man, and by
accompanied
by humiliating him placed him at the mercy of his conquerors; he was tamed and henceforth belonged irrevocably to the community which had mastered him in this fashion. At the same time he became his meal in common: henceforth the society which he had been admitted was not a utilitarian association but a friends. This fraternity would be renewed by fraternity, a society of communion rites, by collective meals and drinking bouts. periodical For students, one of the principal opportunities for drinking was the 'determinance'. In his reformation of the University of Paris in the fifteenth century, Cardinal d'Estouteville shows the revulsion he feels, but does not dare to forbid such established customs, and confines himself to preaching moderation: 'The determinants must not offer and only to banquets, unless it be with moderation and temperance, sodi and to their masters. 10 Masters and pupils, often of roughly the same the same fraternity. age, drank round the same table: they belonged to torturers' brother, thanks to the
to
*
THE PROGWBSS OF DISCIPLINE
245
,
showed no repugnance for these convivial Robert de Coupon in his reformation of the university had not dared to ban their banquets: he merely stipulated should be confined 'to some companions and friends, but few that
The
theologians themselves
habits. In the thirteenth century
they
in
number'. 11
of a freshman or the Apart from great events such as the purge 'determinate', there were a great many occasions, if not for a convivio, at least for a potacio.
The importance
attributed to the
mug
of wine
drunk together can be seen from the constitutions of the
colleges for tradition required the kctores to Harcourt At College, scholarship boys. 12 and the 1311 statutes accepted this tradition: treat their pupils to drinks 'For the honour of the college we wish the pupils of the house to show deference to the lectores... The latter, at the beginning and end of their classes,
'
may,
if
the they wish, offer their fellow pupils
mug
of friendship
no guest receives more than one mug/ [potum amicabilem], provided that In many cases, the peccadilloes of everyday collective life in the colleges at Cornwall College in 1380, pupils did not stop shouting, laughing or playing during mealtimes were
were sanctioned by a round of drinks:
who
mug
friends'.
At
language
shall
13 to those companions who are present'. Similarly was forbidden to wear long pointed shoes under pain of a pint of wine. The associations of scholars which tried to cut down or to suppress
distributed it
be drunk
of ordinary [mediocris] wine which among the Cistercian College in Paris, pupils who spoke in any other than Latin had to buy a pint of wine, 'which shall be
fined 'a
illico
[sic]
the traditional banquets forced the
forbidding them
socii
to take their meals in
to eat separately in their
rooms: the meal in
consecrated the friendship which was supposed to unite the
common,
common
members of
the group.
of these student-bodies recall those of the proother associations studied by E. Coornaert in an or economic fessional, u the excellent article on the medieval guilds importance of the compotacio, of the oath of friendship and peace taken between the brothers, of attendance at members' funerals, and of the performance of religious
The
characteristics
:
duties.
Our modern minds
are puzzled because they refuse to accept the
which are nowadays carefully separated: the mixing of ways of life and friends), the private way of life (leisure life of intimate way (family of life (devotional activities), or the the and amusement), religious way who share the same profession those of life (meetings corporate way of
with the object of learning it or exploiting it or defending it). Modem man is divided between a professional life and a family life which are
SCHOLASTIC
246
LIFE
often in competition with each other, and
all the rest is regarded as of and cultural activities, and even more secondary importance: religious so rest and amusement; meetings with friends for a meal or drinks are considered as a mere relaxation, necessary to the organism like food which can be hurriedly swallowed, but not to be counted as part of the serious business of living - an extra, a luxury, which a man does not neglect, true, but whose importance he does not admit though he is not actually ashamed of it. But in the Middle Ages all these social activities, which are today individualized and repressed, occupied an essential position in collective life. It does not matter to us that they had a religious origin in Mediterranean or Germanic rites of an orgiastic nature. What matters is that at that time people could not imagine a society that was - maintained the not cemented of a
by
public recognition
by
friendship
common
meal and the potacio, and sometimes sealed with intoxication. This rite was valued not only because it afforded sensual pleasure - men have never ceased to appreciate the joys of a good binge among friends! but because this pleasure was transcended and became the perceptible, physical sign of a religious and legal engagement, of a sworn contract on which the whole of collective life rested, just as it rests today on our institutions of private and public law. The modern way of life is the result of the divorce between elements which had formerly been united: friendship, religion, profession. It is also the result of the suppression of some of them, such as friendship and religion, and of the development of another element to which the Middle Ages attributed only secondary importance: the family. The medieval student corporations bore no relation to our ideas on the organization of human societies, especially for children and youths. They were not authoritarian: no leader could impose a decision -a
was generally taken by the community as a whole, on a majority sometimes vote, unanimously. They were not democratic or egalitarian either, for they comprised certain privileges, differences between graduates, differences between old students and new. They were built on decision
personal relationships, on friendship between the members, rather than on a utilitarian aim. The idea of authority, or rather of the delegation of authority, the modern idea of a disciplinary code for which agents of authority are instructed to enforce respect, remained foreign to them. However, we should be wrong to deduce from the absence of the
modern in a state
of hierarchy and authority that medieval pupils lived of anarchy. On the contrary, they belonged to these communities
principle
which constituted the
structure
of the
societies
of
their time.
Thus
in
THE PROGRESS OF DISCIPLINE
247
place of the relationship of master and pupil, chief and subordinate, there were bonds of a different nature, less judicial, closer to real life, but just as strong and just as valid in the eyes of the public: the relationship of old hand and greenhorn, bacchant and bejaune. On this subject we have an extremely full and detailed document of the early sixteenth century, which I have already quoted with regard to 15 It may be pupils' ages the biography of the Swiss, Thomas Platter. objected that it deals with German manners, but if these were different at the time from French manners, this was simply because they were comparatively old-fashioned. In all probability, a hundred years earlier the differences were less pronounced, and Thomas Platter's description must be valid not only for Germany in the early sixteenth century but for a large part of the Western world in the fifteenth century. We have seen how at the age of nine Thomas Platter learnt to sing the Salve from a village priest. One of his first cousins, Paulus, who was a 'student at Ulm and Munich, then came to spend a few days with his him about family. Thomas had a good reputation: 'My friends spoke to me and suggested that he should take me to the German schools.' Paulus agreed, and thus was born the association between the greenhorn Thomas and the old hand Paulus. The former supported the latter, who in return I gave Paulus my protected him. 'We set off. I had to start begging. :
me
money with takings. People gave often lived by begging, the greenhorn
a
good
grace.' Students at that
time
begging for the old hand. The two companions went through Lucerne and arrived at Zurich, where Paulus
was due
to
meet some
Germany. 'During
this
friends
time
I
with
whom he
was going
to travel across
kept on begging and earned almost enough I went into a tavern [we must remember
to support Paulus, for when that at this time the tavern was a place of ill repute, frequented by thieves but a young lad of nineteen could none the less do his and prostitutes,
turn there]
people enjoyed hearing
me
talk the
Valais
dialect
and
of mortifying something.' But there was also the risk willingly gave a ruffian who was staying in the same house at Zurich as experiences: the band of students 'offered me a six-kreutzer piece if I would allow bare skin'. The game was worth the candle: 'I me on him to
me
my
whip
finally agreed.
me horribly*
.
seized me, threw me across a chair and beat and then took back his six kreutzers. there for eight or nine weeks, the band of students
He promptly . .
After loitering
set off for Misnia.
'There were eight or nine of
horns [Schutzen] and the
of the greenhorns.
rest
When
I
old hands.
I
us, to
wit three green-
was the youngest and
smallest
could no longer drag myself along,
my
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
248 cousin Paulus
would walk behind me, armed with a stick or a pike, my bare legs, for I had no breeches [he was therefore
and would beat
dressed in just a shirt and underpants, and perhaps not even underpants] pair of shoes.' But he kept on walking all the same, whereas
and only a bad
but for Paulus he would have fallen by the wayside; admittedly Paulus would then have lost his bread-winner. There were a few minor incidents :
how
his big companions saying easy it was to catch geese in Misnia, he tried his luck with the first goose he saw, and felled it with a stone, but only just managed to escape the vengeance
when Thomas heard
of the
'Coming to the village, the peasants found our old hands and asked them for the price of the goose/ The two sides came
peasants.
at the inn
'When
to an agreement.
were not allowed
the old hands rejoined us [for the greenhorns
they laughingly asked what had
inside the inn],
apologized for doing something which I had thought was happened. allowed by the customs of the country: they replied that I had been in too much of a hurry/ When they stopped for the night, the old hands I
slept together in
By
an inn room, and the greenhorns in the stable. came to write down these stories of vagabond
the time he
life,
had become a schoolmaster and a respected humanist, and he tells them with ill-concealed pleasure. At Neuburg, 'those of us greenhorns who could sing went round the town singing; I for my part
Thomas
Platter
some begging/ In this fashion they arrived at Halle in Saxony: we went to St Ulrich's school. But our old hands treated us so harshly that some of us plotted with my cousin Paulus to escape/ Here he did
'There
is
probably referring to the old hands at St Ulrich's
who
ragged the
newcomers, young and old alike, little Thomas as well as big Paulus. The band left Halle and made for Dresden. At Dresden they went to school for a while: 'The school building was full of vermin which we could hear swarming about in the straw/ But it seems that the masters were not very good, and they set off again, this time for Breslau. They
had a hard time on the road nobody would take in the vagabond students and people set their dogs on them. At Breslau there were seven schools, corresponding to the seven parishes of the town, and each parish was private territory: 'No student would dream of going outside his parish to sing in the street, for if he did :
the greenhorns
would come running up shouting "Ad
and there would be a
terrible
brawl/
several thousand students at Breslau
some
who
who
all
idem, ad idem",
that at times there
lived
on
charity,
and
were that
twenty or thirty years or even longer, thanks fed them. *In the evening I often made five or
stayed at school for
to the greenhorns
It is said
THE PROGRESS OF DISCIPLINE six
journeys to bring the day's takings to
my
old hands,
'
249
who
stayed in
the school/ 'In winter the greenhorns slept
But
the old hands in cells/
wagered any time
that
I
would be
all
on
the floor of the schoolroom, and
shared the same vermin:
'I
able to catch three insects at once
could have
on
my
chest
wished/ In summer, greenhorns and old hands slept out in the open, in the cemetery. If it rained they went back into the school. After a period at Breslau, the eight friends returned to Dresden. For the I
split up into two groups, one for catching geese and the other for picking swedes and onions. 'The youngest of us were sent to had agreed to Neumark, the nearest town, to beg for bread and salt.
journey the band
We
meet in the evening near the town gates where we intended to camp. But the inhabitants had no sooner seen the fire we had lit than they started firing at us. Luckily nobody was hit/ In spite of everything, the band managed to reach Dresden. There the old hands came to an arrangement with the schoolmaster - who must have been of about the same age ~ to exploit the pupils. The master does not seem to have been in charge of the pupils, but one of them die schoolmaster and our old hands sent us goosereports: 'At Dresden We one caught two geese which the old hands and the day hunting schoolmaster ate at a farewell meal/ Platter does not tell us whether the . . .
greenhorns were allowed to eat the crumbs. The band left Dresden and set off for Niirnberg and then Munich, where it settled down. Paulus and I lodged with a soap manufacturer '
. . .
whom
I
helped with
his
soapmaking more than
I
studied
. . .
My
cousin
went to the school in Our Lady's parish, and so did I, but not so frequently, since I had to sing in the streets to earn enough for our keep/ This went on until the two cousins were thrown out because Paulus had been rather too familiar with the maidservant. Then, after five years of wandering around the schools of Germany, Paulus suddenly felt homesick: 'My old hand then took it into his head to go back to the country from which we had been absent for five years, and we returned to the Valais/ Thomas fifteen, and Paulus over twenty. They did not stay set off again, taking with them, like Thomas but long in the village, another five years before, young boy, one Hildebrand 'who was the
must have been about
and therefore born to be a scholar! All three, under Paulus's command, went to Ulm. Thomas had acquired considerable skill in begging, 'so that the old hands did not give me time to go to the result that I could school, preferring to use me for their profit, with were not even read'. He and Hildebrand supposed to give the old hands
son of a
priest'
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
250
their takings. But Hildebrand sometimes kept back some of his money to buy food: 'Our old hands would follow him in the street and
all
him eating; or else they would force him to rinse his mouth and a dish full of water; they could then see whether he had been into spit him on to a bed, put a cushion If they caught him out, they threw eating. catch
over his face to muffle
his cries,
and beat him cruelly
until they
were
exhausted/
Thus the older student was a leader, doing what he wished with the also young ones who kept him alive and whom he exploited, though rather maintaining them by force in a society which, or them, protecting however harsh it may have been, provided them with a setting and, by its very existence, defended them against the solitary adventure. The formation of bands of boys in which the younger ones recognize the their brutality, or perhaps because of authority of the older ones despite in our contemporary societies: it has been a particular it, still
happens
16 But in the medieval association of in the United States. object of study old hands and greenhorns there was something else: parents did not
child often or so to the hazards of the road and foreign towns; him to an older and therefore more experienced student, entrusted they who was better equipped for a dangerous life. The authority of the
abandon a
child's father was then delegated to this older student. Consequently, however much he might abuse it, his authority was recognized not only - but also by public opinion. And public by his subjects or his victims tolerate the breaking of this bond of subjection not would opinion between the greenhorn and the old hand, least of all if it was broken by It seems in fact to have been the only form of subjection the
greenhorn.
which enabled the physical
child to avoid anarchy, vagabondage,
This can be seen from escape.
moral and
distress.
The
first failed. It
Thomas
Platter's
took place
account of his two attempts at A member of the Fugger
at Breslau.
in the little beggar he saw wandering through the family took an interest He offered to take him in. Did Thomas accept straight away? No,
streets.
was not free. He went to Paulus and asked him for permission to him for the Fugger house. Paulus refused to give him this permission. have brought you abroad and I mean to take you back to your family,'
for he
leave *I
he
said,
and such indeed must have been the sense of responsibility these
hulking brutes felt for their young drudges. The second attempt succeeded: Thomas was older -he must have been over fifteen - and obedience was becoming irksome to him. The scene was Munich. Thomas was no longer living with his old hand but
THE PROGRESS OF DISCIPLINE with a kindly butcher's wife.
One Sunday
'
after vespers,
251
Paulus stopped
to see me any more. Take care or you'll get a beating.' At his age, with his voice breaking and his talents as a street-singer on the wane, Thomas was no
him
in the street: 'Greenhorn,' he said,
longer of authority,
by
'you don't
much use to his old hand. But the which the greenhorn's departure had
this threat,
Thomas decided
to
He
flee.
come
latter
was
asserting his
naught. Worried nothing to his kindly
set at
said
landlady: 'I did not dare tell her about my intentions, for she might have given me away' She would have given him away, despite the fact that she disapproved of Paulus's cruelty, because it would have probably
immoral to break so brutally a bond which was recognized and necessary. 'I therefore left Munich, feeling sad at heart, either at abandoning my cousin whom I had accompanied in his numerous and distant peregrinations, but who had always been brutal towards me, or at leaving the butcher's wife who had been so kind to me.' For his part Paulus 'had often told my companions and me that if one of us escaped, he would catch him wherever he might go*. True enough, at Freisingen he was told that Paulus was on his track and had arrived in the struck her as as legitimate
town. 'Your old hand from Munich horns told him
at the school.
is
here looking for you,' the green-
He fled to Ulm, where Paulus followed him:
'He had therefore pursued me a distance of eighteen miles.' At Ziirich, where he took refuge, a messenger from Paulus came to see him: his fellow-countryman Hildebrand, the boy who used to be thrashed because he spent part of his takings on food. 'A few months had gone by [at from Munich to Zurich] when Paulus sent his greenhorn Hildebrand
me
to say that he forgave me: I refused and stayed had stopped ordering him to return - and thus recognized his emancipation! Thomas would continue to lead the vagabond life of a student, but alone: if the opportunity offered itself, he would
ask
to
come back and
at Zurich.' Paulus
services requisition the
of a few greenhorns.
fifteenth century the student was not submitted to an to a scholastic hierarchy. But this extra-corporate disciplinary authority, resources. Either he lived near did not mean that he was left to his
Thus before the
own
a school at his
he had been apprenticed a school
or else he lived with another family to whom with a contract stipulating that he should go to
own home,
- a Latin school of
course.
He
then entered those associations,
which by means of pious or joyous corporations or confraternities,
SCHOLASTIC
252
LIFE
bouts or banquets, nourished practices, by religious worship, drinking the feeling of their community of life. Or else the young pupil followed the older student, sharing his life in good fortune and bad, and often, in return, being beaten and exploited. In either case the student belonged to a society or to a band of friends in which a sometimes brutal but none the less real
comradeship governed
his
everyday
life,
much more
than did
the school and his master, and, because it was recognized by public opinion, had a moral value. From the end of the Middle Ages, this system of comradeship aroused growing opposition in influential circles, and the system went on deterior-
of being disorderly and ating steadily until it finally gave the impression anarchical. In its absence, schoolboys and students were organized on
new
of authoritarian hierarchy. Admittedly this evolution was not peculiar to childhood it extended to the whole of society, and the establishment of monarchical absolutism was one aspect of it. But at school it produced - or followed - a change parallel to the concept of childhood which is of particular interest to us. principles
:
We
are
now
going to follow the progress of these
new
disciplinary
principles.
They originally manifested themselves in a reluctance to tolerate the students' traditional customs of comradeship and self-government. Indeed
we
scarcely
know
these customs, especially at the
end of the Middle
and limit them when they Ages, except through texts which criticize cannot ban them. This disapproval appeared quite early on in Church circles: we find it in Robert de Coupon's thirteenth-century reformation of the University of Paris. These churchmen represented an outlook a technical, technocratic attitude, a Cartesian foreign to their times: of love a order, regularity, classification, hierarchy, organization. spirit, Their first success consisted in relegating to the domain of minor pastimes
those
communal customs which medieval man regarded as an essential life. Even at the beginning of the seventeenth century, certain
part of his
indications bore witness to their long survival, in spite of the hostility of of the authorities as a whole. the and,
pedagogues
generally speaking,
of the town of La Fleche had to take into account the walls of a large student population attracted by the within their presence were taken (as they are today in garrison Jesuit college; special measures towns or prohibited areas), specifying a certain number of prohibitions -
The
authorities
THE PROGRESS OF DISCIPLINE
253
forbidding prostitutes to reside in the town, tavern-keepers to serve students, students to carry arms, etc. Among these prohibitions we find: 'The aforesaid students are forbidden to elect any duke, attorney, or
High Court of Dijon forbade the form any assembly or monopoly among themselves, or to 17 elect an abbot, prior or any other leader and supporter of debauchery*. It was the whole traditional corporate organization, even that of the 18 'nations* which was still allowed elsewhere, that was condemned here. At the same time, the reformation of the University of Paris by Henri IV and all forms of compotado. finally abolished the traditional banquets As early as the fifteenth century, at the same time as they fought against leader
of a
nation.' Similarly in 1623 the
students 'to
the
student
traditions
of corporate
solidarity,
these
reformers and
of childhood and enlightened organizers tried to spread a new concept its education. Gerson and Cardinal d'Estoutcville are of this state of mind. In Cardinal d'Estouteville's opinion, children belong to an etas infirma 19 hi his view requires 'greater discipline and stricter principles'. the schoolmasters, the principales, are no longer the first among their
which
comrades. They are distinct from the infirmi in their charge. Their duty does not consist solely in communicating knowledge, as elders instructing
young companions; they must
also
and above
minds, inculcate virtues, educate as well did not appear so explicitly in the earlier
as
all
mould
their pupils'
instruct. This preoccupation
texts.
These pedagogues are responsible for their charges' souls: monetnus omncs et singulos pedagogos presentes et futures... ut sic intendant regimini et scolarium. It is a matter of conscience for suorum domesticorum
pueromm
to choose their colleagues, the other masters and submonitores, et doctos; to use their powers of punishment judiciously vires bonos, graves for this is a matter of the salvation of souls, without
them
:
culpable indulgence,
for
are responsible before God: ne eorum damnationem. ideas appear at the same time: the notion of the weakness
which they
Two new
of childhood and the concept of the moral responsibility of the masters. The disciplinary system which they postulate could not take root in the old medieval school, where the master took no interest in his pupils' conduct out of class - or if he did, it was not in his capacity as a leader, but as an elder, in die context of the corporations or confraternities and thirteenth century, when a student was their festivities. In the early
was informed and went to identify him, to remove him from the provost's jurisdiction and enable him to benefit 20 However, in 1289, every student had from the arrested in Paris, his master
university's privileges. on the matricula
to be registered
of his master.
SCHOLASTIC
254
LIFE
Then, in the fourteenth century, it became necessary to belong to a The organization of these nations' was the first attempt a systematic regimentation of the students. It resembled the spontaneous *
*
nation' as well. at
of students and had the same corporate structure; in all was originally just a corporation of students from the same probability region: community of origin was keenly felt, and some college statutes must be separated, for fear stipulate that students from the same region of brawls between ethnic groups. The attorney of a nation was elected associations
it
like the principal
of an association of
scholars.
He
gradually acquired a
authoritarian character, however. In the early fifteenth century he wielded disciplinary powers, at least in theory, over his nation. The reformation of 1452 ratified the attorneys' right of search and punishment
more
in the colleges
and pedagogicas of the University of Paris.
the efforts of the reformers, the corporate nature of the Despite medieval nation did not lend itself to this concentration of power in the all
hands of
its
elected attorneys.
The new
discipline
would be introduced
by means of the already modern organization of the colleges and and the masters pedagogicas providing full tuition, where the principal were ceasing to be prim/ inter pares to become the repositories of a superior and hierarchical government of the authority. It was the authoritarian rather
from the fifteenth century, would establishment and development of an increasingly colleges which, as
make
possible the
strict
disciplinary
system.
This system was distinguished by three principal characteristics: constant supervision, informing raised to the level of an institution and a principle of government, and the extended application of corporal
punishment.
of Navarre College 21 Already in 1315 the statutes of the grammar school laid down the principle that no puer (it was probably the child of about ten who was meant) should go out alone. If there was an urgent reason lectio or a sermon outside the college) and if neither of the two masters (a
could accompany him, they were to give the boy a good companion, bonum puerum sodum, of dependable character, to accompany him. And for fear that they were to take care to change this companion frequently, the two boys should plot some turpefactum together. The same pre-
occupation
is
to be
found in Gerson's Doctrina pro pueris ecdesiae parisiensis, choir-school. One of the two masters must
the regulations for a
THE PROGRESS OF DISCIPLINE
<
255
accompany and watch the children: 'Both at school and outside, wherever 2* they may happen to go.' This supervision was doubtless monastic in origin. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, it must have been confined to the grammar schools, the youngest pupils: student freedom preserved the older ones from it. But in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it became one of the essential principles of education. The Jesuits laid great stress on the need for vigilance on the part of the masters, particularly in the regulations for their boarding-schools. At La Fleche, at the time fixed for the pupils to relieve themselves, 'one of the masters shall stand downstairs in the
boarders' latrines and shall not retire until
all
the boarders have left/ 23
No
doubt the old principle of supervision had never before been so systemit incumbent on atically applied, and the authors of the regulations felt them to justify it: *Do not complain, gentlemen, if a great many masters and other people never let you out of their sight. This eternal vigilance is 24 However, it cannot have been very embarrassing but it is necessary/ efficient in the huge day-schools of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which sometimes numbered several hundred pupils. That is one of the reasons why the pedagogues of Port-Royal criticized the big colleges and fewer preferred smaller schools, in which the masters, entrusted with of schools the little pupils, could watch them more closely. However, the where Port-Royal were exceptions, and costly exceptions too, a general rule, a single master had pupils' parents paid very high fees. As
huge classes. He could not exercise the constant supervision of some of required of him, even in school, without enlisting the help in modern the assumed the his own pupils. Whence college importance by informing, which had been unknown in the Middle Ages. At Our Lady's School, Gerson made it the little grammarian's duty to report the schoolmate (suum socium) whom he caught speaking French to look after
cursing, offending against decency or in bed the morning, missing the recitation of the modesty, dawdling 25 in church. If he failed to report his schoolor canonical hours, talking had if he as committed the offences himself. be he would mate, punished in this way to the level of a principle seemed the only raised Informing way for die masters to control every moment of the lives of their pupils, (Gallicum),
lying,
swearing, in
who were
henceforth regarded
as
incapable of behaving themselves: the duty of watching and
The authorities soon stopped imposing infirmi. reporting on all and sundry, however. From duty was confined
the sixteenth century on,
to certain pupils chosen by the masters to help them. Hitherto the pupils of a school had been more or less governed by
this
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
256
comrades whom they had elected. It was still pupils who carried out the in the college, but henceforth they held their physical and moral duties
from the master whose delegates they were. Their authority was sanctioned by their right to inform, failing the to the masters. This was the monitor right to punish, which was confined
authority from above,
system.
monitor was called the excitator. 26 There was a single -a excitator publicus, chosen from the last arts class philosophy student - and as many the dormitories toured and boarders the who woke exdtatores particulars as there were classes. Elsewhere he was called the custos or the asinus. Thomas Platter was a 27 'It is the custom [in England] in custos at Myconius's school at Zurich.
At Montaigu
this
28 At or asini... to supervise the pupils/ to excitator the Eton in 1560, every form had its custos, similar particulars at Montaigu. The masters also chose eighteen praepositores from among the bigger pupils: four had to find out who was absent from the single schoolroom; four supervised the dormitory, two the services in the one the movements in the hall; two were responsible for the
the schools to appoint
custodies
chapel,
oppidani,
the
i.e.
the paying boarders
housework and
who were
not scholars, and one for
29
cleaning. At Geneva, in Cordier's college, they were called observers or nomen80 Cordier cites as a model in his And die good pupil, clators. the observer to was by reporting the troublehelp supposed dialogues, makers: 'We dined in the room, sitting quietly and making no murmur
whom
whom
or
I heard laughing foolishly I gently reproved those I told the observer about those or in vain paid frolicking; speaking no attention to warning so that he should take note of them . The
or noise;
who
my
.
.
master walked up and down the middle of the room, holding a book and to take note of those who played the fool frequently telling the observer While we were finishing dinner, die last bell was rung, each of us picked the register of each up his books, and we went into the common room, class was read out according to custom, those who were present answered to their name, I answered too, and the absentees were recorded on the . . .
nomenclators' registers/ At the end of the week the observers gave the list of delinquents to the master who judged and punished. In the eighteenth century, at the Jesuit college at Mauriac which Marmontel attended, the first in the class was die 'censor': his special task was supervising the class in the master's absence, during what would later be called preparation. The principle of informing and the monitorial system were considered
facing above:
A CLASS by Crispin de Pas
oanftuitrip grlflirn troiwni uno jn<. bfUarff brr t)at)n-otr tuttf temitl
ourtj
-tow itlrrr
Ira
to
urn riu 5imJi4m ion
in norfi
0m
fajmiaftm
>ftl)tr bir
ftmsra kafant
uiir griupElisj* jft
fllrr:
a! tira
nnlrtrrDfruorail'fwi brgnffrn
won im
rai grunlir
^
tiiiril
rr raag
USB
m Urn nrifa R% tiinrin.ttHlJjw'p
Mraftouiura'
uni
.
rarrttui
nod) i)ra
i
toio
ind imfr ra ftrrr vui
THE PROGRESS OF DISCIPLINE
257
to be so effective that in the early eighteenth century St Jeaii-Baptiste dc La Salle, despite his distrust of certain practices current in his time -
corporal punishment for instance adopted them without hesitation and without any qualms of conscience. In his rules for Christian schools, 31 discipline
happening
is
based on informing. 'As the master cannot see what is Brother Director [who
in the street outside the school, the
supervised the pupils' movements] shall order certain pupils to notice in the following streets, especially those where there are
what happens
faithful report of what they have without speaking, or they will must notice However, be punished or given some penance to perform for having spoken/ Inside the little school, Inspectors' are instructed to report what they have seen to the master 'in private and in a whisper*. The inspector in his turn is to be spied on by two 'supervisors' unknown to him: 'There shall be supervisors in every district and large street who shall observe what
a great noticed.
many
pupils,
and to give a
the pupils
happens and promptly report it to the master.' are a long way here from the modern dislike of 'sneaking' which is shared by masters and pupils. And yet even then many pupils must have detested this duty which opposed them to their companions, though
We
without
their opinion troubling the pedagogues' conscience. In Cordier's dialogues a master calls out: 'Hey, Martin, go and bring me five public observers whom I appointed yesterday for this month [they were
apparently changed every month].' '
However much
The master then
preaches this
little
proud and ignorant may consider this duty [of observer] to be vile and abject, you may none the less be sure that your office is honourable and holy.' 32
sermon
to
them
:
the
Linked with the system of supervision and informing was an increasingly strict penal code, based on corporal punishment. In the associations and colleges of the Middle Ages, and as late as the fourteenth century (sometimes
punishments for
later
still,
but only rarely), the statutes laid
down
members who did not observe them or whose way of
something to be desired. These punishments consisted of either a round of drinks or else a fine (which could also contribute to improve the meal). The statutes included a scale of charges. We have already seen cases where a mug of wine had to be bought for the culprit's companions. Cases of pecuniary punishments are common: at Seez in 1425 (a late date), the juvenes were forbidden to go out alone, except in certain life left
i
facing: A
SCHOOL SIGN by Holbein;
above:
An
Mow: A
evening school for adults
little
school for children
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
258
under pain of a fine of four deniers. 38 At Navarre College, if a boy spent a night out he was fined two and a half sous. At Harcourt College in 1311, the pupils were forbidden to go drinking in a tavern under pain cases,
of a
fine
of six
deniers. 84
The severest punishment was
expulsion.
of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a evolution of was to substitute corporal punishment manners far-reaching for fines, an evolution parallel to that which established the absolute in the course
However,
authority of the college principal, and introduced informing, the monitorial system and the principle of constant supervision.
Corporal punishment could be imprisonment in a cell; there was a prison cell at Montaigu, but this was something of an exception. Generally
was a whipping the birch became the mark of the schoolof the grammar-school master, the symbol of the in which the master henceforth held his pupils and consequently subjection of the subjection into which the child had fallen: infirtnus. To the end of speaking,
master,
it
at
:
least
the fourteenth century, references to corporal punishment are extremely rare: and then there was nothing humiliating about corporal punishment it accorded with the monastic austerities depicted in the moralBibles or those with which the on themselves, as in saints inflicted izing the scene in the life of St Louis where the King is being scourged. From the fifteenth century on, the whip takes on a degrading, brutal character,
because
and becomes increasingly common. At first the birch was prescribed for the parvuli, the little grammarians. Gecson states that the master must 'threaten the children with the birch' so that 'for their sins the children know that they will be beaten with the birch', but only with the birch and 'not with rulers or other instruments of chastisement likely to cause dangerous injury'. 35 An early fifteenthcentury miniature depicts a punishment being inflicted: the victim, a boy thirteen, with his breeches undone just as far as is necessary,
of twelve or is
lying across a schoolmate's back, with another pupil holding his legs 36 Certain statutes of the early raising the birch to strike.
and the master
sixteenth century specify that the traditional fines are not applicable to the parv uli - e.g. at Tours College, 1540: 'These pecuniary punishments
do not concern the parvuli instead of these pecuniary punishments, we wish them to be birched for the same offence, but with moderation and without injuring them.' 37 A century earlier, no doubt, nobody would \
have thought of adding a qualification of this sort. Similarly the birch was substituted for fines in the punishment of die poorer pupils, even those
above the age of the parvuli, whereas their richer companions continued to be punished with fines. These poor pupils were sometimes the college
THE PROGRESS OF DISCIPLINE
'
259
who
for a long time were recruited from among the less for example, it was not until the seventeenth schoolboys: prosperous the at that Beauvais College stopped being picked from porter century a regular servant. 88 They could also be the scholars and became among servants,
the personal servants of richer schoolmates. According to Rashdall, the of the University of Vienna and of Queen's College, Oxford,
statutes
limited the birch to the poor pupils, though it is impossible to say whether 89 this was because they were regarded as insolvent or simply as inferior. their lay servants with the birch. In the late Middle feudal tradition submitted the villeins to corporal punishments Ages, as late as the seventeenth century still unknown in the public courts, and
The monks punished
made it the duty of the master to chastise his servants: we Moliere and La Fontaine what this chastisement consisted Stick. One has the feeling that the same evolution introduced
the moralists
know from of- Jack
the birch into both the schools and the penal code: under the ancien to which the courts sentenced rfegime it became one of the punishments
poor
offenders.
In the course of the fifteenth century, the birch was used for the the early sixteenth punishment of acts of violence. At Montaigu in fines or a diet of bread and century venial offences were punished with water, but anyone who laid violent hands on a thing or a person was or even expelled. 40 To begin with, scourged or imprisoned in the cell, neither parvuli nor poor were given corporal punishment pupils who were
only in cases of violence. But soon all these limitations disappeared. By the sixteenth century the birch had taken the place of the traditional pecuniary punishments, which had fallen into disuse, or which were revived simply for form's sake, out
of respect for the old texts. Corporal punishment had become the 'scholastic punishment' par excellence: it was by this name that it was referred to euphemistically. It was no longer practised only on the very of acts of violence. Henceforth it was young, the poor, and those guilty even the most advanced. That is the to all offences and all ages,
applied
As the English historian Rashdall has fourteenth century found the underof the the beginning pointed out, while the end a to did not who college, a free gentleman, belong graduate, of the fifteenth century left him a mere schoolboy not so much in 41 to a Germany as in Paris and at Oxford. He was schoolboy subjected essential point
the
same
of
this evolution.
discipline
as
the
little
adds that grammarian. Rashdall
it
was
of the colleges which brought about this revolution in its zenith in the sixteenth century. university discipline, which reached
the development
SCHOLASTIC
26O
LIFE
According to the same author, the 1509 statutes of Brasenose College, Oxford, were the first in England to reduce the arts student to the level of the little grammar-school boy; in the university colleges, tutors could order undergraduates to be whipped like grammar-school boys elsewhere.
Cambridge fixed eighteen as the age at which corporal was replaced by fines. Wolsey's statutes at Cardinal College punishment Caius's statutes at
took
this
age limit to twenty.
from the beginning of the sixteenth century, the birch was an enthusiasm which exceeded the provisions of the statutes. with applied Such at least was the case under Standonc-at Montaigu, 42 where the In France,
statutes did
not explicitly prescribe the susceptio disciplinae except as a for acts of violence. But contemporaries tell us that Standonc
punishment 'had those he caught out whipped, and pupils guilty of serious offences were stripped in front of the whole community and beaten until they bled'.
Also in the sixteenth century, writers would often recall with some memories of their captive childhood. Montaigne's recollections
bitterness
known, and should be linked with what we know about 43 Montaigu. About 1560, Thomas Tusser told how: are well
From Powles
I
went, to Aeton sent
To learne straightwayes the Latin phraise Where fiftie three stripes given to mee at once
I
had.
of the same period refer to school as a 'place of almost the same expression as Montaigne. This execution', using was to not confined schoolboys: 1'Estoile tells how one day in brutality two had hundred pages and lackeys whipped at the 'the to 1583 King up
Other English
texts
44
[note the familiarity between the pages, who were and the valets] because they had imitated the procession of the penitents in the lower hall of the Louvre.' 45 In the seventeenth century this repressive ardour cooled down some-
Louvre
in Paris
courtiers' sons,
what. But the birch (applied in public,
at least in the Jesuit colleges, by a corrector - one of the older pupils appointed for this purpose, because the ratio did not allow the Fathers to punish offenders with their own
hands) remained the scholastic punishment, inflicted on one and all without regard to differences in age. The records of the time are full of
examples of young people between sixteen and twenty who were sentenced to a whipping, and, generally speaking, we know only the
of recalcitrant offenders. At Aix-en-Provence in 1646 a philosopher and a humanist were both given a whipping. 46 At Orleans in 1672 a
cases
THE PROGRESS OP DISCIPLINE
26l
who stirred up his class against the master of the birch -a mild punishment. In 1634 at 47 Dijon pupils in the logic class were given the same punishment. The Jesuits' ratio specifies the conditions in which punishment was to be meted out. The 1624 regulations of the College de Bourgogne, a school restricted to scholars already versed in grammar, and capable of being instructed in logic and philosophy', threaten them with 'deprivation of their allotment [the old with or fine] corporal punishment'. As late as the seventeenth century, Marmontel left the rhetoric class at Mauriac 48 College to escape from the corrector. twenty-year-old rhetorician
was given three
strokes
*
The history of discipline from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century enables us to make two important points. First,
a humiliating disciplinary system - whipping at the master's and spying for the master's benefit -was substituted for a
discretion
corporate form of association which remained the same for both young pupils and other adults. Admittedly this evolution was not peculiar to childhood, and in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries corporal punishment became widespread at the same time as an authoritarian,
concept of society. Even so, there between the discipline applied to children and that applied to adults, a difference which did not exist to the same degree in the Middle Ages. Among the adults, not all were subjected to corporal punishment people of quality escaped it, and the way in which
hierarchical
-
remained an
in a
word,
absolutist
essential difference
:
the social classes. On the other discipline was applied helped to distinguish hand all children and youths, whatever their rank, were subjected to the same disciplinary system and were liable to be birched. This does not mean that there were no class distinctions in the scholastic world. They existed there as elsewhere, and they were just as pronounced. But the degrading character of corporal punishment for high-born adults did not prevent them from applying it to their children. It even became a feature
of the new attitude to childhood.
The second phenomenon
revealed
by our
analysis
is
the extension of
the use of the birch to pupils of all ages: confined at first to the youngest children, it was extended after the sixteenth century to the whole school
which often approached and sometimes passed the age of to diminish the distinctions twenty. There was therefore a tendency to between childhood and adolescence, push adolescence back towards
population,
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
262
childhood by subjecting it to an identical discipline. Inside the school world, the adolescent was separated from the adult and confused with the child, with whom he shared the humiliation of corporal punishment,
meted out to villeins. Thus a childhood prolonged into an adolescence from which it was The barely distinguished was characterized by deliberate humiliation. whole of childhood, that of all classes of society, was subjected to the degrading discipline imposed on the villeins. The concept of the separate nature of childhood, of its difference from the world of adults, began with the elementary concept of its weakness, which brought it down to the chastisement
the level of the lowest social strata.
insistence on humiliating childhood, to mark it out and improve diminished in the course of the eighteenth century, and the history
The it,
of school
follow the evolution discipline enables us to
of the collective
conscience in this respect. It is interesting to compare the ways in which the change occurred in England and France. The starting-point in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
was the same: absolute power for
the master, informing and corporal punishment. Starting in the eighteenth in the two countries, century, the situation would alter in different ways
which determined its evolution
despite the similarity of the moral principles In France, public opinion showed a dislike for the scholastic system of a dislike which led to the suppression of the system about 1763, .
discipline,
when
the authorities took advantage of die condemnation of the Jesuits
to reorganize the school system. The historian of the Brothers
of Christian Doctrine, H. Rigault, of the first little schools (the model for for one the regulations quotes those of St Jean-Baptiste de La Salle), at Moulins, at the beginning of the 49
eighteenth century.
The
regulations give instructions
on
the adminis-
of the birch: the child must be beaten harder if he screams. Why? His cries stir up the neighbourhood: 'The children begin to enjoy it and scream loudly in the hope that this will exempt them from the punishment, and this is why the people who live near the schools and those tration
and imagine that those who are passing by in the street make a great fuss serious are chastised injury/ Rigault sees here an admission suffering being that already at the beginning of the eighteenth century, there were a *
good many opponents of this system of brutal repression/ St Jeanone of them. He did not ban the birch, but he Baptiste de La Salle was
THE PROG&J^S OF DISCIPLINE recommend
did not
it:
weakness. For the birch
even
when
it
corrects,
'The birch
is
used only out of bad temper or
a servile punishment,
is
if
indeed
it
263
corrects,
which degrades the soul for
its
usual effect
is
to harden/ 50
Thus the servile and degrading character of corporal was no longer regarded as suitable for the weakness of punishment childhood. The idea began to spread that childhood was not a servile age, and that it did not deserve to be methodically humiliated. This revulsion, aroused here by the punishment of little schoolboys, became even more pronounced in regard to older pupils. Little by little it became customary not to whip rhetoricians any more. In 1748, at Schlestadt in Alsace, eight schoolboys violated the Jewish cemetery. At the mayor's request, the rector sentenced them to the poena scholastica. Rather than submit to it in public, in accordance with the customary
public ritual, they
left
the college.
A
century
watch would have brought them back by
earlier,
the officers of the
force, but
now
the
mayor
sorry for them, appealed to the rector on their behalf and secured a mitigation of their punishment: the culprits would not be whipped. At about the same time, at Mauriac College, where Marmontel was a pupil, felt
the prefect still sent his charges to the corrector for punishment; 51 but certain masters no longer agreed with this practice. One laid down the principle that rhetoricians should not be whipped. This was Rollin's view too. When, in 1762, after the suppression of the Jesuits, Louis-le-Grand was turned into a sort of model college,
corporal punishment was abolished; the 1769 regulations give the reason same reason that Jean-Baptiste de La Salle advanced:
for this change, the
52 Nearly everywhere in France, the they 'degrade and do not correct'. traditional poena scholastica was abandoned, never to be revived. At Vendome College in 1770, 'the master was dismissed for using the ferule
on the
At the
rhetoricians.'
the
little
About
63
the old practices of informing were dropped. Already schools at Port-Royal and Jansenist tradition avoided them.
same time
1700,
methods. 64
It
new
college of Sainte-Barbe adopted Port-Royal's suppressed corporal punishment, the medieval principles
the
of emulation adopted by the hated Jesuits, and the institution of the observer. What is more, at the weekly meeting of the masters at which they fixed punishments, a 'champion* of the pupils was present and defended his schoolmates.
imposed
itself
An
entirely different spirit appears here. It after 1763, and on the whole French
on Louis-le-Grand
educational system. The abolition of the observers brought about a reformation of the
SCHOLASTIC
264
LIFE
Without their monitors, the masters could not remain so few in number. If the schools in the Jansenist tradition dispensed with little monitors, it was because they adopted the costly formula of the teaching body.
schools of Port-Royal: eight or ten children to one master, a luxury formula. In the colleges the teaching staff was increased and hierarchized examination was created in 1766 for this purpose, and at the :
agrtgation
bottom of the ladder the pupil monitors were replaced by assistant masters. This was the origin of the usher, sometimes called the master the
*
of conduct'. 65 reformation of the disciplinary system simply correspond in the world of childhood to the progress of liberal ideas? That explanation would be both too simple and too general. For if the birch was dropped
Did
this
it was adopted by the army, where corporal punishment, the Great's army but also from those of the Frederick from copied sanction. Probably the discipline in the Georges, became a systematic first industrial workshops too was fairly grim, even without corporal
by the
colleges,
punishment. relaxation of the old scholastic discipline corresponded to someelse: to a new orientation of the concept of childhood, which was
The thing
with the idea of the weakness of childhood and no for its humiliation. Henceforth it was a longer recognized the need in the child an adult sense of responsibility and question of awakening was not so much opposed to the adult (although he dignity. The child was clearly distinguished from the adult in everyday life) as prepared for could not be carried out brutally and at one adult life. This
no longer
associated
stroke.
called for careful, gradual conditioning. This
preparation
It
concept of education which would triumph
was the new
m the nineteenth century.
In England this concept of education appeared much later. In its educational records, the eighteenth century in England appears as a
became increasingly common. period of violence and brutality. 'Flogging' historian of Winchester College, H. Cook, in the the to According seventeenth century pupils were flogged only on Saturday, 'the bloody 66 Later they were flogged every day. George III, meeting a boy day'. from Eton in the course of a walk near Windsor, asked him: 'Well, well,
my boy, when were you flogged last, eh, eh?'
mixed up
his lists
It is
said that Keates,
beginning of the nineteenth century, one flogging day, and whipped the boys who turned
the headmaster of
Eton
at the
THE PROGRJBSS OF DISCIPLINE up for Holy Communion.
It
so free with their hands had
265
,
should be added that these masters
who were
some
always on
fearful ruffians to deal with,
the verge of revolt. Stories of the time give an impression of reformatories where the most brutal punishments could not succeed in taming youths
addicted to the foulest vices. There was a great deal of this punishment in the French colleges of the sixteenth century, but the reforms carried
Oratorians and the universities made possible the of a application discipline of violence and humiliation within very moderate limits during the seventeenth century. Nothing of the sort happened in England: Tom Browns Schooldays gives one some idea of the
out by the
Jesuits, the
conditions obtaining at Rugby in the early nineteenth century. A reformation was called for: it came at the end of the first third of the nineteenth century, and
it
was
carried out
by Thomas Arnold,
the headmaster
of
Rugby. This reformation was inspired by the same principles as the French
reformation of the 17605; the idea of awakening the man in the child. But the English schools did not adopt a single one of the French methods.
The English
schools preserved the old discipline - corporal punishment
and the monitorial system, which had been abolished they
was
managed retained,
it
to
change
its
spirit
in France - but
completely. For example, if the birch as a punishment but above all as an
was no longer simply
instrument of education, an opportunity for the boy being flogged to exercise self-control, the
first
duty of the English gendeman.
in dissociating Similarly, the English educational reformers succeeded the practices of informing from the monitorial system. Contrary to the opinion of certain English historians, anxious to stress the novelty of the
reforms instituted in the 18308, the monitors of the nineteenth century were no different from the praepositores of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
But they no longer had a duty
to inform
on
their
schoolmates -
the practice could not be tolerated in a young gentleman. Curiously after the larger schools enough, the smaller schools, which were affected
Tom Brown's time to had which already disappeared at Rugby. But if encourage informing, continued to act as assistants the monitors had they stopped informing, to what was still a very small teaching body. It was felt in fact that this of command could foster a sense of authority and its early by
the educational reformation, continued in
experience
However, how could he assert was deprived of the sanction which consisted in reporting them to the masters? This is why he was of direct punishment which former granted in compensation a right leader of men. responsibilities in a future his authority over his schoolmates if he
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
266
him to have. Henceforth the monitor himself on any schoolmate he caught out, and the punishment
usage had never allowed inflicted a flogging
was covered by the There is no need that in
England
hierarchy. to pursue this comparison any further. as in France, despite the different methods
countries, the changes in the scholastic discipline of a new attitude to childhood.
I
tried to
show
a
little
earlier
how
marked
We
can see
of the two
the appearance
the liberalism of the scholastic
system in the eighteenth century was the product of a new concept of childhood. One might imagine that this liberalism, the liberalism of a
man
with the general ideas of the time, would have on and spreading gone growing. But in fact nothing of the sort happened, and by the early nineteenth century scholastic discipline had abandoned like Rollin, in tune
the liberal tradition obtaining at the end of the ancien regime and even during the revolutionary period, in order to adopt regimental methods and
a barrack-room style which were to last a long time, almost to the end of the century. As is well known, Napoleon I felt strongly on the need to
impose on secondary education the principles of exactness and sub-
ordination derived from military discipline principles which, incidentally, were probably better observed under the Empire in the lycees than in :
the army! It was thought at the time that military discipline had special educational virtues, and this idea, after 'many vicissitudes, whose history
Raoul Girardet has recorded, would reappear in France in the opinions of right-wing circles in the late nineteenth century, just as it was being abandoned by the official pedagogues. Without discipline,' Napoleon *
extremely difficult to organize with any precision the and policing of the establishment.' The result was that government habits were introduced into French school life which remained unknown in England, and which in France were not confined to the creations of the Napoleonic educational system. In spite of the dislike felt by the ecclesiastical hierarchy for this militarization, institutions of religious origin, such as the little seminaries, adopted certain of these habits: the use used to say,
'it is
of the whistle, moving about in squares, lining up in columns, and solitary confinement, for nobody dared to revive the corporal
sometimes
punishments
inflicted before 1763.
At Louis-le-Grand, resisted
the regimental character of the disciplinary system every change of regime and opinion; protests from the pupils
THE PROGRESS OF DISCIPLINE
<
267
amounted
at times to mutiny, until at last in 1890 new regulations abolished the prison-cell and the Napoleonic system which had lasted nearly a century. As Dupont-Ferrier, the historian of Louis-le-Grand, remarks, the school then reverted to the situation under Rollin in the
eighteenth century.
The liberalism of the eighteenth century was therefore offset by a contrary influence, which obtained a partial triumph, and which imposed a semi-military condition on the school population. This tendency cannot be attributed to It went back
entirely Napoleon. distant source: during the whole of the second half of the eighteenth century, one can trace the rise of the military idea, at the
in fact to a
same time entirely
more
as that
new:
till
of the
liberal idea, inside
school
then, the only institutions
life.
This was something
which had
left their
mark on
the school had been ecclesiastical, and even monastic. The military had been the last to submit to the complete and of school classes, regular cycle and in the seventeenth century the post-scholastic academies had had to
be created for them to colleges.
But
fill
the gap
after the suppression
left by the classical instruction of the of the Jesuits, part of the educational
system, systematically reorganized, copied the methods of the military schools founded at the same period, and education as a whole took on
something of a military character.
The Jesuit
college at
Tournon became
a military school (like that at
La
Fleche) under the Oratorians. Here we can recognize a strange mixture of a Rollinesque liberalism and a Bonapartist militarism. The pupils were drilled in of offenders had to a wear sort of twenty-four squads
homespun
;
and were kept in detention. Those pupils who, at the end of the year, were admitted to the cole Militaire - an ancestor of the modern Saint-Cyr - were given a hat with a cockade and a uniform. Others were immediately posted to regiments. 57 This tendency was not
fatigue dress
confined to public institutions with foundation revenue such as Tournon. For instance, at Rouen after 1762, some new private schools were
opened
whose pupils were dressed in a uniform which was no longer the clerical robe of the poor scholars of the seventeenth century, but an imitation of the uniform worn by army officers they were taught less Latin too and more 'modern* and mathematics. The old ;
subjects
history,
geography
masters deplored these changes. In the opinion of one of them, quoted by Beaurepaire, 'this sumptuous education amounts to nothing more than
giving the children a sort of military uniform, putting them under arms,
and
68 drilling all these youngsters indiscriminately/
Thus, long before the Napoleonic lycee, the French school, or at
least
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
268 that
which corresponded
military character. This
to the present-day secondary school, took on a change doubtless corresponded to the position
which the army was beginning to assume in society, which it was to lose in France at the Restoration, only to resume it after an interval of half a century under the Second Empire, and which it has never lost in central Europe. Officer status tended at this time to become confused with the concept of nobility: army uniform became the official dress of kings and princes, as E. G. Leonard has shown. In these circumstances it was natural that the education of boys of good family should take on a military character. Even in the English public schools, which managed to resist this change, new names were used to denote the hierarchy of the monitors - names such as captain and corporal this was obviously a fundamental tendency of the sensibility of the time. There was something else too, more relevant to the ages of life. The new interest shown in the officer and the soldier brought about a vague but definite correlation between early adolescence and the typical soldier. The conscript was no longer the rascally and often prematurely aged trooper of seventeenthcentury Dutch and Spanish paintings; he became the handsome young :
soldier depicted
by Watteau.
The medieval school made no distinction between the child and the adult. The college at the beginning of modern times had merged adolescence and childhood in the same scholastic system. In the eighteenth century, the officer and the soldier were to introduce into sensibility the
new
notion of adolescence: a Cherubin in uniform, but a more virile Cherubin. This notion of adolescence was to bring about a major transformation of education: the pedagogues henceforth attributed a moral value to
uniform and discipline. in school, resulted in an
The
correlation
emphasis on
of the adolescent and the
soldier,
characteristics such as toughness
and
and which henceforth were virility which had hitherto been neglected valued for themselves. A new concept had appeared, though as yet in embryonic form, a concept distinct from that of childhood the concept :
of adolescence.
VI
>
*
FROM DAY-SCHOOL TO BOARDING-SCHOOL
T
ODAY we know only three categories of education: individual education by tutors (which was more common in the bourgeois nineteenth century), and two types of collective education, the
day-school and the boarding-school.
One might
imagine that individual tuition was bound to have been
the society of the ancien regime, whose aristocratic make-up and isolated country residences would have favoured it. This was not
adopted by the case.
Not
that the idea did
not
exist:
on the contrary,
it
was
to be
found in pedagogical literature from the Renaissance to the eighteenth century, from Erasmus to Rousseau, in texts which constantly presented individual tuition as the best of educations. However, it sometimes happened that the authors of these theoretical discussions preferred small tutorial classes of ten pupils at the most to individual tuition. Small tutorial classes were held for a very short period in the little schools of Port-Royal and
later at Saintc-Barbe.
In fact this literature, rich though it was, had no influence on either manners or institutions. Some modern historians, not realizing that no
connection existed between attribute
more importance
this
literature
and actual
to Erasmus, Rabelais or
practice,
often
Port-Royal than to
the Jesuits or the Oratonans! Under the ancien regime, until the midat home stopped before the age of eighteenth century at least, education
only boys in France who did not go to such as the Condes went to college, blood of the college. Even princes institution educational which was the only open to all. to common parlance, but in the True, the word belonged ten, except for the King's sons, the
*
preceptor'
and seventeenth centuries it was not taken to mean a master who took the place of school and thus spared his pupil the promiscuity and discipline that went with school life. The word 'preceptor* was used sixteenth
in
two senses. The preceptor could be an
the same (the valet was of chosen by rich parents foster-brother) pupil's their children to school where he shared their life and older
companion
the age, and was sometimes to
accompany and watched over them, protected them, helped them. He did
studies,
not take the place of school, but supplemented 269
it
and
in particular offered
SCHOLASTIC
27O
LIFE
protection against the physical or moral clangers which remained in school life as a result of the many survivals of medieval liberty. An
engraving by Crispin de Pas of the early seventeenth century shows us the child, accompanied by his preceptor, taking leave of his family: they are about to set off, their double bags slung over their shoulders, leaving the family standing at the door; along the road they are going to take, other boys - with or without preceptors - are heading in a group towards the
same
1
goal.
'My father', says H. de Mesmes, born in 1532, 'gave me as a preceptor Maludan, a disciple of Dorat's, a learned man chosen for the innocence of his life and of a suitable age to guide my youth until I was able to govern myself as he did ... He left his post only when I started my career with him and my younger brother ... I was sent to the College de Bourgogne.' 2 Similarly, the future Marechal de Bassompierre, born
J.
. . .
was accompanied to Freiburg College by a preceptor, a dancing master and a writing-master - not counting the valets. 8 But the same name, 'preceptor', was given to a college master to
in 1589,
whom children were entrusted as boarders. At the College des Grassins, according to Lomenie de Brienne, born in 1636, 'my brother and I had as master, and preceptor as well, M. Le Haulx, the vice-principal of the who
took special care college, uses 'preceptor' as a synonym
of our education.' 4 In his Francion, Sorel of 'master': 'Preceptors are people who
almost from the plough to the rostrum, servants who use a few owe their master to pursue their own
come
hours of teaching which they studies
As
between day-boys and boarders, that too was today. Generally speaking, it can be said that the
for the distinction
not the same
as
it is
boarding-school as
we know
it
rarely existed: in the Jesuit colleges, the
pupils whose life was most like that of our boarders were called convictores. The concept of the day-school was clearer and more widespread, because it corresponded to the most common practice. However, the
terminology varied. Jn the Jesuit colleges externi denoted pupils outside who were not scholastici; the day-boys or non-residents
the Society, those
were
called auditores.
However,
we know from
Sorel that at Lisieux
College the term 'day-boy' (externe) was already used as a synonym of the old term 'old fogy' (galoche): the same pupil is mentioned within a
few
lines as
an
externe
and a galoche. 6
In fact, instead of the clearly defined categories of present-day education - boarder and day-boy there existed a whole range of ways of life which I shall now try to distinguish and classify. It should then be possible
FROM DAY-SCHOOL TO BOARDING-SCHOOL to see
how
271
the classic boarding-school system of the nineteenth century earlier formulas.
took the pkce of the
The
simplest, but probably also the rarest, case was that of the family living fairly close to a Latin school or a college. Vives's dialogues show us the scene: the maidservant helping the child to get dressed, and the
goodbye to his parents. He is given his lunch-basket: 'a piece of bread with some butter on it or some dried figs or raisins'. Then he sets off for school. Sometimes he is given some little errands to run; thus he stops to ask an old woman he meets: *How much do you pay for your cherries ? She replies We buy them at six deniers a pound but why do you want to know?' And he answers: 'Because my sister told me to buy some this morning/ He dawdles on the embankment and plays at hopscotch and cards, with the result that he arrives late, when his 6
child going to say
*
'
:
schoolmates have already finished eating. 'Child/ says the master, 'by the time you arrive, everyone has already had supper/ In Cordier's dialogues, we have this conversation between two boys: 'I
had dinner
at half past eight/
'Why do you
have dinner so early?*
nearly always have dinner at that hour in summer. How about you?' 'We never have dinner before half past ten, or even eleven/ 'Why not earlier?' 'We have to wait for my father to get back from
'We
the court/ 'But can't your
mother give you your dinner before your
father prefers me to wait for him/ In another of Cordier's dialogues we have a pupil greeting his master: did 'Good day to you, master/ 'And to you, dear little Stephanio.
father returns?'
'Of course, but
7
my
When
morning?' 'Just before four o'clock, master/ 'You get you get up woke you up?' 'My brother/ 'Did you say your too early. up as soon 'As my brother had combed my hair, I said my prayers/ prayers?' this
Who
In the living conditions of the ancien regime, this category of pupils than a minority. The school Jiving at home could not represent more was not recruited only in the towns where the schools were
population to be found:
the country, and many pupils, it was largely drawn from clerics or nobles, lived too far the of or lords villeins, manor, villagers away to return home at night and to make the journey to school and back
on
foot every day. Consequently a great
many
pupils lived
away from
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
272
home,
either
lodgings
or servants, or in college premises, as boarders
on the
as
day-boys. those who lived
whom
on the college premises were some for the college had made provision right from the start: the scholars. They were called the pauperes at Montaigu in the sixteenth century, and also at
Among
Louis-le-Grand in the seventeenth. But soon the foundation scholarships were put to a different use. Either wealthy families as a result of their influence monopolized them (this happened in the English public schools, into nurseries for young gentlemen), turning foundations for poor scholars or else they were bought as offices, even by people who were not students, and notably by clerics who were thus able to enjoy the advantages of conducted by the High Court into Autun college life. In 1652 an inquiry scholars' association had become a middle-class the that revealed College 8 for about two hundred livres Scholarships were sold
boarding-house!
do not fulfil their obligations either in chapel or in schoolroom... and spend years without attending a single class/ their studies, or were supposed to have completed had
each: 'Most of the scholars
Many
completed them. Newcomers paid an entry-fee to scholars relinquishing their and scholar, has said that when he scholarships: 'Master Paul, priest obtained his scholarship the person who had held it before him extorted which were paid to the principal.' In these sixty crowns from him, circumstances the scholars could not be regarded as pupils: this was which did not provide a full course of true of those colleges particularly tuition and whose pupils had (in principle) to attend the classes at another
did. They gave the impression of being the principal's college which his subordinates, in so far as they took part in the than rather peers
communal life of the At Louis-le-Grand
establishment.
- when it was a Jesuit - the terms of foundation were strictly observed and the pauperes college were given the same treatment as the boarders: that is to say, the same treatment as the richer pupils, the same statute thus covering the richest and the However, the pauperes were distinguished from the other in the seventeenth century
poorest.
boarders by their dress, a dull grey cassock. scholars represented only an insignificant minority, whose importance lay only in the college statutes, which were originally drawn up for them alone. As we have seen, the colleges later recruited a much bigger
The
population.
Among
It is this
those
population that concerns
who
us.
lived in the college buildings, apart
from
the
defines as scholars, was the bigger group of 'boarders', whom Pasquier 9 of the the with or 'those who board with the master* college. principal
FROM DAY-SCHOOt TO BOARDING-SCHOOL Cordier's texts
show how envied they were:
10
*I
am
273
going to go into
college', says a pupil who therefore must be living out of school, coming in only for classes. 'What, to live in college?' 'Not to live there as a tenant and non-resident [two other ways of living in the college buildings
which
I shall
analyse later] but as a companion of yours and a boarder at The master's wife looks after their clothes and their
the master s table'
personal hygiene: 'Can't
you want
to
I
go out?' 'What
go home
for?'
'To go home.' 'What!
cannot have been
again?' (Home there so easily, yet far
far
away, for a
enough for him not to return go a but in as boarder). 'My mother told my every night college stay brother and me to go home today so that the chambermaid could clean our clothes/ 'Why? Have you got lice on you?' 'Yes, a lot.' 'Why didn't you tell my wife?' 'We didn't dare.' 'As if she would have minded! She has a chambermaid whose principal function is to keep you clean, and well you know it. But you are pleased to have this excuse for going to see your mother. You shall stay at school. I shall have your child to be able to
clothes cleaned tomorrow.'
In 1549 Baduel, the rector and founder of Mimes College, wrote to Seguier of Toulouse about his son: 'If you send me your son, I shall bring
commensals or boarders/ 11 He explained that consequently there was no need for a preceptor to accompany him: 'I do not know what companions [the preceptor was regarded as a companion rather than a master] or servants you are thinking of sending with him.
him up with
A
little
boy
my
enough for everything to do with his personal service often a foster-brother]. The rest, that is to say his education our concern/ The master assumed full responsibility for him. is
[the
little valet,
and
health,
is
This category of boarder in the principal's house was still to be found old-established colleges in the seventeenth century. But in the in
many
founded by new teaching orders such as the Jesuits or the Oratorians, the status of the boarders altered. It lost its character of a The boarders were no personal relationship between pupil and principal. but the college's, subject to a statute which laid the
colleges
longer
principal's their time-table
their movements, quite apart from the the pupils, including the day-boys. This but was system foreshadowed that of the modern boarding-school unusual at the time, being confined to a few privileged persons. The were not satisfied with a bed in a dormitory richer or better-born
down
restrictions
imposed on
and all
:
pupils
their own. This was the case with Conde. It they were given a room of was also the case with this relative of the Archbishop of Aix mentioned in the records of Aix College for 1731 'His Grace the Archbishop asked :
SCHOLASTIC
274
LIFE
room in college for the young Comte cTAgout, his sister's son, with a prefect [i.e. a preceptor chosen from among the college masters] and a valet. Master Cachard is to be the prefect. It was impossible not to give His Grace the first two rooms in the masters' gallery. But we had to have reasons as essential as those which we had to put ourselves to this incon-
for a
venience/ 12 In Geneva College, which Cordier describes, 18 apart from the master's boarders there were the 'tenants who hired rooms in college where they ate. Sometimes several tenants occupied one room; they attended the 1
classes, but were not subject to the discipline reserved for the master's boarders. 'The master caught us drinking on the sly,' says one of Cordier's * Where?' asks another. 'In Fluviaus's room.' 'Why did you pupils.
drinking together?' 'Those two are not boarders at our table. They had brought some delicacies from their house which I wish they
start
. And lost on the way seeing that I teach them sometimes [in these very big classes, certain pupils acted as unpaid tutors to their when I have the time to spare, they invited me last night
had
. .
schoolmates], after supper to this dinner today.' and the tenants, the college buildings also Finally, besides the boarders tienne Pasquier calls the cameristes, 'who are housed those whom
boarded by their pedagogues', 14 and Cordier the domestic pupils, lodged with the masters. 'Master,' says one of Cordier's pupils to the principal, 'there is nobody in the sixth class.' 'What's that! Where is Master know? Did one of his domestic Philip?' 'He is ill in bed.' 'How do you
come and tell you?' The masters who lived in
pupils
this was the college had private boarders: which the English public schools have kept to this day. We know from Sorel what the boarding-house of one of these masters was like. Francion's father wanted to send him to college: 'And since the colleges in our part of the country [Brittany] were not to his liking,
'tutorial system'
of my mother's complaints, having business in Paris, he took me and put me to board with a master at Lisieux College whom someone had recommended to him* -a man called Le Heurteur. 'My master was an impossibly proud and impertinent young man. He insisted on being called Hortensius', in the Roman fashion. He lived with his
in spite
there
whose front door gave on to the college courtyard, while another door gave on to the street. He 'acted as master in a few classes'. Some of the college's inmates enjoyed the status of scholar, but valet in a house
was not the case with Hortensius. His pupils, eight lodged in rooms or 'chambers'. Hortensius kept back 'the this
in
number,
greater part
FROM DAY-SCHOtft TO BOARDING-SCHOOL
275
of our boarding allowance and fed us on scraps'. 'For our first two meals at the mercy of a spiteful valet who, so as not to give us our out went for a on his master's instructions, just when they walk, pittance,
we were
were ordered,
much
so that that
should be saved and
we
should have to
'
wait until dinner-time, when we could not complain ... 15 Like the principal's 'boarders', these domestic pupils* were subject to the college's discipline and its comparative claustration. 'At that time,' *
says Francion, 'I was more closely confined than a monk in his cloister, and had to present myself for divine service, a meal or a lesson at the sound of the bell, which governed everything/
The
boarders, tenants, cameristes or servants
buildings and under
its
constant discipline,
who
lived in college, in
formed only a small
part
its
of
the school population. The great majority lived neither at home nor in college: they were in lodgings. 'Apart from these [the boarders and live in town and go 'cameristes]? says Pasquier, there are also pupils who *
whim takes them ... the We have seen that and the others galoches.' young the term galoche is also used by Sorel as a synonym of day-boy it was to fall into disuse in the course of the seventeenth century. Cordier calls these day-boys non-residents orforains. Sorel's Francion also speaks of 'one of to hear the lessons of one master or another as the
ones
we
call martinets
:
my friends who is a town pupil', a pupil living in town. This category, easily the biggest and the most characteristic of the school population as a whole, corresponded roughly to our modern day-boys, except for the fact that they lived in lodgings and not at home. Some made do with a little room in which they lived by themselves: they well have been the unhappiest of all. One of Cordier's boys comwake up in time: his landlord, a merchant and plains of being unable to
may
an old friend of his father's, had already gone out; the chambermaid was absent-minded; and his landlady, 'from early in the morning, when she is always busy with the children or thinking about household gets up, matters'.
He is alone and friendless. 'I cannot study as I would like on account of the great multitude of merchants who come to this house and make a noise all day.' His room is 'so close to the stairs that a cat cannot 'there is go up and down without my hearing some noise'. What more, is stored/ His father does not merchandise the where is a warehouse great 'because he has never been to school and understand his
complaints consequently cannot understand how people study'. either several to a room or Generally speaking, pupils lodged together, in the same lodging-house. In 1605, Canon Jacques de Baune writes in his
SCHOLASTIC
276
LIFE
*
were seven hundred pupils at Tournon, most of them from near-by provinces, but from the most distant 16 They were nearly all in lodgings: 'In the house where I lodged parts.' there were twenty of us* - twenty clerics, future prelates and canons, all very hard to please. 'Alexandre wanted me to give him some fish, and I had not had any.' The system of living in lodgings lasted until the last years of the ancien regime and sometimes a little longer. In 1734 Marmontel arrived at Mauriac to enter the fourth class in the Jesuit college: 'In accordance with the custom of the college, I was lodged with a worthy artisan of the town'. 17 There was a 'discipline exercised by die pupils on themselves*. 'The rooms brought together pupils from different classes, and among them the authority of age and talent brought order and discipline to both studies and manners.' 'We worked together round the same table.' The landlord provided lodging and heating, but only part of the food. memoirs,
there
nobles, not only
. . .
On market-days,
Cordier's school closed down to allow the pupils to go to the money which their parents would send them and collect shopping by means of people passing through the town. Are there many of you wanting to go out?' asks the master. 'Nearly all of us.' 'Why is that?' 'It is market-day today and consequently all of us want to buy something.' 'Go back to the market,' one pupil tells another. 'What, at this hour? There was such a crowd at the butcher's that I could scarcely get to his stall.' 'What sort of meat have you brought us for tomorrow?' Marmontel tells us: 'My father... left me at Mauriac with ^Similarly, my bundle and enough food for a week' a loaf of rye bread, a cheese, a piece of bacon, a dozen pears. It was the week's provisions that the parents renewed every market-day; Marmontel adds that with these provisions 'our landlady did our cooking for us.' The schoolboys watched carefully over their little stock of food. Their landlord, who tried now and then to take a little for himself, had his trouble for nothing. The boys knew how much everything cost. One of these lodging-house keepers, in Larivey's comedy, Les fecoliers, says: 'Most of those schoolboys were so stingy that you could no more swindle them than you could shear an egg. I have had some in my house who would even lock up a piece of bread that was left over from their dinner and supper.' As late as the beginning of the nineteenth century, in the Somme district where there remained a few Latin schools in the country, the boys used to arrive with a week's food in their besaces or double bags: 18 they were known as the besaciers. '
:
FROM DAY-SCHOfcL TO BOARDING-SCHOOL The only systems
in force
277
under the ancien regime were therefore
either the 'tutorial system* or the day-school with board and lodging in a private lodging-house. The only thing which was like our modern
boarding-school, the status of the convictl of the Jesuits or the Oratorians, remained exceptional; it was accepted by the college pedagogues only
with the
greatest reluctance,
and
an aristofrom the promiscuity of number of their boarders:
in order to avoid displeasing
cratic clientele anxious to protect its progeny school life. The Jesuits never tried to increase the
the day-school system remained their ideal. The social climate was unfavourable in any case to a complete incarceration conditions of supply, transport and hygiene were all against the concentration of boarders in a single building and the overall main:
A
tenance of a large population. great deal was made of the risks of for the pupils, of very different and also and of brawls riots, epidemics,
were rough, violent and headstrong. authoritarian tendency and the strengthening of discipline reduced the schoolboy 's liberty and produced a stricter control of his private life. But it is worth noting that this evolution did not start with the Jesuits' convicti and develop as an extension of that boarding-school system. ages,
The
The modern boarding-school has a different origin: the steady transformation of the pedagogicas into private boarding-schools subject to a discipline similar to that of the colleges. have seen that most of the pupils at colleges
We
were in private these day-boys ceased to escape from time when a came lodging-houses; have the college's authority, which soon extended to their landlords.
We
absolute already noted an evolution in the sixteenth century towards be exercised could not this But schoolmaster. for the power power
most schoolboys enjoyed unlimited freedom outside school and church. The principals and masters accordingly tried to reduce this freedom by keeping a check on the lodging-house keepers who put up their pupils in town. Moreover their right to do this was recognized by the civic and ecclesiastical authorities: a Cardinal, the reformer of the and in the seventeenth University of Paris, 141 the fifteenth century; the for courts the good order of towns ensuring responsible century, with colleges. It was in the interest of the lodging-house keepers themselves to accept this control which guaranteed the respectability of their houses and thus assured them of high-class lodgers. The principals and
efficiently if
masters were led to favour certain lodging-house keepers, particularly board and lodging but also acted priests who no longer merely provided
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
278 as tutors to their boarders
and exacted from them, under the threat of the
birch, respect for scholastic discipline.
In
1605
Canon Jacques de Baune boarded as
he
at 19
calls his
Tournon with
a
'For the lodging-
lodging-house keeper. put us up we were twenty lazy/ rascally pupils', addicted to 'childish tricks' and even to 'taking wing'. The students
'pedagogue', house keeper
who
often slept out and sometimes plundered the pedagogue's wardrobe. His final resource was the birch: 'He who will not study in obedience to the birch.' A pedagogue who wields mere lodging-house keeper. At La Fleche in the early seventeenth century, it was recognized that the rector and the prefect of the Jesuit College had the right to inspect the pedagogicas, and they visited them personally. An edict issued by the seneschalsy lieutenant compels the 'lodging-house keepers and preceptors' (note the word 'preceptors') of die town to report their boarders' names within three days of their arrival, not only to the - this would have been a - but to police formality presidial clerk the prefect of the college. 20 The lodging-house keeper thus became the master of a private boarding-school, of a pedagogica as it was called in the early seventeenth century, who sent his pupils to the classes and religious services of the college, and the rest of the time kept an eye on their studies and their morals. In Pere de Rochemonteix's monograph on La Fleche College we find an account of one of these pedagogicas the account tells the story of an
word, will do so in obedience to the the birch
is
no longer
a
;
known
Irishman,
for his Jansenist activities thanks to
John Callaghan, on him in the Port-Royal necrology. Coming from Quimper College, he entered the second class at La Fleche. As he had no money, the Fathers paid him a small salary for his work as sweeper and corrector* the note
'
:
wages, a cassock and a cloak for filling the aforementioned office of corrector, and his food with the other servants 'eighteen livres in silver as
of the aforementioned college'. He continued his studies after leaving the philosophy class and attended classes in theology in 1630. He was still given bread and soup at the college. What is more, a priest who took in boarders at a widow's house 'also gave him food out of charity and put him at the right end of the table*. This text is interesting in that it reveals a certain degree of specialization the owner of the house and the master of the pedagogica were not the same person. The priest had hired the widow's house in order to receive schoolboys in it, provide them with regukr meals and supervise their studies. Some of these boys lodged in :
the
same house: 'A
certain
Moreau, a schoolboy,
who lodged in the same
FROM DAY-SCHOOL TO BOARDING-SCHQOL him [CaUaghan]
house, lent
of them
at a butcher's,
This
his lessons.
regarded
279
half his bed.' Others lodged elsewhere, two but took their meals with the priest and attended
he was not a master at a college, was was a career. From being the master La Fleche, he became in 1633 master of the Le Mans. On his departure he suggested to
priest, for all that
as a professional teacher. It
of a boarding-school at novices at an abbey at '
CaUaghan that he should leave him his schoolboys to give him the means of subsistence'. Here we can see one of the origins of the boarding-schools or institutes which developed in the eighteenth century: boarding-schools which sent their pupils to the classes of a college. The schoolboy was no longer the martinet or the galoche of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Nor was he the rare rich convictus of the Jesuit college. He became the boarder (or sometimes the half-boarder, when he was not rich enough to pay for full board and lodging, and lived in a garret in the house of some artisan or merchant) of a pedagogica which provided discipline and coaching. This type of boarding-school was a college annex open to all ages. Claude Joly's Traiti historique des fcoles Episcopates et eccUsiastiques tells us that there was, at least in seventeenth-century Paris, another type of 21 Claude Joly was private boarding-school reserved for younger boys. the canon cantor (choirmaster) at Notre-Dame, and by virtue of this
he was 'patron, judge and director of the grammar schools or little schools of the city and suburbs of Paris'. He therefore had to defend the rights of the chapter and cantorship against all who threatened them: the university, the parish priests, the master-scribes, the religious orders. office
His
treatise,
published in 1678,
is
at
once an indictment and a speech for
The
university, that is to say the Faculty of Arts or its in fact had accused the cantor of infringing their monopoly. colleges, Claude Joly admits the truth of the accusation: 'The cantors of the Church in Paris, having been asked some sixty years ago (about 1610) by
the defence.
certain private persons who were married and who had hired wellventilated houses with gardens in the suburbs of Paris, to give them children in those houses in order to teach them, to
permission
lodge
district masters [masters of the 'little gladly granted their requests.' 'The schools aa which depended on the cantor] could not take in boarders, not because they lacked the rights but because they lacked the means [their is houses were too ; and that why they considered that an establish'
ment of this
young
small] sort would be convenient for
children
who were
delicate
and
many
still
people of quality with
needed a woman's
care, for
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
280
the parents could not send them to the university colleges children would be spoilt by living they were afraid that their
which reason although
home with
'The baptismal innocence of these little children, would be safer here than with the bigger schoolboys of the University colleges, however careful and be.' vigilant the principals and masters may These boarding-schools were called licensed schools', because they
at
who
valets/
are almost all of an age in these schools,
*
had been licensed by the cantor, or else 'little colleges', because the rival establishments and demanded their Faculty of Arts regarded them as to the parents' desire to have existence their owed They
suppression. their children aged between ten and thirteen lodged in the country, under closer supervision than that provided in the colleges where the
numbers were too
large.
past fifty years, the
'As Paris has
number of
grown by almost
a third in the
licensed schools has also rightly been
increased.'
There were therefore two sorts of boarding-school the pedagogicas which sent their pupils to classes in the colleges, and the licensed schools which taught the younger children themselves, up to the fourth class. It :
these two types happened that in the course of the eighteenth century of establishment came together and complemented one another. Private 'institutions', outside the university, came into existence and took in
so
boarders of
all
ages.
They provided elementary education up
to the
they sent their pupils to classes at a a full course of tuition, giving additional coaching college providing themselves. Thus the community of the Gillotins, which rented some of
fourth
class; after
the fourth
class,
die buildings of Sainte-Barbe College, numbered -just before it was broken up for its Jansenist leanings in 1730 -one hundred and sixty who went to the classes held at Le Plessis College. pupils, all boarders, These one hundred and sixty pupils were in the charge of twenty-five masters, an exceptionally high figure for the time, and one which can the adoption at Sainte-Barbe of the system of small be
explained
by
tutorial classes instituted at
Port-Royal. These establishments were called 'Pension' or
by
the founder's
in 1729
name - for example,
by two masters
'Institution',
followed
the Institution Savoure, founded
at Sainte-Barbe:
-its
boarders
went
to the classes
Dormans-Beauvais College and later to those at Lisieux College, under 24 This practice has continued the supervision of a 'master of behaviour'.
at
to the present day.
These private boarding-schools existed
all
over France. At
Vendome
FROM DAY-SCHO01 TO BOARDING-SCHOOL
28l
in 1775, Jacques Lablee, then a fifteen-year-old rhetorician at the Oratory,
was 'boarded with Monsieur Favin ... a good fellow with too easygoing There were sixty of us boarders. a character and over-fond of wine Like other pupils belonging to various boarding-schools, we went to the . . .
25 classes in college.'
These private boarding-schools grew in number, it seems, after the expulsion of the Jesuits. Masters took advantage of the uncertain situation resulting from the closing of the colleges or the change in their administration to open boarding-schools: these boarding-schools no longer
simply followed and supplemented the classes of the colleges, but provided a complete course of tuition, of a more modern character, intended to prepare pupils for entry into the new military schools. Thus in the late eighteenth century there was a relatively extensive boarding-school arisen on the fringe of the great traditional can say that there were two types of compleone large, By classes the institutions: colleges where pupils simply attended mentary and the private boarding-schools which as a rule did not hold classes. These two types corresponded to two contrary concepts of education, the to the spirit of the Renaissance, which did not trouble itself with
system.
schools.
However,
college the question
which
it
had
and
of lodging, and the private boarding-school to a new moral value to the boarding-school system.
spirit
attributed a
In the early nineteenth century, the internment of the child and the one of young man far from the world and his own family was considered
the ideal forms of education, together with the individual tuition made famous by Rousseau's mile. Individual tuition and the boarding-school became part of French life together. The paradox is only apparent: both to satisfy the same conviction of the types of education were designed
moral necessity for a more suitable setting for childhood. For a long time alike had recommended constant supervision of Jesuits and Jansenists unable to apply this principle or to impose it been had but they pupils, on a public opinion still attached to old habits of liberty, if not of anarchy. On the other hand, from the end of the eighteenth century on, the moral
and educational value of seclusion had been generally recognized. Thus find Rollin writing: 'It is an eminently wise rule, established in 26 not to let die boarders out on Sundays and holidays.' several
we
colleges,
When
a model college after the was system was abolished, for it
Louis-le-Grand was reorganized
suppression of the
Jesuits,
the
day-boy
as
of insubordination'. 27 considered, to quote Dupont-Ferrier, 'the vehicle between the masters at Sainte-Barbe and the The correspondence
SCHOLASTIC
282
LIFE
some idea of the preference shown for the in the early years of the nineteenth century. 28 boarding-school system In 1807 one family wanted to keep its son at home, although he was in
pupils' parents gives us
the eighth class at Sainte-Barbe. The master expressed his disapproval: 'We would point out to the family that he is setting a bad example to
schoolmates by abusing his facilities as a day-boy.' It would be better, the master suggested, if he followed the example of another boy in the eighth class, for whom, he wrote enthusiastically, 'his family has decided to make the necessary sacrifices in order that he may become a boarder'. his
For that boy will
now
complete seclusion
be able to 'gain considerable advantage from
and our
Parents were also
this
special attention'.
recommended
to extend this 'complete seclusion' to
the holidays. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, families used to mobilize all their members for the work that had to be done in the
summer, and
particularly the wine-harvest; in Cordier's dialogues a pupil who recounts his recollections of the wine-harvest. Possibly the origin of school holidays is in fact to be seen in this periodical mobilization. The custom, which took no account of fatigue and aimed
there
is
at ensuring maximum efficiency, benefited the bigger pupils, who obtained longer holidays than the younger boys. But in 1800 the college no longer had the same connections with country life that the primary
school retained far into the nineteenth century and even beyond. Holidays meant an interruption of school work and a period of idleness, and they soon became objects of suspicion in the pedagogues' eyes. 29 The masters
out to cut them down. In 1816 they wrote to the of nine: 'M. Bonaire knows that long holidays are that age.' To the father of a pupil in the third class: 'Holidays
at Sainte-Barbe set
of a
father
child
unsuitable at strike
me as dangerous
in the first year at college; they are
not traditional
at this college or in the pupils' interests.'
The
statistics
very clearly
for Louis-le-Grand published by Dupont-Ferrier show the boarding-school system developed during the first
how
half of the nineteenth century: 30
FROM DAY-SCHOOL TO BOARDING-SCHOOL
283
to 1870, boarders in lyc&s, or in pensions which sent their pupils to classes in lyces, represented over 80 per cent of the total number of pupils. The day-boys were reduced to a small minority, between 10 and
Up
words the exact opposite of the situation in the of the ancien colleges regime. This was the situation which inspired 15 per cent, in other
Taine to write these tion,
bitter lines: 'In order to receive a secondary educahalf the boys in France have to endure seclusion in lay boarding-schools, seclusion under military or
more than
ecclesiastical
or
This extension of the boarding-school system in the century and early nineteenth century was in fact a general be found in Frederick the Great's Prussia as in the to phenomenon,
monastic
discipline.'
late eighteenth
The English public schools became this circumstance distinguished them and exclusively boarding-schools, from the grammar schools, which were attended by day-boys from the surrounding district, as were the French colleges.
England of the public
schools.
In France, the boarding-school system
went
into a decline in the second
half of the nineteenth century. The number of boarders sent from pensions to attend lycee classes dropped to almost insignificant proportions.
The number of boarders
at lycees also dropped. The in the statistics for Louis-le-Grand distinguished
number of boarders dropped from 82 per 1908. The number of day-boys rose from
change can be clearly
shown above. The
cent in 1861 to 31 per cent in 14 per cent in 1861 to 69 per
cent in 1908, in other words to over two-thirds of the total. And it should be remembered that the proportion of boarders was bound to be higher at Louis-le-Grand than elsewhere, on account of the considerable number
of boys from the provinces in the classes preparing for entry into the coles. The reason was that in France the boarding-school Grandes no longer credited with the moral and humane influence was system which eighteenth-century pedagogues had attributed to it. It was resorted to only
when
it
was necessary for reasons of distance, family difficulties, It was accepted, but it was no
or preparation for advanced education.
longer chosen. The richer families retained a certain nostalgia for the boarding-school for some time, favouring not so much the state lycee as the private school, often a religious school. They remained in fact attached to the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century concept of the supervision of
childhood: children, in their opinion, should live apart from adults, under a special discipline. But this was an out-dated phenomenon which
soon disappeared:
in France, boarding-schools of the English public school
type failed to take root.
This dislike of the boarding-school system
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
284
did not in anyway imply a return to the moral conditions of the sixteenthand seventeenth-century day-school. The French family would no longer agree to be separated from its children, even in the interests of their education.
We
The
child
would
stay at
home longer
than before.
We
have come then to the end of
this particular development. with a situation in which the boarding-school was unknown, and schoolboys lived in lodgings, free of all authority, whether paternal or academic: hardly anything in their way of life distinguished them from
started
unmarried
was
Soon masters and
adults.
excessive.
parents decided that this freedom
An authoritarian and hierarchical discipline was established
and after that it was decided that and reach the schoolboy where he spent most of in the college;
it
should extend further
his time.
The
result
was
a boarding-school system outside the college, at first fairly lax in character. Henceforth a child's schooling was expected to provide more than
preparation for adult life: the moulding of a type of individual (the gentleman in the English public schools), something in fact which had
previously been expected not so much from school as from the society the child and the young man had not been excluded. This
from which
particular concern,
which was
French seminaries no
to be
found in the Napoleonic lyces and
than in the English public schools, was unknown to the pedagogues of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Tlie latter taught a culture that was at once humanistic and Christian, the
little
and made no attempt social type.
The
to
honnete
less
impose upon their pupils the features of an ideal homme of the seventeenth century was not a
On
the contrary, every seventeenth-century writer, him as the opposite of a college pedant. an honnete homme in spite of one's schooling - at least that
scholastic creation.
story-teller or moralist depicted
One became
boast! Consequently the pedagogues felt no need to push discipline beyond the minimum necessary to quell the traditional turbulence of schoolboys and students. Still less did they regard claustration as
was the usual
an end in
itself.
Even in the seventeenth-century pedagogicas
for boarders,
under the supervision of the prefects and principals of colleges, there remained a great deal of the free and easy attitude of the preceding centuries.
The development of
the boarding-school system after the end of the
eighteenth century bears witness to a different concept of childhood and its place in society. Henceforth there would be an attempt to separate
FROM DAY-SCHO(5L TO BOARDING-SCHOOL
285
childhood from the other ages of society: it would be considered important at least in the middle class to shut childhood off in a world apart, die
world of the boarding-school. The school was substituted for upon
society in which all the ages were mingled together; it was called to mould children on the pattern of an ideal human type.
The change which occurred in the school population at the end of the nineteenth century in favour of the day-boys did not interrupt this tendency to set children apart, but it turned it in the direction of family life.
The family was
substituted for the school as the
predominant moral
setting (and this just as the school was beginning to play an increasingly important part in professional education). The central concern of the
individual family
was
its
own
children. This
was the triumph of demo-
graphic Malthusianism. If economic or social circumstances bring about a relaxation of family control, childhood and youth may escape from the isolation in
which they
are enclosed
the eighteenth century; that
childhood losing some of age group: adolescence.
is
its
by a
tradition going
probably what
is
back
at least to
happening today, with
special characteristics in favour
of a new
*
THE
VII
'LITTLE
*
SCHOOLS'
the seventeenth century, there was no term for elementary education in everyday French. The term petite hole, corresponding to 'little school* or 'petty school' in English, did not appear
UNTIL
until the seventeenth century. The cantor Joly, writing his defence of schoolmasters in 1678,* maintained that the expression was recent, going back to the sixteenth century at the earliest, and also incorrect, 'contrary
to the old form'. According to Joly, the correct term was 'grammar But we know that the grammar school also tended to be confused
school'.
college, and Joly took advantage of the vagueness of this terminology to contrast what would become the 'little schools' (i.e. primary education) with the university and the lower classes in college
with the
secondary education). In the Middle Ages and until the sixteenth century at least, all there was in fact was a Latin school, the grammar school, the 'school for the (i.e.
instruction of youth'. 2 However, these Latin schools were not all of the same nature. Some would blossom out into colleges and universities, while others the great majority would remain at an elementary level. Many in the fifteenth century consisted of two masters, one of whom taught singing and the rudiments of grammar while the other taught the liberal arts. Some consisted of a single master who taught both singing and the rudiments. We can imagine what these little Latin schools were like, thanks to 'The Prioress's Tale' by Chaucer: 'The little school for Christians was held at the far end of the street; and a crowd of children of Christian birth used to come here who from year to year learnt at school what was usually taught there, namely to sing and to read as 3 children do in their tender years.' That is to say, the children learnt to read from the Psalter or a book of hours, and before learning to read
not certain that they even learnt to read well) they learnt the in unison (as is still done liturgical prayers by heart, by repeating them (it
is
in rabbinical or
Koran schools). 'Now', Chaucer continues, 'among was a widow's son, who was seven years old and
these children there
usually
book
came
to school every day.' 'This
in front
singing of the
of him, was learning
his
little
Alma Redemptoris which other 286
child, sitting
with
his little
ABC when he suddenly heard the children were reading
from
'
THE 'LITTLE SCHOOLS'
287
One can picture the scene: some of the children to the others spell, learning learning to sing. The child 'made so bold as to come nearer and nearer [to those who were singing] and listened to their antiphonaries.'
the words, and to the notes as well, until he knew the first verse by heart. He did not know what the Latin meant, for he was very young.' He
asked an older schoolmate to translate
it for him, but without success. cannot explain it to you,' the other replied, 'I am learning singing but have little grammar.' Nowadays we would say, 'little Latin'.
'I I
We
can therefore regard these schools not
as
primary schools, since
they were intended mainly for choirboys, but as the beginnings of the Latin school or grammar school. However, the cathedral chapters, which held the monopoly of school teaching, gave permission from the fourteenth century on for singing and the rudiments to be taught outside their own schools - which were grammar schools of a more complete character. It was recognized that the teachers in these other schools should stop at the Donat. Thus at Chartres in 1325: 'Roger, Rector of the schools of Saint-Jean-en-Valle, was warned at a capitular meeting, by virtue of the privileges of the Church in Chartres, that he was
forbidden to instruct children, in his house or elsewhere, except only in the great schools of Chartres [in majoribus scolis], which lie within the or book-learning jurisdiction of the Chancellor of Chartres, in books
which go beyond the Donat.' 4 After repeating his offence, he was excommunicated, and he paid a fine and 'promised that in the future, in scolis suis, he would not teach children after the day they began to know their Donat or their parts of speech, sed eos ducet ad majores scolas In any case, it was not long before the restrictions imposed carnutenses the cathedral chapters were flouted and these little schools developed by in such a way as to form other Latin schools similar to grammar schools: it was the city magistrate of Chartres who, in agreement with the bishop and against die wishes of the chancellor, decided in 1564 to merge all these schools into a single college. However, some of these private schools scarcely went any further than the Donat and seem to have been 9
.
nothing more than
little
Latin schools.
Rouen was prosecuted by the cathedral his which right to teach the Donat, a right restricted challenged chapter 6 to die masters of the capitular school. Thus in the sixteenth century nothing but Latin schools existed; but these schools were not all at the same level of development. This situation lasted until the end of the ancien regime. We have a document of 1678 In 1451 the priest of a parish in
in the department of giving the 'state of the colleges
Lower Guienne'.*
SCHOLASTIC
288
Only
a
few
LIFE
colleges covered the complete cycle
of
studies :
Bordeaux,
Agen, Condom, Dax. Others
held classes only in philosophy Perigueux, and theology (the Jacobin school at Saintes), or else in the rudiments, grammar, die humanities, but not rhetoric (Saint-Macaire), or finally in the rudiments and first two classes in grammar (the Doctrinarians of
of La Reole, and the Carmelites of Langon). how these schools of unequal development formed as it were geographical constellations and gravitated round a college providing the full course of tuition. Thus in our historical perspective, the school whose pupils learned to read Latin and sing the Psalter does not appear as the prototype of the modern primary school, but rather as the basic cell of a network of Latin schools which taught first the rudiments, then the rudiments and grammar, then grammar and the humanities, and finally the complete cycle up to rhetoric, and then up to ethics and logic. It is none the less true that as early as the fifteenth Cadillac, the Benedictines
Pere de Dainville has shown
century there were some elementary Latin schools which, if they had not taken on additional classes, must have merged with the little schools which came into being towards the end of the sixteenth century.
We know that m the second half of the seventeenth century there were over France 'little schools' in which we can undoubtedly see the origins of the modern primary school. In Pans, the canon cantor of Notre-Dame was 'patron, judge and director of the little schools of the town, city, university and suburbs of Paris'. He gave (or sold) 'licences to hold school' to masters and mistresses, widi the proviso (which was rarely observed) that die masters shall not receive girls in their schools, nor the all
'
mistresses boys in theirs.' 7 Just as the masters of the Paris colleges
were under the
jurisdiction
of
the university, the schoolmasters were under the jurisdiction of the cantor of Notre-Dame, who held audience every Thursday. The cantor's edicts
defended the
competition by
common
fixing the
interests
of the schoolmasters, avoided
number of schools
in each district in proportion
to the density of population and by fixing the time-tables of the classes. In country districts the master was elected by the village community, to be approved by the bishop and in the eighteenth of the province. 'Most of die schools we the administrator century by have been able to trace [the oldest ones]', observes the Abbe Allain,
whose choice had
'belong to the
last
quarter of the sixteenth century.
facing:
They
are nearly all
THE MASTER SCRIBE'S CLASS
THE 'LITTLB SCHOOLS'
289
contemporaneous with the councils which were held in various provinces to put into effect the decrees of the Council of Trent/ 8 The same was true of England, where the Elizabethan laws provided for a master to 9 teach the 'pettyes' of each village. A new method of tuition and a new type of school personnel had been established by the last years of the sixteenth century.
What
did
this tuition consist
scholastic literature
of?
We know the answer from a whole
from
the mid-seventeenth century, kid teaching methods. This literature bears witness to the in the question and to the lack of precedents.
which,
as
down curricula and interest
shown
Take
for instance L'Escole paroissiale, ou la maniere de bien instruire les un prestre d'une paroisse de Paris, published 10 This handbook, abridged form in I685. written in French (the statutes of the and the colleges university were enfants dans les petites escoles par in 1654 and reissued in an
couched in Latin), deals with discipline as well as material conditions and curricula: one has an impression of established traditions which the reforms of St Jean-Baptiste de La Salle at the end of the century would improve without changing their nature. In 1705 in fact there appeared
La Conduite des 6coles chretiennes, instrucwhich still carried weight in the late
tions for the Brothers' schools,
nineteenth century. 11 The few chapters dealing with the tuition in the little schools reveal its various origins. First of all there is the influence of the Latin school, at its most elementary level: before Jean-Baptiste de La Salle, nobody thought of teaching children to read French straight away. According to the 1654-85 instructions, the child learnt to read and spell in Latin - Church Latin - and the prayers of the liturgy the Magnificat, the Nunc dimittis, the Salve Regina, 'the responses in Mass', the Offices of Our Lady, the Holy Cross and the Holy Ghost, some of the penitential psalms, the Office for the Dead, 'vespers for the whole week', and the :
diocese. And the author insists on the necessity of starting with Latin: Before going on to French reading', the pupils are to 'read Latin in all sorts of books'. There was therefore no difference between this tuition and that given in Chaucer's school, or in the sixth class of the The idea was still that of a colleges. choirboy's education. It was not until St Jean-Baptiste de La Salle came along that France abandoned this tradition which confused book-learning and the Latin language, whether liturgical or humanistic, and instituted tuition in French. Even so, La
hymns of the *
Conduite des
provided for classes devoted to reading French reading lessons. For a long time singing remained as important as Latin, and for the K coles chr&iennes still
in Latin after the
facing above:
CHILD PLAYING WITH YOUNG VALET by Lagniet THE STEPS OP THE AGES OP LIPB
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
29O
it enabled the pupils to make the necessary liturgical responses. Consequently the rudiments master was often referred to as the master of music, as at Gerson's cathedral school in Paris and Colet's in
same reason:
London, where there were two masters, one for singing who also taught the rudiments, and the other for grammar. In England the little schools were also called 'song schools'. Besides singing and the rudiments - subjects taken from the old Latin - the curriculum of the little school included school but now
'vulgarized* the study of etiquette. shall be examining elsewhere in greater detail the historical significance of the etiquette books. 12 Here let us simply say that they were manuals of good manners: how to behave in society and at
We
'
of children to God and their parents, the proprieties and Christian and worldly'. 13 L'Escok paroissiale stipulates that after the Latin lesson the 'French reading' shall be done from manuals of etiquette. These manuals were not unknown in the Latin colleges. One edition of Galatte was intended for the pupils of the Jesuit college at Ponttable, all the duties
good manners, both
st-Mousson.
But
etiquette, like history
and geography or music and
dancing, was regarded as a subject outside the curriculum taught in class. In the little schools, on the contrary, etiquette occupied an important
went to the trouble of giving his pupils manual of etiquette, which put all the previous manuals out of fashion and went through an incredible number of editions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In his Conduite des cples Jean-Baptiste de La Salle wrote: 'When the pupils are all able to read French perfectly and are in die third standard in Latin [there were grades or standards in reading, writing and Latin], they shall be taught to write, and they are to be taught to read from the book ofcivihtdchr&ienne. This book contains all the duties children owe God and their parents and the rules of good behaviour both Christian and social. It is printed in Gothic characters, which are more difficult to read than French characters/ Certain manuals were also printed in several columns, each column being composed in different characters: gothic, roman, italic and manuscript. The manual of etiquette was therefore at once a reading book, an 'example* of handwriting and a handbook of good manners. The manual of etiquette, foreign though it was to the medieval scholastic tradition, also had a distant ancestry: tuition in the proprieties, oral to begin with, later written, and sometimes versified, was almost the place,
a
and Jean-Baptiste de La
civiliti
Salle
chr&ienne, or Christian
t
only tuition given to the non-cleric, the future knight, in his apprenticeshall in fact see that, next to scholastic ship in life and good manners.
We
tuition, there
was
in the
Middle Ages an apprenticeship, a period
in
THE
LITTLE SCHOOLS
2pl
which the child left his home and was sent to another house, where he had to learn the manners (or the trade) of the head of the family. The Latin school, restricted to clerics, did not monopolize all the forms of cultural communication. There was a lay culture, a view of life, with its rules, its morality, its refinements or 'courtesies', which was acquired by an example and through the cohabitation of children and adults: of literature the environment good apprenticeship. In this courtly lay manners was born: hints which were first oral, then written down, and and which were passed around for the benefit of the finally printed,
young pages and
squires
of the household. 14
When
the Latin school
was tempted to make use of spread to middle-class and noble circles, it the manual of etiquette. But the pedagogues never, either in Montaigne's time or in that of the Chevalier de Mere*, abandoned their conviction that
meant for good manners, which college tuition was 'pedantic' and not or in the academies, if not in home at ought to be learnt elsewhere, was perhaps the Jesuits - whence one of the the
only exception reasons for their succeess. Etiquette was neglected in the universities and from the sphere of domestic and colleges; on the other hand it moved
society:
little schools, where it and family apprenDomestic subjects. have been the second source of the primary
of the family apprenticeship to the curriculum
became one of the most important ticeship
is
thus seen to
curriculum. the pupil has learnt 'to read According to L'Escole paroissiak, when well from the manual of etiquette', he is to become a 'scribe' and learn how to write. But at this point the author seems a little embarrassed. By
time meant, as writing, people at that
we do
today, a means of
com-
also regarded as a technique or an 'art'. municating thought; but it was This art was not supposed to be taught in school: it was the monopoly of of master-scribes. The author of VEscole paroissiale recognizes the
guild
admits that his pupils will not be able to perfect their writing at school but will have to address themselves afterwards to the master-scribes, must be the 'famous writing-masters'. All the same, he argues, they this.
He
after the first 'examples', they must practise taught to write usefully: leases... so as to school copying out 'forms of receipt, bonds, farming them in the affairs of the age'. This utilitarian point of view did not fail out as rivals of the master-scribes. It bore no resemblance to
mark them more disinterested, loftier preoccupations of the Latin school. At the Latin school, no stress was laid upon the quality of the pupils' writing.
to the
It
it was understood of course, that one had to be able to write though for so very pressing be that this obligation had not been considered
may
SCHOLASTIC
LIFE
long: in the Middle Ages there was nothing extraordinary about a lay culture nurtured on reading aloud, recitation and music, in which
-
writing was uncommon and largely restricted to clerics. And even clerics before the invention of printing and doubtless also on account of the
and high cost of paper - resorted to memory more often than we would nowadays: it was necessary to learn things by heart, and writing seemed a suspicious means of avoiding this effort. The theology student was not allowed to have a Bible during his first year, and the master was forbidden to use notes during his class. That way one could be certain that he knew his subject. Admittedly the use of writing spread quickly with the development of printing and the manufacturing of paper on a large scale, making possible more industrial work. In the iconography of the sixteenth century, the schoolboy is often depicted with an inkpot in his hand. However, even when it had become normal and indispensable, writing did not immediately play an important role in Latin studies at school. As late as 1596, Coote in The English Schoolmaster 15 complained of grammar-school pupils who wrote badly. Teaching remained predominantly oral (hence the importance of the monitors who went over lessons with the class). However, it became customary to take notes during classes and sermons, and writing tended to become rarity
a form of shorthand. In England in the mid-seventeenth century there were indeed some shorthand manuals, such as J. Everardt's Epitome of 16 It was a corrupt form of handwriting, which itself comStenographic. and several varieties: so on. round, slanting, prised In the little schools writing was no longer regarded simply as an instrument of literary or legal knowledge; it was already a profession, or the basis of a profession. This semi-technical education was introduced with the greatest care, for the schoolmasters were afraid of opposition from the master-scribes and had uneasy consciences. The pupils began by learning to write in different characters. We have seen that the manuals of etiquette were often composed in several characters: the usual characters employed in printing - gothic, roman and italic - and also 'handwritten letters' which in typographic jargon were also known as 'etiquette letters' or caracteres de civilitt. The complete and perfect knowledge of all the various scripts was anything but general. La Conduite des fecoles chrltiennes considers it necessary to expect it of the masters: 'Every master of the writing-class must be able to read all sorts of
handwritten documents.' The Brothers encouraged their pupils to study all the different varieties of handwriting: 'When the pupils are in the fourth standard of round writing or are beginning the third standard of
THE 'ttTTLB SCHOOLS'
293
or slanting writing, they are to be taught how to read handwritten papers diswas not that writing parchments called registers.' It can be seen tinguished from reading scripts, even rare or difficult scripts. Similarly the reading
of scripts was not confused with the reading of the printed
characters in current use. Starting with the easiest scripts, pupils were to * be taught to read handwriting of increasing difficulty until they are able
to read the
most
difficult scripts it is possible to
However, Jean-Baptiste de La
Salle
is
encounter'.
bolder and
more adventurous
than his predecessors in the teaching of handwriting. L'Escole paroissiale initiation only. To perfect their writing, pupils referred to the master-scribes, the 'famous writing-masters', in the
had provided for an
were
hope Yet Jean-Baptiste de La Salle does not hesitate to teach the complete curriculum of the scribes in his schools. We have seen that the examples of writing given to the schoolboys to copy were business forms: receipts, bonds and so on. It was proposed to 'school them in the affairs of the age'. Thus writing was always linked with arithmetic, known in France as lejet because of ihejetons or counters without which it was impossible to calculate correctly. The art of the jet
of mollifying the
was
latter.
essential to 'the practices
and
affairs
of the
age', if
only because
it
enabled one to find one's bearings in a complicated monetary system: with the aid ofjetons, says L'Escole paroissiale, the pupils are to be taught to grasp the relationship between livres, sols and deniers. In La Conduite coles chrttiennes, arithmetic is introduced as a means of solving
des
*
everyday financial problems:
To do
a
sum
well,
he will begin with
deniers.'
Such are the three elements which formed the curriculum of the little schools in French towns in the seventeenth century: reading and singing, and arithmetic. To varying degrees they were also to etiquette, writing be found in the little schools in the country, which grew in number
Thus during the seventeenth century.
at Castillon,
near Bordeaux, in
listened community gathered together in due order', to^its was it that decided and vacant school the necessary 'to attorney declare a schoolmaster who would be able to teach reading, obtain
1759, 'the
immediately
There was a candidate for the writing, arithmetic and book-keeping'. of Bordeaux'. The aldermaster-scribe sworn *a a certain Laroche, post: men and jurats (the notables of the community) satisfied themselves as to his orthodoxy and morals and, 'having seen his writing and questioned him about the rules of arithmetic and about book-keeping', decided that he was a suitable person to fill the post, 'subject to the approval of His Grace the Archbishop and His Lordship the Administrator'. On the
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
294
other hand, in a village in the Lower Pyrenees in 1689, a candidate for a similar post was rejected because he was incapable of deciphering the village charters. Similarly in 1737 the inhabitants of Macau in M6doc
asked the Archbishop of Bordeaux to dismiss the local schoolmaster: 'Every day people present themselves who are infinitely more capable than he is of teaching writing, arithmetic and the reading of bonds/ 17
Thus the
village schoolmaster
had to be both a book-keeper and
a
also the paleographer. Just as today the village schoolmaster in France is clerk to the parish council, at that rime he was the notary to the com-
munity and sometimes even attorney and lieutenant of justice, words half police-officer and half justice of the peace.
The schoolmaster
in other
also acted as choirmaster in the village church: this
was the singing element of the little school. He was honoured during Mass: the 1685 Assembly of the Clergy had decided that 'schoolmasters dressed in their surplices should be incensed in church and should be honoured before the laymen and even the lords of parishes/ As late as 1847, when the inhabitants of a village in the Oise gathered together to choose their schoolmaster from ten candidates, the first test was in singing,
and the inspector reported to the
made
village
their choice at once, crying:
rector:
'The
"It's thattun
ladies
of the
we want!"
"Thattun" may not have the most education, but he has the loudest and that, Monsieur le Recteur, is how the matter is usually
voice
. . .
18
arranged/
And
nearly everywhere, at school as well as at home, children were from a manual of etiquette, in the eighteenth century
taught to read
usually Jean-Baptiste de La Salle's. Thus the three constituent factors in the country schools.
of the
little
school were to be found
We know where singing and reading came from
at home). (the Latin school), and etiquette too (the education provided But what about writing and arithmetic? In the middle of the seventeenth century, tuition in writing and arithmetic was provided, outside the little schools or the Latin schools, by the public scribes or scriveners. They were not under the jurisdiction and control of chapter or university, and in Paris their guild was under
the authority of the Chitelet, like to us today as craftsmen. accountants and valuers.
all
the other trade guilds.
They were not
They
teachers,
They appear but primarily copyists,
called themselves 'experts in the verifica-
of deeds, contracts, notes of hand and other such documents'. 19 They were commonly known as 'verifiers': verifiers of deeds (because of handwriting) and of accounts (because they they could read all kinds tion
THE 'LITTLE SCHOOLS'
295
could count and calculate). At Rouen, they bore the title of 'masters and guardians of the noble art and science of writing and arithmetic, expert verifiers in the city and suburbs of Rouen', Their 'science of writing* corresponded to what we ask of typewriting: the transcribing of texts in the most legible manner possible. We must try to appreciate how important copying was before the invention of the typewriter: clerks not only had to be able to write like everyone else, but * also to write to perfection 80 Calligraphy was an art, an art inherited from the old manuscript copyists of the era before the invention of as Jean Rou has testified. printing. It demanded considerable manual skill, About 1643 he was a precocious pupil at Harcourt College. He tells us in his memoirs: *I had so supple a hand and fingers so agile that if it had not been decided to make a scholar of me, I should have been trained 21 to become nothing less than a perfect master-scribe/ Writing was the as the late sixteenth-century English work: such manuals of subject 1
.
the Pen's excellency or the Secretary's Swift writing, true writing, fair writing: as used different The scribe scripts for different purposes, just delight.**
the printer uses different characters; one had to have recourse to the scribe, even if one could write oneself, when it was a question of drawing a document which had to be unambiguous and whose material
up
This 'science of writing' also presentation had to follow certain rules. skill of an expert paleographer today, for it comprised the to corresponded the deciphering of manuscripts which had become illegible, either as the of a change in script or because of the use of symbols and abbreviations which had fallen into disuse. This work was not the gratuitous result
of a historian: many ancient documents - charters, contracts, etc. - were still legally binding and still governed public and private often ceased to be intelligible, sometimes because of relationships. They the language, but above all on account of the writing. The master-scribe who could draw up present-day documents was also able to read and This function would be rendered obsolete by 'verify* those of the past. the extension of the printed paper (Le Moniteur and Le Journal officiel started publication in the late eighteenth century) and by the politicoof the 1789 Revolution, which rescinded the old judicial upheaval started again from scratch, in a script which was documents: the research
country
intelligible to the general populace. the scribes were also accountants.
Finally
They were conversant with
and foreign exchange* and also with all 'book-keeping by double entry the systems of weights and measures whose variety made the establishing of a delicate matter. They undertook to Verify accounts and equivalents
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
2p6
calculations' just as they 'verified scripts'. It was not given to everyone de Svign for one was delighted to find at to be able to do sums.
Mme
Les Rochers a priest who was skilled in the use ofjetons and therefore a good accountant: 'I had a great surprise this morning in the abb6's study.
We discovered, with the aid of his counters which are very good and accurate,
livres.' 28 The master-scribe was also profit of 530,000 to 'write to perfection* expected to instruct others in his art. Clerks able and calculate with the aid of counters were needed in the offices of lawyers,
that
I
had made a
merchants and administrators. Nor were these skills confined to minor noble intending to make his career in the army or at posts. A young court could take lessons in writing as in languages or dancing or the non-scholastic arts: the future Marechal de Bassompierre arrived at school in 1591 with a retinue which included, apart from his preceptor
and his dancing-master, a writing-master. 24 About 1600, Charles Hoole, in his book The Petty School, recorded that one grammar school used to 'entertain an honest and skilful penman, that he may constantly come and continue with them about a month or six weeks together every year, in
which time commonly everyone may
learn to write legibly*.
This recourse to an outside specialist sometimes caused irritation, and if a good manual were used, 'the schools may Brinsley maintained that be freed from having any need of the scriveners, which go about the the names of scriveners, and take upon country, at least, which go under them to teach to write; and do oft-times very much hurt in the places where they come.' 25 These itinerant scribes had a bad reputation. In the towns, the master-scribes, organized into recognized corporations,
hang
and arithmetic: they had to kept respectable schools of writing in front of their houses which shall list the names of the
'signs
They stood up for their rights against all the schoolmasters, that is to say, in Paris, were Among those under die jurisdiction of the cantor of Notre-Dame. In 1661 an edict of the High Court forbade the schoolmasters 'to put more than 26 The three lines in the examples which they gave to their pupils'. sciences
which they
rivals.
profess'.
the latter
We
have that they could teach writing but not calligraphy. principle was bothered about not this had subtle Salle La de that seen Jean-Baptiste
and made no bones about teaching his pupils the writing were the official monopoly of the scribes: but in Paris the which styles 27 scribes brought an action against him and won their case. On another front, some 'so-called mathematicians' were also Court recognized their monopoly and competing with them. The High the title of mathematician'. under of 'die forbade any sign display
distinction
THE 'tltTLE SCHOOLS* The division of labour between schoolmasters and scribes was a difficult problem, which the magistrates to whom it was submitted found impossible to solve. Thus an edict of the High Court issued in 1661 states that 'the scribes
may have printed books or texts must not on they any account teach reading/ But
to teach spelling, but
as Claude Joly points out in his defence of the little schools, 'any Scribe teaching his pupils to read from these texts and books can that he is them
printed
spelling
and not
reading.*
The
say
best solution
teaching for the
would have been
schoolmasters to teach reading but not writing, and the master-scribes writing but not reading, with a common but contested zone between them for spelling, which was in its unfixed It incidentally
early,
stage.
can be seen that reading and writing, which are now considered to be were for a complementary, long time regarded as independent subjects to be taught separately, one being associated with literary and religious the other with the manual arts and commercial culture, practice.
The
school of the writing-master would therefore seem to have been a technical school teaching a craft which still owed something to manual skill. These schools had two interesting features: they taught girls as well as boys, and they were attended by adolescents as well as little children. curious engraving of the early eighteenth century shows a writing lesson in progress: some big fellows are present, and some of them are would which that this form of tuition was not wearing swords, suggest
A
by families who either belonged or aspired to the nobility. It is case any certainly no infants' class. The number of youths seems and the greater ages more mixed than in even the heterogeneous lower 28 classes of the colleges. despised in
If
we
are to believe die censorious
canon Claude Joly,
this
diversity
was not without its dangers for the virtue of any girls who should join the class. He wanted the scribes to be forbidden to teach girls, and he expatiated on 'the danger of putting girls with big boys, as those who go to the Master Scribes usually are*. The scribes' reply to Joly's suggested prohibitions was: 'It is necessary for girls to be able to read, and there are are capable of learning to write to perfection and who should
some who
not be deprived of that advantage.' To which Joly retorted like Moli&re's Chrysale: 'It is not necessary for girls to be able to write to perfection, but it is necessary for them to be in a safe place above suspicion.' Yet the utility of writing and arithmetic was not disputed by the
who in 1606 paid forty sous a month to 'Saint-Germain, for Schoolmaster, teaching writing and arithmetic for three months' to his or by a certain Lemonier, 'proprietor of the Lion de daughter; Dijon sergeant
SCHOLASTIC LIFE 1
France at Dijon in 1648, who got a priest to give his daughter lessons in arithmetic. 29 Hitherto there had been no schooling for girls: they stayed the women of the house or else in a convent, without in the first half of the but religious instruction. However, receiving any seventeenth century, people began to feel some concern about their education, and religious orders such as the Ursulines devoted themselves at
home with
to it. The scribes proposed to give them a real technical education, either because they were thought to have a gift for writing, or in order that they should learn how to keep accounts, a useful art whether in home life
or in the running of a business: seventeenth-century usage allotted
women
an important role in the administration of the estate and the supervision of certain incomes (notably income in kind: poultry, eggs, fathers such as that sergeant etc.). One can understand why thoughful and that hotel-keeper of Dijon should have wanted their daughters to
how to use a pen and counters. But let us note here above all else the almost adult nature of the instruction given by the master-scribes. In fact it was linked to an education different from that of the Latin schools and anterior to that of the little French schools: the manual education given by craftsmen to their apprentices. The scribes' schools were a particular instance of a practice current in other crafts, at least in England and Germany. and early seventeenth English educational literature of the late sixteenth learn
workshop schools. In 1596 Edmund Coote published The English Schoolmaster* a manual of seventy-nine in that it was not pages in English, not Latin, which was remarkable addressed to professional pedagogues, nor even to educated readers. It went through twenty-six editions between 1596 and 1656. It comprises and the art of spelling; eighteen pages thirty-nine pages on the alphabet on the catechism, prayers and Psalms; five pages on chronology; two two pages of arithmetic; some twenty pages of examples of writing; and phrases. with of explanations of the difficult words vocabulary, pages - 'the unskilful of what It is destined for self-teachers of all ages age so ever '-who after reading it 'may easily both understand any hard centuries sometimes refers to these
sermons or elsewhere English words, which they shall in Scriptures, hear or read; and also be made to use the same aptly themselves'. It is also supposed to allow craftsmen of little or no education to keep school. Coote declares that his book is addressed to 'such men and women of trade as tailors, weavers, shopkeepers, seamsters, and such others as have undertaken the charge of teaching others'. And he describes in a few words these
humble workshop
schools:
'Thou mayest
sit
on thy shop-board,
THE 'tlTTLB SCHOOLS*
299
at thy books or thy needle, and never hinder any work to hear thy scholars, after thou hast once made this little book familiar to thee/ Thus we can see that, without leaving his work, an artisan would sometimes gather some apprentices around him - or even some adult companions in the same craft and teach them a few elements of reading, and doubtless writing draughtsmanship, for draughtsmanship was even more important than reading or writing for certain crafts: joinery and
carpentry for instance. This impromptu schoolmaster could earn a little extra money in this way, and at the same time satisfy a need for rudi-
He might even be tempted to devote all his time was for a school of this sort that at Basle in 1516 Holbein painted a sign showing on one side an evening class the master and his adult pupils - and on the other side a class for children, with the master and his boys on the left, the mistress and her girls on the right. 81 The to read and write inscription on this sign reads: *He who wishes to learn German by the quickest method, and who does not know a single letter, is informed that here he will be able to learn all that he needs to know of writing and reading. And if anyone is so foolish that he does not manage to learn it, I shall have taught him gratis and for nothing and he shall not
mentary
instruction.
to his school.
It
owe me anything. Whoever you may be, burgesses, artisans, labourers, women or girls, and whatever your needs, he who comes here will be
On
the other hand, children, for a reasonable fee. faithfully instructed little boys and little girls, will pay every term as is customary.'
As in the case of Coote's readers, children, whether boys or girls, formed only part of the clientele of these masters: 'of what age so ever', said Coote, and Holbein: 'burgesses, artisans, labourers, women or girls'. Many were adolescents or adults who plied their trade during the day and came in the evening to ask the master to teach them to read, write or 82 draw. Gerard Dou has depicted a school of this sort: the schoolroom is and some big children of twelve or more, both boys lighted by candles, round the master's table; in the foreground, on the are and girls,
left,
a
gathered
young man
is
drawing, while a
girl is
holding the candle for
him
and pointing to something - probably they are studying draughtsmanship with draughtsmanship, we have an element of technical together. Here, education added to the ABC. In the commercial towns, draughtsmanship was replaced by arithmetic, for the keeping of accounts, and this tuition, from the fourteenth century on, was quite distinct from the Latin school
At Bologna
there
were the
usual
instruction in the arts there
grammar
were some
masters, but besides this Latin
scholae
puerorum which, doubtless
instruction for merchants' sons using the vernacular, provided practical
3<X>
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
which an important place was given to arithmetic; in official documents the master called himself magister de abaco (and not de artibus or and grammatical).** It is known that at Florence in 1338 grammar in
in six logic were taught in four Latin schools, and algebra and the abacus schools. 84 The same phenomenon was to be found in German towns such as
Hamburg and Brunswick, and
And we must
in France in the schools run
probably look to
by
the
education for adults, education of a professional and technical character, for the principal origin of the little schools. The other elements singing and the Psalter master-scribes.
this
taken from the Latin schools, and etiquette from the houses of the - were added later, probably not before the beginning of the
nobility
seventeenth century. Moreover, with the occasional exception of big cities like Paris where the cantor was inclined to be pretentious and insist
on university degrees, the masters of the little schools were often recruited from the scribes. Thus at Castillon in 1759 a sworn master-scribe from Bordeaux was appointed. 35 It is easy to see why the schoolmaster was also the village attorney, and he had to be able to read charters and old manuscripts and draw up official reports. :
However, the essential feature of the little schools of the seventeenth the workshop schools of the century, which distinguished them from sixteenth century and from those of the master-scribes, was not so much their curricula as the pupils' ages. The pupils were no longer adolescents or adults: they were children between the ages of seven and twelve. In 1*833 an inspector made this observation, which was also valid for the earlier years of the nineteenth century and the whole of the eighteenth: 'Children cannot be sent to school before the age of seven or eight ... At the age of eleven or twelve, they are sent to work.' The principle of education for adults continued to be maintained in
France for some time elsewhere than in the
scribes' schools.
Thus
in the
seventeenth century the parish priest of Saint-Sulpice, M. de la in Chetardye, set out to found a Sunday school for the poor: 'Skilled late
of the poor, he conceived finding ways of contributing to the education the idea of founding a Sunday school for young people whom the necessity of earning their living kept busy all the week, leaving them only Sunday
and holidays on which to go to school.' 86 Called the Christian Academy, this school was handed over in 1699 to St Jean-Baptiste de La Salle and his new congregation. In addition to reading, writing and arithmetic, the
were taught geometry, drawing and architecture. The big boys were not supposed to be older than twenty. But this academy went into a decline and gave rise to few imitations. Adult education, widespread pupils
MXTLE SCHOOLS
THE
.
301
and sixteenth centuries, disappeared in the seventeenth place was taken by an education confined to children. The phenomenon of the specialization of the ages and the particularization of childhood can be seen here much more clearly than in the age structure of the Latin college. Henceforth an age group ranging from five-to-seven to ten-to-eleven would be marked out from the rest of childhood.
in the fifteenth
century, and
How
its
did the transition take place
from
the technical instruction for
of Coote, Holbein and the master-scribes to that of the little schools of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? Under two influences: one, a general influence, which set apart the younger ages and tended to isolate the elementary stage of education; the other an influence linked with the great religious current of the Reformation and aimed at providing a suitable background for poor children. adults
From
the mid-seventeenth century to the present day, the average age
of the college boy has steadily decreased. And as greater homogeneity was demanded of each class, the beginners' class had to be split up several times and lower classes created, going further and further back, down to the kindergarten and the nursery school of modern times. In their plan, the ratio studiorum of 1599, the Jesuits wanted to start with the fifth class and have only three grammar classes. Like other education writers of the time, they disliked the idea of teaching the rudiments. In the same spirit, Brinsley wrote in 1627 in his Lucius Litterarius that it struck him as absurd that the grammar schools should be troubled with a class learning the
ABC, and 'such
that
it
was humiliating
little petties'.
for the masters to teach such things to
87
But the longed-for separation of the rudimentary classes and the grammar classes never became effective. In most of their colleges the a sixth class in which the ABC and the rudiments Jesuits had to put up with were taught. In the late seventeenth century, extra sixths were created in the colleges and even gave rise to weaker classes, which were already called sevenths and eighths: these were the bottom classes of the presentday secondary school. At La Flche, for example, there were at this time a seventh class and a sort of eighth which was referred to as 'a room in which those who
are not
cantor Joly complained of in
88 The to enter a class are given instruction'. this proliferation of the lower college classes,
fit
university on the rights of die and eighth classes which 'seventh the deplored
which he saw an encroachment by the
local schoolmaster.
89
He
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
3O2 have been formed
which the children
in certain colleges in
are taught to
read'.
town were reserved and needed to remain with womenfolk*. These were the 'little colleges of licence-holders' authorized by the cantor, who acted as a sort of director of primary Apart from these lower
classes, pensions
for 'children of tender years
who were
outside the
delicate
itself, beginners who risked being swamped in their lower classes, the in numbers the colleges, especially huge by establishments. Joly calls these of services the coaching private employed
education in Paris. In Paris
*
schools
by
hedge-schools', that
is
to say clandestine schools unauthorized
either the university or the cantor: their masters 'coach pupils
who go
to the college classes'. This type of education would enjoy considerable success in the eighteenth century, in what we recognize as those pensions which also took in boarders and which we studied in the chapter on
who were often older boys, the boarding-schools. Besides the boarders, instruction to young day-boys. There is an interesting pensions gave document which shows that these pensions were very well patronized in the late eighteenth century: the dossiers of the candidates for the military schools in 1790. These schools were intended for impoverished nobles. candidate's family had to fill up a printed form which, apart from the usual details, included the following questions: 'Can the child read
The
he
What is his present occupation?... being brought up 40 The candidates were in the Paternal House, in a pension or a college?' all nine or ten. Here are a few cases. An eleven-year-old: 'He is a Is
or write?...
nearly half-boarder at Tours, learning the rudiments of Latin, and has never left the paternal house as yet.' nine-year-old: 'He is studying in Beauge 9 in pensions. Another nine-year-old: 'He is educated was He College. in the paternal house and is sent every day to take being brought up
A
9
lessons at a neighbouring pension.
in a pension at Rethel
An
eleven-year-old:
where he has been
since
March
'He
is
studying
I5th. His father
and
mother cannot keep him in this pension. A nine-year-old: 'Was brought months has been in a up in the paternal house and for the past eighteen 9
9
private pension. In the sixteenth century, nobody had yet out of the first grammar classes;
had the idea of taking the when they were grouped beginners a sixth class, it was a lumber-room class in which no attempt in together was made to measure their efforts. This was no longer true after the end of the sixteenth century. With the lower classes in die colleges, and with the private pensions, an elementary stage came into existence. It The same was true also of the regarded as a preparatory stage.
was little
THE 'LITTLE SCHOOLS' schools
which were
classes in the
colleges.
-
303
trying, at least in the towns, to replace the
lower According to Claude Joly, the little schools prepared
their pupils for entry into the fifth, or, preferably in his view, the fourth the colleges: they were anterior to and not concurrent with the
class in
and incidentally had failed to eliminate the other establishments competing with them. We are still a long way here from the nineteenthdid not century concept of a primary stage from which
college,
pupils
necessarily
graduate to the secondary school. But we are even further from the more contemporary idea of an education that is unique and general to begin with, and is varied later on in accordance with the pupils' vocations and aptitudes.
Let us
now
consider the second influence
and development of the
which
affected the origins schools. In the late sixteenth century a new and France, an idea which had originated in
little
idea appeared in England the religious feeling common to both the Reformation
Reformation. In the art *
as
and the Counterwell as the literature of Western Europe in
that picaresque age, down-and-outs' occupied an important place, indicative of their numbers or rather of the extent to which were
people
aware of their
existence. Their picturesque appearance appealed to but others set out to combat their poverty, laziness and
many,
immorality by
means of administrative and police measures such as the English Poor Laws, by means of edicts as ineffective as they were frequent against vagabondage, and finally and this is what concerns us here - by means of the education of poor children. In those piety in France and England it was felt
new
circles
most
affected
by
the
that the children in question should be given the religious instruction hitherto reserved in practice for the choirboys of the Latin school, and at the same time
taught reading
and writing, which were now regarded as necessary for the exercise of any trade, even a manual job. In this way it was hoped to make pious, serious workers out of what had been depraved adventurers. A curriculum was soon evolved, providing for tuition in the vernacular based on the catechism, the ABC and the abacus, and intended for children who could not follow the Latin cycle. In England, the founder of one school explained: 'We have a great number of poor people in our parish who are not able to keep their children at grammar. But we are desirous to have them taught the principles of Christian Religion and to write, read and cast accounts, and so put them forth to prentice.' 4* Some founders even
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
304 tried to
make
'pettyes*.
the Latin schook a
Thus
in 1612,
little
we find one
more
utilitarian, at least for
the
such founder urging his master and
ushers to try to teach arithmetic to their pupils, especially to those who showed greater aptitude for trade than for study. This preoccupation
gave
which the
rise to schools in
classical
humanities were
more or
less
abandoned in favour of the 'modern* curriculum, and to an active and stamp out campaign to bring education to the lower classes immortality and poverty: thus in the
late
seventeenth century the Society
Knowledge founded a great many charity Promoting schools in which poor children were given 'knowledge and practice of the Christian religion, as professed and taught in the Church of England' and 'some other things which are useful in their station in life' - namely and a manual trade, reading and writing, in some cases arithmetic, Christian
for
42 spinning or cobbling. In France, despite the difference in religion, the same thing happened In 1543 the city council of Rouen decided on the in the same
spirit.
of the poor that 'in order to train children from childhood in went together], so that morality and reading and writing [these things service at an earlier age and in for shall be means this prepared they by a more manner', they should 'take in beggar-children, both subject
agreeable
from the age of five, to give them instruction in decency girls, 48 and morality and reading and writing'. Throughout the eighteenth or 'charitable schools for the poor' were century, 'charity schools' born in built all over France. At Moulins and Lyons, Charles Dermia, boys and
1637, gave the regulations attention!... Writers, get
for his schools a military character: 'Readers,
start ready, take your pens, show them, similar faith inspired three priests who explained writing.' their motives in these words: 'Every day we see idlers and vagabonds in how to do anything but eat and drink the who, not 44
At Autun, a
knowing
streets,
and bring poor children into the world, produce these swarms of beggars which are so much trouble to us ... Christian schook would put an end 45 to this state of affairs.' In Paris, at the height of the period of pious humanism, priests took to founding free schook for the poor in their parishes greatly to the because they did not come under his jurisof Claude Joly,
indignation
of Paris say that it is a right attached to their office their even it that is and duty to give instruction to their parishioners, school as as well children fathers, and that consequently they can keep with the of the that It goes without saying regard worthy priests charity diction:
'The
priests
. . .
to their schookcosts
them nothing
at
all.
>46
Peoplegave money generously
THE for the schools. In
'uffffLB
SCHOOLS*
,
305
some of these
schools, the children also learnt a trade. In 1680, in the Saint-Sulpice schools, a hosier was employed to teach two to hundred knitting pupils. The girls, though neglected for a long time in this respect, were not forgotten. In 1646, Louise Bellange brought
together forty poor girls of the parish of Saint-Eustache. New religious orders devoted their energies to this end: thus the Ursulines 'make it their profession to keep public schools for day-girls as well as for boarders'. In 1685 Pre Barre founded the Institute of the Infant Jesus, which served as a model for the teaching orders, and especially for the
most famous of them
all,
the Brothers
of the Christian Schools. Then
again, St Jean-Baptiste de La Salle gave his support to the charitable priests of Paris who aroused the indignation of the cantor of Notro-Dame, providing the schools of the parish of Saint-Sulpice with masters from
community. With him, primary education was endowed with principles which hardly changed at all until the mid-nineteenth his
century. In the country, the bishops urged their parish priests to pursue this course - witness the Bishop of Ch&lons's synodical instructions of 1662:
'Take a sum of money every year from the building fund to help to have a schoolmaster in places where there is none on account of the poverty of the inhabitants. If you yourself can make some contribution to the schoolmaster's keep, give preference to that charity rather than to others which are neither so necessary nor so urgent. In a word, neglect nothing that depends on your zeal to secure the installation of a schoolmaster in
your parish, this being the best and most dependable method of ensuring that youth is always well instructed in its faith and brought up in the fear of God, on which the reformation of our parishes depends/ 47 Henceforth, and for a long time to come, religious education would be linked with utilitarian lay instruction, not for reasons of opportunism or propaganda, but because professional lay education was recognized as having a high moral value.
In the preceding analyses, set apart children
between
we began by
five
distinguishing a tendency to
and eleven, to separate them from classes - the seventh and the
their
and group them in special eighth, the nucleus of a system of elementary education; we then followed the current of religious aposdeship which resulted in the foundation of deduce from this that primary charity schools for the poor. One might elders
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
306 education, in so far as
it
existed in the
modern
sense in the seventeenth
of these two influences and was limited to charity century, was the result schools for poor children. Such was no doubt the original aim of the reformers down to St Jean-Baptiste de La Salle. religious
to this charitable origin the accordingly tempted to attribute lower-class character which primary education has retained from the late
One
is
the present day: far from being one step in a eighteenth century to climbed at least the first steps together, it hierarchy in which all children
opposed to secondary class. But the charity schools did the middle of monopoly not give rise to an education reserved for the lower classes. Claude Joly 48 He would have tolerated the existence of charity offers us proof of this. schools at a pinch if they had been confined to little beggar-children. was that this was no longer the case at die end of the But his strikes us as a specifically lower-class education, as
education, the
objection seventeenth century. According to him, the charity schools were no sooner founded than they attracted a well-to-do clientele of craftsmen, merchants and burgesses, to the loss of the traditional schools. The
cantor had the right to
visit all schools,
even those outside
his jurisdiction,
of a primary-school inspector. In the promoter was something 'did not find the filth and the rags of the charity schools the promoter the priests say that they are composed*. poor beggar-children of whom
and
his
real poverty without rags at a time when the authority in dress. wealth necessarily asserted itself by No filth and no rags: greatly to his indignation, the promoter, 'visiting a girls' school in the Faubourg Saint-Germain in June 1675, found only cleanliness there, and having complained of this to the Mistress, ^was that she did not know how poor they were'. In given no reply save another school he found 'over two hundred girls... most of them well
There was no conferred
dressed, neither dirty
surrounding
districts
nor in rags which is why all the girls' schools in the the cantor's [which were not free and were under :
are at present deserted. It is proverbial that wants it, rich and poor alike.' free,
jurisdiction]
when something
Thus the charity everybody a schools - where the teaching must have been done by masters of
is
done
who
than the layinspired greater confidence
district schools
- attracted children from well-to-do homes
religious brotherhood,
masters of the
We
can also see from this that the district schools as poor children. or lower middle-class clientele which middle-class a after hankered also were taking away from them and orders the or the priests religious
as
well
which Abraham Bosse has depicted in his engravings. The accusations of unfair competition levelled at the Brothers of
THE 'LITTLE SCHOOLS' St Jean-Baptiste
de La
Salle
by
307
the district schoolmasters and the master-
same story. The syndic of the master-scribes that the Brothers 'take in not complain in a factum of June 7th, 1704, in which they are established, but also the only the poor of the parishes 4* children of worthy burgesses, merchants and craftsmen'. And they add, in a sentence which reveals a great deal about the manners of the rime: them in separate 'They distinguish the latter [the burgesses] by putting offends our at school and rich of This segregation poor places and seats.' it which the But modern sensibility. implies and the spatial proximity same benches on the if not room die same within familiarity inevitable between difference the have we here And us. to are also repugnant great twentieth the of that and the seventeenth of that the two societies, century or at least the nineteenth century: the difference between a society in which people were carefully ranked but were mixed up in a common and a society which is egalitarian but in which the classes are kept scribes tell exactly the
space,
apart in separate spaces. know that the college, the ancestor of the present-day secondary lower classes. Originally the school, also drew some of its pupils from the for scholarship boys; in fact the scholarships later intended were colleges which were sold like offices. It was therefore not became
We
privileges
that the poor gained admission to the always by means of scholarships Latin school, but rather because of free instruction and the day-school The day-school system enabled a pupil to live in lodgings, often
system. in the humblest conditions, in the house of an artisan who was often paid in kind. He lived all week on the food which relatives or neighbours a child could be kept at school In that him on
brought
for far less than
market-day.
it
would
way
cost a boarder at a
modern
Iyc6e.
In principle the university colleges were not free. The master received other sources of the traditional fees direct from his pupils, and he had or the income: either a foundation scholarship if he was a senior scholar, the pupils payments made by
whom
he lodged in
his
home. However,
which pupils attending classes were called upon to pay, always strictness. Charles Sorel writes: modest, were not even exacted with any where the 'In the opposed to the Jesuit colleges] the fees
ordinary colleges [as their fees every month to the master, there are pupils of good family pay and who none the less almost as many day-boys who come without paying these poor boys die attend the master's lessons without anyone denying as cruel to combe derive from them it would just advantage they may at night with the street as for a man walking along plain of these things from enjoying the same a lighted torch to want to prevent the passers-by ;
SCHOLASTIC
J08
LIFE
50 The tendency was towards free education. It was already given light/ 61 The University of Paris officially instituted it in lyip. the by Jesuits. 52 The Oratorians retained the principle of a small tuition fee.
One of
coliers (1601), declares the characters in Larivey's play, Les these students (for he takes in students as lodgers) there are
that if among some 'good young men', many are 'the children of poor artisans, who have come from the dregs of the lower classes, with nothing of the 63 The scholar about them save the name, and worse than sharpers'. in Le Mans at sometimes give the father's occupation:
college registers
were the sons of 1668, eleven pupils out of forty-one in the physics class 54 results of an statistical Pere de Dainville has published the artisans. examination of the register of the Jesuit college at Ch&lons-sur-Marne, for the years between 1618 and 1736. The proportion of artisans and labourers varied according to circumstances between 20 per cent and cent and 62 per cent of the 35 per cent (mainly artisans) 'between 48 per were drawn from the lower class or the lower in the ;
college pupils 55 And we should note that this middle-class.'
was a big college: higher which were limited to
existed in the Latin schools, proportions probably
grammar classes. The recruitment from ambitions on the part
the lower class often corresponded to social of the parents: thus a brass-founder, Girardon,
sent his son, the future sculptor, to college in the hope of making an lower-class pupils - though of him. large proportion of these
attorney
A
minor gauge the proportion exactly later became officials and founded middle-class families: their or treasury police
it is
impossible to
existence therefore implies a greater social mobility than
is
generally
a few years in the lower supposed. However, many pupils spent only classes of the colleges. According to a text of 1789, 'the experience of a considerable number of years proves that most provincial colleges would be obliged to abolish their second, rhetoric and philosophy classes if they were not attended by students destined for the Church or the Bar.
have scarcely covered half their studies Nearly all the other children 56 Some abandoned them for before they abandon them for good.' trades. The register of the for manual others but or the army commerce, some departures in the for reasons the at Oratorian Troyes gives college
middle of the school course: several have joined the army, but one has become a joiner, another has 'gone back to his father's kitchen', while 87 a third has 'left school to become a cobbler'. Young Girardon dishis father by apprenticing himself to a wood-carver. When appointed Marmontel entered Mauriac College, his father envisaged a stay of only
THE 'LITTLE SCHOOLS' a few years, and he was reluctant to a rich
him
309
stay at school after the
enough of studying and Latin... I have a post for 68 merchant, and the counter shall be his school/ At the
rhetoric class: 'That
him with
let
'
is
same time Guyton de Moreau wrote:
'It is customary for nearly all the to send their children to college, just for a few years and with the intention of taking them away again after a certain time...
artisans in the
town
Most of those who go
to college leave before completing their studies in order to
959 One can imagine the medley of ranks, and and of clothes manners, to be found in these classes. But, consequently as in the little schools, the children of good family were separated from the rank and file: in the Jesuit colleges, the young nobles sent their famuli or valets on ahead to keep the special seats which were reserved for them. In the same way, at the beginning of this century, society ladies would send their servants to church to keep the best seats for them at the
take
up
their father's trade.
rashionable
Sunday Masses.
An edict of 1626 reveals
the existence
of similar customs in the
colleges
f the University of Paris: the colleges separated the boarders from the day-boys, the laymen from the clerics (domesticos ab externis a laicis t
sacerdotes}>
but also the sons of good family from the poor students
who
acted as college servants (famulos ab ingenuis).** The little schools developed in the course of the seventeenth century at the same time as the sixth, seventh and eighth classes in the colleges.
Their growth bears witness to the special interest shown henceforth in the younger schoolchildren, who had been somewhat neglected. But at this
time neither colleges nor schools drew their pupils exclusively from
one
social class.
These colleges full of lower-class pupils were to disappear; they were new spirit unable to survive a radical transformation of manners.
A
which created the appeared in the course of the eighteenth century, situation obtaining in the nineteenth century; it was the same spirit which It denied access to secondary education to inspired the Enlightenment. the children of the lower classes. Henceforth it was considered that
education should be confined to the rich,
for, if it
were extended to the
would turn them against manual kbour and make social misfits poor, of them. The whole of society would suffer from the lack of an adequate kbour force and from the presence of an excessive number of unproductive citizens. This opinion was the expression in an economist's terms it
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
310
of an instinctive dislike of the mixing of the social classes at school. It was the exact opposite of the opinion held by the seventeenth-century reformers, who saw in education the only possible means of instilling a sense of morality into the down-and-outs, of turning them into servants and workers, and hence of providing the country with a good kbour force. But it was already the theme of social conservatism in the nineteenth century and colonial conservatism in the twentieth, which sees the school as the means taken by modern revolutionary ideas to reach the lower classes and undermine the authority of established fortunes. The time of this retrogression, the eighteenth century, is particularly indicative of a profound structural change. Here is the opinion of a technologist, the author of a treatise on highways and bridges: 'It has become fashionable not to engage any servant who cannot read, write and count.' Apparently people preferred educated servants, like those of Marivaux or Beaumarchais! 'With all the labourers' children becoming monks, clerks [invoicing clerks in the offices of merchants, lawyers, magistrates or administrators] or lackeys, it is not 61 surprising that there are none left for marriage or agriculture/ In 1763, after the departure of the Jesuits, the public felt concerned as
who was
going to take their place, and there was a great deal of of educational questions. All this discussion gave rise to a mass' of literature on the reform of education. The notorious La Chalotais expounded the ideas of the philosophers in his Essais d*Education nationale ou to
discussion
2 plan d'&udespour lajeunesse* In his opinion there were too many schools: 'Surely there are too many scribes [master-scribes who ran schools], too
many academies,
too
many
colleges. In the past
it
was
difficult to
become
a scholar because of the dearth of books; nowadays the multitude of There have never been books prevents one from becoming a scholar . . .
many students in a country where everyone complains of depopulation fact the population, far from going down, was increasing]. Even the [in
so
lower
classes
want
the colleges in the
to study; labourers little
they have muddled
towns where
their
and
it
way through
artisans
costs
to live, and when which have taught them
very
studies
send their children to
little
to despise their father's trade [this was not always the case], they take refuge in the cloister, in the ecclesiastical state [becoming the 'unpro-
ductive citizens' which the liberal conservatives of the nineteenth century would see, not in the monks any more, but in the civil servants], or they become officers of the kw [this was obviously the commonest way of climbing the social kdder].' The Latin school, in his opinion, ought to
be closed to peasants, workers and
servants, like secondary education
THE later on.
But La
into the
little
LITTLE SCHOOLS
311
went further and would not even allow them 'The Brothers of Christian Doctrine, also known
Chalotais
schools:
as the Ignorantines, came along to finish everything off They teach reading and writing to people who should have learnt nothing but how to draw and how to handle a plane and a file, but who now no longer want to [note the association between draughtsmanship and manual skill,
which we remarked on
earlier in
connection with the workshop
schools of the late sixteenth century]. They are the rivals and successors of the Jesuits. The public good requires that the knowledge of the lower classes
La
extend no further than their occupations/ Voltaire congratulated ** 'Thank you for condemning the education of labourers.
Chalotais:
who
farm the land need agricultural workers and not tonsured clerics/ 'The lower classes should be guided, not educated: they are not worthy to be educated/ 'I consider it essential that there should be ignorant find Verkc writing in 1759 in the same spirit: beggars on earth/ towns and villages echo with this cry during market 'Cottages, hamlets, the two months of holidays: "Send your children to college/" 'How are we to stop this flood of education which is submerging so many I
We
villages, producing so many charlatans, and unhappy people of all sorts, and introintriguers, envious, angry and condition?' 64 Here we can recognize into class confusion every ducing - the need for ignorance and of social conservatism themes essential the to manual the lower classes to confine kbour, and the opposition illiteracy associated here with the themes work and manual education between these recriminations proved But the of anti-clericalism Enlightenment. of of the in the face education, although it is true that progress powerless first half of the nineteenth century. the school attendance dropped during the modern idea of adapting a also there time At the same appeared de Bernis wrote or trade his future to child's studies profession. Cardinal of the same station not all are who are in his memoirs: 'Why children, education? same to the same the for in life, nor destined jobs, subjected
cottages, depopulating so
many
not be better to teach arithmetic to a merchant's son, for would be instance, than to teach him to write Greek and Latin verse? [It these before ideas, frequently expressed at another two hundred years in France, with die educaconsideration into taken the time, began to be studies continue to classical Fourth tional reforms of the Republic: like should I dominate secondary education.] everyone to be educated function he is due to to the in relation and according to his station, three see subjects of instruction which only perform in society. I can should be common to all men: religion, by means of which one hopes
Would
it
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
312
to attain salvation; the study of the laws, by means of which one defends one's own property and that of others; and finally medicine [we should 65 by means of which one hopes to preserve one's health.' say
hygiene],
People began to think that the cycle of Latin studies retarded a young man too much and put him in a position of inferiority vis-i-vis his rivals when they had begun at an earlier age to serve an apprenticeship in their his philosophy class profession or station in life. Jacques Lablee finished I had to think of of writes: He seventeen. home, making 'Going age
at the
a career for myself.' His father had left the army to manage a wine business. 'Those children who do not go to college are the luckiest. They are in a better position than the rest to decide their lot; they enter a
have a job lawyer's office or a business house at an early age, and they which soon becomes lucrative or leads them to a settled position.' The
he goes on, either arrive too late and find every or else have 'no taste for long, difficult and obscure
oldest college students,
position
filled,
where all the talk is of money and the apprenticeships in classes of men means of making it.' 66 Sensible observations, perhaps, but they have never discouraged French parents from giving their children a classical education, once this education had
become
the
mark of
middle-class
status.
The
current of opinion which condemned the admission of the lower education in general and to the Latin school in particular,
classes to
resulted in a social specialization
of types of instruction from which the
In stages of present-day education are derived. the early nineteenth century the lower classes were expelled from the Latin colleges by the development of the boarding-school system - which - and of the the was restricted to the richer
primary and secondary
little
country colleges,
pupils for very
which
by low
steady disappearance took in besaciers, children
fees
from the surrounding countryside who lived in lodgings on food brought to them on market-days. These pupils could not hope to go to the big where life was more expensive, where the colleges in the great urban areas, medieval tradition of lodging students had disappeared and where the school authorities no longer tolerated day-boys who were free from both rid itself of its lowerparental control and academic supervision. Having class pupils, the college would become exclusively middle-class. In England, a parallel evolution gave rise to the so-called public schools. Originally there was no distinction between the public schools and the other grammar schools or endowed schools. The latter were day-schools
with only a few places for boarders who were scholarship boys; they their pupils from the town and neighbourhood and from an
drew
THE 'LITTLE SCHOOLS'
313
extensive social field, as was the case in France.
Towards the end of the eighteenth century, the gentry showed a certain reluctance to send its sons to the nearest grammar school, which was also attended by children from poorer homes. It was then that some of these grammar schools decided to specialize in the education of and became
young gentlemen
boarding-schools whose recruitment ceased to be regional in character and extended to the whole country: the public schools. The old grammar schools which remained faithful to the ancient day-school traditions,
deprived of their
rich, aristocratic clientele, gradually dropped the of Latin and either disappeared teaching completely or became indisfrom the little tinguishable elementary schools. The prestige of the
public
steadily; the new middle class, Revolution, sent its sons to it to learn the manners
school
born in the Industrial of a modern gentleman, Arnold at Rugby (1828-42).
grew
as codified
The
by reforming pedagogues such as public schools moulded English society
and gave function
it its
as
a
in the nineteenth century
aristocratic character:
dam
contemporaries appreciated their to hold back the flood-waters of democracy, and the
Duke of Wellington, alarmed
at the progress
founded a public school of
being
made by
the lower
own
to help defend the English The gentleman. nineteenth-century gentleman, so different even in his physical make-up from the Englishman of the eighteenth or early nineteenth century, as also from Mr Pickwick, was a product of the classes,
his
public schools.
This aristocratic specialization was peculiar to England: no French college (even the Jesuit colleges) could be compared to the English public schools. Experiments such as the Dominican college of Saint-Elme at Arcachon, or the Protestant school of Les Roches, were too limited in their scope and sometimes failed completely. However, if the evolutionary mechanism differed in France and England, the phenomenon remained basically the same: a change from day-schools with a regional recruitment to boarding-schools with a more extensive and sometimes national recruitment, from a varied social make-up to a limited aristocratic or middle-class recruitment. The result was that what had been a virtually unrestricted secondary education became a class monopoly, the symbol of a social stratum and the means of its selection. Conversely, the little schools were reserved for the lower classes, which were henceforth debarred from the secondary schools. In 1820 we find a primary inspector recommending the adoption of the methods of 'mutual education* because, among other reasons, this would satisfy the objections of respectable families to mixing their offspring with
SCHOLASTIC
314 lower-class children:
'By adopting two rooms at once,
easily look after and this would raise the
from
LIFE
method, a single master can particularly two adjoining rooms,
this
only obstacle which prevents many parents where they would be mixed up are a long way from Joly's point of view, expressed
sending their children to a school
We
with paupers/ 67 little over a century before; the coexistence of the social classes in a had been quite natural in the seventeenth century, which single space, a
was no longer
tolerated.
In this chapter we have studied two phenomena: first, in the seventeenth century, the demographic specialization of the ages from five-toseven to ten-to-eleven, both in the little schools and in the lower classes of the colleges; then, in the eighteenth century, the specialization of two
middle types of education, one for the lower classes, the other for the the one hand the children were separated classes and the aristocracy.
On
from
their elders,
poor. There
the other hand the rich were separated from the in opinion, a connection between these two
on
exists,
my
phenomena. They were the manifestations of a general tendency towards was not unconnected distinguishing and separating: a tendency which with the Cartesian revolution of clear ideas.
*
VIII
*
THE ROUGHNESS OF SCHOOLCHILDREN 1 88 1 the historian Carr6 expressed astonishment on studying the records of the Oratorian college at Troyes in the seventeenth century: 'The reports on some of the pupils are deplorable, and I doubt whether
IN
modern lyce could merit reports of that sort/ 1 The remark would certainly be true of the young adults, but not as true as it would be of the children. The difference in manners between the two societies, that of the seventeenth century and our own, can best be seen in the children and young people, who for a very long time retained archaic, medieval characteristics which were already partly effaced in the adult a pupil at a
We
have studied the progress in school and other academic of a modern concept of childhood: we have seen how a minority wedded to ideas of order, clarity and authority tried to introduce into society by means of education a new way of life opposed to the anarchical impulsiveness of the old manners. This minority exerted pressure from the outside on the world of childhood, but the latter held out for a long time and remained until the end of the seventeenth century in France, until the beginning of the nineteenth century in England, a sort of islet of archaism. It was later to become the focus of the modernization of society. world.
institutions
Schoolchildren used to be armed. for their disarmament
The Jesuits'
on entering the
ratio
studiorum provided
weapons being placed in handed a and back to the pupil when for in return safe custody receipt, he went out. In 1680, the disciplinary regulations of the College de college,
Bourgogne repeated this rule: 'Neither firearms nor swords are to be retained in pupils' rooms and those who possess such weapons must hand them over to the Principal, who will keep them in a place chosen for that purpose.' 8
It is
hard to imagine a rule of that sort in our present-
day colleges or lycees! The youngest children, from the age of five, could already wear a sword, which was not simply for ornament or
how
*on Shrove Monday this month [in 1588] prestige: L'Estoile tells the King sent the civil and criminal lieutenant, his public attorney at the
and the commissioners [examining commissioners, at once examining magistrates and police superintendents] with some sergeants Chastelet,
315
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
316
to the University of Paris to disarm the students who during the Saint8 Germain fair had gone there armed to behave insolently.' And much
mention a 1709, the records of the Oratorian college at Troyes who was threatening to run his master through igladio minatus est
later, in
pupil
of towns with colleges were for ever swords: witness this edict of March 20th, forbidding the pupils to wear Court of Dijon: 'Since the majority of the the issued
praeceptori*
The judicial
authorities
1675, High by for the robe [but we know young people of the city, although destined now that there was really less difference between gentlemen of the robe and gentlemen of the sword than historians had thought: they came from the same families] and still at school [in the rhetoric or logic classes], and several other persons unfit to wear a sword, none the less wore one wherever they went, and since this licence was harmful, not only on account of the scandal it caused the public, but also on account of the 5 For a long time brawls which often resulted from it... quarrels and the High Court at Dijon went on repeating the same prohibition, even not as kte as 1753, as if the regulation had not become out of date, if '
effective.
Even when he had deposited
his
sword
into the college, the schoolboy could
still
in the armoury, before going be a dangerous character: in
beaten by his pupils 1661, at Beaune, an Oratorian Father was soundly and the High Court of Dijon had to extend to other offensive weapons the ban already applied to the sword, forbidding 'all students to carry in the classrooms of the house of sticks, stakes and other offensive weapons the aforementioned Priests of the Oratory*. The masters often had to cope with real armed revolts, and mutinies were common and violent. Take for instance the one staged by the
of the Jesuit college of La Fl&he one carnival day in 1646. It will be seen that this was a far more serious affair than the minor demonstrations of young schoolboys or even older students nowadays. The carnival at that rime was a festival of youth in which the whole it was accompanied by great gaiety and great took pupils
population
disorderliness.
broadminded
part: authorities charged with maintaining order were in their attitude, like the authorities in Moslem countries at
The
However, the magistrate of La Flfcche had taken the abbot or prior of youth: of forbidding the election of a king, precaution the traditional master of ceremonies and organizer of the carnival
the end of Ramadan.
celebrations.
The atmosphere was
all
the
more
electric that
year in that
older pupils of the college had had to suffer the humiliating a public flogging by the corrector. They considered that scholastica, poena
some of the
THE ROUGHNESS
,0F
SCHOOLCHILDREN
317
they had been dishonoured and were plotting revenge. The school records of the time are full of stories of pupils who had been punished and who took their revenge by beating up their masters, who had to send for the police. At La Fl&che, on the evening of Shrove Tuesday, the day-boys, who had sided with their schoolmates, introduced one of their
number
into the college disguised as a
woman. But
neither the Fathers
nor the Brothers were taken off their guard: these monks knew what they were up against and defended themselves energetically. The Brothers
managed to capture one of the mutineers who had drawn his sword and him up. The brawl then changed in character and turned into a riot: 'This made the others angrier than before. They went to the armourers and provided themselves with weapons.' 6 Here we recognize the state of nerves which is still characteristic of Arab crowds, and which
locked
an orgy of killing and looting; we imagine this state of mind. increasingly those involved were day-boys at the college students were armed: ,The who lived in the pedagogicas and in lodgings approved by the principal: can easily turn a ourselves find
trivial incident into
difficult to
it
among them were
those in the philosophy classes. 'They spent and laid siege to all the doors of the college by which it could be handed over [in the morning] to justice/ One can imagine the excitement of this Shrove Tuesday vigil. In the morning they the oldest
the night under arms
forced their
way
into the college:
'When morning
came, they entered would have
the college under arms, repeating their threats that they
their companion back willy-nilly, and that they would capture a Jesuit or a boarder by way of reprisal.' In spite of this invasion, the Fathers and their obedient pupils got ready to follow the usual routine of a peaceful day: 'The rebels... stood in the avenues, armed with swords, sticks,
black-jacks, bell rang to
and
stones, driving
back the pupils
The
who came
out
when
the
threatened to take an ugly turn if the Fathers refused to lose face and release their prisoner. They too
had
go
their stock
sticks,
but also
to the classrooms.'
affair
of weapons, and they armed their servants, not only with with halberds and above all with muskets: they had the
on their side. The Jesuits' servants then attempted them a bloodless victory: the sight of the a healthy mistrust. Unfortunately one of the mutineers
superiority of fire-power a sortie which nearly won
muskets inspired
held his ground: 'Instead of retreating like the other rebels in the troop, he advanced on the servant who was holding the musket with its muzzle pointing upwards [there may well have been only one musket!], and hurling himself on the man and his weapon, tried to force him to sur-
render
it
. , ,
As
ill-luck
would have it,
the bolt of the musket
was
released
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
318
in this struggle and the musket went off, the bullet going through the master's cassock [a master had intervened in the fight] which was caught
between the barrel of the musket and the student's belly, passing between the skin and the flesh of the belly without entering a vital organ, and finally striking the thighbone.'
These school mutinies did not always turn into armed riots: they sometimes took the form of strikes and picketing. In 1633 the court, 'informed that the logic students of the college of this city of Dijon have withdrawn without die permission of the rectors and masters, and are
and violently preventing their companions from entering the aforementioned college', ordered them to return to school and instructed 7 the mayor to help the masters to punish the rebels. In 1672, at Orleans, a
forcibly
8 his classmates against their master. twenty-year-old rhetorician stirred up 9 The pupils of the Protestant academies were no more law-abiding: in
1649, at Die, the logicians barricaded themselves inside the college, the masters and the pupils of the other classes from entering,
prevented
fired pistol-shots, fouled the rostra in the first and third classrooms, threw the benches in the second classroom out of the window, tore up die books, ? climbed out of the windows of the fourth classroom, scandalindeed they would attack passers-by with izing the public. Sometimes their swords, when they did not make do with the traditional fireworks. school mutinies would stop at the end of the In France the
and
finally
great
seventeenth century. One has the impression that a disciplinary system but only then, in curbing the already over a century old succeeded then, turbulence of youth. The eighteenth century was a period of calm; there would be some demonstrations in the lycees in the first half of the nineteenth century, but for political reasons: the boys were demonthe Jesuits, and so on. This was a strating for or against Poland, against state of mind, akin to that of modern times. Henceforth, different very from the traditional festivities, only politics would produce disorders apart
which generally remained within the limits of the student rag. In England, on the other hand, the schools did not enjoy this period of remission in the eighteenth century. Mutinies, far from decreasing in number and finally disappearing, became increasingly frequent and violent in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. There was and rebellion everywhere. At Winchester, in the late the boys occupied the school for two days and eighteenth century, hoisted the red flag. In 1818 two companies of troops with fixed bayonets 10 had to be called in to suppress a rising of the pupils. At Rugby, the set fire to their books and desks and withdrew to an island which
indiscipline
pupils
THE ROUGHNESS OF SCHOOLCHILDREN had to be taken by
assault
by
319
the army. There were similar incidents at
Eton. In 1768 the praepostors or monitors - the good pupils - of the sixth form seceded and left the school. In 1783 there was a revolt against the headmaster, with rooms pillaged and windows broken. In 1818 the school authorities brought forward the time when the gate was locked, to prevent the boys from going hunting: the latter, after pelting their master with rotten eggs, knocked down part of the wall, and the trouble-
makers had to be taken by force. Mutiny had become one of the typical and picturesque aspects of the idea contemporaries had of school life. King George III, meeting some Eton boys at Windsor, and joking with them about the two main features of their life, floggings and mutinies,
you had any mutinies lately, eh, eh?' last important mutiny occurred at Marlborough as late as 1851. At Eton there was none after 1832, when the last one ended with the flogging of eighty boys: order was then restored. asked: 'Have
In England, the
In France, during the first half of" the seventeenth century, one of the forms that violence took was the duel. The preceptors sometimes set their charges an example in this respect. Thus the future Mar&hal de Bassompierre, who in 1591 entered the third class at the college of
Freiburg-im-Breisgau together with his brother, writes in his memoirs: 'We spent only five months there because Grouet, our preceptor, killed
La Motte,
who
used to teach us dancing,' 11
The
annals
of Aix College
pupils having been so unruly as to fight and quarrel, even challenging one another to duels, it was decided to put a stop to this, especially as after school they would sometimes start
for 1634 record:
'Some of our
the neighbours, the passers-by fighting in front of the college, scandalizing and the other pupils/ 12 These brawls after school must have been frequent occurrences: Pre de Dainville quotes 'quarrels outside and fights with stones
and other weapons which take place
[at
Avignon] between the
to the Jesuit schools in that town and those who go to the master-scribes and other masters and pedagogues: fights which
children
distract
who go
them from
their studies
and in which they
risk
being
wounded
unto death'. 13 In 1572, in the same town, in the course of a brawl between schoolboys from Saint-Nicolas and some workmen, a schoolboy was apparently 14 In 1513, on Corpus Christi Day, the schoolboys of killed with a stone. Saint-Nicolas had laid claim to their place in the procession with the aid of sticks and swords. The captain, mad with anger, tried to arrest them and pursued them right into the chapel where they had taken refuge.
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
32O
One of them, to strengthen a right of sanctuary in which he had no great confidence, had taken the chalice and held it in his hand. The captain cuffed
him but
did not dare to snatch the chalice from him. 15
Aix annals, 16 'there was a great fight between the Philosophy class and the Humanities class, and the Rector informed before President du Chaine' - who had a few of the 'Then',
state*
the
boys imprisoned handing them over to the college corrector. In 1646: 'One of our pupils a nobleman from Sisteron and a metaphysician, was killed in a [at Aix],
duel without having the opportunity to show any sign of contrition. There were four of them who fought, two of whom were not students. It was at nine o'clock in the morning, and they had spent the night together in the Carthusians' barn, in order to be able to fight more few months before, another pupil in the conveniently afterwards.
A
same way by a surgeon and had died pupil in the third class, not one of the older boys. Louis Legendre, born in 1655, tells us in his memoirs that one of his brothers died 'from a sword-thrust when he tried to separate two students who were fighting'. 17 These duels were common occurrences. At Aix the rector, alarmed at their frequency, 'went to the classrooms of the philosophy, rhetoric, humanities and third classes, after summoning there a great many of the little boys of die fourth and fifth [whose tender years afforded them no protection against this contagion of violence], and there he pointed out to them the evil in duelling and forbade them 18 to indulge in duelling under pain of severe penalties'. In France these private battles, very common at the time of the League and the Fronde, grew less frequent and practically disappeared during the second half of the seventeenth century, as did the collective battles and third class
had been
killed in the
just as un-Christian a death.'
A
the mutinies one has the impression that the turbulent, unruly population of the schools had finally been tamed. But in England the school records of the eighteenth century still mention cases of violence half-way between ragging and duelling: a pupil called Cottel was expelled laesionem enormem Philippe Ly$ crudeliter et saepessime - in other words for 'bullying'. These fights changed in the early nineteenth century into wrestling or boxing matches, respected by the masters, before the reform of the public :
schools: Thomas
Hughes shows us some of these in Tom Brown
s Schooldays.
During the same period, violence was also prevalent among adults: Richelieu too banned duelling, which was decimating his nobility. other like gangs of boys after Villages and trade guilds fought each school. The spirit of violence spread to the whole of society, to all its ranks, noble
and
villein alike,
and to
all its
ages, children,
youths or
THE ROUGHNESS OF SCHOOLCHILDREN
32!
,
adults. The only ones to escape its influence were the little group of churchmen, statesmen and moralists who, apart from the great currents of contemporary manners, were painstakingly building the social structure of the world to come.
This spirit of violence went with considerable licence with regard to wine and women. In the Middle Ages, schoolboys drank heavily, and college statutes recognized the mug of wine as a forfeit for minor offences and accepted it as a symbol of initiation and brotherhood. They codified a custom, trying to regulate it in order to avoid not dare to suppress it. In the sixteenth
its
abuse, since they did
was
century, drinking
officially
prohibited in school, at least in France and Geneva: according to Cordier, if pupils drank hard in their rooms, it was secretly', and if the culprits were caught they knew what to expect. It is to note the *
interesting
made by
the authorities:
first
they regulated drinking, then they flatly prohibited it. But a deeply rooted habit could not be changed immediately for all that; the boys simply did their drinking out of school, progress
19 in the neighbouring taverns. In Schottenius's dialogues, set in Cologne we have a schoolboy saying to another: 'Come with me; I
in 1524-5,
know where
the drinking students hide/ *I suppose you often go with them/ says his companion. 'Now and then/ comes the reply, 'when I have some money/ At Pont-4-Mousson, a drunken rhetorician killed one of his schoolmates. 20 In the records of the Oratorian at
college
Troyes, at the beginning of the eighteenth century: vino dediti cauponam olent, or again, bibere doctiores quam studere. 21 If French students became
more
sober in the eighteenth century, thanks to a
more
efficient disci-
plinary system, their English counterparts, at least in the university colleges, were still upholding the medieval traditions of Pantagruelian tippling in the early nineteenth century. Ruskin, at his first supper-party at Christ Church, held his own the down his only by
pouring
waistcoat, after first
back to
which he helped
their
to carry four of his
punch companions head-
rooms.
In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries public opinion regarded the student as a libertine and the terror of fathers and husbands, a sort of
adventurer after the fashion of Villon, with
'A hundred
scholars',
Montaigne
tells
all the risks that that implied: 'have caught the pox before boys read Aristotle young! In
us,
22 And getting to their Aristotle lesson/ Larivey's comedy, Les fecoliers, the lodging-house
Nicolas, for
all
hint of envy:
*
that
As
he knows
for
me,
if I
his lodgers
were
a
keeper or 'host', only too well, declares with a
woman,
I
would
rather
go with a
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
322
A
student, ah! student than with the most splendid courtiers in France. he's the pearl of mankind. What sweet words, what gracious manners, would think he was referring to the students what
high
spirits!'
Anyone
of Murger's Vie de Bohttne or Flaubert's Education sentimentale; but the lodgers of Nicolas were ordinary schoolboys, big schoolboys perhaps, but nothing in their everyday life entirely distinguished them from the smaller boys. In 1460 at Dijon a labourer's son, who was studying at the of a Dijon school and was aged about seventeen, was lodged in the house vineyard owner
'who provided him with nothing but bed and soup'
with his own personal provisions). (the boy supplemented this hot soup He did not waste time, and his association with his host's 'chambermaid', a girl of fourteen who helped him to force the lock of the nearest hotel, 28 one hundred and obviously went deeper than mere friendship. Here, of another of is the characters, the later, Larivey's complaint years
fifty
of an inconveniently beautiful daughter: 'It seems to me that been put in such a plight by these libertines and fairground hunters [the students] that chickens have to be kept cooped up, and even father
Paris has
then they are none too safe.' And yet the time was past when the authorities waited for the third repetition of the offence before expelling the scholar who had introduced a woman into his college or pedagogica, according to certain statutes noted
by
Rashdall.
The 1379
statutes
of
however pupils to invite any woman, in the school, under pain of a fine of five dinner lunch or to respectable, sous. 24 Was that expensive?
Narbonne College forbade the
Ift their colleges the Jesuits demanded the strictest morality: Pere Lainez exhorted his pupils to 'abstain from the pleasures of the flesh'. Francion does not attempt to disguise the fact that he had to wait until he left school before losing his innocence with an ugly old woman he had
an inn. Between their classes and their pedagogicas or authorized to meet women: this was the lodgings, pupils had few opportunities claustration which would henceforth characterize sexual of the beginning of the medieval foundations had never college life and which the statutes been able to impose completely. It was understood in the seventeenth that women were received only in the chapel, and provision was
met
at
century
made
for a
room
reserved for this kind of visitor
who
could not go any
At
the College de Bourgogne, according to the of 1680, 'women shall not enter the college disciplinary regulations of gentlemen who may ask to see them. for the mothers rooms, except Conversation may be had with other women, when absolutely necessary,
further: the parlour.
in the chapel, pending the installation
of a room for
this
26
purpose.'
THE ROUGHNESS, OF SCHOOLCHILDREN
323
Henceforth woman was the intruder, ridiculed by a masculine community which desired her and excluded her at the same time. This scene, described by Sorel, has something modern about it, and one might imagine oneself in the courtyard of a twentieth-century boys' school into which a girl had wandered by mistake: 'Our schoolmates hissed and whistled at the girls and women they saw entering the courtyard of our 26 But this strict morality encountered a resistance to which the college.' records bear witness, as if it were in advance of its time. At Troyes, college as early as the end of the first half of the seventeenth century, we find these observations: Sunt suspectis aut pravissimis moribus - pravitatem illius scholae - vitiorum omnium lacritnos si noveris, vis poteris
colluvies et sentina.
21
continerc-faex
And at Caen in
1677: Ejectus ob impudentia (admittedly
2* age of eighteen), Impudentia et arrogantiafamosus. This is why, in the seventeenth century, towns with big colleges were Thus at La Fleche in 1625 prostitution subject to special police supervision.
at the
was more
strictly
controlled than
it
was elsewhere: 'Neither
women
evil and scandalous reputation' could approach - in principle girls of within seven miles of the town. 29 Tavern-keepers, gambling-den at least forbidden to put students up or to proprietors and hotel-keepers were take them in as lodgers: the tavern was still a place of ill repute, frequented by women of easy virtue, soldiers, vagabonds, sharpers and students ah prohibitions. In 1602 Crispin de Pas published a series of too,
nor
1
despite
see not only the departure for engravings depicting school life. Here we school, scenes inside the college, the library, various sports such as ball-
but a games, or tennis, the social graces represented by a dancing lesson, like a cross between a tavern looks in a which place merry gathering
and a brothel, where men and youths are drinking with women to the sound of music. It seems possible that the regulations of the civil authorities at La Flche were not very strictly observed. had a curfew: at nine o'clock at night all Finally these college towns the inhabitants had to lock their doors. Similarly at Tournon, in the same period (1612),
it
was forbidden to go out
after eight o'clock. 80 In this
way
who
lodged in the town from no were measures out. These longer necessary at Mauriac in the sleeping went to school there. School Marmontel when late century, it
was hoped
to prevent schoolboys
eighteenth
of French schoolboys a stricter discipline from by the students who enjoyed the same complete freedom as adults. In of morals continued in the England, on the contrary, the old freedom until the reforms the schools eighteenth century throughout public
life
had become much
closer to that quieter, already
in the nineteenth century, clearly separated
SCHOLASTIC
324
LIFE
in 1760 it was possible to write, two centuries earlier, that a public-schoolboy France did in Montaigne *had practised more vices by the age of sixteen than anyone else would
of the years 183050. In England as
have heard of by sixty '. S1 Schoolboys, as
we
have already said, lived more often than not on market every week by relatives or neighbours.
food brought to the
local
But they
by begging. In sixteenth-century Germany there
also lived
is
abundant evidence on this point. The little band of students, greenhorns and old hands, to which Thomas Platter belonged, and which led a and vagabond life from one town to the next, lived either by thieving in the country, or by the begging of the and the roads on scrounging and taverns: 'When I went greenhorns who went singing in the streets into a tavern, people enjoyed hearing me talk the Valais dialect, and 'those of us greenhorns who gladly gave me something.' At Neuburg could sing went singing round the town; for my part I did some begging/ 'In the evening I often made five or six journeys to bring our old hands who stayed in school my takings for the day/ Sometimes, in the summer, we would go and beg for some beer in the beer-houses after supper/ '
should be added, was a very skilful beggar. Begging by children was tolerated, even approved by public opinion. The bands of scholars exploited this state of mind to the full, training the
Thomas,
it
in stealing and youngest boys for begging, while the oldest specialized Thomas with Platter, on the were There eight companions, scrounging. Dresden Road: they split up into several groups, one for hunting geese, another for picking swedes and onions in the fields and gardens. 'As for
the youngest of us, for bread and salt/
we were
sent to
Neumark,
the nearest town, to beg
They had no luck
that day, for the inhabitants fired at as they lit their camp-fires. Schoolboys
them over the town walls as soon whose voices were beginning to break no longer had any success. At about the age of nineteen, Thomas Platter tried to earn his living by me aside: I had the deep singing in the streets of Zurich: 'People pushed voice of an old hand/ 82 The practice of begging in childhood was so generally accepted, at describes
in his
sixteenth-century Germany, that Mosellanus between Leipzig schoolpedology. This is a collection of conversations least in
it
in their lives. 'As soon as boys. Begging occupies an honourable place Mass is over/ says Laurent, 'I shall run so fast to the rich people's door that I shall be, if not among the first, at least among the second and third
to be given alms/
'You
will be hard put to
it
to beat me,' says his friend.
THE ROUGHNESS OF SCHOOLCHILDREN
'We shall see/ 38 These alms, an indispensable part of the scholar's income, also
had a
traditional character
back to ancient times.
I
and were
associated
with customs dating
quote Mosellanus once more:
'Tomorrow
is
St Martin's Day.' 'Well, what of it?' 'We scholars reap a rich harvest that day. First of all, people give us more to eat than usual, and then it is
customary for the poor to go from door to door to be given alms. I hope to collect enough to get me through the winter without too much hardship.' And again: 'Who's coming into the country with me? We'll go begging ifor eggs in accordance with the old custom.' His friend refuses, partly out of shame and partly because he does not think the game is worth the candle: 'Is there anything more degrading than hanging around farms for the sake of nine or ten eggs?' 'But how am I to appease my hunger?' 'Here in town you can at least husband your time.' Another German dialogue of the same period as Schottenius's describes the same customs at Cologne. 84 'What are you doing with that stick?' 'Tomorrow we are going to go begging from door to door.' 'Begging
for what?'
*A
little
does that custom
loaf of rye bread.'
'Where
remember seeing a statue of head stuck on the end of a stick.' The
St Blaise
piece of pork or a
come from?'
in church, holding a pig's
little
*I
historian
of these dialogues, Massebiau, adds that in his day, in 1878, St Blaise was the patron saint of children and cattle in Germany. On his feast day, the bread and salt. Even in our own time, children in the priest used to bless
go from door to door one October day, asking for little a relic of customs which once corresponded to die and sweets: presents children needs of living at some distance from their homes. alimentary One may incidentally wonder if begging by children was not tolerated the young Wagner was longer in Germany than anywhere else. In 1877 in the second class at the Kreuzschule in Dresden: he was fourteen years old. He wanted to go to see his mother in Dresden; as he had no money, 85 he set off on foot, asking travellers he met on the way for alms. Yet he United
States
cannot have looked
like a
wretched
little
beggar-boy. In later times
have been allowed to get very far. unlikely that he would would be a hitch-hiker.
it is
Nowadays he
In England the traditions of the public schools preserve the memory of these begging customs. At Eton, on the day of the reception and initiation of the new boys or 'freshmen', the pupils used to go out in roads: they would stop the passers-by groups along the neighbouring them some money in return for a little salt - the to
and force them
give used to sprinkle over the freshmen. The English historian of Eton 86 sees here something half-way between robbery and mendicity. salt
326
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
In France, on the other hand, even in the sixteenth-century texts, there no mention of begging at all. We have already drawn attention to the silence of French documents on the subject of student japes: mendicity would seem to have been linked with japes and rags in student manners. The disciplinary system of the colleges and pedagogicas in France must have limited, if not suppressed, vagabond customs which were more deeply rooted in other countries. Yet the population of the Paris schools was still extremely free and easy in the sixteenth century. The humanist Buchanan describes a classroom in the early sixteenth century in these is
terms: 'While the master shouts himself hoarse, these lazy children sit dozing and thinking of their pleasures. One boy who is absent has paid
one of his companions to answer in his place. Another has lost his breeches, while yet another is looking at his foot which is poking through a hole in his shoe/ 87 The educational reformers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries punished pupils who neglected their appearance: they must have been more successful than the founders of colleges in the late Middle Ages, who required their scholars to dress in a way which was no longer fashionable: no shoes with pointed toes, no short, tight-fitting clothes. Respect in the colleges and even in the pensions or pedagogicas for a stricter system of discipline brought about the disappearance of the bohemian martinet. Provided with a better environment, the schoolboy behaved better. However, it was only with the greatest difficulty that the school authorities got rid of certain habits, the inveterate legacy of an easygoing past: thus pupils who were tired of a certain course, or more often who wanted to escape a punishment, used to change masters without obtaining the permission of either their family or the university. For a long time this was regarded as a right they possessed. Then it was seen as a sign of indiscipline on the part of the pupils, an invitation to an unpleasant rivalry between the masters, and from then on war was waged on this floating population. The 1598 reformation of the University of Paris would seem to have got the better of it. But it would take a long time before greater regularity in school attendance could be achieved. Boys found it an easy matter to play truant from Mathurin Cordier's school, as is shown by this fragment of dialogue between two friends, one of whom is absconding: 'When are you coming back to school?' 'I don't know.' 'Why aren't you telling your father?' 'Do you think I care about him?' The records for the seventeenth century still reveal a goodly number of premature departures without permission. At Caen in 1677, fifty-one pupils in the humanities class left school in the middle of the year, without waiting for it to end;
THE ROUGHNESS OF SCHOOLCHILDREN
327
some because they
refused to be punished (ejectus media anno quod debitas families had sent for them, subire non voluerit)> others because their paenas to others them unable more; simply on an impulse: support any being ne paenas absentiae daret, for punishments were inflicted for these unauthorized absences, which must have been frequent. Saepe abiit, seu effugit
et malus. obfuit, pigerritnus
Sine causa 15 antefinem diebus agens a domi -15 cum esset in urbe. Obiit proprio motu (at the
antefinem diebus obfuit sine causa
age of fifteen). the eighteenth century the schoolboy had been more or less tamed, which lasted as long as the daydespite certain habits of independence
By
school system or the custom of living in lodgings, and which disappeared only in the nineteenth century with die spread of the boarding-school
system or the extension of the child's stay at home.
The modern .these
and
reader will have been surprised
manners: they strike us
the unseemliness of
and we of a mental age the wrong side of maturity. In the sign
early adolescence,
classes, as the
by
incompatible with our ideas of childhood barely tolerate them in adults in the lower
as
sixteenth and seventeenth same picaresque world as
centuries, people situated schoolboys in the and beggars. Worthy citizens
soldiers, valets
with landed property mistrusted all equally. A canon of Dijon, speaking of the gilded youth of the town (which included the son of the President of the High Court) and of its departure in 1592 'to go to the Universities of the Law at Toulouse', called it vermin: 'We are well rid of that 88 One of the vermin' - as if he were speaking of a gang of thugs. characters in Larivey's comedy likens certain schoolboys to the outsiders live on the fringe of civilized society: 'I do not regard them as
who
- and men, living without law and without appetite' 'free men' meant something like tramps or truands. The very word from the truand, which in modern French slang denotes an adult, comes
schoolboys but
as free
word applied chiefly to vagabond school of the society in the past. It still retains this scholars, plague in English, where the word 'truant' normally refers to a child scholastic Latin trutanus ('vagabond'), a
meaning
who stays away from school. Here we can see links whose importance we can only guess at, between scholastic terminology and popular slang. It
needed the pressure of the pedagogues to separate the schoolboy
from the bohemian adult, both of whom were the heirs of a time when was limited not even to the cleric but to the elegance of speech and dress moral new adult. A concept was to distinguish the child, or at courtly least the
schoolboy, and
set
him
apart: the concept
of the well-bred
child.
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
328 It
scarcely existed in the sixteenth century; it was formed in the sevenknow that it was the product of the
teenth century.
We
reforming
opinions of an elite of thinkers and moralists who occupied high positions in Church or State. The well-bred child would be preserved from the roughness and immorality which would become the special character-
of the lower
would be the he would be the England gentleman, a social type unknown before the nineteenth century, and which a threatened aristoistics
classes.
In France this well-bred child
litde bourgeois. In
cracy would create, thanks to the public schools, to defend itself against the progress of democracy. The old medieval unruliness was abandoned first
of all by mark of
children, last
of
all
by the lower
the hooligan, of the beggars and outlaws.
the
last
heir
classes
:
today
it
remains
of the old vagabonds,
*
CONCLUSION
SCHOOL AND THE DURATION OF CHILDHOOD have studied the beginnings and development of two views of childhood. According to the first, which was widely held, f children were creatures to~be coddled* and childhood was
WE held to
last
hardly beyond infancy; the second, which expressed the
of the innocence and the weakness of childhood, and consequently of the duty of adults to safeguard the former and strengthen the latter, was confined for a long time to a small minority of lawyers, priests
realization
and
moralists.
But for
their influence, the child
would have remained
simply the poupart or bambino, the sweet, funny little creature with whom people played affectionately but with liberty, if not indeed with licence,
and without any thought of morality or education. Once he had passed the age of five or seven, the child was immediately absorbed into the world of adults this concept of a brief childhood lasted for a long time in the lower classes. The moralists and pedagogues of the seventeenth century, heirs of a tradition going back to Gerson, to the fifteenth-century reformers of the University of Paris, to the founders of colleges in the late Middle Ages, :
succeeded in imposing their considered concept of a long childhood thanks to the success of the educational institutions and practices which (
they guided and supervised.
We
same men, obsessed with of both the modern concept of
find the
educational questions, at the origins
childhood and the modern concept of schooling. Childhood was extended beyond the years when the
little
man
still
*
a leading-string* or spoke his 'jargon', when an intermediary rare and henceforth more and more common, was introhitherto stage, duced between the period of the robe with a collar and the period of the
walked on
recognized adult: the stage of the school, of the college.
The age groups
societies are organized around institutions; thus adolescence, never was distinguished in the nineclearly defined under the ancien regime,
in
our
teenth century and indeed already in the late eighteenth century by conscription and later by military service. The schoolboy or scholar or
-the terms were used interchangeably until the nineteenth century of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was to a what the conscript of the nineteenth and twentieth childhood long to adolescence. was centuries
student
3*9
SCHOLASTIC
330
LIFE
not immediately demographic function of the school was for a long time the school the On a contrary, necessity. recognized remained indifferent to the separation and distinction of the ages, because its essential aim. Nothing it did not regard the education of children as Latin school for this function of moral and medieval the predisposed it social education. The medieval school was not intended for children:
However,
this
as
*
of technical school for the instruction of clerics, young or old' as Michault's Doctrinal put it. Thus it welcomed equally and indifferently at the foot of adults, the precocious and the backward, children,
was a
sort
youths,
the magisterial rostrum.
Until the eighteenth century at least, a great deal of this mentality have seen how tardy was the life and manners. and cksses, and how the various ages division into
We
remained in school
regular
separate
remained mixed up within each class, with children between ten and In thirteen sitting next to adolescents between fifteen and twenty. common parlance, to say that someone was of school age did not necesthat that person was a child, for school age could also be taken sarily mean had small hope of success. That which a to mean the limit
beyond
is
how we must
husband Sancho
'Do not
forget
already fifteen
pupil
by Theresa Panza to her on an expedition with Don Quixote:
advice given interpret the as
me
and
he
sets
off
or your children.
that
it is
Remember
that our Sanchico
time for him to go to school if it
is
is
agreed that
1 a churchman of him/ People went going to make of looking to school when they could, very early or very late. This way in seventeenth the spite of continued century, throughout arthings in the remain would of it traces Sufficient eighteenth influences.
his uncle the priest
is
contrary
after the Revolution, to remember it century for the oldest pedagogues, the ancien regime to condemn in order it, the practice under and to recall, until not would It school. on at of keeping old pupils disappear for good the nineteenth century. This indifference shown by the school to the education of children was
not characteristic simply of old-fashioned conservatives. It is important to note that the humanists of the Renaissance shared it with their enemies, the traditional schoolmen. Like the pedagogues of the Middle Ages, they confused education with culture, spreading education over the whole value to childhood or youth, a span of human life, without giving special
a result they exerted only a slight influence on die structure of the historians. school, and their role has been grossly exaggerated by literary fifteenth of the reformers century, The real innovators were the scholastic
As
Cardinal d'Estouteville,
Gerson^ the organizers of the colleges and
SCHOOL AND DERATION OF CHILDHOOD
33!
pedagogicas, and finally and above all the^uitSj the Oratorians and the Jansenists in the seventeenth century. WitOicm we see the appearance of an awareness of the special nature of childhood, knowledge of chi!4
psychology, and the desire to devise a method suited to that psychology. The college under the ancien regime thus retained characteristics of its ancestor, the Latin cathedral school, for a very long time; many years passed before it became an institution specially intended for children.
Not everybody, by any means, went school.
Among
those
even to a
to a college or
little
who never went to a college, or who spent only one
two years there, the old habits of precocity remained Ages. The concept of a very short childhood held good.
or
as in the
Middle
In the seventeenth century, schooling did not necessarily go with good Many young nobles ignored the college, avoided the academy, and went straight into active service in the army. In her famous account of
-birth.
the
Mar&hal of his
Mme
de Svigne mentions the presence beside fourteen-year-old nephew. At the end of Louis XTV's
Turenne's death in 1675
reign there were fourteen-year-old lieutenants in the army. Chevert joined the army at the age of eleven.*
Mme
de Svigne, who, This.precocity.was also to be found in the ranks. E. GfTTeonard points out, was decidedly interested in military matters, tells this anecdote: *Despraux has been with Gourville to see M. le Prince. as
M.
le
think
it
M.
will
soldier in
to look at his
le Prince.
it isn't
Common
him
army. "Well, what do you think of "Your Royal Highness," said Despr&mx, "I be very good when it reaches its majority. Because the oldest
Prince sent
it?" asked
8
eighteen."'
men in the seventeenth century, this for a long time in the rank and file; it disprecocity in the eighteenth century among the officers, who entered the appeared a more or less complete schooling, sometimes prolonged after army only to both officers and
would continue
training in special military schools. If schooling in the seventeenth century was not yet the monopoly of were excluded one class, it remained the monopoly of one sex.
by
Women
The result was that in their lives the habits of precocity and a brief childhood remained unchanged from the Middle Ages to the seventeenth century. Since the age of twelve, thanks to God whose life is eternal, I have taken a husband five times at the church porch.' Thus one of Chaucer's wometi in the fourteenth century. But at the end of the sixteenth '
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
332 century
o
we find Catherine Marion marrying Antoine Arnauld at the age And she was sufficiently mistress of the house to give 'a slap to
thirteen.
first chambermaid, a girl of twenty, for not resisting a caress which someone gave her*. The person who wrote these lines, Catherine Lemaltre, had herself been married at the age of fourteen. There was talk of marrying off her other sister, Anne, at the age of twelve, and only the little girl's a stop to this project. The suitor was in no hurry religious vocation put
her
and was fond of the family for, so Catherine Lemaitre tells us, 'not only did he delay marrying until she [Anne] had made her profession, but he even put off his marriage until he had seen the entry into religion of the his marriage to my youngest of the family, the little girl who, when sister Anne was being discussed, was a child of six*. At the most an were engagement of four to six years. Moreover, by the age often, girls little women: a precocity due in part to an upbringing which already in life like grown-ups. 'At the age of taught girls to behave very early ten, that little girl's mind was so developed that she ran the whole house for
Mme Arnauld, who
in the deliberately made her do this to train her since that was to be her station in life/
work of a wife and mother,
no girls were given virtually where the boys went to college, they learned as a general phenomenon. nothing. Fenelon complains of this ignorance He admits that considerable trouble is taken over boys: 'The greatest Apart from
this
domestic apprenticeship,
education. In families
down rules in this respect. How many How much money is spent on the printing
to ky experts have taken pains masters and colleges there are!
of books, on
on choosing
scientific research,
professors 1
.
. .
and
on methods of teaching foreign languages,
this
shows the high opinion people have of
But the
'It is considered perfectly permissible girls! to the guidance of ignorant or indiscreet girls willy-nilly mothers.' 4 The result was that women could scarcely read and write: to read and write correctly. It is shameful but common to 'Teach a
the education of boys. to
abandon
see
women
girl
of wit and manners unable to pronounce what they read:
either they hesitate or they read in a sing-song voice . . They are even more at fault in their spelling, and in shaping and joining letters of the .
were virtually illiterate. People got into alphabet when writing.' They the habit of entrusting girls to convents which were not intended for education, and
where they performed pious
exercises
and were given
exclusively religious instruction.
At
Mme
the end of the century provide a model institution of a
de Maintenon's Saint-Cyr would
modern type
between the ages of seven and twelve and
for
left
girls,
when
who
entered
it
they were about
SCHOOL AND DURATION OF CHILDHO9D
333
6
Complaints about the little co-educational schools and the the Ursulines indicate a general tendency in favour of feminine of teaching education, but it would operate with a time-lag of about two centuries.
twenty.
From the fifteenth century on, and especially in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, despite the persistence of the medieval attitude of indifference to age, the college tended to devote itself essentially to the education of youth, drawing its inspiration from the psychological in Cordier, principles which were found, and which we recognize today, in the Jesuits' ratio, and in the abundant pedagogical literature of Port-
Royal. The need for discipline was recognized: a steady, organic discithe violence of an authority regarded with scant pline, very different from the unruly society under their jurisdiction respect. The lawyers knew that called for a strong hand, but school discipline was born of a very different and tradition. It originated in ecclesiastical or religious discipline; spirit it
was not
so
much an
instrument of coercion
as
an instrument of moral
and it was adopted not only for its efficiency, spiritual improvement, because it was the necessary condition of work in common, but also because of its intrinsic moral and ascetic value. The pedagogues would at least in theory, was adapt it to a system of supervising children which, and
constantly in operation, night and day alike. The essential difference between the medieval school and the college
lies
modern
was gradually discipline. Discipline to the private pensions where the schoolboys
in the introduction
of
extended from the colleges lodged, and sometimes to the town
itself, though generally without any masters tended to subject the schoolboy to an ever stricter control in which parents, from the end of the seventeenth best conditions for a good century on, increasingly came to see the education. The authorities were led to increase the hitherto restricted
success in practice.
The
numbers of boarders, and the
ideal institution
of the nineteenth century
a boarding-school, whether lycee, little seminary, religious normale. In spite of the survival of certain archaic features, hole or college the ancien regime a modern would give the college under discipline the present-day secondary school. This discipline character
would be
foreshadowing not only took the form of better supervision inside school, but it tended to force parents ttf respect the complete school cycle. Schooling would and youths - that is to say it admittedly become a matter for children encroach as in the Middle Ages or the Renaissance on would no longer
- but it would be comparatively long (though not as long as in the Middle Ages). People would no longer be content with spending a adult
life
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
334
two at school as was often still the practice in the early seventeenth century, both for impoverished or hurried nobles and for humble folk anxious to give their children a smattering of Latin. The school cycle at year or
the end of the eighteenth century was fairly similar to that in the nineteenth century: four or five years at least. The child would be subjected for the duration of his schooling to an increasingly strict and effective Discipline,
and
enjoyed by
liberty entire duration
who suffered it from the Thus childhood was extended by almost the
this discipline separated the child
the adult.
of the school
cycle.
On the one hand there was the school population, on the other there were those who, in accordance with immemorial custom, went straight into adult life as soon as they could walk and talk. This division did not correspond to social conditions. True, the nucleus of the school population consisted of future burgesses, lawyers and churchmen. But, as we have seen, there were nobles who never went to school, and artisans and peasants who did. Girls of good family were no better educated than girls of the lower classes, and they could be worse educated, for girls of the people sometimes learnt to 'write to perfection* as a trade. The school population, at a time when the college gave almost all the types of instruction
which we nowadays
not correspond nearly social classes.
label primary, secondary
and higher, did
does today to the contour of the of educational apostleship in the late seven-
as closely as it
The movement
teenth century, which resulted in the foundation of the Brothers of the CKristian Schools, was not confined to the poor. The poor schools were
invaded by children of the lower middle
class, as the lower classes in the little artisans and were peasants. by colleges Things could have developed in such a way that the French educational system would have been based on a single school: after all, until the eighteenth century, the ancien regime knew only one school. School attendance would have extended socially and geographically; the length
of the school
cycle,
on
the other hand,
would have
varied according to
the vocation; only lawyers and churchmen would have completed the full course, including two or three years of philosophy corresponding to
the
modern at
university course; the rest, artisans or soldiers, would have earlier stage. That was in fact the situation about the middle
an
stopped of the seventeenth century: the colleges and Latin schools spread a circular network around a big college providing a full course of tuition, and the density of this network diminished towards the periphery. It consisted of a host of schools which contained only the lower classes of the school
SCHOOL AND DURATION OF CHILDHOpD may seem
cycle. This
of the
diversity
social
when one considers the rigidity and under the ancien regime: educational hierarchy to rank than according to function. according surprising
practice differed less Consequently the basic attitudes, like
not
differ
This
335
many
features
of everyday
life,
did
much more.
state
single school
of
affairs did not last, and after the eighteenth century the was replaced by a dual educational system in which each
branch corresponds not to an age group, but to a social class: the Iyc6e or the college for the middle class (secondary and the school for education) the lower class (primary education). Secondary education is a long business. Primary education remained a short affair for a very long time,
and in both France and England followed the two
it
needed the
social revolutions
which
World Wars
to prolong it. Perhaps one of the reasons for this social specialization is in fact to be found in the technical requirements of a long education, once it was firmly established as part of
modern
was no longer
possible to tolerate the coexistence of not determined pupils right from the start to go on to the to all the rules of the end, accept very game for the rules of an enclosed community, whether it is a school or a religious body, demand the life;
it
who were
same
total
abandonment as gambling. Once the long cycle had been was no longer any room for those who, on account of
established, there their station in stances,
life,
their parents' profession, or their financial
could neither follow
it
through, nor intend to follow
it
circumthrough,
to the end.
But there was another cause of this evolution: the action of those men of authority, reason and learning, whom we have already found at the origin of all the great changes in manners between the Middle Ages and modern times. It was they, as we have pointed out, who realized the and the moral and social importance of the special nature of childhood, of children in special institutions devised for that education systematic were disturbed at the extent of their soon some of them purpose. Very success - a sociological success of which they were not always aware. Richelieu, who wanted to found a model academy in the Utopian city he intended to build at Richelieu, and Colbert after him, expressed fears of an overabundance of intellectuals and a shortage of manual labour: an old theme which generations of middle-class conservatives have handed down to
our
own
day. In the seventeenth century, these precursors, despite
eminent reputations, talked to deaf ears: they could do nothing to the progress of the colleges, or their spread into the country. But in
their
halt
'
the eighteenth century their prejudice
was adopted by those enlightened
'
SCHOLASTIC LIFE
336
who
respects appear as their successors; these men of the to their numbers and their connections, could thanks Enlightenment, influence public opinion to an extent which no group ofjurists, clerics or
people
intellectuals
in
many
could have dreamt of before.
Some of them,
such
as
Con-
of universal education open to all. had been expelled - to confine to a single social class the privilege of the long classical education, and to condemn the lower classes to an inferior, exclusively practical, type dorcet, remained faithful to the idea
But most of them proposed -
as
soon
as the Jesuits
of instruction.
We know
too that the concept of childhood found
its
expression in these same circles of enlightened bourgeois Greuze and read mile and Pamela. But the old ways of life
almost until the present day in the lower
classes,
most modern admired
who
have survived
which have not been
We
subjected for so long a period to the influence of the school. may even ask ourselves whether, in this respect, there was not a retrogression first half of the nineteenth century, under the influence of the for child labour in the textile industry. Child labour retained this characteristic of medieval society: the precocity of the entry into adult
during the
demand
life.
The whole complexion of life was changed by
the differences in the
educational treatment of the middle-class and the lower-class child.
There
is
accordingly a remarkable synchronism between the
modern
age group and the social group: both originated at the same time, in the late and in the same milieu - the middle class. eighteenth century,
PART THREE
THE FAMILY
PICTURES OF THE FAMILY may seem debatable whether one
can speak of a profane iconography Middle Ages before the fourteenth century, seeing that the distinction between sacred and profane was so slight. However, among the profane contributions is one theme whose frequency and popularity are highly significant: the theme of tradesuancL crafts (metiers). The archaeologists have shown us that the Gauls in the Roman era were fond of depicting scenes of their working life on their mortuary bas1 reliefs. This liking for the subject of trades and crafts is to be found nowhere else. The archaeologists have been struck by the rarity, if not die complete absence, of such scenes in the mortuary iconography of Roman Africa. 2 The theme consequently dates back far into the past. It continued and even developed in the Middle Ages. To use an anachronistic expression, one may say, broadly speaking, but without deforming the truth, that the 'profane* iconography of the Middle Ages consists above all of this subject of crafts. It is significant that it was their craft or trade which for a long time struck people as their foremost activity; this was a point of view that was linked with the mortuary cult of the GalloRoman epoch, and with the social and learned concept of the world in the Middle Ages, in the cathedral calendars. No doubt this seems perfectly natural to modern historians. But have they asked themselves how many people today would prefer to forget their trade and would choose to leave some other image of themselves ? People have tried in vain to inject a little lyricism into die functional aspects of contemporary life; the result is a sort of academic art without any roots in everyday life. The man of today would not choose his trade, even if he liked it, to propose in the
IT
as a subject for artists, even if the latter could accept it. The importance accorded to the trade or craft in medieval iconography is a sign of the sentimental value that was put on it. It is as if a man's private life were first
of all and above
all his trade.
popular representations of trades and them with that other theme, the seasons, whose importance 8 occasion to recognize in connection with the 'ages of life'.
One of the most
crafts linked
we have had We know that
of symbols Ages in the West were fond of linking by means behind external hidden whose secret connections, appearances,
the Middle ideas
339
THE FAMILY
340 they wished to
emphasize.
They
linked the various
crafts
to
the
seasons, as they did the ages of life or the elements. This is the significance of the calendars in stone and glass, the calendars of the cathedrals and the
books of hours.
The
traditional
iconography of the twelve months of the year was much as we can find it at Saint-
established in the twelfth century, very
Denis, in Paris, at Senlis, at Chartres, at Amiens, at Reims, etc. works and days. On the one hand, the great tasks of the countryman: hay, corn, wine and the vineyards, and pigs. On the other, the period of rest, that of the winter and the spring. It is the peasants who are shown working, but the pictures of leisure moments vary between peasant and noble. seen sitting at a groaning January (Twelfth Night) belongs to the noble, board. February belongs to the villein who is shown coming in from
gathering
wood and
hurriedly sitting down of flowers or a
peasant resting in die midst
by the fire. May is either a young noble setting off for
the chase and getting his falcon ready. In any case it is an evocation of the man is youth taking part in the Maytime festivities. In these scenes valet (as at Saint-Denis) always alone, except that sometimes a young shown standing behind his master who is eating at table. The person
is
depicted
We
is
always a man, never a
see this
iconography
woman
. . .
evolving in the
books of hours
until the
sixteenth century, revealing significant tendencies as it develops. First of all we see woman appear, the lady of courtly love or the mistress o the house. In the Hours of the Due de Berry, in the month of February, Paris or Amiens, the longer, as on the walls of Senlis, house are already of the women Three himself. only person warming round the fire, while the peasant is still shivering outside in the
the peasant
is
no
sitting
snow-covered yard. Elsewhere the scene shows a winter evening at home: the man, sitting in front of the hearth, is warming his hands and feet, but
him
at her spinning-wheel (Charles is quietly working of the court of love: the lady the theme In April appears d'Angoul&ne). and her lover in a walled garden (Charles d'Angouleme). She is also shown accompanying the knights in the chase. But even the noble lady does not remain the idle and somewhat imaginary heroine of the April
beside
his
wife
gardens or the horsewoman of the
Maytime
festivities:
she also superin-
woman
recurs tends the work in the April garden (Turin). The peasant the men with fields in the works She more frequently. (Berry, She takes drinks to the harvesters as they rest on a hot
Angoul&ne). summer's day (Hennessy, Grimani). Her husband brings her back in a wheelbarrow with the wine-flask she has brought him. The knights and
PICTURES Of THE FAMILY
341
no longer isolated in the noble pleasures of April or May. Just the lady of the Turin Book of Hours busied herself with her garden, the nobles mingle with the peasants and wine-harvesters (as in the
ladies are as
cherry-picking scene in the Turin Hours).
The
games. There are a great rustic scenes in
one goes in time, one finds the lord's and joining in their
further
often especially in the sixteenth century, the more their work the family among peasants, supervising
many sixteenth-century tapestries showing these
which the masters and
or supervising the corn-harvest.
their children are picking grapes
The man
is
no longer
alone,
and the
the imaginary couple of courtly love. Wife couple and family join in the man's work and live beside him, indoors or out in the fields. These are not, strictly speaking, family scenes: the children are still missing in the fifteenth century. But the artist feels the need to is
no longer simply
of the men and women depict the collaboration of the married couple, of the house, in the day's work, with a hitherto unknown attention to
homely details. At the same time the street appears in the calendars. The street was it takes on a paralready a familiar theme in medieval iconography: in the admirable views of the bridges of ticularly expressive animation Paris in the thirteenth-century manuscript of the life of St Denis. As in
modern Arab towns,
the street
was the
setting for
commercial and
as also for gossiping, conversation, professional activity,
entertainments
and games. Outside private life, which for a long time was ignored by artists, everything happened in the street. However, the calendar scenes, it for a long time. In the fifteenth being of rustic inspiration, neglected the street took its place in the calendars. True, the months of century,
November and December
in the
Turin Hours are
illustrated
by
the
of the pig. But here it is taking place in the street, and the neighbours have come to their doors to watch. Elsewhere (the calendar of the Hours of Adelaide de Savoie) we are at the market: some little street-arabs are cutting the purse-strings of busy, absent-minded traditional sacrifice
housewives: here
was to recur
all
we recognize the theme of the little pickpockets which way through picaresque genre-painting in the seven-
the
teenth century. 4 Another scene in the same calendar shows the return from the market: a woman has stopped to talk to her neighbour who is out of the window; some men are sitting resting on a bench,
looking
of the village wrestling and by a screen, and watching the boys medieval This street, like the Arab street today, was not playing of private life; it was an extension of that opposed to the intimacy and social relations. The artists, familiar the life, setting of work protected
tennis.
private
342
THE FAMILY
in their comparatively tardy attempts at depicting private life, would begin by capturing it in the street, before pursuing it into the house. It may well be that this private life took place as much in the street as in
the house, if not more.
Together with the street, games invaded the calendar scenes: knightly games such as tournaments (Turin, Hennessy), games common to all, and festival pastimes such as dancing round the maypole. The calendar of the Hours of Adelaide de Savoie consists chiefly of a description of a wide variety of games, parlour games, games of skill, traditional games: the bean-game on Twelfth Night, dancing on May Day, wrestling, hockey, football, water-jousting, snowballing. In other manuscripts we are shown a cross-bow contest (Hennessy), a musical boating party
(Hennessy), and swimming (Grimani). We know that in those days games were not simply pastimes but a form of participation in the community or the group: games were played between members of a 6 family, between neighbours, between age groups, between parishes. Finally, as from the sixteenth centujy, a new character came on the scene in the calendars: the child. He was already frequently depicted in the iconography of the sixteenth century, especially in the Miracles de Notre-Dame. But he had remained absent from the calendars, as if that ancient form of iconography had been reluctant to accept this latecomer. In the fields, there are no children to be seen with the women. Only a few are shown waiting at table during the January banquets. They can also be caught sight of at the market in the Hours of Adelaide de Savoie; in the same manuscript they are depicted snowballing one another, the in church and thrown out. In the last Flemish heckling preacher being of the sixteenth are manuscripts century, they having their fling: one can sense the artist's liking for them. The calendars of Hennessy's and Grimani's Hours have imitated fairly closely the snow-covered village in the Tr&s Riches Heures du Due de Berry, in the January scene which I have described above, with the peasant hurrying home to join his womenfolk by the fire. However, they have added another figure: the child. And the child is in the same position as the Manneken-Pis, which had become a common subject in the iconography of the time: the child piddling through the open door. This theme of the Manneken-Pis was to be found everywhere - witness the picture of St John the Baptist in the Muse des Augustins at Toulouse (a picture which used to hang in 6 the chapel of the High Court of the town), or a certain of Titian's. putto In these Hours of Hennessy and Grimani, the children are shown skating and aping the grown-ups' tournaments (one of the children is
PICTURES OF THE FAMILY
343
supposed to be the young Charles the Fifth). In the Munich Hours they are having a snowball fight. In the Hortulus anitnae, they are playing at courts of love and also at tournaments - riding a barrel instead of a horse - and skating. 7
These successive pictures of the months of the year therefore introduced characters: the woman, the neighbours and friends, and finally the
new
child.
And
the child was associated with a hitherto
unknown
desire for
homeliness, for familiar if not yet precisely 'family* life. In the course of the sixteenth century, this iconography of the months
underwent a final transformation of great significance for our subject: it took on a family character. This it did by merging with the symbolism of another traditional allegory: the ages of life. There were several ways of took the lead: one, the more representing the ages of life, but two of them of form in die survived of the two, engravings and showed the popular the steps of a pyramid rising from birth to maturity, and then to old age and death. The great painters scorned to copy the other hand they frequently adopted the this naive composition.
ages
on
going down
On
in the form of a child, some representation of the three ages of life adolescents - often a couple - and an old man. A Titian painting exemin the foreground a it shows two sleeping putti, and plifies this type: naked man and a fully-dressed peasant girl playing the flute, and in the
in his hands. 8 background a bent old man who sits with a death's-head The same subject would be treated by Van Dyck in the seventeenth 9 In these compositions, the three or four ages of life are depicted
century.
in accordance with the iconographic tradition. Nobody thought of bringing them together within a single family whose different generations would symbolize the ages of life. The artists, and the public opinion remained faithful to an individualistic concept of the which separately,
they expressed,
same individual was depicted at the various stages of his destiny. However, in the course of the sixteenth century, a new idea had the duration of life by the hierarchy of the appeared which symbolized occasion to quote Le Grand Proprittaire de had have We already family. toutes choses, the old medieval text translated into French and printed
ages: the
in I556. 10
The
sixth
book
with the
deals
ages. It
is
illustrated
by a wood-
cut depicting neither the steps of the ages nor the three or four ages shown separately, but simply a family gathering. The father is sitting with a little child on his knees. His wife is standing on his right; one of his sons
is
his father
standing on his is
left,
and another is kneeling to take something is at once a family portrait, of a kind of
This giving to him.
which thousands were painted
in this period in the Netherlands, Italy,
THE FAMILY
344
England, France and Germany, and a family subject such as painters and engravers would produce in large numbers in die seventeenth century. This theme was destined to achieve the most extraordinary popularity.
It
was not
entirely
unknown
remarkable fashion on a
in the late
capital,
known
Middle Ages. as the
It is
marriage
treated in a
capital, in the
n loggias of the ducal palace in Venice. Venturi dates it about 1424 ; Toesca puts it at the end of the fourteenth century, which seems more probable in view of the style and dress, but more surprising in view of the 12 precocity of the subject. illustrating the fragility of
The life
eight sides of this capital tell a story familiar theme in the fourteenth and
-a
fifteenth centuries, but here in the context
of a family, which is something have the engagement. Then the young woman is dressed in a formal dress on which little metal discs have been sewn: ornaments
new.
First
we
perhaps, or possibly coins, for coins played a part in the marital and at the baptismal customs. The third face shows the
moment when one of the two rite
which has survived
entitled to kiss.
bed.
A
child
is
wedding ceremony crown over the other's head - a Oriental liturgy. Then the couple are
holds a
in the
On
the fourth face, they are lying naked in the marriage born the father and mother hold between them,
whom
in swaddling-clothes. Their the time of their engagement and
people,
own
clothes look simpler than at wedding they have become serious
wrapped
who
dress severely or in
:
an old-fashioned
style.
The seventh
face
brings together the whole family, who pose for their portrait. Each parent is holding the child by a shoulder and a hand. This is already the family portrait such as that in Le Grand Propri&aire. But with the eighth face, the story takes a dramatic turn: the family is in mourning, for the child has died; he is stretched out on his bed with his hands folded. The
mother is wiping away her tears with one hand and touching the child's arm with the other; the father is praying. Other capitals near this one are adorned with naked putti playing with fruit, birds and balls: more
commonplace themes, but themes which enable
us to place the marriage context. iconographic The story of the marriage begins as the story of a family but ends with a different theme, that of premature death.
capital in
its
At the Musee Saint-Raimond at Toulouse, one can see the fragments of a calendar which the costumes enable us to place in the second half of the sixteenth century. In the picture for July we see the family gathered as in the together contemporary engraving of Le Grand Propri&taire, with one additional
detail
which
is
the servants beside the parents.
not without importance: the presence of The father and mother are in the middle.
PICTURES QP THE FAMILY
345
The father is holding his son by the hand and the mother her daughter. The valet is standing on the men's side, the maidservant on the women's, for the sexes are separated as in the - the men, fathers portraits of donors and sons, on one side, the women, mothers and daughters, on the other. August remains the month of die harvest, but the painter has chosen to depict not the actual harvesting but the delivery of the harvest to the master, who has some money in his hand and is about to give it to the peasants. This scene is connected common in the sixteenth
with an iconography which was very century, especially in the tapestries of the
where country gentlemen are shown supervising their peasants or joining in their games. October: the family meal. The parents and their children are at table.
period,
The
perched on a high chair which brings him up to the made for children of his age, of a type to be found today. A a napkin is serving the meal: possibly with boy
level still
smallest child
of the
is
table: a chair specially
a valet, possibly a relative given the task of waiting at table, a task which he would not in any way consider humiliating. November: the father is old and ill, so ill that the doctor has been called in.
The
traditional
doctor, with a
iconography,
is
commonplace
gesture examining the urinal.
which belongs to a
December: the whole family is gathered together in the bedroom around the bed in which the father is dying. The last sacraments have been brought to him. His wife is kneeling at the foot of the bed. Behind her, a young woman on her knees is weeping. A young man is standing with a taper in his hand. In the background we can see a little child: no doubt the grandson, the next generation which will continue the family. Thus this calendar likens the succession of the months of the year to that of the ages of life, but it depicts the ages of life in the form of the story of a family: the youth of its founders, their maturity with their children, old age, sickness, and a death which is both the good death, the death of the good man, another traditional theme, and also that of the patriarch in the midst of his family. The story on this calendar begins like that of the family on the marriage it is not the son, the beloved child, capital in the Palace of the Doges. But that death takes too soon. Things follow a father
who
dies at the
end of a
full life,
more
natural course:
it is
the
surrounded by a united family
and doubtless leaving them a well-managed a new concept: the concept of the family.
estate.
The calendar illustrates
THE FAMILY
346
The appearance of the theme of the family in the iconography of the months was not an isolated incident. A massive evolution was to carry the whole iconography of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in this direction.
To begin with, scenes depicted by artists were set either in an indeterminate space, or in public places such as churches, or in the open air. In Gothic art, freed from Romano-Byzantine symbolism, open-air scenes became more common and more significant as a result of the invention of perspective and the fashion for landscape painting: a lady receives her knight in a walled garden; the chase passes through fields and forests; ladies meet to bathe in a garden pool; armies manoeuvre; knights meet in tournaments; the army is encamped round the tent in which the King is resting; armies lay siege to cities; princes enter and leave fortified towns to the acclamations of the people and burgesses. We go over bridges into these towns, passing stalls at which goldsmiths are working. We see wafer-vendors passing by, and heavily laden boats sailing down-
We
We
see games being played, still in the open air. accompany tumblers or pilgrims along the road. The profane iconography of the Middle Ages is an open-air iconography. When, in the thirteenth or
stream.
artists set out to illustrate particular anecdotes incidents, they hesitate, and their naivety turns into clumsiness: they never achieve anything like the virtuosity of the anecdotal painters of the
fourteenth century, the
and
fifteenth
and sixteenth
centuries.
Before the fifteenth century, interior scenes are therefore extremely
But from that century on, they become increasingly common. The gospel-writer, hitherto placed in a timeless setting, becomes a scribe it his desk, with a quill and an erasing-knife in his hand. At first he is rare.
placed in front of an ordinary ornamental curtain, but finally he in a
room where
there are shelves lined with
books
:
is
shown
we have come from
the gospel-writer to the author in his room, to Froissart writing a dedication in a book. 13 In the illustrations to the text of Terence in the Palace of
women working
and spinning in their rooms with are not always by themselves. shown kitchens and inn rooms. Love scenes and conversations are henceforth set in the enclosed space of a room. the Doges, there are
We
their maidservants, or lying in bed,
its appearance, the birth of the Virgin are the providing pretext. Maidservants, old women and midwives shown bustling round St Anne's bed. The theme of death appears too
The theme of child-birth makes
:
death in the bedchamber, with the dying
The growing
practice
of
man
fighting for his life. rooms corresponds to a depicting
new
PICTURES, OP THE FAMILY
347
emotional tendency henceforth directed towards the intimacy of private Exterior scenes do not disappear - they develop into the landscape but interior scenes become more common and more original, and they
life.
its existence. Private life, typify genre painting during the whole of thrust into the background in the Middle Ages, invades iconography,
in the sixteenth and above particularly in Western painting and engraving all in the seventeenth century: Dutch and Flemish painting and French inconsistent engraving show the extraordinary strength of this hitherto or neglected concept. This copious illustration of private life can be divided into two cate-
of drinking and whoring on the fringe of society, in the world of the down-and-outs, in taverns and bivouacs, with gypsies shady and vagabonds - a category which does not concern us here - and its other face, that of jamily Hfe. If we look through collections of prints and paintings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, we cannot help of families. This movement being struck by the positive flood of pictures in the first half of the seventeenth century in is at its painting height in France, but during the whole century and beyond in Holland. In France it continues during the second half of the seventeenth gories: that
and painted fans, reappears in the century in engravings, gouaches and lasts through the nineteenth century eighteenth century in painting, until the great aesthetic revolution which banishes the subject painting
from art. There is no counting the number of group-paintings
in the sixteenth
Some are portraits of guilds and corporations. can see these a family gathered together. fifteenth in the course of the century, with family portraits beginning of some floor donors who have themselves depicted on the ground at first, and as a sign of their piety. They are discreet religious scene, their of family, the alone. Soon, however, they bring along the whole are died have dead: wives and children who given a place living and the the other the on the one side are the man and his sons, in the
and seventeenth
centuries.
We
But most of them show
picture.
On
wife or wives, each with the daughters of her bed. The storey occupied by the donors spreads at the same time as it fills scene which soon becomes to the detriment of the with people,
religious
and almost an hors-d'oeuvre. More often than not it is the men's reduced to the patron saints of the parents, the male saint on the women's. It is worth noting importance side, the female saint on the of assumed by the devotion to patron saints, who appear as protectors a of family here we can see a sign of a private devotion the
an
illustration
family:
THE FAMILY
348 character, like the cult is
of the guardian angel, although
this latter
devotion
of a more personal character more closely linked with childhood. This phase of the portrait of donors and their families can be illustrated
with countless examples from the sixteenth century: for instance, the stained-glass windows of the Montmorency family at Montfort-
L'Amaury, Montmorency and couen, or the pictures hung as ex-votos on the pillars and walls of German churches (several are still in position in the churches of Niirnberg). Many other paintings, often naive and clumsy, are now in the regimental museums of Germany and Germanspeaking Switzerland. Holbein's pictures of families are faithful to this 14 It seems that the Germans remained attached longer than other style. nations to this form of religious family portrait intended for churches; it strikes us as a cheaper form of the donor's stained-glass window, an older type of gift; and it points the way to the more anecdotal and picturesque ex-votos of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, which depict, not the family gathering of the living and the dead, but the miraculous event which has saved an individual or a member of a family from shipwreck, accident or illness. The family portrait is also a sort of ex-voto. English mortuary sculpture in the Elizabethan era offers another example of the family portrait intended as a form of devotion. But it
should be added that this sculpture is an isolated phenomenon and is neither as frequent nor as commonplace in France, Germany or Italy. Many English tombs of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries show the
whole family
in bas-relief or in the round, gathered
on including
around the deceased:
the children, living and dead, is extremely are still to be found in Westminster of these tombs Several striking. that of Sir Richard for Pecksall, who died in 1571 and instance, Abbey:
the insistence
all
represented between his two wives, with four daughters sculpted on the base of the monument. is
- his figures either side of
little
On
the recumbent statue of Margaret Stuart, who died in 1578, are her sons and daughters. Over the tomb of another recumbent figure, that of
Winifred, Marchioness of Winchester, who died in 1586, her husband watches; he is represented on a reduced scale, on his knees, with a tiny
tomb beside him. Sir John and Lady Puckering, who died in 1596, shown lying side by side, surrounded by their eight daughters. The
child's
are
Norrises (1601) are kneeling in the midst of their six sons. In 1634 the Duchess of Buckingham had a tomb erected for her husband, assassinated in 1628; husband and wife are represented as recumbent figures in the
midst of their children. 15
At Holkham,
there are twenty-one
little
figures
on the tomb of John
PICTURES, pF THE FAMILY
349
of donors, with those who are the tomb of Cope d'Ayley at Hambledon (1633), the four boys and three girls are standing in front of their kneeling parents; one boy and one girl are holding death's-heads. These German and English monuments prolong what are still medieval
Coke
(1639), lined
up
as in the portraits
dead holding a cross in
their hands.
On
of the family portrait. But in the sixteenth century the famity floor iti portrait rid itself of its religious function. It was as if the ground the donors' pictures had invaded the entire canvas, banishing the religious
aspects
picture, so that
form
it
as a little
painting.
The
either disappeared completely or lingered picture hanging on the wall at the
pious
ex-voto tradition
is
still
on
in token
back of the
present in a picture
by Titian
-an old painted about 1560: the male members of the Cornaro family man, a middle-aged man with a grey beard, a young man with a black - and six shape and colour are indications of age) children, of whom the youngest is playing with a dog, are grouped around an altar. 16 At the Victoria and Albert Museum is a 1628 triptych showing beard (the beard,
its
on the centre volet, and the parents on the two no longer intended for churches: they are meant to adorn private homes, and this secularization of the portrait is undoubtedly a most important phenomenon the family contemplates itself in the home of one of its members. The need is felt to fix the present condition of that family, sometimes also recalling the memory of the dead by means of a picture or an inscription on the wall. These family portraits are extremely common, and no useful purpose would be served by recording them all. They are to be found in Flanders as well as in Italy, with Titian, Pordenone and Veronese; in France with Le Nain, Lebrun and Tournier; in England and Holland with Van Dyck. From the sixteenth to the early eighteenth century they must have been a little
boy and
a
little girl
other volets. 17 These pictures are
as
common as
individual portraits. It has often been said that the portrait of individualism. Perhaps it does; but above all else
reveals the progress
immense progress made by the concept of the family. are arranged rather stiffly, begin with, the members of the family as in the donors' pictures or in the engravings of the ages of life in Le or the miniature in the Musee Saint-Raimond. Even Grand
it
renders the
To
Propri&aire
when they are rather more lifelike, they pose in a solemn attitude intended to underline the
the husband
is
bond joining them
resting
his left
P. Pourbus together. In a painting by his wife's shoulder; at their feet,
hand on
on his little sister's is repeating the same gesture shoulder. 18 Sebastian Leers has himself painted holding his wife by the hand. 19 In a painting by Titian three bearded men are standing around a one of the two children
THE FAMILY
350
- who provides the only bright note in the midst of their black costumes - and one of them is pointing at the child, who is in the centre of the composition. 20 However, many of these portraits make little or no attempt to give life to their characters: the members of the family are juxtaposed, and sometimes linked together by gestures expressing their is reciprocal feelings, but they do not join in any common action. This the case with the Pordenone family in the Borghese gallery - the father, the mother and seven children 21 - and again with the Pembroke family 22 as painted by Van Dyck: the Earl and Countess are seated, the other figures standing; on the right is a couple, probably one of the married children with husband or wife; on the left, two very stylish adolescents and (stylishness is a sign of male adolescence: it disappears with age gravity), a schoolboy with his book tucked under his arm, and two child
younger boys. About die middle of the sixteenth century, artists began to depict the family around a table laden with fruit: the Van Berchaun family painted by Floris in 1561, or the Anselme family painted by Martin de Voos in 1577. Or the family may have stopped eating in order to make music: we know that this is no painter's trick, and that meals often ended with a concert or were interrupted by a song. The family posing for the artist, with varying degrees of affectation, remained in French art until the early eighteenth century at least, with Tournier and Largilliere. But under the influence of the Dutch in particular, the family portrait was often treated as a subject painting: the
concert after the meal
is
one of the favourite
themes of Dutch painters. Henceforth the family was depicted snapshot, at a fire,
the
moment
woman
in
everyday
life:
taking a cauldron off the
brother. 28 Henceforth
it is difficult
painting depicting family
During the
its
first
to
tell
the fire,
men
as in
a
gathered round the
a girl feeding her little from a subject
a family portrait
life.
half of the seventeenth century, the old medieval of family life without regard for
allegories are also treated as illustrations
We
have already seen yvliat happened in the case iconographic tradition. of the calendars. The other ckssical allegories were altered in the same
way. In the seventeenth century, the ages of life become pretexts for pictures of family life. In an Abraham Bosse engraving of the four ages of man, childhood is suggested by what we should call a nursery: a baby in a cradle,
watched over by an
attentive sister, a child in a robe
who
is
PICTURED pF THE FAMILY kept on his feet by a sort of play-pen on wheels
(a
35!
very
common device
between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries), a little girl with her - one of whom doll, a boy with a paper windmill, and two bigger boys has thrown his hat and cloak on the floor getting ready to fight. Manhood is illustrated by a meal which has brought the whole family together around the table, a scene similar to that in a great many portraits and which was often repeated in both French engraving and Dutch painting. This is the spirit of the engraving of the ages in Le Grand Propri&aire of the mid-sixteenth century, and of the miniature in the Musee Saint-
Raimond at Manhood
Toulouse.
always family life. Humbelot-Huart has not gathered the family round the dining-table but in the office of the father, a rich merchant whose premises are piled with bales of merchandise. The is
is doing his accounts, pen in hand, with the help of his son who is standing behind him; at his side his wife is attending to their little daughter; a young servant, who has probably been to their country
father
house,
coming
is
in
with a basket of foodstuffs. 24 In the
late
seventeenth
Guerard takes up the same theme. The father -a younger man than in the Humbelot-Huart engraving -is pointing out of the window at the port, the wharf and the ships, the source of his fortune. Inside the room, near the table on which he does century an engraving by
his accounts
and on which
F.
his purse,
some counters and an abacus
are to
be seen, his wife is rocking a baby in swaddling-clothes and watching another child in a robe. The caption gives the tone and stresses the spirit of this iconography: 'Happy is he who obeys the laws of Heaven and devotes the best years of his life to serving God, his family and his 25 King/ Here the family is put on the same level as God and the King.
This attitude does not surprise us in the twentieth century, but it was new time and its expression cannot but astonish us. Humbelot treats
at the
the same theme in another picture, where he depicts a young woman showing her breast to a child who has climbed up behind her: we must
remember late.
Or
that in the seventeenth century children time in another Guerard engraving,
else, this
of the house, with her keys and her
were weaned very
we see the mistress
children, giving orders to a
maid-
servant. 26
other allegories are also depicted by family scenes. The sense of in an early seventeenth-century Dutch treatment of the five senses, smell,
The
represented by the henceforth 27 wiping the naked child's bottom. is
Abraham Bosse
also symbolizes
commonplace scene of the mother one of the four elements by a picture
THE FAMILY
352
of family
life:
in a garden, a
nanny
is
holding a child in a robe; the child's
parents, gazing at him tenderly from the door - the fruits of the earth. tossing fruit to him
of the house, are playfully
Even the Beatitudes give rise to evocations of family life: with Bonnart-Sandrart the Fifth Beatitude has become a mother's forgiveness of her children, a forgiveness which she confirms by offering them sweets
28 :
this
is
already the sentimental family spirit of the nineteenth
century.
Broadly speaking, the modern subject painting began with the illustration of traditional medieval allegories. But the distance is too great
between the old theme and its new expression. We forget the allegory of the seasons and of winter when we look at Stella's picture of an evening by the fire, with the men having supper on the one side of the big room, and on the other, around the hearth, the women spinning and plaiting rushes, the children playing or being washed. Instead of winter, we have an evening by the fire instead of manhood or the third age of life, we have a family gathering. An original iconography has been born. The concept of the family is its basic inspiration, an inspiration very different from that of the old allegories. It would be a simple matter to draw up a list of the subjects repeated ad nauseam: the mother watching over the ;
child in the cradle 29 or feeding it at her breast 30 the woman washing the child; the mother picking the lice out of her child's hair (an extremely ;
commonplace operation and moreover one which was not confined children:
Samuel Pepys submitted
to
31
it);
his little brother or his little sister standing
to
the child in the cradle, with
on
tiptoe in order to see
him;
the child in the kitchen or the store-room with a valet or a maidservant; 82 or the child going shopping. This last subject, a common one in Dutch also treated by French engravers - in the middle of the Abraham Bosse (at the pastrycook's), and at the end of the century by Le Camus century by (at the wine merchant's). A painting by Le Nain tired a who has fallen asleep. His wife is hushing the two depicts peasant 33
painting,
was
showing them their father, who is resting and must not be awakened: this is already a Greuze, not in its painting or style of course, but in its sentimental inspiration. The action is centred on the child. In a picture by Peter de Hooch34 the family is gathered together for breakfast, and the father is sitting drinking. A little child of about two is standing on a chair; he is wearing the round, padded hat which was normally worn at that time at the age when a child was not too steady on his feet, to protect him if he fell. A woman (the maidservant?) is holding him up with one hand and with the other is offering a glass of
children,
facing:
THE FEAST OF ST NICHOLAS
PICTURES OF THE FAMILY wine to another
woman
who
353
(the mother?) dipping a biscuit in it. She to is the to sodden the biscuit give going parrot to amuse the child, and the entertainment of the child in the midst of the family whose unity he
thereby ensures
is
is
the painter's real subject, the meaning of his anecdote. family, which thus emerges in the sixteenth and
The concept of the
seventeenth centuries, is inseparable from the concept of childhood. The interest taken in childhood, which we have analysed at the beginning of this
book,
only one form, one particular expression of - that of the family.
is
this
more
general concept
An analysis family was
of iconography leads us to conclude that the concept of the
unknown in the Middle Ages,
and sixteenth
centuries,
and
that
it
that
reached
it
originated in the fifteenth full expression in the
its
seventeenth century. It is tempting to compare this hypothesis with the observations of the historians of medieval society.
The basic idea of the historians of law and society is that the ties of blood composed not one but two groups, distinct though concentric: the family or mesnie which can be compared with our modern conjugal family, and the line which extended its solidarity to all the descendants of a single ancestor. In their opinion, there was not so much a distinction as an opposition between the family and the line, the progress of the one resulting in a
weakening of the other, at least it never embraced a whole
or mesnie, though
in the nobility. line,
contained,
The family
among
the
members who
lived together, several elements, and sometimes several households: these lived on an estate which they had been reluctant to divide, in accordance fraternitas.
with a method of possession
known
as frereche or
The frereche grouped around
who had no
property of their own,
the parents those of their children together with nephews and bachelor
cousins. This tendency to joint possession in the family, a tendency which rise to the scarcely ever lasted more than a couple of generations, gave traditional nineteenth-century theories on the great patriarchal family.
The modern conjugal family is thus considered to be the consequence of an evolution which, at the end of the Middle Ages, is supposed to have weakened the line and the tendency to joint possession. In reality, the story of the relations between line and family is more in the Macon complicated than that. It has been traced by Georges Duby thirteenth century inclusive. 35 country, from the ninth century to the In the Frank state, writes Duby, 'the family in the tenth century was to
M facing above:
below:
THE CARD-PLAYERS by Le Main THE ROYAL FAMILY by Nocret
THE FAMILY
354
community reduced to its simplest expression, the whose cohesion was sometimes prolonged for a little while after the death of the parents, in thefrereches. But the ties were very loose. This is because they were useless the peaceful organs of the old Frank state were still strong enough to allow a freeman to live an independent life and to prefer, if he so wished, the company of his friends and neighall
appearances a
conjugal
cell,
:
bours to that of his relatives/
However, lineal solidarity and joint possession developed as the result of the dissolution of the State: 'After the year 1000, the new division of powers obliged men to group themselves together more closely/ The tightening of the ties of blood which took place then satisfied a desire for protection, like those other forms of human relationship and subjection: the vassal homage, the seigniory, the village community. 'Too independent, and ill protected against certain dangers, the knights sought refuge in lineal solidarity.' At the same time, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries in the
country,
we
can note an advance
made by
joint ownership.
It
Macon
was
this
period which saw the institution of joint ownership of the goods of husband and wife; in the tenth century, husband and wife had managed their own property, buying and selling separately without the other
being able to interfere.
was also extended more often than not to the children, prevented from obtaining any advance on their inheritance: 'There was a prolonged integration into the family home, and under the ancestor's authority, of descendants destitute of all personal wealth and of all economic independence.' Joint ownership often continued after the It is necessary to death of the parents try to imagine what a knight's house was like in those days, gathering together on a single domain, in a single "court", ten or twenty masters, two or three couples with the children, the brothers and the unmarried sisters, and the canon uncle who dropped in now and then and who was looking after the career of some Joint ownership
who were
'
:
nephew.' The frereche rarely lasted beyond the second generation, but even after the divisio of the estate, the line retained a collective right over the divided estate: the laudatio parentum, the lineal redemption. This description applies above all to the knightly family, which could
already be called the noble family. Duby assumes that the peasant family did not experience this tightening of the ties of blood to the same extent because the peasants had filled in a different way from the nobles the
vacuum
left
by
the dissolution of the Frank state: the seignior's tutelage authorities, and the
had immediately taken the place of that of the public
PICTURES* OF THE FAMILY
355
,
community had soon provided the peasants with a framework of organization and defence superior to the family. The village community was to the peasants what the line was to the nobles. village
In the course of the thirteenth century, the situation changed again. the extension of personalty, the
The new forms of monetary economy,
frequency of financial transactions, and at the same time the increase in the authority of the prince (whether he was a Capetian king or the head
of a large principality) and in public security, brought about a tightening of lineal solidarity and the abandonment ofjoint ownership. The conjugal family became independent once more. However, in the nobility, there was no return to the loose links of the tenth-century family. The father
maintained and even increased the authority which he had been given and twelfth centuries by the need to maintain the integrity
in the eleventh
of the undivided
estate.
We know too
that
from the end of the Middle
Ages on, the power of the wife steadily diminished. It was also in the thirteenth century, in the Macon country, that the law of primogeniture spread among the families of the nobility. It took the place of joint ownership, which became inheritance and
its
integrity.
much The
means of safeguarding the of the law of primogeniture of husband and wife can be seen
rarer, as a
substitution
for joint ownership and the joint estate as a sign of the recognition of the importance both
and of the place assumed
in
everyday
life
by
of paternal authority the group of the father and
children.
Duby concludes: 'In fact, the family is the first refuge in which the threatened individual takes shelter when the authority of the State as soon as political institutions afford him adequate off the constraint of the family and the ties of blood shakes he guarantees, are loosened. The history of lineage is a succession of contractions and relaxations whose rhythm follows the modifications of the political order/ The contrast between the family and the line is less marked in Duby's
weakens. But
writing than in that of other legal historians.
It is
not so
much
a question
of a progressive substitution of the family for the line - this would seem indeed to be a purely theoretical view - as of the loosening or tightening of the ties of blood, now extended to the whole line or to the members to the couple. One has the impression that ofthefrereche, now restricted of line was the exciting the forces of feeling and imagination. capable only
That
is
why
so
many romances of
chivalry treat of
it.
The
restricted
an obscure life which has family community, on the other hand, had the historians. But this obscurity is understandable. of the attention escaped In the domain of feeling, the family did not count as
much
as the line.
THE FAMILY
356
One might say that the concept of the line was the only concept of a family character known to the Middle Ages. It was very different from the concept of the family such as we have seen it in the iconography of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It extended to the ties of blood without regard to the emotions engendered by cohabitation and intimacy. The line was never gathered together within a small space, around a single courtyard. It was not to be compared with the Serbian Zadrouga. The legal historians recognize that there are no traces of any great
peaceful communities in France before the fifteenth century. But from the fourteenth century on, we see the modern family taking shape. The process, the history of which is well known, has been clearly
summarized by M. Petiot: 36 'Starting in the fourteenth century, we see a slow and steady deterioration of the wife's position in the household. She loses the right to take the place of the husband in his absence or sixteenth century, the married woman is so that any acts she performs without the a disability placed under husband or the of her law are null and void. This development authority Finally, in the
insanity...
strengthens the powers of the husband,
who
is
finally established as
a
of domestic monarch.' 'Royal legislation from the sixteenth century on took care to strengthen the father's power with regard to the marriage of his children.' 'While lineal ties weakened, the husband's authority in the home became stronger, and his wife and children were more rigorously subject to it. This dual movement, in so far as it was the unconscious and spontaneous work of custom, undoubtedly reveals a sort
'
manners and conditions Henceforth a value was attributed to the family which had previously been attributed to the line. It became the social cell, the basis of the State, the foundation of the change in
social
monarchy.
We shall now see what importance the Church attributed to
The medieval
. . .
glorification
of the
line, its
it.
honour, and the solidarity
which the Church of blood may well have been repugnant to it. In France, where it accepted the heredity of the kings, it is significant that it made no mention of that heredity in the between
its
members, was a
distrusted or ignored.
specifically lay attitude
The pagan
naturalism of the
ties
coronation liturgy.
Moreover the Middle Ages did not know the modern
principle of the of lay life, or rather it recognized it only in exceptional the holy king (but the king was consecrated), the good knight
sanctification cases:
PICTURE* X)F THE FAMILY
357
,
(but the knight had been initiated after what had become a religious ceremony). The sacrament of marriage could have ennobled the conjugal union and given it a spiritual value, as also to the family. In fact it simply made the union legitimate. For a long time marriage remained simply a
The ceremony, if we are to go by the sculptured representations of it, did not take place inside the church, but in front of the porch. Whatever the theological point of view, most priests, considering their flocks, must have shared die opinion of Chaucer's priest that marriage was a concession to the weakness of the flesh. 37 It did not cleanse sexuality of its essential impurity. Admittedly the priests did not go to the lengths of condemning marriage and the family after the fashion of the Cathars contract.
of the south of France, but they showed suspicion and distrust of anything to do with the flesh. It was not in lay life that man could attain to holiness; sexual union, when blessed by marriage, ceased to be a sin, but that was all. What is more, the other great sin of the laity, the sin of usury, threatened a man in his temporal activities. The only way by which the
layman could make sure of salvation was to leave the world completely and enter religious life. In the quiet of the cloister, he could atone for the faults of his profane past. It was not until the end of the sixteenth century, the time of St Franois de Sales' s Philothfa, or the seventeenth century, with the example of the gentlemen of Port-Royal and more generally of all the laymen engaged in religious, theological, spiritual and mystical activities - that the Church' recognized the possibility of sanctification outside the religious vocation, in the practice of one's profession. For a natural institution so closely linked with the flesh as the family was to become the object of a cult, this rehabilitation of the lay condition
of the family and of the necessary. The progress of the concept the followed the of rehabilitation parallel paths. For layman religious of the family, unlike the medieval concept of the line, modern
was
concept
common piety. The first sign of this piety, as yet seen in the practice begun by donors of religious be to very discreet, donors grouped their families or stained-glass windows -the pictures also be discerned in the later custom of associating around them. became an object of is
Piety may the family with the cult of the patron saint. In the sixteenth century, it was a common practice to offer as an ex-voto a picture of the patron saints of husband and wife, surrounded by the parents themselves and their children.
The
cult
of the patron
saints
became a family
cult.
influence of the concept of the family is also to be seen, especially in the seventeenth century, in the new way of depicting a marriage or a
The
THE FAMILY
358 christening.
At
the end of the Middle Ages, the miniaturists used to
depict the religious ceremony itself, as it took place at the church door. Take for instance the marriage of King Cosius and Queen Sabineda in life of St Catherine, where the priest is shown folding his stole round the hands of the newly-married couple; or the marriage of Philip of Macedonia depicted by the same Guillaume Vrelant in the story of King
the
Alexander, where behind the priest, on the tympanum of the church 88 door, one can see a sculpted representation of a husband beating his wife! In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the marriage ceremony was depicted, except in the case of kings and princes. Instead, chose to treat the incidental, family aspects of the wedding, with relatives, friends and neighbours gathered round the bride and groom.
no longer artists
at Cana' in the Louvre) we have have the wedding procession: thus wedding Stella shows us the bride on her father's arm, followed by a group of 39 children, on her way to the church outside which the groom is waiting. In a picture by Molinier the ceremony is over and the procession is
With Gerard David ('The Wedding the
feast.
Elsewhere
we
leaving the church: on the left is the groom with his groomsmen, on the right is the bride wearing a wreath (but not yet in white: the colour of love was still red, as for the priest's vestments), in the midst of her bridesmaids, with a bagpipe playing and a little girl throwing coins in front of the bride. 40 Albums of engravings of clothes of the late sixteenth
or the early seventeenth century often show the bride or bridegroom with bridesmaids or groomsmen: at that time the wedding-dress became more not yet the white uniform worn from the ninespecific (though it was teenth century to the present day), at least in certain details. Care was taken to present these details as characteristic of the manners of a certain region. Finally, all the licentious little scenes of folklore entered iconography e.g. the first night of the newly-married pair. artists preferred the Similarly, when it came to depicting a christening, traditional gatherings at home: the guests having a drink on their return
from the church, with a boy playing the flute, or neighbours calling on the young mother. Or else they depicted traditional customs which are harder to identify, as in the picture by Molenaer of a woman holding a of great ribaldry, their dresses. 41
child in the midst their heads
with
with
all
the ladies present covering
would be wrong to interpret this taste for social or traditional festivities, from which licentiousness was not absent any more than it was from the language of respectable people, as a sign of religious indifference: the stress was simply laid on the family, social character of It
PICTURES OP THE FAMILY the occasion rather than
its
,
359
sacramental character. In the northern
where the family themes were extremely widespread, a highly significant painting by Steen shows us the new family interpretation of folklore or traditional piety. 42 We have already had occasion to stress the countries
importance, in festivities:
life
tinder the ancien regime,
of the great collective
we have shown the part played in them by children,
mingling with adults; the whole of a heterogeneous society was gathered together on these occasions, and happy to be together. But the festival pictured
by Steen is no longer one of those festivals of youth, in which the children behaved rather like slaves on the day of the Saturnalia, in which they played a part fixed by tradition in the company of adults. Here, on the contrary, the grown-ups have organized the occasion to entertain the children: it is the feast of St Nicholas, the ancestor of 'Santa Glaus*.
Steen catches the moment when the parents are helping the children to find the toys which they have hidden all over the house for them. Some of the children have already found their toys. Some little girls are holding dolls. Others are carrying buckets full of toys. There are some shoes lying
about: perhaps it was already customary to hide toys in shoes, those which children of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in some
shoes
countries, put in front of the fire on Christmas Eve? This is no longer a great collective festival, but a quiet family celebration; and consequently
on the family is continued by a concentration of the around the children. family Family feasts became children's feasts. Nowathe biggest, one might almost say the only, has become Christmas days, feast in the year, common to believers and unbelievers alike. It was not this
concentration
important as this under the ancien regime, when it suffered from the competition of Twelfth Night, following shortly after it. But the
as
extraordinary success enjoyed by Christmas in contemporary industrial which feel an increasing dislike for the great collective festivals,
societies,
due to the family character which
association with the feast of shows us that in seventeenthwas already celebrated as the century Holland feast of 'Santa Glaus' or 'Father Christmas' is celebrated in Western countries today, with the same modern feeling for childhood and the is
St Nicholas has
won
its
Steen's painting the feast of St Nicholas it:
family, for childhood in the family. new theme illustrates in even more significant fashion the religious constituent of the concept of the family: the theme of grace. For a long time past, 'courtesy' had demanded that in the absence of a priest, a should bless the table at the beginning of a meal. Some
A
young boy
manuscript texts of the fifteenth century, published by
F. J. Furnivall
THE FAMILY
360 in a collection called
The Babees
Boofe,
48
lay
behaviour at table- 'the conventions of the
instruct the child to say grace authority to do so by a priest or lord.
at table'
given
- and
down
very
table', 'the
strict rules for
way
to behave
without any hesitation if The manuals of etiquette
allot the task of saying grace, not to any of the children at table, but to the youngest. Mathurin Cordier's manual establishes this rule, which is maintained in later, revised editions; thus
of the sixteenth century
a mid-eighteenth century edition still stipulates that the duty of blessing the table 'falls to the ecclesiastics, if there are any, or, in their absence, to the youngest of the company'. 44 'Once he has finished serving the meal,'
we
read in
La
civilite
nouvelle
of 1671,
'it is
a true and excellent courtesy
45 company and then say grace/ And in Les Regies de la bienstance et de la cwilitt chrfrienne of St Jean-Baptiste de La Salle: 'When there is a child present, he is often instructed to perform this function' 46 Vives in his dialogues describes a big meal: 'The (that of saying grace). master of the house, as was his right, allotted the places. The prayer was
to
bow
to the
47
by a little child, briefly, quaintly, and in verse/ Thus it was no longer a young boy in the company but the smallest child in the house who was given the honour of saying grace. We can
said
of the added attention given to childhood in the sixteenth is what but really important is that the child should be associated century, with the principal family prayer, for a long time the only prayer recited in common by the whole family gathered together. In this respect extracts
see here a sign
f^om manuals of etiquette are less revealing than iconography. From the end of the sixteenth century on, the saying of grace becomes one of the most common themes of the new iconography which we have tried to Merian for example. 48 It is a portrait distinguish. Take the engraving by of a family at table, faithful to what is already an old convention: the father and mother sitting in two armchairs, their five children around them. A maidservant is bringing in a dish, and an open door reveals the kitchen beyond. But the engraver has caught the moment when a little boy in a robe, resting his arms on his mother's knees, his hands folded in the rest of the family are listening to the prayer prayer, is saying grace:
with
their heads
uncovered and
their
hands folded.
An engraving by Abraham Bosse shows the same scene in a Protestant 49 Antoine Le Nain depicts a woman and three children at table: family. 60 is standing saying grace. Lebrun treats the subject in the old-fashioned style, with a Holy Family. The table is laid; the father, a bearded man with a traveller's staff in his hand, is standing. The mother, who is seated, is looking affectionately at the child who, his hands folded,
one of the boys
PICTURES OF THE FAMILY is
reciting
361
,
the prayer. This picture obtained wide circulation as a
devotional image, 51 It is
only to be expected that
we should find
this
theme in seventeenth-
century Dutch
painting. In a picture by Steen, the father is the only an seated: old country custom, which had long since been dropped person the French middle class. The mother is serving him, and also the two by
children
who
two and
three, has folded his hands,
are
remaining
standing:
and
picture by Heemskerck, two old men,
man, who
is
the is
who
smaller,
52
saying grace. are seated,
standing, are all at table, as well as a
sitting with her hands folded: next to her a little 53 prayer which she is reading on her mother's lips. again that we meet in the eighteenth century,
Artists
were fond of depicting the scene of a
they recognized a
aged between In a similar
and a younger
woman who
is
girl repeating the It is the same theme is
in
Chardin's famous
child saying grace because
new
significance in this hitherto commonplace prayer. The iconographic theme evoked and associated in a synthesis three emotional forces: piety, the concept of childhood (the smallest child),
and the concept of the family (the gathering at table). Grace had become the model for the family prayer. Formerly there had been no private religious worship. The etiquette manuals mention the morning prayer the boarders (in the colleges
already say
less
said
it
54 together after washing).
about the evening prayer. They lay greater
stress
They on the
children's duties to their parents (the oldest rulfcs of courtesy of the fifteenth century did not speak of children's duties to their parents but to their masters). 'Children', says Jean-Baptiste de La Salle, 'must not
go to bed before bidding their father and mother goodnight.' Courtin's manual of etiquette of 1671 brings the child's evening to a close in this way: 'He shall recite his lessons, bid his parents and masters goodnight, 55 relieve himself, and finally, having undressed, lie down in bed to sleep. privately by each family developed to considerable in Protestant circles: in France, especially after the revocation
Worship conducted
proportions of the Edict of Nantes, it took the place of public worship to such an extent that after the restoration of liberty, the pastors of the late eighteenth
century found
it difficult
become accustomed
to
to bring back to public worship people
make do with
who had
family prayers. Hogarth's famous
shows that in the eighteenth century the evening prayer said in common - a prayer which gathered together around the father of the conventional and commonfamily his relatives and servants had become families followed an almost that It seems Catholic probable place. caricature
THE FAMILY
362 that parallel course,
they too
felt
the need for a piety
which was neither
individual: a family piety. public nor entirely
We described just now Lebrun's 'B6n6dicit6', popularized by Sarrabat's engraving: grace was
it
was immediately recognized that this scene of the saying of of the Holy Family, showing the prayer and meal
also a picture
of the Virgin, St Joseph and the Infant Jesus. Lebrun's picture belongs to series of pictures, both equally popular at the time because both same concept. As V. L. Tapie has pointed out: 'It was glorified the without a shadow of doubt the very principle of the family which was
two
56
homage to the Holy Family/ Every family was urged the Holy Family as its model. Thus the traditional iconography
linked with this to regard
altered under the
Joseph no longer
same influence that increased paternal authority: St role in it which was still his in the plays the minor
and early sixteenth centuries. He appears in the foreground, as the head of the family, in another picture of the Holy Family at table, which was likewise given wide circulation by engraving. 'The Virgin, fifteenth
St Joseph
and the Infant Jesus', comments
mile Male, 'are having their
contrast between a is evening meal: a candle on the table creating startling the scene an appearance of mystery; and and shadow, lending deep light St Joseph is giving a drink to the Infant Jesus, who with a napkin round 67
good as gold.' Or there is the 'The Holy Family on the road', in which the
his
neck looks
as
theme which Male calls Infant Jesus is between
Mary and Joseph. is to be noted in many scenes: in a picture by a 58 seventeenth century he is carrying the Infant the of Neapolitan painter arms and thus occupies the centre of the picture; this scene Jesus on his was a common subject for Murillo and Guido Reni as well. Sometimes
St Joseph's authority
59
shown working
in his carpenter's workshop, helped by Jesus. Head of the family at table during mealtimes, and in the workshop the family at that other working hours, St Joseph is still head of
Joseph
is
during dramatic
moment
in family
life,
the
moment when
death strikes
him
his becoming the patron saint of the good death, keeps wits about him: the picture of his death resembles that of the father's death so often used in illustrations of the good death; it belongs to the
down.
St Joseph,
same iconography of the new family.
The other holy
families inspire the
century in particular, artists
same
feeling. In the sixteenth
were fond of showing
Christ's contemporaries
PICTURES OF THE FAMILY as children all
playing together.
363
A German tapestry of great charm shows
Marys surrounded by their children, who are frolicking about, 60 This group frequently bathing, and generally enjoying themselves. the three
recurs,
notably in a fine wood-carving of the early seventeenth century
Notre-Dame La Grande at Poitiers. The theme is obviously linked with the concept of childhood and the decoraconcept of the family. This link is heavily stressed in the at
baroque of the Lady Chapel in the Franciscan church at Lucerne. This decoration is dated 1723. The ceiling is adorned with little angels, all very decently dressed, and each carrying one of the Virgin's symbols listed in her litanies (star of the sea, etc.). On the side walls, holy parents and children, all life-size, are holding hands; St John the Evangelist and tion
Salome, St James the Elder and Zebediah, and others. from the Old Testament are also used to illustrate this devotion. The Venetian painter Carlo Loth treats the blessing of Joseph by Jacob
Mary
Subjects
common
in the ages of life, of the old man waiting of his children. 61 But it is Adam's family above all which has been treated on the pattern of a holy family. In a painting by Veronese, Adam and Eve are standing in the courtyard of their house, surrounded by their animals and their children Cain and Abel. One of like the scene,
very
for death in the midst
is feeding at his mother's breast; the other, who is smaller, crawling about on the ground. Adam, hiding behind a tree so as not to disturb these antics, is looking on. He is seen from behind. It is doubtless
the children
is
one can discover a theological intention in this family of the heralds the coming of the 'second Adam', Christ. But this learned intention is hidden behind a scene which evokes the now consecrated joys of family life. 62 We find the same theme in the convent of San Martino in Naples, on a ceiling of a later date, probably the early eighteenth century. Adam is digging (just as Joseph works wood), Eve is spinning (just as the Virgin sometimes sews), and their two children are with them. true that 'first
Adam*, who
Thus iconography enables us to follow the rise of a new concept: the concept of the family. The concept is new but not the family, although the latter doubtless did not play the primordial part in early times which Fustel
de Coulanges and
has noted
his
contemporaries attributed to it. M. Jeanmaire in Greece of non-family structures
what are still important relics
such as age groups.
The
ethnologists have
shown
the importance of age
THE FAMILY
364 groups
American among the Africans, and of clan communities among the
ourselves unconsciously impressed by the part the our society for several centuries, and are we not in family has played to attribute to it an almost to exaggerate its scope and even tempted absolute sort of historical authority? Yet there is no doubt that the family
natives.
Are not
we
was constantly maintained and reinforced by influences at once Semitic in my opinion) and Roman. It may be that the (and not simply Biblical, of the Germanic invasions, yet it would family was weakened at the time a be vain to deny the existence of family life in the Middle Ages. But the did not awaken feelings strong enough to family existed in silence: it artist. We must recognize the importance of this silence: or inspire poet not much value was placed on the family. Similarly we must admit the the iconographic blossoming which after the fifteenth and significance of of obscurity: sixteenth the century followed this long period especially the birth and development of the concept of the family. This powerful concept was formed around the conjugal family, that of the parents and children. This concept is closely linked to that of childhood. It has less and less to do with problems such as the honour of a line, the integrity of an inheritance, or the age and permanence of a from the unique relationship between the name: it springs simply their children. In the seventeenth century people thought that parents and the St Joseph resembled his adopted son, thus stressing the importance of children that idea bond. Erasmus had already had the very modern
family united the family and that their physical resemblance produced this close union; his treatise on marriage was reissued in the eighteenth century the too admire cannot 'One written: had greatly that work in which he in this respect; she depicts two persons astonishing pains taken by Nature the portrait of a and face a in single body; the husband recognizes single one his wife in his children, and the wife that of her husband. Sometimes can also discover the likeness of a grandfather or a grandmother, a 63 What counted most of all was the emotion great-uncle or a great-aunt/
aroused
by
the child, the living image of his parents.
II
FROM THE MEDIEVAL FAMILY TO THE MODERN FAMILY
T
HE preceding analysis of iconography has shown us the ance assumed by the family in the sixteenth and
seventeenth
in the same period important changes significant that noted in the family's attitude to the child; as the attitude towards
centuries. It
can be
new import-
is
the child changed, so did the family itself. An Italian text of the late fifteenth century gives us an extremely thought-provoking impression of the medieval family, at least in England. 1 taken from an account of England by an Italian; 'The want of 'affection in the English is strongly manifested towards their children; for
It is
having kept them at home till they arrive at the age of seven or nine seven is given as die age years at the utmost [in the old French authors, when the boys leave the care of the womenfolk to go to school or to enter after
the adult world], they put them out, both males and females, to hard service in the houses of other people, binding them generally for another seven or nine years [i.e. until they are between fourteen and eighteen].
and during that time they perform all and few are born who are exempted from this the most menial offices; he rich however fate, for everyone, may be, sends away his children into in whilst of return, receives those of strangers into the houses he, others,
And
these are called apprentices,
own/ The Italian considers this custom cruel, which suggests that it was unknown or had been forgotten in his country. He insinuates that the his
children because they thought that in that English took in other people's better service than they would from their own obtain would way they In fact the explanation which the English themselves gave to offspring.
the Italian observer was probably the real one
might This
learn better
* :
In order that their children
manners/
way of life was probably common in the West during the Middle a twelfth-century Micon knight called Guigonet, whose
Ages. Thus
Duby was able to describe from a study of his will, 8 two young sons to the eldest of his three brothers. At a later numerous articles of apprenticeship hiring children to masters prove
family Georges entrusted his date,
how It is
of placing children in other families. widespread was the custom sometimes specifically stated that the master must 'teach' the child 365
THE FAMILY
366
and 'show him the details of his merchandise* or that he must 'send him to school'. 8 But these are exceptional cases. As a general rule, the principal duty of a child entrusted to a master is to 'serve him well and truly'. Looking at these contracts without first of all ridding ourselves of our modern habits of thought, we find it difficult to decide whether the child has been placed as an apprentice (in the modern meaning of the word), or as
a boarder, or as a servant.
We should be foolish to press the point:
distinctions are anachronistic,
and a
man of the Middle Ages would
our see
them but slight variations on a basic idea - that of service. The only type of service which people could think of for a long time, domestic service, brought no degradation and aroused no repugnance. In the fifteenth century there was an entire literature in the vernacular, French or English, listing in a mnemonic verse form the rules for a good
nothing in
One of
these poems is entitled in French: 'Regime pour tous The English equivalent is 'way ting servant'- which has remained in modern English with the word 'waiter'. True, this servant must know how to wait at table, make beds, accompany his master, and so on. But this domestic service goes with what we would nowadays call
servant.
serviteurs'.
4
it is not a permanent condition, but a period of an intermediary stage. apprenticeship, Thus domestic service was confused with apprenticeship as a very learnt by practice, and this practice general form of education. The child did not stop at the frontiers of a profession, all the more so in that at that time and for a long time afterwards there were no frontiers between
a secretary's duties: and
life -an anachronistic professional and private life; sharing professional - meant life with which it was the in case sharing private any expression
was by means of domestic service that the master transmitted and not his child but another man's, the knowledge, practical he was supposed to possess. experience, and human worth which All education was carried out by means of apprenticeship, and a much wider meaning was given to this idea than that which it took on later. Children were not kept at home: they were sent to another house, with or without a contract, to live there and start their life there, or to learn the good manners of a knight, or a trade, or even to go to school and learn Latin. In this apprenticeship we see a custom common to all classes of between the valet and the superior society. We have noted an ambiguity existed between the child - or A similar confused.
It
to a child,
ambiguity secretary-companion. the very young man - and the servant. The English collections of didactic which taught manners to the servants were called 'babees books'.
poems
The word 'valet' meant a young boy, and Louis XIII as
a child
would say
FROM THE MEDIEVAL TO MODERN FAMILY in
an outburst of affection that he would
The word garden denoted both
a very
be 'Papa's
like to
367
little valet'.
young man and a young servant in
the language of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century France: the French have kept it to summon caft waiters. Even when, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, people began to establish distinctions within domestic between subordinate services and nobler offices, it still fell to the
service,
boys of good families - and not to the paid servants - to wait at table. appear well-bred it was not enough, as it is today, to know how to behave at table: one also had to know how to wait at table. Until the
To
eighteenth century, waiting at table occupied an important place in the manuals of etiquette and treatises on good manners a whole chapter in Jean-Baptiste de La Salle's Cwiliti chr&ienne, one of the most popular :
books of the eighteenth century.
It
was
a survival
from the time when
domestic services were performed indiscriminately by children
all
whom we
and by paid help who were probably also very The distinction between these two categories was established very young. The servant was a child, a big child, whether he was occupying gradually. shall call apprentices
and no hope of ever
his position for a limited period in order to share in the family's life
thus initiate himself into adult
life,
or whether he had
becoming a master. There was no room for the school in this transmission by direct apprenticeship from one generation to another. In fact, the school, the Latin school, which was intended solely for clerics, gives the impression of being an isolated and special case. It would be a mistake to describe medieval education in terms of the school: this would be to make a rule of an exception. The general rule for everybody was apprenticeship. Even the clerics who were sent to school were often lodged, like the other a prelate, whose servants apprentices, with a cleric, a priest, sometimes of a much education as school. was as cleric's Service became. part they For the poorer students it was replaced by college scholarships: we have seen that these foundations were the origin of the colleges of the ancien regime.
There were cases where apprenticeship lost its empirical character and took a more pedagogical form. A curious example of technical tuition in a book that describes originating in a traditional apprenticeship is given schools of hunting at the court of Gaston Phoebus, where pupils were to him who wishes to learn taught 'the manners and conditions necessary to be a good hunter'. 5 This fifteenth-century manuscript is illustrated by some very fine miniatures. One of them shows an actual class: the master, a nobleman so his dress indicates, has his right
arm
raised, his
index finger
THE FAMILY
368
-a gesture punctuating a speech. In his left hand he is waving a the indisputable sign of professorial authority, the instrument of correction. Three pupils, boys who are not very tall, are reading the big
levelled stick,
scrolls
learn
which they are holding
by
heart: this
is
in their hands
and which they have to
any other. In the background, some old similar scene shows a lesson in horn-blowing:
a school like
huntsmen are looking on. A 'How to halloo and sound the horn*. These were things learnt by practice, like riding, fencing and courtly manners. It may be that certain forms of technical education - tuition in writing for instance - developed from an apprenticeship which had already been organized on a scholastic pattern. However, these cases remained exceptional. Generally speaking, transmission from one generation to the next was ensured by the everyday
This explains the mingling of participation of children in adult life. children and adults which we have seen so often in the course of this study, even in the classes of the colleges, where one would have expected to find distribution of the ages. Everyday life constantly and adults in trade and craft, as in the case of children brought together 6 the little apprentice mixing the painter's colours; Stradan's engravings of
a
more homogeneous
trades
crafts show The same was
and
panions.
us children in the true
of the army.
workshops with older comcases of soldiers of
We know
7 page holding the Due de Lesdiguires's gauntlet, and those carrying Adolf de Wignacourt's helmet in the Caravaggio in the Louvre, or General del Vastone's in the great Titian in the Prado, are not very old either their heads do not come up to their masters' shoulders.
fourteen; but the
little
:
In short, wherever people worked, and also wherever they amused themselves, even in taverns of ill repute, children were mingled with adults. In this
The
social
way
they learnt the art of living from everyday contact.
groups corresponded to vertical partitions which brought
together different age groups. In these circumstances, the child
even
if he later
returned to
it
soon escaped from
own
family,
up. Thus the family at existential attitude between profound
was unable to nourish a children. This did not mean and parents
that time
his
when he had grown
that the parents did not love
but they cared about them less for themselves, for the affection they felt for them, than for the contribution those children could make to the common task. The family was a moral and social, their children,
rather than a sentimental, reality. In the case of very poor families, it corresponded to nothing more than the material installation of the couple in the midst of a bigger environment - the village, the farm, the 'courtor the 'house' of the lord and master where these poor people spent
yard*
FROM THE MEPJ&VAI, TO MODERN FAMILY more time than have a
home of
own homes (and own but rather led
369
in their
sometimes they did not even
their
a
vagabond
life)
;
among
the
prosperous, the family was identified with the prosperity of the estate, the honour of the name. The family scarcely had a sentimental existence at all
among
the poor; and
where
there
was wealth and ambition, the by that which the old
sentimental concept of the family was inspired lineal relationships
had produced.
Starting in the fifteenth century, the reality
and the idea of the family
were to change: a slow and profound revolution, scarcely distinguished by either contemporary observers or later historians, and difficult to extension of recognize. And yet the essential event is quite obvious: the school education.
We
have seen
how
in the
Middle Ages
children's
education was ensured by apprenticeship to adults, and that after the age of seven, children lived in families other than their own. Henceforth, on the contrary, education became increasingly a matter for the school. The school ceased to be confined to clerics and became the normal instrument of social initiation, of progress from childhood to manhood. This evolution corresponded to the pedagogues' desire for moral severity, to a concern to isolate youth from the corrupt world of adults, a determination to train it to resist adult temptations. But it also corresponded to a
watch more closely over their children, them even temporarily to the of school for apprenticeship likewise reflects a rapprochement between parents and children, between the concept of the family and the concept of childhood, which had hitherto been distinct. The family centred itself on the child. The latter live constantly with his parents: he left them for a distant did not as
desire
on
the part of the parents to
to stay nearer to them, to avoid abandoning care of another family. The substitution
yet
of a college school, although in the seventeenth century the advantages and many people held that education at home education were disputed
under a tutor was preferable. But the schoolboy's separation was not of the same character and did not last as long as that of the apprentice. The child was not as a general rule a boarder in college. He lived in a master's house or in a private lodging-house. Money and food were brought to him on market-days. The ties between the schoolboy and his family had to Cordier's dialogues, the masters even had to tightened: according intervene to prevent too many visits to the family, visits planned with the of the mothers. Some schoolboys, from well-to-do homes, did
complicity
THE FAMILY
37O
offalone: they were accompanied by a preceptor, an older boy, or of the sevenby a valet, often a foster-brother. The educational treatises in choice of duties the teenth century laid great stress on the parents'
not
set
college
and preceptor, and the supervision of the
returned
The
home
child's studies
sentimental climate
at night. closer to ours, as if the
was
now
when he entirely
originated at the same of habit the as at least or as the time educating children at school, general
different
and
modern family
school.
which was rendered inevitable by the small not be tolerated for long by the parents. would colleges than the effort made by the parents, more be could significant Nothing more and more schools in order found to the city magistrates, helped by to bring them closer to the pupils' homes. In the early seventeenth century, In any case the separation
number of
de Dainville has shown, 8 a dense network of schools of various was created. Around a college providing a full course of tuition and
as Pfere sizes
a concentric range of classes, there was established no philosophy class) and a system of a few humanities colleges (with a few Latin schools (with just grammar classes). The greater number of in the bigger colleges. classes for the Latin schools provided pupils higher this at alarm Certain contemporaries expressed proliferation of schools.
comprising the
full
satisfied both the desire for a theoretical multiplication of schools of apprenticeship and the old the education to replace practical forms home as long as possible. near children their to of desire keep parents which bears witness to a major transformation of the
The
A
phenomenon
the child, and its life became identified family: the latter fell back upon with the increasingly sentimental relationship between parents and children. It will be no surprise to the reader to discover that this pheno-
occurred during the same period in which we have seen a family and their children. iconography emerge and develop around the couple True, this extension of schooling, so important in its effects on the formation of the concept of the family, had no effect on a vast proportion of the child population, which continued to be brought up in accordance Girls at first did not go to school. of with the old
menon
practices
apprenticeship.
'little schools' or convents, most of Apart from a few who were sent to a them were brought up at home, neighbour's or a relative's. The not become common until the would extension of schooling to girls
centuries. Efforts such as those eighteenth and early nineteenth
made by
Mme de Maintenon and Fenelon would have an exemplary value. In the case of the boys, schooling was extended first of all to the middle the great families of the nobility and the range of the hierarchy of classes:
FROM THE MEDIBVAL TO MODERN FAMILY
371
artisan class remained faithful to the old system of apprenticeship, providing pages for grandees and apprentices for artisans. In the working class, the apprenticeship system would continue down to our own times.
The tours of Italy and Germany made by young nobles at the end of their stemmed from the old tradition: they went to foreign courts
studies also
or houses to learn languages, good manners, noble sports. This custom fell into disuse in the seventeenth century, when it gave place to the academies : another example of the substitution for practical education of a more specialized
The
and
theoretical tuition.
survival of the
social ladder did
by means of its
apprenticeship system at the two extremities of the not prevent its decline it was the school which triumphed increased numbers, its greater number of classes and its ;
moral authority. Our modern civilization, built on a scholastic foundawas now solidly established, and time would steadily consolidate it,
tion,
by prolonging and extending school
life.
The moral problems of the family now appeared in a very different light. This is shown very clearly in connection with the old custom which allowed one child in a family to be favoured at the expense of his brothers, generally the eldest son. It would appear that this custom was established in the thirteenth century, 9 to avoid the dangerous division
of an
estate
whose unity was no longer protected by the practices of joint ownership and lineal solidarity, and which was threatened by the greater mobility of wealth. The privilege of the child favoured by its primogeniture or by its parents' choice was the basis of family society from the end of the Middle to the seventeenth century, but not during the eighteenth century. In fact, starting in the second half of the seventeenth century, moralists and
Ages
educational theorists disputed the legitimacy of this practice; in their view, was inequitable, it was repugnant to a new concept of equal rights to
it
family affection, and
it
was accompanied by
a profane use
of ecclesiastical
One chapter in Varet's treatise, De f education des enfants, is about 10 There is 'the equality which must be maintained among children'. another regrettable practice which has become common among the faithful and which is no less prejudicial to the fairness which parents owe benefices.
*
their children,
of those
and
is the habit of thinking only of the establishment order of their birth or by the qualities of their person them because they served the family's 'pleased'
that
who by the
please them most. [They future better than the rest. This was the concept of a family as a society in
THE FAMILY
372
which personal feeling played no if they share their
part, as a 'house'.] People are afraid that among all their children, they will not
property equally
be able to add to the glory and lustre of the family as much as they would The eldest son will not be able to hold and keep the posts and offices
wish.
which they are trying to obtain for him, if his brothers and sisters enjoy the same advantages as he. They must therefore be rendered incapable of challenging this right of his. They must be sent into monasteries against their will and sacrificed early in life to the interests of the one who is destined for the world and its vanity/ It is interesting that the indignation aroused by false vocations and the privileges granted to the eldest son is of disputing totally absent when marriage is involved: there is no question parental authority in this field. The text quoted above expresses a definite opinion. But Coustel, in his 9 11 Regies de I Education des enfants, displays a certain embarrassment, and he
of verbal precautions in condemning an old, to be tied up with the permanence of which seemed widespread practice the family. He recognizes the right of parents to have certain preferences: 'It is not that parents are wrong to love those children most who are the most virtuous and who have more good qualities than the others. But I sees fit to
all sorts
employ
maintain that distinction
and
it
may
this
be dangerous to make too great a show of
preference/
The Abbe Goussault, tenement: 'There
this
is
in his Portrait
fun
honnfte
homme of i692, 12 is more
not only great vanity in giving the better part of son of the family, to maintain him in splendour
>ne's estate to the eldest
injustice.
What have
sons done to be treated like this?' 'There are
some who,
ind eternalize his
name;
establish certain sons
there
beyond
is
even
their
means,
the
younger
in order to
sacrifice the others
and shut
them on the matter and Fathers do not love their without seeing whether they have a vocation sons equally and introduce distinctions where Nature put none/ For all his indignation Goussault none the less admits, as a concession to the common opinion, that parents 'may have more love for certain of their children', but 'this love is a fire which they must keep hidden underneath
them up
in monasteries without consulting
. . .
the ashes.'
Here
we
see the beginning
before the law and which, as
of a
feeling
which would result in equality already become widespread
we know, had
in the late eighteenth century. The efforts made in the early nineteenth century to restore the privileges of the eldest son encountered invincible repugnance on the part of the public : very few fathers, even in the nobility,
used the right which they enjoyed by law to favour one of their children.
FROM THE MEDIEVAL TO MODERN FAMILY
373
from Vill&e in which the latter deplores this of his policy and prophesies the end of the family. 18 In reality this bears witness to the respect for equality among the children of a family the modern sentito 'house* a as move viewed from the family gradual mental view of the family. People now tended to attribute a new value to the affection between parents and children. The theorists of the early Fourcassie cites a letter
failure
nineteenth century, Villele among them, considered this sentimental foundation too fragile; they preferred the concept of a 'house', a real
had no place; they had also at the bottom of this new the law of primogeniture, restore to tried That is family spirit. why they thus overthrowing the entire tradition of the religious moralists of the business
company, in which private
realized that the concept
feelings
of childhood was
ancien regime. will note that the concept of equality among children was able new moral and emotional climate, thanks to a greater
Here we
to develop in a
intimacy between parents and children.
These observations might usefully be related to a phenomenon whose a lawsuit in i67?. u novelty and moral significance were underlined by Masters were allowed to marry at that time, but married masters were forbidden to hold university offices. In 1677 * married master was elected dean of the Tribe of Paris. The defeated candidate, a clerk of the court called du Bouky, appealed against the election and the matter was Council. referred to the lawyer lists in a memoir the still
Du Boulay's
Privy
reasons for upholding the celibacy of the teaching profession. Masters, he in the habit of taking in boarders, and the virtue of these boys explains, are 'Perils which result only too often be may exposed to various dangers: which married masters are obliged to allow between from the familiarity
the youths they are teaching and their wives, daughters and maidservants. the boarders they take in at cannot it, even less among
They
prevent
the day-boys. Let the Commissioners reflect, if they in schoolboys seeing on the one hand the indecency involved please, on the other hand their books and and and women of clothes the
home
than
among
on
girls,
writing desks, and often
combing
all
together;
and
in seeing
women and
girls
children in their their hair, dressing, adjusting their clothes,
of marriage/ cradles and swaddling-clothes, and all the other appurtenances the married master replies in these terms: 'The this
To
last
argument
aforementioned du Boulay
talks as if
he had just come from the village
THE FAMILY
374
where he was born For everybody knows that where there are women living there are rooms for them where they dress in complete privacy [privacy that was probably fairly recent, and confined to big towns] and other rooms for the schoolboys.' As for children in the cradle, there are . . .
none
to be seen in these Paris houses:
'Everybody knows that children arc
put out to nurse in some neighbouring village so that there are as few cradles and swaddling-clothes to be seen in the house of a married master as in the aforementioned du Boulay's office/
These
seem to
custom of putting children out to common in urban circles such as those of the masters, but very old, since one of the plaintiffs could pretend ignorance of it. This custom would seem to have developed during the seventeenth century, when it was denounced by educational moralists who, long before Rousseau, urged mothers to feed their children themselves. But their opinion rested only on traditions going back to Quintilian. It could not hope to prevail over a practice which was doubtless based on experience and which was considered the texts
nurse 'in
indicate that the
some neighbouring
village* was that it was not
One has only to consider the difficulties involved in feeding a baby if the mother's milk ran dry. Using cow's milk was the poor man's fate. The humanist Thomas Platter, in order to best treatment for the time.
describe the abject poverty of his childhood in the early sixteenth century, can find nothing more expressive than the admission that he was brought up on cow's milk. The hygienic conditions obtaining on the farms which
provided the milk made
this repugnance understandable. Moreover it was far from easy to give it to a child: the peculiar receptacles which are on display in the Musee de la Facult de Pharmacie in Paris, and which were used as feeding-bottles, must have called for considerable skill and patience. One can understand why mothers resorted to wet-nurses. But what wet-nurses? At first, they were probably servants recruited from the neighbourhood, and the foster-child stayed in the house with the other children. It seems that in the rich families of the sixteenth and the early seventeenth century, the babies were kept at home. Why then, especially in lower middle-class families such as those of the college masters, did people get into the habit of putting them out to nurse in the country? Probably this comparatively recent custom can be interpreted as a protective measure - 1 hesitate as yet to call it a hygienic
precaution
to be linked with the other
phenomena
in
which
we
have recognized a
special solicitude for children.
In fact, despite the propaganda of the philosophers, well-to-do parents, of both die nobility and the middle class, went on putting their children
FROM THE MEDICAL TO MODERN FAMILY
375
out to nurse until the end of the nineteenth century, that is to say until the progress of hygiene and aseptic methods made it safe to use animal milk. However, a significant change took place in the meantime: the wet-nurse
was moved kept their
instead
little
of the
house and the parents was a phenomenon comparable to the
child; she stayed in the
children. This
substitution of the day-school for the boarding-school.
The story outlined here strikes one as that of the triumph of the modern family over other types of human relationship which hindered its development. The more man lived in the street or in communities dedicated to work, pleasure or prayer, the more these communities monopolized not only his time but his mind. If, on the other hand, his relations with fellow-workers, neighbours and relatives did not weigh so heavily on him, then the concept of family feeling took the place of the other concepts of loyalty and service and became predominant or even exclusive. The progress of the concept of the family followed the progress of private life, of domesticity. For a long time the conditions of everyday life did not allow the essential withdrawal by the household from the outside world. One of the great obstacles was doubtless the departure of the children when they were sent away to serve their apprenticeship, and their replacement by little strangers. But the return of the children, after the institution of the school, and the emotional consequences of this to create the modern tightening of the family bonds were still not enough and its strong inner life; the general sociability of old, which was family
An equilibrium was incompatible with it, remained virtually intact. established in the seventeenth century between the centrifugal or social and the centripetal or family forces which was not destined to survive the progress of domesticity. have seen in the preceding pages the rise of these centripetal forces.
forces
We
Let us
now
stubborn
the survival of a study the resistance of the centrifugal forces,
sociability.
The historians have already stressed the survival late into the seventeenth of relationships which had previously been neglected. The
century monarchical centralization achieved by Richelieu and Louis XIV was more political than social. If it succeeded in crushing the political powers with the crown, it left the social influences intact. Seventeenth-
competing
made up of graded clienteles in which the 16 The formation of these groups called greatest.
century society in France was little
men
mixed with the
THE FAMILY
376
whole network of
for a
daily contacts, involving an unimaginable
and exchanges. Material success, conventions and collective amusements were not separate activities
number of calls, social
conversations, meetings
more than professional life, private life and social The main thing was to maintain social functions. separate relations with the whole of the group into which one had been born, and
as
they are today, any
life
were
to better one's position by skilful use of this network of relations. To make a success of life was not to make a fortune, or at least that was of secondary it was above all to win a more honourable standing in a
importance; society
whose members
all
saw one another, heard one another and met
one another nearly every day.
When
the French translator of Laurens
Gracian (1645) suggested that the future 'Hero' should find an emploi he did not mean what we would now call a good job, but 'one plausible,
of everybody and to the satisfaction of The art of succeeding was the art of being agreeable in society. all'. That was how Balthazar Castiglione's courtier saw it in the sixteenth 17 'This is in my opinion the most fitting way of paying court century: for a nobleman living at a princely court, by which he may render perfect service in all reasonable matters in order to acquire the favour of some
which was performed
in sight
16
A
man's future depended entirely on his is another thing which adds to or 'reputation'. detracts from a man's reputation, and that is his choice of the friends with
and the
of
praise
'It
others.'
seems to
whom he must maintain
A
me
that there
constant and close relations.'
to great place was given
century
literature; a friendship
friendship in the whole of seventeenthwhich was a social relationship carried
Hence the importance of conversation, according to should again be particularly glad to hear about the manner
further than most. Castiglione:
'I
of living and conversing with men and women: something which strikes me as most important in view of the fact that at court most of one's time -and not just at court. All the etiquette manuals of is spent doing that' the seventeenth century insist on the importance of conversation, on the need to know the art of conversation, on one's bearing during conversations, etc.
The recommendations
in these manuals
go into incredible
Conversation must observe the proprieties. Domestic, household or excessively personal subjects must be avoided. One must avoid the was the time of Corneille's Menteur). Or again, to quote lying boast (this detail.
La
18
civilitt
nouvelle
of 1671
19 :
'You
will
never to bring up frivolous matters
remember
that the
first
rule
is
among great and learned persons,
Do among persons who cannot understand them as sores, infirmities, of such melancholy things your company
nor
difficult subjects
not
talk to
. . .
FROM THE MEDIEVAL TO MODERN FAMILY 377 Do not recount your dreams Do not prisons, trials, war and death give your opinion unless it is asked for ... Do not attempt to correct the . . .
faults
lords
of . . .
others, especially as that
. . .
is
the duty of fathers, mothers and
Do not speak before thinking what you intend to say/
We must remember that this art of conversation was not a minor art like
dancing or singing. Sorel commented on Galatte, the bedside book
of the seventeenth century:
'In some nations, when people see a man commit some discourtesy, they say that he has not read Galatte.' Galatte makes it quite clear that knowing how to converse is a virtue:*1 'I shall with what I consider necessary to learn to be thought well-bred begin and agreeably tactful when conversing with others, something which however is a virtue or something very like a virtue/ Galatle was used in the Jesuit colleges. As for the Jansenists, Nicole would kter express himself . . .
in similar terms in his essay 'De la civilit6 chretienne': 22 'The love of others being so necessary to support us, we are naturally led to seek it out and win it for ourselves . . love or we pretend to love others, in order .
We
That is the basis of human courtesy, which is simply a sort of exchange of amour-propre, in which we try to attract the love of others by showing them affection ourselves.' Good manners are to charity what pious gestures are to devotion. 'The closeness of their union [that of respectable people] does not depend simply on these spiritual ties but also on those other human cords which preserve it* -propriety and the art of living in society. If one lives in to attract their affection.
the world, one must 'arrange one's opportunities' and 'endear oneself to others'.
The insistence on good manners and sociability was not new; it went back to a very old concept of society in which communications were ensured less by school than by apprenticeship, and in which writing did not yet occupy an important place in everyday life. It is remarkable that this state of mind should have endured in a society in which the development of the school indicated the progress of a very different mentality. This ambiguity between traditional sociability and modern schooling was clearly perceived
by contemporary
observers,
and
particularly
by
the
moralist pedagogues, several of whom lived in the vicinity of Port-Royal. all of them examined the question whether private education at
Nearly
better than public education at school. To tell the truth, the for it had already been discussed topical as it appeared, moralist the but pedagogues discussed the problem in the by Quintilian; context of their own time and circumstances. In L'Honneste garfori**
home was
problem was not as
M.
de Grenaille puts the problem in these terms: 'For
my part,
I
do not
THE FAMILY
378
to offend antiquity with modern opinions, nor criticize the organization of the Colleges, which so many wise men have praised ... I will however venture to say that the Colleges are rather inexpensive Academies
want
for the public than necessary institutions for the nobility/ They 'make it for the poor as well as the rich to acquire those treasures of the possible mind which only persons of great wealth could possess in the past. There children who, being unable to afford to keep masters at home, are
many
consider themselves extremely fortunate to be maintained at public free of charge knowledge which previously had expense and to be given to be bought. But for those whom Fortune, like Nature, has blessed with is all its favours, I consider that private tuition is better than public. This
seem/ Public education it by no means a new opinion, bold though may was despised because it was held that the schools were in the hands of common in literature, at least after Montaigne, pedants: this opinion was and also most certainly in public opinion. The great development of the school did nothing to diminish the contempt felt for the schoolmaster. There were other reasons for disliking the school. School discipline was considered to be too strict. *J ust as [ at home] children are not accorded
never left the company of adults], they dangerous freedom [because they are not subjected to a constraint harmful to their self-confidence/ And M. de Grenaille adds this comment which reveals a nostalgic regret for the time when children were not set apart from adults: *They are not treated as others/ The school either risks corrupting the child by in the same
way him in evil company, or else it retards his development by keeping him away from adults. M. de Grenaille disapproves strongly of the putting
'Even if a child is not scandalized by his prolongation of childhood: less learn a great deal of childish nonsense the none he will schoolmates, which he will later find it hard to forget, and it will be as difficult to cleanse
him of
the defilement of college
most which
serious
tion of children,
separates
'
ment.
life as
to protect
shortcoming of the college
vices/ Finally, the
them from
him from
is
its
the segrega-
their natural social environ-
He needs to learn early in life how to behave in society as well as in
the study, and he cannot learn that in a place where people think more of dead than with the living, that is to say with books than living with the we have the real reason for all this criticism: the dislike Here with men/ for school felt
by
those
who
remained more or
less faithful
to the old
education by apprenticeship, a type of education which plunged the child and left it to society to train him to play his part straight into society
immediately. This would
still
be the opinion, twenty years
later, in
1661,
of Marshal
FROM THE MEDIEVAL TO MODERN FAMILY de
Cailli&re.
24
'It is
at school; there
is
379
not enough to be versed in the knowledge taught
another sort of knowledge which teaches us
how to use
which speaks neither Greek nor Latin, but which shows us how to employ both. It is to be found in the Palaces ... in the homes of Princes and grandees, it hides in the alcoves of Ladies, it delights in the company of soldiers, and it does not despise merchants, labourers, or artisans. It has prudence as a guide, and its doctrines are conversation and experience/ Conversation and familiarity with society have 'often made good men without any help from Letters. The world is a great book which teaches us something every moment, and conversations are living studies which it...
are not a whit inferior to those of books
two or in the
three wits can be
world
. . .
. . .
Habitual conversation with
more
They pour
useful to us than all the university pedants out more good sense in one hour than we
could read in a library in three days. The movements and the expression of the face have a charm which lends weight to what the tongue has to say/ At the
end of the century, the Abb6 Bordelon was of the same opinion: 'Teach children more for the world than through the school/ 26 It can be seen that throughout the seventeenth century there was a current of opinion which was hostile to the school. We shall be able to understand school was.
this better if
The
we remember what a recent phenomenon the who had understood the importance of
moralists,
education, hitherto neglected and
still
scarcely appreciated
by
their
contemporaries, had not fully realized the role which the school would play, and had already played, in the training of children.
Some,
particularly those associated
with Port-Royal,
tried to reconcile
the advantages of the school, which they recognized, and those of education at home. In his Regies de Education des enfants (1687), Coustel submits the
and weighs the pros and cons. 26 If children at home, the parents watch more closely over their health a new preoccupation), and they 'learn good manners more
problem to are brought up (this
too
easily'
is
close analysis,
by mixing
the duties of social
in society. 'They unconsciously instruct themselves in life and in the behaviour of civilized people/ But there
are certain disadvantages:
'It is difficult
to maintain regular hours for
study, because mealtimes on which they depend cannot be fixed because of business and because of calls which are received which often cannot be
The children also risk being excessively spoilt to the 'complaisant flattery of their by parents. Finally they are exposed the servants, and to the lewd talk and foolish remarks of foreign lackeys either foreseen or avoided/
who
cannot always be kept away from them*. Time and again
we come
THE FAMILY
380 across this
problem of the dreaded promiscuity of the servants; even the
school's worst enemies recognized that this was a powerful argument in its favour. Thus M. de Grenaille admits that parents are 'forced to send their children to college, preferring
them
to be in a classroom than in a
kitchen'. 27
Coustel recognizes that in any case the question is of a theoretical character because, in his time, every boy was sent to college: 'The practice is to put them in colleges/ usually employed for the education of children These institutions have their advantages; children 'make useful friendships in
them which often
last until
the end of their days'.
They enjoy
the
of emulation: 'The pupils acquire a praiseworthy boldness in and this is speaking in public without going pale at the sight of others, essential for those who are destined to hold high office.' 'Private education' increases shyness. It will be noticed that the advantages which the colleges are recognized as possessing have very little to do with tuition; they are social in character, 'civil' as they would have been called at the time. benefits
But the colleges also have certain disadvantages. It is known that the were too big, sometimes containing over a hundred pupils. In
classes
Coustel's opinion 'the excessive number of pupils it is to their morals.' What we
to their studies as
as much an obstacle know about crowded
is
and the unruliness of schoolboys enables us to understand Cordier's in this sort of place, they anxiety. "As soon as young children set foot start losing that innocence, that simplicity and that modesty which hitherto made them so pleasing to God and men alike.' There was a solution to the problem which had already been proposed classes
by Erasmus:
'to put five or six children
with a good
man
or
two
in a
We
have seen that this formula was adopted by Portprivate house'. 'little schools' - famous but ephemeral. It was also famous in the Royal founded in the late in numerous the private pensions which were adopted seventeenth century and in the course of the eighteenth. With a few exceptions, the moralist pedagogues are rather reticent on the subject of the college.
An
historian
who
confined himself to their
testimony could legitimately conclude that public opinion was hostile to scholastic forms of education, when in fact, as we have seen, there
was such a demand for college education that the classes were seriously overcrowded. Theorists do not always give the truest picture of their times.
Yet
this
opposition was
importance which
no
aberration;
social apprenticeship
it
still
progress of scholastic education. In everyday
can be explained by the retained in spite of the people were better able
life
FROM THE MEDIIWAL TO MODERN FAMILY than the educational theorists to reconcile schooling and one did not exclude the other.
381
*
civility'.
The
The word 'civil* was roughly synonymous with our modern word The word civility* would thus correspond to what we call *
'social*.
'good manners', but in fact it meant much more. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, civility was the practical knowledge which it was necessary to have in order to live in society and which could not be
we
acquired at school: what
call etiquette.
'courtesy', civility already existed The origins of the manuals
when
Under
the older name of were confined to clerics. or manuals of etiquette and seventeenth centuries
schools
of civility which were so common in the sixteenth are somewhat complex. The sources fall into three very old categories. First of all the 'treatises of courtesy*. Many of these were written in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in French, English, Italian and even Latin. They were intended for everybody, clerics as well as
laymen, people who could read Latin as well as people who could understand only the vernacular. In Italian there was a manual called 26 This manual included such directions as: Zinquanta cortesie da Tavola.
'Wash your hands
.
. .
Do
not
sit
down
until
you
are invited to
do so ...
He who
waits at table must be clean, and must not spit or do anything unclean in front of the guests.' In French there was the book Comment se
tenir a table\ in Latin,
Stans puer ad mensam. For these
were books for
29 children or youths: in English they were known as the 'babees books'. They taught how to speak correctly, how to greet people, how to kneel
before one's master,
how
how
to say grace before a meal,
to answer
and wash your hands questions. 'Cut your finger-nails fairly frequently, before dinner. When you have taken a morsel of food out of your mouth, do not put it back on the plate ... Do not pick your teeth with the point Do not spit at of your knife ... Do not rub your hands on your arms table... Do not roll up your cloth... Keep your trencher straight in These practical Do not doze at table Do not belch front of . . .
'
you
. . .
. . .
. . .
recommendations were usually presented in the form of couplets. In the Middle Ages they were also addressed to women. Le Roman de la Rose is in it recommends women to wear a sort of corset part a treatise on courtesy: advice on their toilet, their or bones metal) and gives them (without intimate hygiene, and the care of the 'house of Venus' which had to be well shaven. The later manuals of etiquette did not mention women, kept
THE FAMILY
382
had diminished at the end of the Middle Ages and the times. of modern beginning The second source of the manuals of etiquette can be seen in the rules of morality contained in a collection of late Latin adages attributed in the Middle Ages to Cato the Elder, Cato's distichs. Le Roman de la Rose cites as if their role in life
them
as a reference: 'This
is
also Cato's
opinion
if
you remember
his
book.' Cato's distichs were used for several centuries: they were still being 30 They tell the reader how to live reprinted in the eighteenth century. his own decently, to guard his tongue, to distrust women (including be afraid of death, not to worry if not to on to not count legacies, wife), somebody in the company starts whispering (and not to imagine in such
being discussed), to teach his children a trade, to restrain dissimulation is anger against his servants, to conceal his defects (for better than an evil reputation), not to practise soothsaying and magic, not to talk about or worry about his dreams, to choose his wife well, to avoid
cases that
he
is
his
desire of gluttony (especially when it was accompanied by the 'shameful not to be a complaisant husband, etc. old of fun make not to men, love'), These recommendations combine what we should now consider common-
and crude common sense: what is done place morality, social conformity and what is not done in all spheres - in one's relations with one's wife, one's servants, one's friends, as also in conversation or behaviour at table all this pell-mell and on the same level. But where we see the pressure of trivial social conventions in these writings, our ancestors recognized the
commandments of life in common, the guardians of real values. The third source of the manuals of etiquette consisted of the writings on the arts of pleasing or the arts of love: Ovid's Ars amoris, Andre le Barberini's Document! d'amore, the Chapelain's De amore, Francesco de
love manuals of the sixteenth century. Le Roman de la Rose is a typical not his example. It tells the reader to avoid jealousy, that the husband is
and master (this would change later), that the lover must become versed in the arts and sciences in order to please his mistress, that he must not scold her or try to read her letters or discover her secrets. And it teaches him to refrain from mean actions, not to indulge in slander, wife's lord
to greet people correctly and acknowledge their greetings, not to talk smart and clean, gay and merry and coarsely, to avoid arrogance, to be
These are generous, and to bestow his affections in one quarter only. all the and of women affections for the companions of a winning recipes life
in
which one
is
never alone, but always in the midst of a large,
exacting society. Treatises
on
courtesy, rules of morality
and
arts
of love were
all
FROM THE MEDIEVAL TO MODERN
FAMI'LY
383
intended to achieve the same result: to initiate the young man (and sometimes the lady) in social life, die only conceivable life outside the cloister, a life
which was spent
activities as
well
in
human
contacts
and conversation, the
serious
as the
games. This complex and abundant medieval literature changed in the sixteenth century and became much simpler. The result was two genres, similar in nature but different in form: die 'civili ties' or manuals of and etiquette,
*
on the art of succeeding in life. The first manual of etiquette was that by Erasmus, which founded the genre. All the later manuals, and there were a great many of them, were inspired by Erasmus or slavishly copied him. Perhaps the most notable names are those of Cordier, Antoine de Courtin and finally Jean-Baptiste de La Salle, whose Ragles de la biense'ance et de la dvilite chr&ienne was reprinted an infinite number of times in the eighteenth and even in the the courtiers' or treatises
early nineteenth century.
The manual of etiquette was not
a school book, but it satisfied a more need than the old courtesy treatises or die sayings of the pseudo-Cato. Circumstances extension of (the schooling) dictated that, although these manuals were not intended for school use, and although they contained rules of behaviour which were both unsuitable to be taught in school and difficult to teach, they should be associated with the tuition of little children, with the first lessons in reading and writing. Children were taught to read and write from manuals of etiquette. They were accordingly printed in different characters - as characters as strictly educational
many
existed in a complicated typographical range: not only roman, italic but also the characters which were used characters, gothic manuscript
and
only
in the printing of this type of book and which caracteres de dvilitt. The fact that these manuals
were therefore called were intended for an
educational purpose resulted in their being given a picturesque typographical appearance. Moreover the text was sometimes printed in several languages, in vertical columns, each column in a different type:
French and Latin of course, but
also Italian, Spanish
and German (never and no
English, a language which at that time had a limited audience cultural value). The manuals of etiquette in fact taught modern
languages
which were not taught in college. But these books were not by any means intended solely for children. Antoine de Courtin's manual was addressed 'not only to persons with children but also to those
who, although advanced
in years, are
none the
insufficiently versed in the courtesies and proprieties which have to be observed in society' 81 Thus in Grimoux's painting in the Mus6e des
less
THE FAMILY
384 Augustins at Toulouse
which we can
we have an
make out
adolescent girl reading a
the caracteres de
book
in
The
subjects dealt with in these manuals were not always intended for children: they often to treat one's wife and servants, or included adult matters, such as clearly
tiviliti.
how
how how
They contained both advice to children on and moral recommendations which we would consider unintelligible to children. These manuals were considerably influenced by the habits of a period when there were no restrictions on the readingmatter made available to children, and when the latter were plunged straight into society; they had plenty of time to assimilate all this knowledge, since it was given to them at the start. They went straight into the to
grow
old gracefully.
to behave
adult world.
We
have often had occasion to refer to the manuals of etiquette. One of them, Galat&e, reached an extraordinarily wide public in the first half of the seventeenth century. The Jesuits had adopted it: an edition of 1617 was specially intended for the boarders of the Society of Jesus at La Fl&che and the boarders of the same Society's college at Pont-aMousson. 32 Galatee, originally composed in Italian by J. de La Case and since rendered into French, Latin, German and Spanish', is described as 'a treatise essential for the education of young people in all the manners and customs approved by people of honour and virtue, and suitable for those who take pleasure not only in the Latin tongue but also in the vernacular tongues which at present enjoy greater favour'. Like the other manuals, Galatde teaches its readers how to behave and converse in society. It tells the reader that 'to put one's hand on a part of one's body in public is anything but commendable', just as the Stans puer ad mensam of the fifteenth century condemned the habit of scratching in society. One *
should not dress or undress in public when performing one's natural nor wash ostentatiously immediately afterwards, nor draw
functions,
*
on
the roads, nor get people to smell stinking things'. One should avoid offending other people's senses by 'grinding one's teeth, whistling, gurgling, or rubbing stones or pieces of iron attention to excrement
together' (another finger-joints or to
manual of
etiquette urges people not to crack their
noise when coughing or sneezing). One should avoid yawning, keeping one's mouth open or looking at one's
make too much
We
find here the old precepts on table manners, which importance until the end of the eighteenth century; the meal was still a social rite - which it has practically ceased to be today - in which everyone's role was minutely defined, and in which everyone had to take special care to behave properly: not to eat too quickly, not to put
handkerchief.
kept
all their
TOMB ANTOON ANSELME AND
facing above: CHILD'S
below :
HIS FAMILY
PROM THE MEDIEVAL TO MODERN FAMILY one's elbows possible
and
on if it
385
the table, not to pick one's teeth, not to 'spit as far as is absolutely necessary, to spit in a discreet fashion'. The
explains how one should dress: 'A man must make every effort to approximate as closely as he can to the style of dress of the other citizens and allow himself to be guided by custom/ Any eccentricity, in this sphere as in any other, is a sign of lise-soci&4. One should always give in to the company's wishes, without ever imposing one's own. One should not ask for writing-paper or a chamberpot when a meal is ready and one's hands are washed. One should not be shy or familiar or melancholy. One should always behave in a dignified manner with the servants (certain proud creatures 'are constantly scolding their servants and rebuking them and keep their entire family in perpetual tribulation'), and in the street (where one's walk should be neither too quick nor too slow and where one should never stare at passers-by). Editions of manuals of etiquette continued to appear from the sixteenth to* the eighteenth century, all very similar one to the other. That by JeanBaptiste de La Salle, Ragles de la biensdance et de la civilite chr&ienne, had as much success in the eighteenth century as those by Erasmus and Cordier or as Galatte in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The fact that a pious pedagogue, the founder of an educational institute, burdened with cares and responsibilities, should have taken the trouble to draw up a treatise which deals, like the preceding manuals, with good behaviour, clothes, hair, table-manners, etc., shows the importance that was attributed to subjects which have now become trivial. Admittedly it was a matter of educating a boorish rural population, and the discipline of good manners was more necessary than in our present-day society where people are more subject to all sorts of public authorities and police controls: the State has taken the place of good manners in the training of the individual, since the institution of schools, street-traffic and military service. People of
book
had the feeling that there were no unimportant things in That is why there was nothing astonishing about Jean-Baptiste de La Salle, the Canon of Reims, carefully repeating in his turn the traditional recommendations of the manuals of etiquette: 'Take special care to see that there is no vermin or smells; these precautions are most important with regard to children.' There is a long discourse on ways of to have dirty, filthy hands; this is only spitting. 'It is shameful to seem tolerable in the case of labourers or peasants.' 'When one needs to urinate, one should always retire to some secluded spot, and it is wrong [even for earlier times
social
life.
in places children] to perform other natural functions anywhere except where one cannot be seen.' 'It is unseemly to strike a blow with one's
N facing: LITTLE GIRL
AT THE WINE-MBRCHANT'S
THE FAMILY
386
hand when playing with someone/ 'One should not shake one's legs, nor move them playfully, nor cross them/ The reader is also told how to dress: 'It is unseemly for a child to be dressed like a man, or for a young man's clothes to be more ornate than an old man's.' And of course there is the usual long chapter on 'the way to cut and serve meat', to lay the table, to serve the meal and to clear the table, tasks specially reserved for children and youths.
The enormous number of manuals of
etiquette, new editions and from Erasmus to de La Salle and beyond, shows adaptations, Jean-Baptiste that the school had not yet monopolized all the functions of instruction. Great attention was still paid to those good manners which, a few centuries earlier, had been the essential features of apprenticeship. 'The sweet and orderly behaviour of children,' wrote an English pedagogue in the seventeenth century, 'addeth more credit to a school than due and constant teaching, because this speaketh to every one that the child is well taught though perhaps he learn but little, and good manners indeed are a main part of good education.' 83
In the early seventeenth century people still talked about 'knowing 9 in the original Italian, Le Courtisan in French (II Cortegiano
The Courtier
they could say of a man that he had read his Galatte?* Balthazar Castiglione's The Courtier created a genre (just as Erasmus created the prototype of the manuals of etiquette) the genre of the arts of pleasing and succeeding. These arts were the essential subject-matter of The Courtier, of books such as Laurens Gracian's He'ros, translated from the translation), just as
:
Spanish, of Faret's L'Honn&te
which Daniel Mornet has
Homme, and indeed of a whole
literature,
studied. 85
This subject can be reduced to two basic ideas: ambition and reputation. Ambition was considered a virtue. Nobody, it was felt, should be content with his lot; he should constantly think of bettering it. This eagerness to rise in the world was not seen as an appetite for pleasure and comfort but as an ideal calling for strict discipline and unflinching determination, an heroic ideal in which one can recognize the spirit of the Renaissance. It was to last until the middle of the seventeenth century. It finds ingenuous expression in a passage in L'Honne$tegarfonThc author, M.de Grenaille, knows the importance of noble birth: 'I should like the honneste garfon to be born into some noble family... Is it not true that noblemen are
endowed by nature with an
air
in their degradation? Children
of majesty which commands respect even of the nobility seem to command even in
FROM THE MEDIEVAX TO MODERN FAMILY
387
in a position subjection, whereas commoners who are sometimes placed of authority seem to be receiving orders when they give them/ But
another social concept is
a 'divine quality
honour* -and
this
is
no
less
important in the author's eyes: nobility
which upholds courage and virtue and not a vain and it quality is acquired by virtue or reputation,
of a 'generous ambition*. The honneste garfon will of his house: 'If he is born a mere nobleman he will want to become a baron; if he is a marquess, he will try to become a count. In short, he will press the rights which Nature lias given him as far as Fortune will allow/ 'Those who, coming from an honourable family, find themselves in only a very lowly or very mediocre position should strive to rise by means of skill and to conquer nature by means of industry/
increases as the result raise the titles
'There are
more men of lowly
birth
who become
great than great
men
who
maintain themselves in the same position. This is because the latter sometimes neglect everything whereas the former neglect nothing/ And
M. de
Grenaille accords his admiration to these brave achievements: the
honneste gargon should 'realize that his nobility will be more honourable if he acquires it by merit than if he had it by birth/ This is a curious text, which reveals the moral value attributed to ambition.
How was this 'elevation* to be achieved? There was only one way: fame and reputation. Intellectual or technical competence and moral worth were not envisaged; not that they were overlooked, but they were included in the approval which consecrated a man as 'famous* and 'likeable*. This approval, however, had to be constantly maintained by new exploits and new displays of skill: 'Greatness must be renewed, 37 Success could be obtained reputation reborn, and applause resuscitated/ the and the of the favour of means friendship of one's peers. great only by a man had to be prepared to use To secure this favour and this
even
friendship, conceal his faults ill-gotten riches, to
and to simulate
qualities.
Dissimulation was permissible: *Oh, man whose passion works only to win fame, you who aspire to greatness, let every man know you but no
man
understand you. Thanks to
this art, the
die great infinite, and the infinite more/ 'Virtue', writes Faret in L'Honnfre Homme, all
who
there
is
wish to obtain consideration sullied it
and
in all
disguised,
its
88
each
at
tries
mediocre will seem 'is
so essentially the
great,
aim of
Court that although everyone to give the impression that he
This was understandable: 'A
purity/ possesses chances to speak to the courtier only once in his
life
will
man who
go away pleased
with him and will say things about him which he would never say 39 had seen the depths of his soul/
if
he
THE FAMILY
388
In order to 'acquire people's love', a man needed 'tact', 'a beautiful a perfect life'. And here we come back to civility, to etiquette, to the
soul, art
of living in
society:
'Without
it,
the finest achievement
is
dead, the
40
greatest perfection revolting/
In the second half of the seventeenth century, the genres born of '
*
Erasmus's
civility
'
*
and Castiglione's courtier underwent some significant
changes.
The Renaissance ideal of ambition and elevation disappeared at the same as the courtier was replaced by the honnfae homme and the court by
time
society. It
was no longer considered
in
good
taste to aspire
too obviously
A
new ideal appeared, which the Chevalier Mer to fortune and prestige. was to cultivate throughout his work: the search for the happy mean, a distinguished mediocrity. This concept did not reduce the weight of but it no longer attributed the same moral value to
social influences,
Good manners remained just as necessary, but they gradually lost moral content and ceased to be a virtue. This was the scarcely an evolution which would gather speed in the perceptible beginning of nineteenth and centuries: the coherent sociability of the ancien eighteenth them.
their
regime would be reduced to a more fragile and less opulent worldHness. However, during the second half of the seventeenth century, this evolution was only hinted at, and sociability, for all that it was less heroic and less exemplary, remained extremely dense and powerful. The manuals of etiquette remained for a long time descriptions of good
manners which were intended for children as well as for adults in so far as members of either group had not yet learnt them. Like their distant models in the Middle Ages, they explained how a well-bred man should behave, and they recalled established practices which had not hitherto been written down but which had none the less been respected and sincere. In the second half of the seventeenth century, the manuals of etiquette retained their traditional appearance, but they gave more and more place the
to educational advice and to recommendations addressed simply to children, to the exclusion of adults, on such subjects as the behaviour of 41 the schoolboy. In a manual published in iy6i, there was a whole chapter on 'the way in which the child must behave at school*. This was a manual
based on that written by Cordier, who was a schoolmaster, and on his school dialogues. It taught that the child should take off his hat on entering the school, either to bow to the master or to greet his companions. He
FROM THE MEDIEVAL TO MODERN FAMILY
389
should not change his seat but remain in the place allotted to
him by the 'Do not annoy your companions by pushing one and shoving another.' *Do not be so uncouth and unobliging as to refuse to lend ink, master.
or anything else to your companions if it should happen that quills they have forgotten to bring any.' 'Do not talk in school/ 'It is a sign of an evil
show pleasure when someone is being scolded or punished.* The manual of etiquette now paid greater attention to school life, adapted itself to it and prolonged it. This was a consequence of the development of the school, and of the growing awareness of the special nature of child-
nature to
hood.
of i67i 42 was already something like an educational manual for parents this had not been the case with the traditional manuals of etiquette, which were simply records of established practice. It told how
La
nouvelle
civiliti
:
to set about punishing children, when to start teaching them their letters, and so on. 'The child should repeat at home what he has learnt at school
or at college, or else he should learn at
home what he
will
have to
recite
before his master.' In the evening, the parents should examine his conscience: 'If the child has lived like a man*, he should be washed and caressed. If
correct
he has committed a few venial offences, the parents 'should or by inflicting some mild punishment
him by making fun of him
that is easy to bear*. 'If he has committed one of those actions verging on crime, such as blasphemy, theft or falsehood, or hurling a foul insult at a maidservant, or a valet, or being stubbornly or contemptuously dis*
Next the child should bid his parents and masters good-night, and go to relieve himself.' 'Finally, after undressing, he should lie down in bed to sleep, without chatting and telling stories. He should lie down in such a way that he is comfortably and decently obedient, he should be birched.'
arranged and entirely covered; he should sleep neither on his back nor on but on his side [a piece of medieval medical advice], and he should not sleep without a shirt, both for reasons of propriety and in order
his belly,
to
be able to find
his clothes in
any emergency which might
arise.'
the enlarged scope of the traditional manuals was too narrow to the new educational preoccupations. There then appeared, parsatisfy in the Port-Royal entourage, practical treatises on education, ticularly
Even
in I666, 43 Coustel's presented in the form of advice to parents: Varet's in 1687,** and so on. Although these works contained chapters on good
manners
(in
traditional
They
conversation and at table) which read like extracts were written in a different etiquette, they
manuals of
also dealt
from spirit.
with the choice of a trade, and with the difficult problems also with masters, books (romances 'poisoned the
of choosing a school,
THE FAMILY
390 soul*
and were
to
be forbidden), games and pedagogic methods: 'Adjust you can to their weakness, stammering with them, so
as far as
yourselves to speak, in order to help them to learn their litde lessons.' Thus, apart from recommendations to parents, these manuals also contained advice
They urged parents to behave well in front of their children, good example, to keep an eye on their friends, to 'give them some occupation in conformity with their own plans on the subject, so as not to condemn them to a shameful idleness* while avoiding going to any for masters.
to set
them
a
*
5
trouble to put their children at their ease'.* are a long way here from the traditional manuals of etiquette, for here it is no longer a question of recording adult usage for the benefit of children or ignorant adults, but of instructing the family itself in its duties
We
and
responsibilities,
and of advising
it
in
its
behaviour towards children.
The difference between Erasmus's CiviM and the educational treatises by Coustel andVaret corresponds to the difference between the late fifteenthhabits of apprenticeship in century family, still attached to the medieval other people's houses, and the family of the second half of die seventeenth the children. century, already organized round However, these modern features of family education did not diminish the success of the traditional manuals, for the concentration of the family around the children was not yet opposed to the old habits of sociability: the pedagogues themselves recognized that 'social intercourse' remained essential.
Since everything depended on social relations, one is bound to wonder where people met. They still often met outside, in the street. Not only by chance, because towns were comparatively small, but also because certain streets or squares were promenades where at certain hours one met one's crowds friends, as one does today in Mediterranean towns. The teeming of the Corso or the Piazza Major were to be found in squares which are
by pedestrians who, even when they loiter, are one another. The present-day tourist finds it hard to recognize the Place Bellecour at Lyons in this description of it given by an 4* 'Men and women were Italian traveller of 1664, the Abb Locatelli: one holds a child walking about arm in arm, holding one another as
now
deserted or crossed
unknown
to
. . .
A woman
gave her
arm
to
two men,
a
man
two women. good priest came from
his
Unaccustomed as we were to these manners [the Bologna where people were more reserved than
arm
to
in Lyons],
we
thought
FROM THE MEDIEVAL TO MODERN FAMILY we had
noticed how gay they all were, and at the saw them take each other by the arm, which the handle of a basket, and they walked about in this
entered a brothel...
entrance to the promenade,
they held bent like
way/ The
391
surprise felt
I
I
by
this
sight of this laughing population as that which we
seventeenth-century Bolognese at the walking about arm in arm is the same
when we mingle with an Italian crowd. where did they forgather? In nineteenth-
experience today
People met in the century France, and the caft.
street;
modern France too,
the
men often gather together in
Contemporary French society remains unintelligible unless one recognizes the importance of the caft: it is the only meeting-place which is accessible at any time, as regular as a habit. The English equivalent is the 'public house' or pub. The society of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was a society without a cafe or pub: the tavern was a place of ill
repute reserved for criminals, prostitutes, soldiers, students on the spree,
down-and-outs, and adventurers of every sort - it was not frequented by .decent people, whatever their station in life. 47 There were no other public
places except private houses, or at least certain private houses: the big houses in either the town or country.
What do we mean by a big house? Something very different from the meaning we would give today to the same expression. A house today is said to be big in relation to the density of its population. A big house is always a house with few people in it. As soon as the population density people say that they are beginning to feel cramped for room, and the house, comparatively speaking, is no longer as big as it was. In the seventeenth century, and also in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a rises,
big house was always crowded, with
more people in it than in litde an important point, which emerges from all the investigations into density of population made by demographic historians.
houses. This
is
The population of Aix-en-Provence at century has been studied by means of the
of the seventeenth 48 capitation register of I695. In the light of these analyses, a sharp contrast can be seen between the poor, densely populated districts and the rich, less populated districts: the former had litde houses with few people in each house, the latter big houses crowded with people. Some houses contained three or fewer than three the end
occupants, while others contained twenty-five people (two masters, six children, seventeen servants) or seventeen people (two masters, eight children, seven servants). This contrast was not peculiar to the seventeenth century or to Provence. recent article on Carpentras in the middle of the fifteenth
A
40 century gives the same impression. Twenty-three families of notabilities
THE FAMILY
392
or 7*7 people to each comprised one hundred and seventy-seven people, lived in houses containing more the of cent 17*4 population house; per than eight people. One noble had twenty-five people in his house. The cathedral architect lived with fourteen other people. It is a delicate matter to draw conclusions about the birth-rate from these figures. But they show clearly that the houses of the rich sheltered, apart from the family
whole population of servants, employees, clerics, clerks, shopand so on. That was the case from the fifteenth to the keepers, apprentices seventeenth century in the greater part of Western Europe. The houses in with several rooms on each floor and several question were big houses, windows overlooking the street, courtyard or garden. Taken by themselves they formed a veritable social group. Beside these big, crowded houses containing only married couples and houses there were proper, a
tiny
their children, the youngest. In the towns, these probably just a few of were houses such as are still to be found here and there in the old districts, houses with only one or two windows on each floor. According to Paul at Masson, it seems that the house with two windows was considered
be an improvement on the house with one window: 'The floor are composed of two rooms, one overlooking apartments on each a narrow space separating the backs of the street, the other
Marseilles to
overlooking
from those of the next street' 50 Often the two windows room. Thus there were only one or two rooms in these lighted only one urban lodgings. In the country, the little houses had no more than that, was reserved for the ^nd when there were two rooms, one of them animals. They were obviously shelters for sleeping and sometimes (not These little houses fulfilled no social function. They could these houses
always) eating. not even serve as
World War
homes
for families.
The housing
crisis after
the Second
has taught us something of the effect of housing
were not
as sensitive
family. Admittedly people the ancien regime. But there has to be a certain
on
the
about promiscuity under
amount of space or family
and the concept of the family cannot take shape or may conclude that these poor, badly housed people felt develop. - that elementary form of the a commonplace love for little children of the more complex and more of childhood - but were
life is
impossible,
We
ignorant
concept
the young family. It is certain that a very early age these single rooms which we would call or hovels, either to move into other hovels -two brothers together, husband and wife - or to live as apprentices, servants or clerks in the big
modern forms of the concept of the
must have
left at
houses of the local notabilities. In these big houses, neither palaces, nor yet mansions,
we
find the
FROM THE MEDIEVAL TO MODERN FAMILY
393
we
cultural setting of the concept of childhood and the family. Here collected all the observations which have gone to the making of this book.
that of these notabilities. It is that family which abundant family iconography of the mid-seventeenth century, the engravings of Abraham Bosse, the portraits of Philippe de
The first modern family is
is
depicted in the
Champaigne, the scenes by the Dutch painters. It is for that family that the moralist pedagogues wrote their treatises, that more and more colleges were founded. For that family, that is to say for the whole group it formed, a group which comprised, apart from the conjugal family, not other of patriarchal family was clearly very rare) or at the
relatives (this type
very most bachelor brothers, but a houseful of servants, friends and prot6g6s.
The
a big house fulfilled a public function. In that society without it was the only place where friends, clients,
caft or a 'public house',
and proteges could meet and talk. To the servants, clerics and lived there permanently, one must add the constant flow of visitors. The latter apparently gave little thought to the hour and were never shown the door, for the seventeenth-century pedagogues conrelatives
clerks
who
sidered that the frequency and the time of these visits made a regular time-table, especially for meals, quite impossible. They regarded this as sufficiently harmful for children's education to justify
irregularity
of school life. The sending them to college, in spite of die moral dangers constant coming and going of visitors distracted children from their work. In short, visits gave the impression of being a positive occupation, which
and even dictated its mealtimes. governed the life of the household These visits were not simply friendly or social: they were also professional; but little or no distinction was made between these categories. clients were also his friends and both were his debtors. There A lawyer's
either for the judge or the merchant or professional premises, the banker or the business man. Everything was done in the same rooms
were no
where he
lived
with
his family.
rooms were no more equipped for domestic work than they Now communicated with one another, for were professional purposes. They the floor where the family lived. on had houses and the richest galleries but just as dependent on one were rooms the smaller, On the other floors these
a special function, except the kitchen, and even then the cooking was often done in the hearth of the biggest room. Kitchen refinements, and when there facilities in the towns did not allow of
another.
None had
many
were bought ready-cooked from the nearest caterer. When Hortensius, Francion's master, wanted to entertain some friends, he
were
guests, dishes
THB FAMILY
394
'Go and ask my neighbour the tavern-keeper to send me wine together with a roast, Now he said this because as
told his servant:
some of his
best
was already very late, and seeing that the latest to arrive had brought a hurdy-gurdy, he realized that he would have to offer supper to all the out with the servant. At the tavernpeople in his room/ Francion went
it
We
to suit us and we just bought some wine. keeper's, 'we found nothing decided to go to the cook-shop on the Petit Pont. The servant bought a
a sirloin of beef, went into capon, and as he also wanted to see if he could find a good one/
all
the cook-shops
ate in them, but not at People lived in general-purpose rooms. They the 'dining-table' did not exist, and at mealtimes people set special tables; seen from trestle-tables, covering them with a cloth, as can be
up folding
Bosse's engravings. In the middle of the fifteenth century the 51 humanist architect Alberti, very much a laudator temporis acti 9 recalled the manners of his childhood: 'When we were young ... the wife would
Abraham
send her husband a she dined at literally,
little jug
home and
for this
die
of wine and something to
men
custom was
in the
still
workshop/
common
in
eat
with
his bread;
He must not be taken
many
artisan
and peasants
time he was writing. But he contrasted this simple custom with urban usage at the time: 'the table put up twice a day as for a solemn banquet'. In other words, it was a collapsible table, like so many
homes
at the
52
of furniture in the early seventeenth century. In the same rooms where they ate, people slept, danced, worked and received visitors. Engravings show the bed next to a dumb-waiter loaded with silverware, or in the corner of a room in which people are eating. A picture by P. Codde (1636) shows a dance: at the far end of the room in which the mummers are dancing, one can make out a bed with the pieces
curtains
around
it
drawn. 53 For
a
long time the beds too were
collapsible.
to the apprentices or pages to put them up when company was author of Le Chattel de joyeuse destinte congratulates the expected. The 54 'dressed in the livery of France* on their agility at setting up beds.
It fell
youths
As kte as the early seventeenth century Heroard wrote in ids diary on March I2th, 1606: 'Once he [the future Louis XIII] had dressed, he helped to undo his bed/ March I4th, 1606: 'Taken to the Queen's apartments, he was lodged in the King's bedchamber [the King was away fighting] and
Mme
de Montglat to the Queen: helped to take his wooden bed round installed her bed there to sleep there/ On September 8th, 1608, just before out for Saint-Germain, 'he amused himself by undoing his bed setting
become less himself, impatient to leave.' Already, however, beds had * . . . I remember : wrote old the for in his mobile. Alberti, days, good regrets 55
PROM THE MEDIBT&Z, TO MODERN FAMILY
395
seeing our most notable citizens, when they went off to the country, taking their beds and their kitchen utensils with them, and bringing them
back on
their return.
Now the
furniture of a single room is bigger and expensive than that of a whole house used to be on a wedding68 day/ This transformation of the collapsible bed into a
more
permanent piece of furniture undoubtedly marks an advance in domesticity. The ornamental bed, surrounded by curtains, was promptly seized upon by artists to illustrate the themes of life: the room in which husband and private wife came together, in which mothers in which old men died, birth, gave and also in which the lonely meditated. But the room containing the bed was not a bedroom because of that. It remained a public place. Consequently the bed had to be fitted with curtains which could be opened or drawn at will, so as to defend its occupants* privacy. For one rarely slept alone, but either with one's husband or wife or else with other people of one's
own
sex.
Since the bed was independent of the room in which it stood, there could be several in die same room, often one in each corner. BussyRabutin tells how one day, in the course of a campaign, a girl frightened
by the troops asked him for protection and hospitality: 'I finally told servants to give her one of the four beds in room/ 67 It is easy to imagine the promiscuity which reigned in these rooms where nobody could be alone, which one had to cross to reach any of
my
my
the communicating rooms, where several couples and several groups of at least boys or girls slept together (not to speak of the servants, of
whom
some must have
slept beside their masters, setting up beds which were in the room or just outside the door), in which people still collapsible to have their meals, to receive their friends or clients, and forgathered
sometimes to give alms to beggars. One can understand why, whenever a census was taken, the houses of notabilities were always more crowded than the little one-room or two-room apartments of ordinary folk. One has to regard these families, for all that they were giving birth to the modern concept of the family, not as refuges from the invasion of the world but as the centres of a populous society, the focal points of a crowded social life. Around them were established concentric circles of relations, increasingly loose
towards the periphery:
debtors, etc.
circles
of
relatives,
protg&, of this complex network was the resident group of the children and the servants. The progress of the concept of childhood in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the moralists' mistrust of the servants had not yet succeeded in breaking up that group.
friends, clients,
At
the heart
THE FAMILY
396 It
was
as if it
were the
engravings show
living, noisy heart
us children with servants
of the big house. Countless
who
themselves were often
illustrations of a book of proverbs very young. For example Lagniet's a Bttle servant is shown playing with the child of the house who is only to walk. 58 The same familiarity must have existed in poorer
just starting families between artisans
and labourers and their young apprentices. There was not a great age difference between the children of a big house and the servants, who were usually engaged very young and some of whom were foster-brothers of members of the family. The Book of Common Prayer of 1549 made it the duty of heads of houses to supervise the religious instruction of all the children in their house, that is to say, of all the children, servants and 'prentices'. The servants and apprentices on the same footing as the children of the family. They all were *
placed 'The abbe's lackey, playing like a played together at the same games. little dog with sweet little Jacquine, threw her on the ground just now, wrist. The screams she gave were breaking her arm and dislocating her de Sevign6, who seemed to find this all terrifying.' So wrote
Mme
quite
59
very amusing. Sons of houses went on performing domestic functions in the seventeenth century which associated them with the servants' world, particutable. They carved the meat, carried the countless dishes larly waiting at in die French-style service which has gone out of fashion and which
now
and poured out the wine, them. The manuals of etiquette devoted a long
consisted of offering several dishes at once,
carrying glasses or
filling
at table, and genre pictures often showed chapter to the subject of waiting 60 children performing this service. The idea of service had not yet been to somebody. The handbooks degraded* One nearly always belonged* of the type of The Courtier advised the gentilhomme particulier or minor noble to choose his master well and try to win his favour. Society still *
network of 'dependencies'. Whence a certain difficulty in between honourable services and mercenary services distinguishing
appeared
as a
reserved for the menials: this difficulty still existed in the seventeenth servants were henceforth placed on the same century, although the There still remained between as the despised manual workers. footing which went beyond respect for a conmasters and servants
something
did not by an employer: an existential bond which on the one hand and cunning on the other, but which
tract or exploitation
exclude brutality resulted from an almost perpetual community of life. Witness the terms used by moralists to denote the duties of a father: 'The duties of a good father can be placed under three principal heads: his first duty is to control
PROM THE MEDIBVAt TO MODERN FAMILY his wife, the
'Solomon contains says,
second to
}>ring
up
397
' 6l his children, the last to govern his servants.
gives us some very judicious advice on this point, which a Master's duties to his servants. There are three things, he
all
which they must not
because
their right;
it is
ment because they
lack: bread, work and scoldings. Bread work because it is their lot; scoldings and punish-
are our interest.'
*
There would be very few servants behaved badly, if they were fed properly and paid their wages regularly.' But wages were not paid as they are today. Listen to Coustel: prodigal parents place themselves in a position where they are unable to
who
*
reward their
to satisfy their creditors, or to help the poor, as is are reciprocal duties between servants
their servants, 62
*
Or Bordelon: There
duty/
and masters. For
and
them compassion was not paid, he was rewarded: a master's relationship with his servant was not based on justice but on patronage and pity, the same feeling that people had for children. This feeling has never found better expression than in Don Quixote's thoughts when he awakens and considers the sleeping Sancho: Sleep, you have no worries. You have committed the responsibility for your person to my shoulders; it is a burden which nature and tradition have imposed on their services
and financial reward.
A
9
their submission, give
servant
*
those
who
wondering
have
servants.
how to feed him,
The
valet sleeps while the master sits up, improve him and do good to him. Fear [of a bad
harvest, etc,] does not affect the servant, but only the master,
support during
sterility
and famine him
who
served
who must
him during
fertility
and abundance/ 64 The produced
familiarity which this personal relationship can be seen in Moli^re's comedies, in the language of the
maidservants and valets
rooms intended
when
they are speaking of their masters. In those
no
special purpose, where people ate, slept and received visitors, the servants never left their masters: in the Caquet At I'aaouche'e, dialogues between a woman who had just had a child and her
visitors, the
for
maidservant joined quite naturally in the conversation. This
was not only true of the middle class, but of the nobility
some
Madame
Mme
de Sevigne, 'having conceived an Conde],' writes time ago for a footman of hers called Duval, the latter was
la Princesse [de
affection
*
as well.
enough to show signs of impatience at the kindness which she also showed young Rabutin, who had been her page/ 66 They started a fight in front of the princess. Rabutin drew his sword to punish him, Duval drew his too, and the princess, stepping between them to separate them, was slightly wounded in the breast/ This familiarity was undoubtedly beginning to disappear from adult foolish
*
relationships,
and the moralists most concerned
to ensure
good treatment
398
THE FAMILY
for servants also advised the greatest reserve when dealing with them: 86 'Speak very little to your servants.' But the old familiarity remained
between servants and children or youths. The latter had played since infancy with the little lackeys, some of whom were personally attached to them and sometimes served them at college; a genuine friendship could arise between them. Moli&re's valets and the valet in Corneille's Menteur are well known. But a forgotten stage valet, the one in Larivey's Le$ ficoliers, expresses the feeling he has for his master with a more sincere emotion: *I was brought up with him and I love him more than any other living person.' The historians taught us long ago that the King was never left alone. But in fact, until the end of the seventeenth century, nobody was ever left alone. The density of social life made isolation virtually impossible,
and people who managed to shut themselves up in a room for some time were regarded as exceptional characters: relations between peers, relations between people of the same class but dependent on one another, relations between masters and servants - these everyday relations never left a man by himself. This sociability had for a long time hindered the formation of the concept of the family, because of the lack of privacy. The development in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries of a new emotional relationship, or at least a newly conceived relationship, between parents and children, did not destroy the old sociability. The consciousness of childhood and the family postulated zones of physical and moral intimacy which had not existed before. Yet, to begin with, it adapted itself to constant promiscuity. The combination of a traditional sociability and a new awareness of the family was to be found only in certain families, families of country or city notabilities, both nobles and commoners, peasants and artisans. The houses of these notabilities became centres of social life around which there gravitated a whole complex little world. This equilibrium between family and society was not destined to survive the evolution of manners and the new progress of domesticity.
In the eighteenth century, the family began to hold society at a distance, it back beyond a steadily extending zone of private life. The
to push
organization of the house altered in conformity with this new desire to keep the world at bay. It became the modern type of house, with rooms which were independent because they opened on to a corridor. While
they
still
communicated with each
other, people
were no longer obliged
FROM THE MEDI1VAI TO MODERN FAMILY
399
to go through them all to pass from one to another. It has been said that comfort dates from this period; it was born at the same time as domesticity, privacy and isolation, and it was one of the manifestations of these
phenomena. There were no longer beds all over the house. The beds were confined to the bedrooms, which were furnished on either side of the alcove with cupboards and nooks fitted out with new toilette and hygienic equipment. In France and Italy the word chambre began to be used in opposition to the word salle - they had hitherto been more or less synonymous the chambre denoted the room in which one slept, the salle the room in which one received visitors and ate: the salon and die salle b manger, the camera and the sala da pranzz. In the word 'room* was England kept for all these functions, but a was added to the prefix give precision: diningroom, the bedroom, etc. This specialization of the rooms, in the middle class and nobility to begin with, was certainly one of the greatest changes in everyday life. It ;
new desire for isolation. In these more private dwellings, the no longer left the out-of-the-way quarters which were allotted to them - except in the houses of princes of the blood, where the old manners endured. Sebastien Mercier noted as a recent innovation the habit of ringing for the maidservant. Bells were arranged in such a way
satisfied a
servants
that they could summon servants from a distance, whereas they had previously been capable of arousing attention only in the room in which they were rung. Nothing could be more characteristic of the new desire
and also to defend oneself against was no longer good form in the late eighteenth century to call on a friend or acquaintance at any time of day and without warning. Either one had days when one was 'at home', or else 'people send each other cards by their servants/ 'The post also takes care of visits... The to keep the servants at a distance
intruders. It
letter-box delivers cards; nothing is easier, has the decency to close his door/ 67
The use of 'cards' and
'days'
was not an
nobody
isolated
is
visible,
everyone
phenomenon. The old
of living in public and together. The new code of manners emphasized the need to respect the privacy of others. The moral stress had been moved. Sebastien Mercier was quick to observe this
code of manners was an
art
change: 'Present-day custom has cut short all ceremonies and only a provincial stands on ceremony now.' Meals were shortened too: 'They are
much
amusing
shorter,
stories',
and
it is
but in the
not
at table that
salon, the
room
people talk freely and
tell
which people withdraw: a hurry to drink, no longer
to
the 'drawing-room'. 'People are no longer in torment their guests in order to prove that they
know how
to entertain,
THE FAMILY
400
no longer
ask
you
of the sixteenth
to sing [the old concerts over dessert
and seventeenth centuries]/ 'People have abandoned those foolish and ridiculous customs so familiar to our ancestors, unhappy proselytes of an and annoying tradition which they called correct. 'Not a 9
embarrassing
moment's rest: people tried to outdo each other in politeness before the meal and during the meal with pedantic stubbornness, and the experts on etiquette applauded these puerile combats. Of all those stupid old has customs, that of blessing someone who sneezes is the only one that the and tailor lasted down to the present day/ 'We leave it to the cobbler each other the sincere or hypocritical accolade which was still usual to 9
*
give
ago/ 'Only the petit bourgeois now employs those tiresome manners and futile attentions which he still imagines to be correct and which are intolerably irksome to people who are used to in polite society forty years
society life/
The rearrangement of the house and the reform of manners left more room for private life; and this was taken up by a family reduced to parents and friends were excluded. General de Martange's letters to his wife between 1760 and 1780 enable us to gauge the progress made by a concept of the family which had become identical with that of the nineteenth and early twentieth had invaded people's correspondence and doubtless centuries. The
and
children, a family
from which
servants, clients
family
and preoccupations too. 68 The old forms of address such as 'Madame* had disappeared. Martange
their conversations
addressed his wife as 'dear
maman or 'my
dear love',
*my
dear child',
same name that his children gave her: maman. His correspondence with his wife was full of details about the children, their health and their behaviour. They were 4
my
dear
little
referred to
one'.
The husband
called his wife
by
the
This increasingly widespread by nickname: Minette and Coco.
use of nicknames corresponded to a greater familiarity and also to a desire to address one another differently from strangers, and thus to emphasize the solidarity of parents and children and a sort of hermetic
language
by
the distance separating them from other people. When the father was away, he kept himself informed of details
of everyday
life,
which he took very
seriously.
He
all
the
little
waited im-
dear little one, to write just a few patiently for letters: 'I beg you, my words/ Scold Mile Minette for me for so far neglecting to write to me/ He spoke of the joy of seeing his family again very soon: 'I look forward to being with you once more in our poor litde home, and I should like no than that of arranging your room and making our responsibility better Here we already have the modern taste for comfortable/ and stay pleasant '
PROM THE MEPIBVAI TO MODERN FAMILY domesticity, contrasting die house, the object with the outside world.
of
401
enthusiastic pottering,
In this correspondence, and hygiene occupied an questions of health serious illnesses, but about worried had Hitherto important place. people not bothered about had had not this constant shown solicitude, they they a cold, a minor ailment: physical life had not been regarded as so important 'I should be so unhappy if I had no news about your health and that of my little girls/ 'Although what you tell me about the poor health which you and my poor little girls are enjoying is not as comforting as a father's heart
me
you him
might wish
...' 'I
am
not very happy about what you
tell
boy's pains and loss of appetite. I cannot recommend too earnestly, dear child, to procure some Narbonne honey for both with it when they are in pain.' and Xavire, and to rub their
about our
little
gums
This was the anxiety of parents over their children's teething troubles: it de Svign's time, but it could have interested a few old women in had not hitherto been given the honours of a place in a staff officer's
Mme
me
correspondence. 'My daughters' colds worry me that the weather finally took a turn for the better this morning.' Vaccination against smallpox was discussed then as inoculation against polioto see to Xaviere's vaccination, and the myelitis is today. 'I leave it to you sooner the better, because everybody is satisfied with die vaccination.' He advised his wife to drink 'Sedlitz water', 'the salts of the same name', ...
and lemonade, and guard against One of the sweet maman
also to
But
it
seems to
mix vinegar or brandy with her
water, to
infection. girls
had got married
in
Germany. In a
letter to
her 'dear
of January i4th, 1781, she explained her long silence:
of all the two youngest had whooping-cough for two mondis, so went purple in the face and the badly that every time they coughed they blood came bubbling out of their nostrils. After that illness, my little 'First
and Xavier caught the worst brain fever you could imagine.' The all doctors had given up hope of saving Xavier: 'The poor child suffered to the 'Thanks saved: was he in the end it is possible to suffer.' However, girl
three have been returned to me.' Nobody would now dare to seek consolation for losing a child in the hope of having another, before. The child as parents could have admitted doing only a century found happiness mother die And his death was
Supreme Being,
all
irreparable. irreplaceable, to in the midst of her children, who no longer belonged
an intermediary
and non-existence: 'The company of my little region between existence between the progress ones is my sole delight/ Here we see the connection between concern of the concept of childhood and the progress of hygiene,
THE FAMILY
4O2
and concern for his health, another form of the link between and attitudes to death. Considerable attention was also paid to the children's education, the
for the child
attitudes to life
importance of which was fully recognized: 'Above all I urge you not to waste a minute that can be given to the children's education; double or treble their lessons every day, especially to teach
and
eat' (an
them how
to stand,
walk
echo of the old manuals of etiquette). The three children had
a tutor: 'Let the three children profit by his tuition and let the two girls in particular learn how to stand and walk. If M. H. can give them grace, he can consider himself a clever master.'
Martange ran into financial difficulties. He dreaded the consequences: 'The sorrow of being unable to give them the education I would have wished has given me some bitter moments of reflection.' Whatever happened, the 'masters' fees' had to be paid. We are a long way here from the laments of the moralists of the i66os, who complained that schoolmasters were not paid because people did not realize the importance of their work. *I should sell my last shirt, if I had nothing else, to see my children on die same level as all the others of their age and rank. They must not be brought into the world to humiliate us with their ignorance and behaviour. I think of nothing else, my dear, but of repairing my fortune to ensure their happiness, but if they wish to ensure mine, they must work hard and not waste time.' Mattange was worried when his children were vaccinated, in case 'the time taken by vaccination is lost by their masters*. 'Use your stay in town to give them a little of that education which my [financial] misfortunes have so far prevented us from obtaining for them.' Health and education
would henceforth be the chief preoccucannot parents. help being struck by the extremely modern tone of this correspondence. In spite of the two centuries which
pations of
separate us,
century a is
it is
earlier.
:
these
One
all
Mme de Sevigne, who lived only a Mme de Sevigne, apart from the maternal solicitude of
closer to us than to
In
good grandmother, what appears above all, at odd moments in her life, an amused interest in the caprices of childhood, what I have called the *
first
attitude to childhood, the
'
coddling attitude. This attitude
is
almost
entirely absent from Martange. He treats everything much more seriously. His is already the gravity of the nineteenth century, applied to both little
things and big: Victorian gravity. In the seventeenth century, when he was not a subject of amusement, the child was the instrument of matrimonial and professional speculation designed to improve the family's
position in society. This idea
is
relegated to the background in Martange:
FROM THE MEDIEVAL TO MODERN FAMILY his interest in
education seems
much more
disinterested.
403
Here children
as
they really are, and the family as it really is, with its everyday joys and sorrows, have emerged from an elementary routine to reach the brightest zones of consciousness. This group of parents and children, happy in their
and indifferent to the rest of society, is no longer the seventeenthcentury family, open to the obtrusive world of friends, clients and
solitude
servants:
it is
the
modern
family. striking characteristics of this family is the concern to maintain equality between the children. have seen that the
One of the most
We
moralists of the second half of the seventeenth century gave timid support to this equality, chiefly because favouring the eldest son often drove the
younger children into false religious vocations, but also because they were ahead of their times and foresaw the future conditions of family life. We have seen from their writings how conscious they were of going against public opinion. Henceforth, from the end of the eighteenth century on, inequality between the children of one family would be considered an intolerable injustice. It was manners, and not the Civil Code or the Revolution which abolished the law of primogeniture. The families of France would reject it out of hand when the Ultras of the Restoration restored it, inspired by a new concept of the family which they incorrectly attributed to the ancien regime: 'Out of twenty well-to-do families', VillMe wrote to Polignac on* October 3ist, 1824, 'there is scarcely one which uses the power to favour the eldest or some other child. The bonds
of subordination have been loosened everywhere to such an extent that in the family, the father considers himself obliged to
humour his
children/ 89
Between the end of the Middle Ages and the seventeenth century, the had won a place beside his parents to which he could not lay claim at a time when it was customary to entrust him to strangers. This return of the children to the home was a great event: it gave the seventeenthit from the century family its principal characteristic, which distinguished medieval family. The child became an indispensable element of everyday child
life,
and
his parents
worried about
his education, his career, his future.
He was not yet the pivot of the whole system,
but he had become a
much
more important character. Yet this seventeenth-century family was not the modern family: it was distinguished from the latter by the enormous mass of sociability which it retained. Where the family existed, that is to say in the big houses,
it
was a centre of social
relations, the capital
of a
404 little
THE FAMILY
complex and graduated
society under the
command of the
pater-
familias.
The modern
family, on the contrary, cuts itself off from the world and to opposes society the isolated group of parents and children. All the of the energy group is expended on helping the children to rise in the world, individually and without any collective ambition: the children rather than the family.
This evolution from the medieval family to the seventeenth-century modern family was limited for a long time to the nobles, the middle class, the richer artisans and the richer labourers. In the and early nineteenth century, a large part of the population, the family and then to the
biggest
poorest section, was still living like the medieval families, with the children separated from their parents. The idea of the house or the home did not
them. The concept of the home is another aspect of the concept of the family. Between the eighteenth century and the present day, the concept of the family changed hardly at all. It remained as we saw it in die town and country middle classes of the eighteenth century. On the other hand, it extended more and more to other social strata. In England in the exist for
late
eighteenth century, agricultural labourers tended to set up house on own, instead of lodging with their employers, and the decline of
their
apprenticeship in industry
made
and larger of work, the difficulty of finding lodgings, the mobility ofjourneyman labour and the continuation of the traditions of apprenticeship, were so many obstacles to the ideal way of middle-class family life, so many obstacles which the evolution of manners would gradually remove. Family life finally embraced nearly the whole of society, to such an extent that people have forgotten its aristocratic and middle-class origins. 71 possible earlier marriages
families. 70 Late marriage, the precariousness
*
CONCLUSION
THE FAMILY AND SOCIABILITY
T
HE
historian
who
studies iconographic
documents
in the
hope of
discovering the tremor of life which he can feel in his own existence, is surprised at the scarcity, at least until the sixteenth century, of
and family scenes. He has to hunt for them with a magnifyingand glass interpret them with the aid of hypotheses. On the other hand he promptly makes the acquaintance of the principal character in this interior
iconography, a character as essential as the chorus in the classical theatre: the crowd - not the massive, anonymous crowd of our overpopulated cities, but the assembly of neighbours, women and children, numerous but not unknown to one another (a familiar throng rather similar to that
which can be seen today in the souks of Arab towns or the cours of Mediterranean towns in the evening). It is as if everyone had come out instead of staying at home: there are scenes depicting streets and markets, games and crafts, soldiers and 'courtiers, churches and tortures. In the street, in the fields, outside, in public, in the midst of a collective society - that is where the artist chooses to set the events or people he wishes to depict.
The
idea of isolating individual or family portraits gradually emerged.
But the importance which we have given to these early attempts should not blind us to the fact that they were rare and timid to begin with. For a long time until the seventeenth century, when the iconography of the was the rich - the became family
of public
life.
representation important thing extremely This representation doubtless corresponds to a profound
seventeenth century, was lived in public. examples of the ascendancy of society. The
in the past, until the reality. Life
We have given a good many traditional ceremonies
which accompanied marriage and which were
more important than the religious ceremonies (which for a regarded of the marriage were time entirely lacking in solemnity), the blessing long as
bed the visit paid by the guests to the newly-married pair when they were the wedding night, and so on~ already in bed; the rowdyism during afford further proof of society's rights over the privacy of the couple. ;
What objection could there be when in fact privacy scarcely ever existed, when people lived on top of one another, masters and servants, children and adults, in houses open at all hours to the indiscretions of callers? The room for the family. Not that the family did not density of society left no 405
THE FAMILY
406 exist as a reality: it would not exist as a concept.
We
be paradoxical to deny that
have studied the birth and development of
family from the
uSSKne
it
this
We
did.
But
it
did
concept of the
have seen how, fifteenth century to the eighteenth. it failed to the old sociability; destroy eighteenth century,
admittedly it was limited to the well-to-do classes, those of the notabilities, rural or urban, aristocratic or middle-class, artisans or merchants. Starting in the eighteenth century,
it
spread to
all
classes
and imposed
The evolution of
itself
few tyrannically centuries has often been presented as the triumph of individualism over social constraints, with the family counted among the latter. But where is
on
people's consciousness.
the individualism in these
modern
lives, in
which
all
the
last
the energy of the
directed to serving the interests of a deliberately restricted couple posterity? Was there not greater individualism in the gay indifference of the prolific fathers of the ancien regime? Admittedly the modern family is
no longer has the same material reality as under the ancien regime, when it was identified with an estate and a reputation. Except in cases whose importance
is
constantly diminishing, the problem of the transmission of of the children's welfare, and that
property takes second place to that
is no longer necessarily seen in loyalty to a professional tradition. family has become an exclusive society in which its members are happy to stay and which they enjoy evoking, as General de Martange did
welfare
The
in his letters as early as the end of the eighteenth century. The whole Evolution of our contemporary manners is unintelligible if one neglects this astonishing growth of the concept of the family. It is not individualism
which has triumphed, but the family. But this family has advanced in proportion as "sociability has retreated. It is as if the modern family had sought to take the place of the old social relationships (as these gradually defaulted), in order to preserve mankind from an unbearable moral solitude. Starting in the eighteenth century, people began defending themselves against a society whose constant intercourse had hitherto been the source of education, reputation and wealth. Henceforth a fundamental movement would destroy the old connections between masters -and servants, great and small, friends or clients. It was a movement which was sometimes retarded by the inertia of geographical or /social isolation./ It would be quicker in Paris than in other towns, quieter in the middle classes than in the lower qfc^ses. Everywhere it reinforced /private life (at the expense of neighbourly rektionships, friendships, and traditional contacts. The history of modern planners caii be reduced in part to this long effort to break away from
THE FAMUI AND SOCIABILITY
407
unbearable. others, to escape from a society whose pressure had become lost the public character which it had in certain cases in the
The house
seventeenth century, in favour of the club and the caf, which in their turn have become less crowded. Professional and faixuly life have stifled that other which ojice invaded the whole of life: the activity of activity
social relations.
of the tempted to conclude that sociability and the concept at each other's family were incompatible, and could develop only
One
is
expense.
CONCLUSION
He was
he was no longer on the ground. He was free of mat weight of human relationships which impedes movement, free, infinitely free, so free that
conscious of pressing
those tears, those farewells, those reproaches, those joys, all that a man caresses or tears every time he sketches out a gesture, those countless bonds which tie him to others and make him
heavy.
Saint-ExupeYy
CONCLUSION
*
the Middle Ages, at the beginning of modern times, and for a long time after that in the lower classes, children were mixed with adults as soon as of without their they were considered
IN
capable doing mothers or nannies, not long after a tardy weaning (in other words, at about the age of seven). They immediately went straight into the great community of men, sharing in the work and play of their companions, old and young alike. The movement of collective life carried along in a single torrent all ages and classes, leaving nobody any time for solitude> and privacy. In these crowded, collective existences there was no room)
The family fulfilled a function; it ensured the trari* property and names; but it did not penetrate very far into human sensibility. Myths such as courtly and precious love denigrated of children loosened marriage, while realities such as the for a private sector.
mission of
life,
apprenticeship
the emotional
bond between
parents and children. Medieval civilization had forgotten the paideia of the ancients and knew nothing as yet of modern education. That is the main point: it had no idea of education j
Nowadays our
society depends, and knows that it depends, on the of its educational system. It has a system of education, a concept of education, an awareness of its importance. New sciences such as psychoanalysis, pediatrics and psychology devote themselves to the problems of childhood, and their findings are transmitted to parents by way of a mass of popular literature. Our world is obsessed by the physical, moral and sexual problems of childhood. This preoccupation was unknown to medieval civilization, because there was no problem for the Middle Ages: as soon as he had been weaned, or soon after, the child became die natural companion of the adult. The age groups of Neolithic times, the Hellenistic pddeia, prosupposed a difference and a transition between the world of children and success
411
CONCLUSION
412 that
of adults, a
Medieval
transition
made by means of an initiation or an
civilization failed to perceive
this
difference
education.
and therefore
lacked this concept of transition. The great event was therefore the revival, at the beginning of modern times, of an interest in education. This affected a certain number of
churchmen, lawyers and scholars, few in number in the fifteenth century, but increasingly numerous and influential in the sixteenth and seventeenth
when they merged with the advocates of religious reform. For were primarily moralists rather than humanists: the humanists they remained attached to the idea of a general culture spread over the whole of life and showed scant interest in an education confined to children. These reformers, these moralists, whose influence on school and family we have observed in this study, fought passionately against the anarchy (or what henceforth struck them as the anarchy) of medieval society, where the Church, despite its repugnance, had long ago resigned itself to it and urged the faithfuljo^eek salvation far from this pagan world, in some monastic retreat] A positive moralization of society was taking place: the moral aspect of religion was gradually triumphing in practice over the sacred or eschatological aspect. This was how these champions of a moral order were led to recognize the importance of education. We have noted their influence on the history of the school, and the transformation of the free school into the strictly disciplined college. Their writings extended from Gerson to Port-Royal, becoming increasingly frequent in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The religious orders founded at that time, such as the Jesuits or the Oratorians, became teaching orders, and their teaching was no longer addressed to adults like that of the preachers or mendicants of the Middle Ages, but was essentially meant for children and young people. This literature, this propaganda, taught parents that they were spiritual guardians, that they were responsible before God for the souls, and indeed the bodies too, of centuries
their children.
Henceforth it was recognized that the child was not ready for life, and that he had to be subjected to a special treatment, a sort of quarantine, before he was allowed to join the adults. This new concern about education would gradually install itself in the heart of society and transform it from top to bottom. The family ceased to be simply an institution for the transmission of a name and an estate -it
assumed a moral and
spiritual function,
it
moulded bodies and
souls.
care expended on children inspired new feelings, a new emotional attitude, to which the iconography of the seventeenth century gave
The
CONCLUSION brilliant
and
insistent expression:
Parents were
413
modern concept of die family * setting up only a few of their The ethics of the time ordered them
die
no longer content with
children and neglecting the others, to give all their children, and not just the eldest
teenth century even the
girls
-a
training
- and in the late sevenfor life. It was understood that
would be provided by the school. Traditional apprenticeship was replaced by the school, an utterly transformed school, an instrument of strict discipline, protected by the law-courts and the police-courts.The extraordinary development of the school in the seventeendi century was a consequence of the new interest taken by parents in their children's education. The moralists taught them that it was their duty to send their this training
children to school very early in life: 'Those parents', states a text of 1602, 'who take an interest in their children's education [Hberos erudiendos] are
more worthy of respect than those who just bring them into the world. They give them not only life but a good and holy life. That is why those parents are right to send their children at the tenderest age to the market of true wisdom [in odier words to college] where they will become the
of their own fortune, the ornaments of their native land, their and their friends.' 1 family Family and school together removed the child from adult society. The school shut up a childhood which had hitherto been free within an increasingly severe disciplinary system, which culminated in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the total claustration of the boarding-school. The solicitude of family, Church, moralists and administrators deprived the child of the freedom he had hitherto enjoyed among adults. It inflicted on him the birch, the prison cell -in a word, the architects
punishments usually reserved for convicts from the lowest strata of the expression of a very different feeling society. But this severity was from die old indifference: an obsessive love which was to dominate society from the eighteenth century on. It is easy to see why this invasion of die public's sensibility by childhood should have resulted in the now
better-known phenomenon of Malthusianism or birth-control. The latter
made
its
appearance in the eighteenth century just
finished organizing itself around the child, life
between the family and
and
when
had of private
the family
raised the wall
society.
The modern family satisfied a desire for privacy and also a craving for of the family were united by feeling, habit and identity: the members their way of life. They shrank from the promiscuity imposed by the old sociability. It
is
easy to understand
why
this
moral ascendancy of the
CONCLUSION
414
a middle-class phenomenon: the nobility and the family was originally lower class, at the two extremities of the social ladder, retained the old idea of etiquette
much
The lower
pressures.
outside longer and remained more indifferent to almost down to the present day the
classes retained
There is therefore a connection between the concept liking for crowds. of the family and the concept of class. Several times in the course of this we have seen them intersect. For centuries the same games were
study
to the different classes; but at the beginning
common
of modern times a
reserved for people of quality, the others were abandoned to the children and the lower classes. The for the poor, attracted the seventeenth-century charity schools, founded children of the well-to-do just as much; but after the eighteenth century
choice was
made among them: some were
the middle-class families ceased to accept this mixing and withdrew from what was to become a primary-school system, to in the pensions and the lower classes of the colleges, over place them established a monopoly. Games and schools, originally which their children
they
formed part society, henceforth all as if a rigid, polymorphous social body had
common
to the
whole of
It was and had been replaced by a host of little
system.
societies,
of a
class
broken up the families, and by a
few massive groups, the classes; families and classes brought together the individuals related to one another by their moral resemblance and by embraced their way of life, whereas die old unique social body identity of these classes were all the variety of ages and classes. For greatest possible
more clearly distinguished and graded for being close together in took the place of physical distances. The strictness space. Moral distances the
of external
signs
of respect and of differences
in dress counterbalanced the
of communal life. The valet never left his master, whose code to friend and accomplice he was, in accordance with an emotional which we have lost the key today, once we have left adolescence behind; of the master matched the insolence of the servant and the
familiarity
haughtiness
a hierarchy which excessive familiarity restored, for better or for worse, was perpetually calling in question. lived in a state of contrast; high birth or great wealth rubbed
People
shoulders with poverty, vice with virtue, scandal with devotion. Despite man or caused no surprise. its shrill contrasts, this medley of colours
A
woman
of quality
felt
no embarrassment
at visiting in rich clothes the
in the prisons, the hospitals or the streets, nearly naked their rags. The juxtaposition of these extremes no more embar-
poor wretches beneath
rassed the rich than
atmosphere
it
stiU exists
humiliated the poor. Something of this moral
today in southern
Italy.
But there came a time
CONCLUSION when
the middle class could
or the contact of the lower
no longer bear class. It
415 the pressure of the multitude it withdrew from the vast
seceded:
society to organize itself separately, in a homogeneous its families, in homes designed for privacy, in new districts kept free from all lower-class contamination. The juxtaposition of inequalities, hitherto something perfectly natural, became intolerable
polymorphous environment,
among
it: the revulsion of the rich preceded the shame of the poor. The quest for privacy and the new desires for comfort which it aroused (for there is a close connection between comfort and privacy) emphasized even
to
between the material ways of life of die lower and middle classes. The old society concentrated the maximum number of ways of life into the minimum of space and accepted, if it did not impose, the bizarre juxtaposition of the most widely different classes. The new society, on the contrary, provided each way of life with a confined space in which it was understood that the dominant features should be respected, and that each person had to resemble a conventional model, an ideal type, and never depart from it under pain of excommunication. The concept of the family, the concept of class, and perhaps elsewhere the concept of race, appear as manifestations of the same intolerance towards variety, the same insistence on uniformity.
further the contrast
NOTES
NOTES INTRODUCTION 1 8
Le Temps de fhistoire, 1954. Cf. F. Braudel, 'Histoire et science
P. Aries,
sociale, la
longue dureV, Annales,
1958, pp. 725-53.
PART ONE:
1
THE AGES OF
I:
Chapter
See Part
Two, Chap.
"Exhibition Portrait
8
dans
the
Ibid., J
Ibid.,
8
1
Vart flamand,
Le
edited
des Arts et Traditions popu1953 Exhibition, no. 778.
Don
Quixote. Vie de Thomas Platter [the Elder], edited by E. Pick, Lausanne, 1895. Colloques, Paris,
Le Grand
Proprietaire de toutes choses,
Glanville, translated
Compared!,
pour
tenir le
by B. de
by Jean Cor-
Virgile nel m.e., vol.
pp. I44-55Kuseir Amra.
I,
Van
Marie,
Kalendrier
et
compost
des
1500 edition, quoted by Morawski, Les douze moisjigurez,
bergiers,
J.
1926,
pp.
as
Janus
Charles France
sanitatis,
schola
by Arnaud de V.
Langlois,
au
salernitania,
Villeneuve.
Moyen
La Age
Vie t
en
1908,
p. 184.
1568.
Didron, 'La Vie humaine', Annales archeologiques,
XV,
p. 413.
XVII, pp. 69, 193A. Venturi, *La Fonte di una comdel
posizione
guariento',
Arte t
1914, XVII, p. 49. * The steps of the ages'
was not a theme in popular prints only. It is also to be found in painting and sculpture in Titian and Van Dyck and on the fronton of the Versailles of Louis XIV. Bibliotheque Nationale, MSS Fonds :
Cf.
Iconographie de fart profane, 1932, vol. II, pp. 144 ff.
Grant
t
Ibid.,
bichon, 1556.
'
romanicum
351-63.
bifrons.
corps en sante 9 compiled
4
des ideh
National
Institut
d'Jkudes de*mographiques, Cahier no. 18, 1954.
Regimen
Mathurin Cordier,
Le Renouveau
famille.
Depicted in the calendars
tres utile et profitable
1
la
Ibid.
Paris,
1586. 9
Prigent,
sur
Archivum
IV.
Orangerie,
laires, '
R.
LIFE (pages 15-32)
no. 71. no. 93.
Musee
(pages 9-11)
THE IDEA OF CHILDHOOD
1952, nos. 67, 1 8. Ibid., nos. 67, 68.
*
5
at
8
419
Latin, nos. 10990, 10991. Baillet,
Les Enfants devenus celebrespar
leurs ttudes, 1688.
NOTES
42O
des amis de Port-Royal, 1751, vol.
Miracles de Notre-Dame, edited by G. F.
Warner, Westminster, 1885. Jubinal, Nouveau recueil de contes, vol. I,
pp. 31-3, 42-72; vol.
II,
Jacqueline Pascal, see note 31. M. E. Storer, La Mode des contes de
pp. 244,
fees (1685-1700), 1928.
356-7.
Quoted above, note A. de Charmasse,
J pray you,
13. tat
de I'lnstruction
*
Gaufres,
Rtforme
Claude Baduel et la des etudes au XVIe
Bull Soc. H. du
si&cle',
isme jranfais,
that
pp.
1917
Litterarius,
8
Munich.
1
Gospel-book of Otto
2
*Vie et miracle de saint Nicolas',
8
Psalter
children to
come
Suffer the
Gospel-book 6
6
7
little
10
to me', in Otto's
and
in
moralist de saint Louis, f
P.
the
at
Royal Nevers,
coquette.
(pages 33-49)
du Colombier, VEnfant au Moyen
Miracles de Notre-Dame, edited
G.
*
the
Age, 1951. 9
Bibliothque Nationale. of St Louis of Leyden.
for
poster
Rotrou, La Soeur. Quinault, La Mere
Suite des Vies
THE DISCOVERY OF CHILDHOOD
the scene,
de Sevigne,
1789. Exhibition: L'Affiche, Bibliothque Nationale, 1953, no. 25.
of Port-Royal, 1721). Regulations of Chesney College, in
Compare
one better than
Mme
Piedmont Regiment
tions
4
little
...
fenfance, 1657.
Recruiting
III,
injustice in thinking
Coulanges, Chansons choisies, 1694. Claudine Bouzonnet-Stella, Jeux de
les Jacqueline Pascal, Reglement pour to the Constituenfants (Appendix
II:
lytell
June I2th, 1675; see also her letter of October 5th, 1673.
edition.
Wallon de Beaupuis,
all
Lettres,
Erasmus, Christian Marriage.
Chapter
love the
'
499-505. Brinsley, Ludus
I
the pichon
protestant-
XXV,
1880,
lytell babes,
Miracles de Notre-Dame,
'You do me an
1878.
J.
all
lern ...
chyldren,
publique dans I'antien diocese d'Autun,
J.
I,
p. 175.
Bible
F.
Manuscrits a peinture du Vile au Xlle siecle, Exhibition at the Biblio-
thque
Nationale, 1954, no. 330,
plate XXX.
505.
A.
11
de Laborde, Bibles moralises illustrles, 1911-21, 4 vols of plates.
12
Gospel-book in the Sainte-Chapelle ; scene reproduced in H. Martin, La
14
Rampilly. See note 5.
16
Miroir d'humilite*, Valenciennes, f
Bible moralist de saint Louis, f
5.
by
Warner, 1885.
Miniature franfaise, plate VII. Exposition des bronzes sardes, Biblio-
th&que Nationale, 1954, no. 25, plate XI.
See note Iliad,
5.
Ambrosian Library, Milan.
18
"
18,
early fifteenth century.
See below, Part
III,
Chap.
17
Gaigni&res, Les Tombeaux.
18
G. Zaccagnini, La
II.
vita dei maestri e
NOTES degli scolari nella studio di
81
Bologna.
Geneva, 1926, plates IX, X. Before this, the representation of
on tombs was
children
Le Caquet
82
P.
Montaigne, Mrae de S6vigne*,
du Colombier, trait
84
Lettres,
August 86
1671.
Marian, Tabula Cebetis, 1655. Cf. Leb&gue, 'Le Peintre Varin et le
and Child',
'Virgin
86
op.
cit.
'Virgin Enthroned*, supposedly por-
de Faccouchte, 1622. Essais, II, 8.
1 9th,
Baldovinetti,
Louvre. 88
rare.
421
of Beatrice
d'Este, 1496.
of the
'Glorification
Victory
of
Lepanto', Prado. Dresden, Pinakothek. in
Reproduced nederlandse
Tableau de Cebes', Arts, 1952, pp.
1952, vol.
H.
Gerson, De 2 vols,
Shilderkunst, I,
p. 145.
37
L. Hautecoeur, Les Peintres de la vie
Gaignieres, Les Tombeaux.
88
Versailles
F.
89
Rouches,
167-71.
Montaigne,
Essais,
II, 8.
familiale, 1945, p. 40.
Bond, Westminster Abbey, London, 1909.
Musee
40
catalogue.
Van Dyck, CCXIV.
K.
d.
plate
III:
vol.
cit.,
I,
C. Bouzonnet-Stella, op. cit. de S6vign6, Lettres, January
Mme
8th, 1672.
September i8th, 22nd, 1671
p. 71.
CHILDREN'S DRESS
J
instruire
Museum,
Catherine
de
Bethisy and her brother. 1 Arnoult, 'Le Due d'Anjou enfant
escoles,
les
enfants dans les petites
par un prestre d'une paroisse
in A. Michel, Histoire de VArt. la
by
E.
Cordier,
Colloques,
'At Lisieux College. See G.
Sorel,
Histoire comique de Frandon, edited
by E. Roy, L
et
Mathurin 1586.
Erasmus, Christian Marriage. Drawing in the Louvre, reproduced
I'enfance
May
December
20th, 1672.
de Paris, 1654. *
,
engraving, Cabinet des Estampes, in-f,Ed. 101, vol. I, f 51.
Heroard, Journal sur
1671;
L'Escole paroissiale ou la maniere de bien
cit.
Versailles
;
(pages 50-61)
Tabula Cebetes, M6rian. Cf. Lebgue, op.
48
44
Breard, 1898.
Chapter
Purgatorio. 42
Marie, op.
et
moderne, 1923, p. 253. About 1609, Karlsruhe.
41
K.,
Correspondance inedite du general de Martange, 1756-1782, edited by
Van
'Largilliere, peintre d'en-
Revue de VArt ancien
fants',
des Augustins, no. 465 in the
Museum.
C.
de
Henri
1926.
Rochemonteix, Le College
IV de La Fleche, 1889. Portrait de Madame Infante
*
jeunesse de Louis XIII, edited
SouKe*
and E.
de
s
edited
de Jean
by
F.
Versailles
Museum.
2 vols, 1868. Me'moires
Guiard,
pour Mesdames', 1788,
Barthelemy,
Rou,
'
1638-1711,
Waddington, 1857.
XV en 1715 tenu en lisiere par Mme de Ventadour', engraving,
'Louis
NOTES
422 Cabinet des Estampes,
pet. fol.
E
e
3 a. 14
'L'Sge viriT, engraving
about 1700. de Sevigne*,
by Gurard,
li
Lepautre,
clothes',
15
Mme
16
Miracles de Notre-Dame, vol.
Lettres,
81
ist,
April
17
I,
18
plate
88
CLXXXn.
*
Heroard, Journal sur
I'enfance
et
Chap. IV, and
20
Religion populaire dans la
21
Cf. below, Part
II,
Part HI, Chap.
II.
Nilsson,
La
Ibid.
6
E. Foumier, Histoire desjouets etjeux
10
11 12
14
16
22 28
engraving, Cabinet des Estampes, Oa 52 pet. fol. f 164. C. Bouzonnet, Jeux de fenfance, 1657.
Geneva Museum. P. Fierens, Le Main, 1933,
XX.
Albeit
Museum,
Van
18
Cf. note ii.
Marie, op.
Cf. below, Part
26
T. L. Jarman, Landmarks
87
Ibid.
88
Charles de Robillard de Beaurepaire,
Platter a Montpellier, 1595-99,
III,
Chap.
II.
in the History
Recherches sur rinstruction publique dans le diocese de Rouen avant ijSg, 3 vols, 1872, vol.
cit.,
vol.
I,
29
by H,
d'Allemagne,
II,
p. 284.
Jusserand, Les Sports et jeux d'exercice dans I'ancienne France,
J.-J.
1901.
p. 71.
Sevigne*, Lettres, 1671.
Reproduced
Engraving by F. Mazot, *La Nuit*. Exhibition of painted fans, Galerie
26
cit.
engraving, Cabinet des Estampes, Ed. 73 in-f , p. 104.
Mme de
Steen, 1928, p. 82.
Thomas
Lepautre,
10
Kassel, reproduced in F. Schmidt-Degener and Van Gelder,
Steen,
24
Berndt, no. 509 (Cornells de Man), no. 544 (Molinar).
16
1906,
ofEducation, 1951.
Chantilly. and Victoria
17
passe-temps,
p. 346.
plate
Louvre.
Foumier, op.
et
Charpentier, 1954, no. 70 (from the Duchesne Collection).
Arnoult,
London. 18
O a 50 pet. fol.
Metsu, 'The Feast of the Kings', reproduced in Berndt, no. 515.
Jan
fenfants, 1889.
7
Cabinet des Estampes, f 137.
p. 107.
4
8
Miniature anglaise, 1926, plate
Recreations
la
Grece antique.
?
no. 50.
A MODEST CONTRIBUTION TO THE HISTORY OF GAMES AND PASTIMES (pages 62-99)
jeunesse de Louis XIII. 8
I,
Jean Leclerc, 'Les Trentes-six figures contenant tous les jeux', 1587.
Chapter IV:
1
vol.
H. Gerson,
XXXV.
p. 58.
H. Gobel, Wandteppiche, 1923,
des
Gospel-book of St Edmund. Millar,
La
1672. I,
Cabinet
engraving,
Estampes, Ed. 43 fol., p. n. 80 Jan de Bray, 1663, 'A distribution of
80
Paul Achard, 'Les Chefs des plaisirs', Annuaire administratif du dtpartement du Vaucluse, 1869.
NOTES Laval, 'Droit de barbe et batacule', Universitt
49
42J
A. Varagnac,
Civilisations
tradition^
50
Mar&hal de
'The Seasons
Florence.
,
H. Gobel,
des
II,
Mete*, CEuvres, edited
by C. Boud-
hors, 3 vols, 1930.
at
vol.
See also
Tournai. H. Gobel, op.
Vives, Dialogues, French translation,
88
G.
Mariette,
nin-f,p.
Cabinet des
58.
Thomas Hughes, Tom Browns School-
56
L.
days, 1857.
J.-J. 67
'The Musical
68
Interlude', reproduced in Berndt,
F.
Morley, quoted Watson, The English Grammar '
Franz Hals, Child Musicians', Kassel. I,
Franz Hals, Berlin; Le Nain, Detroit; 'La charette*, in the Louvre.
Brouwer, 'Hurdy-gurdy grinder surrounded by children*, reproduced in W. von Bode, p. 29. Studio of Georges de La Tour, Exhibition in
68
Charles Sorel, Maison desjeux, 2
des
sodologie
Universities
Middle Ages,
of
3 vols,
1895, reprinted 1936. V, p. 662.
Ibid., p. 721.
Published
in
Thery,
Histoire
de
en France, 1858, 2 vols,
II.
vives, Dialogues.
65
Pere de Dainville, Entre Nous, 1958, 2.
66
Academia
sive
asticae,
1602.
J--J*
speculum
Jusserand, op.
D. Mornet, classique,
8
70
Cf. note
scol-
cit.
Histoire de la litterature
1940, p. 120.
Christine de Pisan, CEuvres po&iques,
34,
vols,
vitae
n.
published 71
pp. 469-71.
Mme
Felibien, vol.
vol. 84
88
N. Gu&rard, engraving, Cabinet Estampes, Ee 3 in-f . I,
The
in the
r Education
repro-
Le Nain, reproduced in P. Fierens, Le Nain, 1933, plate XCIII.
1642, vol.
H. RashdaU,
67
(1576-1629), duced in Berndt, no. 942.
essais de
Quatre
Caillois,
by
Ibid., p. 689.
Paris, Orangerie, 1958, no. 75.
Vinckelbaons
cit.
61
62
p. 167.
R.
Europe 60
1660, 1907, p. 216.
Jusserand, op.
contemporaine, 1951. 59
no. 472.
Gerson, vol.
et
This dance was called the Karrikdanza. Information given Gil Reicher.
1878.
to
Cognet, La Mere Angllique
58
L. Massebieau, Les Colloques scolaires,
in
college
saint Francois de Sales, 1951, p. 28.
Ftlix et Thomas Platter [the Younger] a Montpellier, 1892, p. 142.
Thomas
lhes de fancien
84
Muse*e des Augustins, Toulouse.
(1606-1652),
Les
Carre*,
de Troyes, Memoires de la Societe acadfmique de I'Aube, 1881.
p. 24.
II,
I.
82
repro-
82 in-f, and Estampes, Ed. Marian, Cabinet des Estampes, EC
Schools
La Fortune
1661.
particuliers, 61
vol.
1923,
Brokenburgh (1650-1702), duced in Berndt, no. 131.
Lamen
Cailliere,
1
p. 409.
cit.,
about 1769.
gens de qualitl et des gentilshommes
Wandteppiche,
Tapestry
of
author
Languis,
Pastorales basques,
1948.
nelles,
de
Larche*
Avignon, pp. 44-5.
1 88,
by M. Roy,
1886, pp.
196, 205.
Erasmus, Christian Marriage.
424
NOTES
C. Sorel, op. cit. S. de Vri&s and
Le
80
Marpugo,
Brtviaire Grimani, 12 vols, 1904-10.
81
B. Castiglione, Le Courtisan (French
82
of II
translation
M.
cit., II,
Marian,
Estampes, EC
1
Vie de J-~J-
86
Cabinet
u in-f, p.
Mme
Lettres,
June I3th,
(pages 100-127)
A. Schimberg, Education morale dans
Pere de Dainville, La Naissance de
15
Pere de Dainville, op.
16
F.
Me*chin, Annales du college royal
17
M.
de Bourbon-Aix, 2 vols, 1892.
is
By
J.
et
les
p. 261.
19
H.
Baldung-Grien,
plate
S.
Hennessy, 1895 and 1923.
de Vries and Marpugo, Le
28
H. Gerson, Von Geertgen
7
Muse*e des Augustins, Toulouse. Cf. Part II, Chap. V.
1950, vol.
Ibid.,
I,
tot
pro
Opera,
ecclesiae
27
28 29
translation,
80 81
1571.
Watson, The English
Schools
to
39.
I,
Gue*rard, Cabuiet des Estampes, Ee 3 a, pet. in-f .
De
Grenaille,
L'Honneste
garc,on,
Faret,
L'Honnete homme, 1630.
Cadet, L' Education a Port-Royal,
F.
Coustel,
Regies
de
f education
des
1660,
1907,
Varet,
De V education
chretienne
des
enfants, 1666.
1706, vol. IV,
Cf. Part
F.
cit.
enfants, 1687.
pueris
II, Chap. V. Vives, Dialogues, French
Dainville, op. 26.
I,
1887. 26
Opera,
p. 717.
p. 112.
25
p. 309.
II,
Essais,
1642. 24
p. 95-
Doctrina
Quoted in Grammar
Cordier, Colloques, 1586 edition, Pomponius and Trobatus.
Ibid., F.
F. Hals,
De confessione mollicei,
parisiensis,
21
22
cit.
cit.
Quoted by Pere de
Breviaire
9
1706, vol.
Watson, op.
Montaigne,
GrimanL
Gerson,
colleges dejesuites, 1913, p. 227.
20
Destree, Les Heures de Notre-Dame dites de
18
de Svigne,
la
4
12
des
1685.
FROM IMMODESTY TO INNOCENCE
XLVIII.
11
cit.
Cabinet engraving, 10 in-f EC Estampes,
des
Heroard, Journal sur fenfance
Curjel,
10
Jusserand, op.
14
8
8
LXXXI.
Grosley, 1787.
58.
rhumanisme moderne, 1940,
5
d. K., plate
MeYian,
jeunesse de Louis XIII. *
M.
84
196.
engraving,
Magnasco in Geiger, XXV; G. Dou,
.
cit.
Leclerc, op.
Chapter V:
Munich, K. 88
p. 132.
;
Magnasco, plate
85
Gobel, op.
LXXIV
plate
Pluvinel, with engravings by Crispin de Pas, Cabinet des Estampes, EC a Montpellier,
des contes de
Guardi in Fiocco, Venetian Painting,
Cortegiano).
35e,in-f,%. 47. Ftlix et Thomas Platter
La Mode
E. Storer,
ftes (1685-1700), 1928. Ibid.
82 88
84
Jacqueline Pascal, op. F. Cadet, op. cit. J. Pascal,
op.
Coustel, op.
La
cit.
cit. cit.
Civilitt nouvelle, Basel, 1761.
J. Pascal,
op.
Varet, op.
cit.
cit.
NOTES 85
cit.
Varet, op.
425
Frem
86
Ibid.
87
Jean-Baptiste de
vol.
Salle,Le$ Regies de
51
la bienseance et de la dvilitichritienne.
88
The
68
La
edition
first
was published
in
des 6coles chrfaiennes,
1937,
I.
De
Grenaille, op. cit. Cf. above, Part I, Chap. Stradan (1523-1605),
II.
engraving,
Cabinet des Estampes, Cc9 in-f 88
89
Varet, op. cit. Memoires du Cardinal de Bernis, 2 vols,
54
1878. 40
55
Catalogue no. 106.
56
De
des amis de Port-Royal, 1751, vol.
57 I,
42
T.
de
Histoire
Lavallee,
maison
la
58
Naples, art gallery.
59
Tournier, L'Ange gardien, Narbonne, 1656-7. Exhibition at the Petit
royale de Saint-Cyr, 1862. 48
Cf. note 32.
44
On
the
Palais,
manuals of etiquette,
below, Part Bien seance de
II,
Chap.
cf.
la conversation entre
pour
des
dressee
enfants
. . .
les
60
I 'in-
61
par
Cf. below, Part
II,
II.
Disticha
de moribus adfilium, translated into
48
college
Henri
IV
de
La
siecles.
Fleche,
4 vols, Le Mans, 1889. Mechin, Annales du college
royal
(i559).
p. 89.
HL Bremond,
J. Pascal,
Histoire
litteraire
op.
68 64
85
cit.
Histoire
TWO
THE
present, edited
119:
du
1921,
generate
J. Pascal,
Les
Colonel
Gerard
Exhibition, Enfants d'autrefois, Versailles,
1931.
CONCEPTS OF CHILDHOOD
Doctrinal
du
by T. Walton,
'Puis
des
2
temps
vecy une femme
Le Malade HI. Cf.
1931,
enfants en grausse, Pourtant deux sa trousse.' Painting by Van Laer
(pages 128-133)
imaginaire,
Montaigne,
Act
III,
Scene
JE$$m'$, II, 8.
8
Le Grand Proprietaire
4
Quoted by Jarman, Landmarks
in Berndt, (1592-1642), reproduced
no. 468.
op. at. du Cahiers
I,
(1766-1846), 1951.
Pere Michault,
p.
Ill,
ff.
H. Rigault,
Conclusion: 1
62
college de
aux XVIIe-XVIIIe
Bourbon-Aix, 2 vols, 1892, vol.
pp. 512 49
des
French verse by Francois Hubert
sentiment religieux t vol.
50
Estampes, Ed. 82 in-f. C. de Rochemonteix, Un
Le
Chap.
Abraham
Cabinet
127. Estampes, Ed. 30 a in-f, Mariette, engraving, Cabinet des
Jesuites
un missionnairc, 1753. 47
139.
engraving,
GD
II.
Civilite puerile et honnete struction
1958, no.
Bosse,
hommes, Pont-a-Mousson, 1617. 46
Grenaille, op. cit. Fleury, Traite du choix et de la methode des e'tudes, 1686.
p. 175.
Cf. note 32.
46
Volckert (1585-1627), reproduced in Berndt, no. 871.
Regulations of Chesnay College, in Wallon de Beaupuis, Suite des Vies
41
.
,
p. 239.
de toutes choses,
in the
History ofEducation, London, 1951. 8
Mme
de
S&tigne*, Lettres, April ist,
NOTES
426 1672.
C
of August ipth,
letter
11
As can be seen in the 1586 ratio of the
1671.
Jesuits
6
Montaigne, 7
8
II, 8.
Essais,
Coulanges, Chansons
choisies,
Heury, op. cit. G. Delia Casa, Galatte, French trans-
I:
Chapter L.
H.
I.
Universites
'Les
Revue
siecle',
dans 3
I*
SCHOLASTIC
au
.H.
I.
I.
Cf. below, Part 7
the
Cambridge, of Education,
Cambridge, 1930. cit.
P. Delhaye,
12
P. Delhaye, op.
au Xlle
18
A.
14
H.
V, 1947.
Chap.
cit.
F. The'ry, op. cit. Ferte*,
Des
grades
Vancienne
de
facultl
universitaires
des
Arts,
1868.
II.
16
P. Delhaye, op.
Brinsley, Ludus Litterarius,
1612.
16
A.
no Faculty of Law in England. In Germany another source of higher education was the academy, which did not follow
17
Chaucer, 'The Prioress's Tale', about
J.
There
is
the medieval tradition of the
The new these
1383-
Du Boulay, vol. IV, p. 261. 19 W. Adamson, A Short History J.
were taught in by means of which were already
P. Delhaye, op.
Quoted in A.
of
Education.
arts.
sciences
cit.
F. The'ry, op. cit.
18
20
academies
methods modern. 9
A Short History
to
Cf. below, Part H, Chap. VII.
8
*
Guide
Cambridge, 1919. English Education,
cit.
III,
A
Adamson,
1920.
coks de Chartres au
Marrou, op.
en France, 1858, 2 vols,
History of Education,
1895.
Marrou, op.
(pages 137-154)
I.
W.
Antiquite', 1948.
si&cle', Traditio, vol.
H.
vol.
education
*L' Organisation scolaire 5
Portrait d'une honn$te
LIFE
I* Education
J.
Moyen Age, 4
Le
Br<ard, 1898.
11
A. Clerval, Les
girls
Correspondance inedite du giniral de Martange, 1756-1782) edited by
historiaue,
Histoire de
Marrou,
Pascal's
little
S. J.
19310 *
Goussault,
MEDIEVAL SCHOLARS YOUNG AND OLD
Halphen,
Xnie
the
femme, 1693. 18
PART Two:
1
12
B. Gratien, El Discrete, Huesca, 1646, French translation of 1723 by P&re
de Courbeville,
for
brought up at Port-Royal.
1694.
lation, 1609, pp. 162-8. 10
and in Jacqueline
regulations
21
De
unitate
intellects
oistos, vol.
LXIX,
R. of
Salisbury,
contra
Averri-
p. 252.
De
vanitate mundi,
P. L., 176, col. 709. cit.
F. The'ry, Histoire de
22
Michault, Doctrinal du temps present, edited by T. Walton, 1931,
KOTES Chapter I
II:
Quoted
A NEW INSTITUTION: THE COLLEGE
in A. F. The'ry, Histoire de
r Education en vol. 8 8
I.
Du Boulay, vol.
V,
^tienne Pasquier,
H.
Rashdall,
de
Recherches
la
Universities
the
Middle
vol.
1895,
I,
497-539J
pp.
1936. 5
6
Gerson, Opera, IV, 718. F&ibien, Histoire de Paris, vol. V, p. 689.
7
Du
Boulay, vol. IV,
vol. 8
I,
p. 261.
8, 9, ii, 17,
pp.
Launoi,
10
Du Boulay,
15
Chapotin, Le
II
Lemoine', Memoires de
Du Boulay, vol.
V,
17
C. Jourdain, op.
cit.
18
Du
19
de
rhistoire
Paris,
20
Cf. note 17.
21
E. Pasquier, op.
22
III:
24
Buchanan, CEuvres
vol.
p. 721.
France,
V,
p. 689. f
C. Jourdain, Histoire de
aux XVIIe
et
l
Universite de
XVIIIe
1862-6, Appendices, p. F<9ibien, vol.
present.
siecles,
3.
p. 812.
V,
(pages 176-188)
See also the picture of a
single schoolroom with two rostra facing one another, with the
pupils sitting
around them in two
groups. (Statutenbuch des Collegium Cultura
Serena,
umanistica
a
Trevisio, 1912, pp. 330-3-
D. Bourchemin, Les Academies protestantes,
1882.
Gaufres, Claude Baduel, 1880.
F^libien, vol.
V, p. 799Thomas Platter [the Younger] a Montpettier, p.
II,
by Quicherat,
Ibid., p. 721.
THE ORIGINS OF THE SCHOOL CLASS la
completes, vol.
cit.
F(3ibien, vol.
Paris
Ill,
1706.
J.
27
Social de
Erasmus, Letter to Justin Jonas, no. 435 of the Leyden edition, vol. Ill,
P.
Chapotin, op. V,
F^libien, vol.
28
E. Pasquier, Recherches de 1621.
A.
cit.
cit.
28
26
pp. 42-81.
Chapter
Boulay, vol. IV, p. 88. F&ibien, vol. V, p. 689.
op.
1876,
p. 616.
part 2, p. 31, quoted
du Cardinal
Dormans-
College de
16
25
la
vol. IV, p. 88.
Beauvais, 1870.
25.
W. Adamson, op. cit. Du Boulay, vol. Ill, p. 430. Rashdall, op. cit. C. Jourdain, 'Le College
College d'Harcourt-
14
J. 9
Le
Quicherat, Histoire de Sainte-Barbe, 1860.
Ages,
by F. M. Powicke and A. B. Emden, 3 vols, Oxford,
L. Bouquet,
18
of
revised
H.
(pages 155-175)
Saint-Louis, 1891.
p. 536.
The
in
Europe
18
France, 1858, 2 vols,
France, p. 820. 4
427
490.
Pere Michault, Le Doctrinal fa temps
Sapientiae. P.
Morgan
Library.)
Thurot, Organisation de fUniversite de Paris, 1850. F
V,
p. 721.
Gaufres, op. cit. Gaufres, 'Histoire
du plan d'tudes
du protestantprotestant', Histoire isme, vol. p. 481,
XXV,
Recueil de Bechins, p. 690,
NOTES
428 14
Gcrson, Doctrine pro pueris
ecclesiae
1706, vol. IV,
Opera,
parisiensis,
pp. 717-19.}. W. Adamson, op. 16
C. Godard, L'Ancien
college de
Vie de Thomas Platter [the Elder]. Brinsley, Ludus Litterarius, edition
J.
of 1917.
cit.
Gray
M.
(1557-1792), 1887. 16 17 18
19
Pere Michault, op. Gaufres, op.
moyennes
cit.
(1697-1897), Lyons, 1898. C. Jourdain, Histoire de fUniversite de
aux XVIIe
Paris
XVIIIe
et
1862-6. Appendices, p.
Chapter IV: 1
by
AGE
PUPIL'S
President
5
C.
6
Memoires
de
Mesmes,
IV de La Fleche, de
published
Cailliere,
J.
Memoires,
1
889.
Beauvais-Nangis,
H.
F.,
Baillet,
celebres
H.
P.,
4 vols. Maison
12
A. Le Fevre d'Ormesson, Memoires des lemons que j'ay appris en ma
des Jeux,
A
Short History of
*
by Cheruel, de Louis XIV,
published
De V administration 1850, p. 204.
C. Perrault, Mtmoires. A. Hallaye, Les Perrault, 1926.
descrip-
tion de cette ville, 1677.
de
con-
versation, 1675.
rnilitaires,
Institutions fecoles
1866.
C. Sorel, op. cit
1642,
2 vols.
18
Adamson,
Mme de
C.
jeunesse',
W.
Education, 1919.
C. de Montzey,
11
Sorel,
J.
par
Pere de Dainville, op. cit. Mare*chal de Bassompierre, Journal, S.
Beauvais-Nangis, op. cit. Quoted by Cherot, op. cit. Belleperche, L'Academie du Roy, 1598.
predestine,
leurs ttudes, 1688.
10
sup-
Trois educations princieres,
R. Bary, Nouveau Journal
Les enfants devenus
is
1896.
Michel de Marolles, Paris ou
1862.
Le Courtisan
He
posed to have been born in 1618, but this date does not tally with the ages he quotes later.
pp. 32-4.
*
Bussy, Memoires, 1696.
by Mommerque* and
Taillandier, S. 7
Cordier, Colloques, 1586. Histoire de Juilly, 1868.
Hamel,
H. Cherot,
Rochemonteix, Le College
Henri
8
tant'.
M.
vols.
S.H.F. de
D. Bourchemin, op. cit. Gaufres, du plan d*e*tudes protes-
(pages 189-240)
Platter [the Elder], E. Pick, Lausanne, 1895.
by Cheruel, 2
4
classes
3.
Gorceix, Bonneval Pacha, 1953.
S.
des
dirigeantes en Angleterre,
'Histoire
A. Le Fevre d'Ormesson, Journal, edited
8
siecles,
Thomas
Vie de edited
2
THE
et
1894. P.
cit.
College seminaire de Belley
Rochet,
L' Education
Leclerc,
S6vigne*, Lettres,
25th, 1653,
and June
November
4th, 1669.
Philosophy was not dropped at the academies for the nobility mentioned J.
Rou,
earlier.
Memoires,
edited
by
F.
Waddington, 1857. H. Cherot, op. cit. L. Massebieau, Les Colloques scolaires,
1878.
NOTES 88
M.
29
Cardinal de Bernis, Memoires, 2 vols,
30
Vie de
1
Cordier, Colloques, 1586.
429
hors, 3 vols, 1930, Preface. Sicard, Les fetudes classiaues avant la
1878. 81
82
J.
M.
Revolution, 1887. 1
(1723-1799),
Pere
fun
de Dainville,
in
and 1957, pp.
Archives de
Le
Pre
89
Hommes
Niceron, Les
Chapter V: 1
Chavenac,
of
Statutes
d'Aix,
the
p.
* 6
cit.,
Felibien, vol.
V,
*
F.
vol.
Ill,
pp. 376-85.
en
du
Droit
fran^ais
L. Bouquet,
Felibien, vol.
8
A. Varagnac, nelles...,
Kouroi 9
H.
18
Fdlibien, vol.
14
16
V,
Civilisations
1948.
H.
tradition-
C. Mutteau, Les
coles et
colleges
en
F.
Thery, op.
cit.
cit.
20
H. Rashdall, op.
cit.,
21
Du Boulay, vol.
IV, p. 88.
22
Gerson, Opera, vol. IV, pp. 717-19. C. de Rochemonteix, op. cit.
85
The'ry,
of 'Teddy-
C. de Rochemonteix, op.
24
in
talk
A.
de
Quoted
E. Coornaert, op. cit. Vie de Thomas Platter [the Elder]. This had been written before there
19
22. historique, 1948, p. Histoire
cit.
p. 173.
18
28
Revue
Ill,
province, Dijon, 1882.
Jeanmaire,
et Kouretes.
II,
boys'. 17
p. 689.
L. Bouquet, op.
had been any
E. Coornaert, 'Les Ghildes medi^vales',
10
Ibid.
12
Le College d'Harcourt-
Saint-Louis, 1891. 7
2 vols, 1858, vol.
11
et
21. etranger, 1887, p.
H.
(pages 241-268)
Appendix.
15
p. 662.
corporation d'&udidroit', Nouvelle Revue
historiaue
6
V. Bouquet, Souvenirs du college de Rouen, par un eleve de pension
I'education,
of
Une
Fournier, ants
F.
108,
University
Manuale scholarium, edited by R. Rashdall, op.
I'abbe Liautard,
(1829-1835), 1895.
Seybolt, 1921. 8
5
illustres.
Aix. 2
Dengs, Mlmoires de
THE PROGRESS OF DISCIPLINE Histoire
2450 ff. wish to
We
1844.
cit.
Baillet, op.
8
of
years
allowing us to consult these cata1
de Dainville, La Naissance de Yhumanisme moderne, p. 23.
88
H
la Seine.
the
logues.
IV de La Fleche.
College Henri
for
M. Fleury, now Director of the ficole des Hautes tudes, for
acadtmique de I'Aube, 1881. 87
1921.
accounts
thank
Populations, 1955, p. 480. G. Carre*, Les feleves de Vancien college de Troyes, Memoires de la Socicte
86
the
1765-73. Archives, J
Clermont-
vols,
3
Louis-lc-Grand
Populations,
vie auotidienne
parisien,
of
Registers
1955, pp. 455-88,
86
college
Louis-le-Grand,
1824.
467-94. 84
G. Dupont-Ferrier, La
Memoires fun pere, 1827. Labile, Memoires Sun homme de lettres,
88
Grosley, 1787.
Marmontel
F.
J.
by C. Boud-
Me*re*, (Euvres, edited
Ibid.
Gerson, op.
cit.
vol.
I.
NOTES
430
*
48
F<3ibien, vol.
V, p. 721. Vie de Thomas Platter [the Elder]. 88 Ludus Litterarius, 1612. J. Brinsley, 89
H.
M.
C.
Lyte,
History
1943, vol. 46
of Eton 47
College, 1889. 80
M.
81
Conduite
Ecoles
des
88
Felibien, vol.
84
H.
85 8e
H.
V,
Gerson, op. cit. G. Zaccagnini, La
50
cit.
Conduite des
61
J.
vita dei maestri e
52
88
M. D.
89
H. Rashdall, op.
cit.,
40
Felibien, vol.
V,
p. 721.
Rashdall, op.
cit.,
42
vol.
44
p
Schools
to 1660,
Chapter VI:
de
college
fun homme
de
1824.
Quicherat, Histoire de Samte-Barbe, 1860.
55
L.
57
Notice
Lacroix,
historique
sur
58
H. Cook, Winchester College, 1917. M. Massip, Le College de Tournon. de
C.
de
Robillard
Beaurepaire,
9
The English Grammar
Watson,
Du
64
56
M.
48
cit.
rinstitut Savoure, 1853.
III.
Godet, Montaigu, 1912. H. C. M. Lyte, op. cit.
1937.
Marmontel, op.
lettres,
vol. HI.
fecoles
coles chretiennes.
Lablee, Memoires
J,
Chapotin, College de Dormans-
I,
de
generate
Frhes des
des
Dupont-Ferrier,
p. 421.
Ill,
pere,
Clermont.
Beauvais, 1870.
41
F.
G.
58
Geneva, 1926, plate XXII. Felibien, vol.
Histoire
Rigault,
chretiennes, vol.
p. 689.
L. Bouquet, op.
royal
Marmontel, Memoires fun
flnstitution
cit.
Cordier, op.
College
1827.
degli scolari nella studio di Bologna,
87
F.
J.
49
M.
du
Bourbon-Aix, 2 vols, 1892. C. Mutteau, op. cit.
chrttiennes,
1720. 82
L. Lef&vre,
p. 294.
I,
Annales
M6chin,
48
Cordier, Colloques, 1586.
R.
L'Estoile,/0wrwj/, ed.
17
Recherches sur
dans
1908.
I
instruction publique
de Lyon, 1872.
le diocese
FROM DAY-SCHOOL TO BOARDING-SCHOOL (pages 269-285)
M.
Crispin de Pas, Academia sive speculum vitae scholasticae, Arnheim, 1602.
10
President de
12
M^chin, op.
Mar^chal de Bassompierre, Journal, S. H. F., 4 vols. Lome'nie de Brienne, S. H. F., 1919.
18
M.
14
E. Pasquier, op.
16
C. Sorel, Francion.
C. Sorel, Francion.
16
Rouchier, Bull. Soc. des Sciences
Mesmes, Memoires.
11
J.
Cordier, op. cit. Gaufres, Claude Baduel, 1880. cit.
Cordier, op.
9
Arts
Viv&s, Dialogues.
M.
M.
Cordier, Colloques, 1586.
*Visite
au
November Nationales,
college I9th,
M.
d'Autun',
1652. Archives
17
l
Ardhhe
Massip, op.
Marmontel, op.
18
J.
cit.,
t
p. 56.
cit.
series II
T, 1933.
19
M.
80
C. de Rochemonteix, op.
I,
et
by
quoted
Estienne, preface to Archives de
Somme,
80.
E. Pasquier, Recherches 9 1621, vol. IX.
de
cit. cit.
Massip, op.
cit.
cit.
la
NOTES C. Joly,
Traite historique des ecoles Episcopates et ecclesiatiques, 1678.
For the
Quicherat, op.
Chapotin, op. J. Labile, op.
II,
Chap. VII.
Chapter VII:
cit.
THE
80
Dupont-Ferrier,
2
A. de Charmasse,
Traite historique des ecoles episcopates et ecclesiastiques, 1678.
publique dans fancien diocese d'Autun,
17
Chaucer,
'The
MoyenAge, de
C.
Prioress's
Tale', 18
de
Robillard
21
Beaurepaire,
y
2 vols, 1872. P. Delattre, Les
des
II,
8
p. 741.
C. Joly, op. cit. Allain, L' Instruction
avant
ij8g, 1881. 9
J.
W.
Adamson,
A
Short History of
10
F.
28
Mme
dressee
enfaveur des petites
Marshal de Bassompierre, Mlmoires,
25
F.
26
C. Joly, op.
27
H. Rigault, op. cit. Engraving classed under
14
F. cit.
cit.
Metiers
Estampes,
series,
fecrivains in
Cabinet
Bibliothque
ale.
escoles.
C. Mutteau, Les
coles chretiennes, vol.
80
F.
81
Basle
82
Gerard Dou, reproduced in K.
III,
Chap.
I,
II.
H. Rigault, op. cit. F. Watson, The English Grammar to
1660,
1908.
The Babees Book, 1868.
des
Nation-
29
Cf. below, Part
Schools
H.
Watson, op.
the
I93718
June loth,
Histoire de restitution des
Frires des
12
Lettres,
24
Shorter version of 1685: Instruction
H. Rigault,
de S^vigne',
1671.
mlthodique pour fescole paroissiale, 11
Waddington, 1857. Watson, op. cit.
22
28
Education.
cit.
Estienne, Preface to Archives de la
S.
primaire
cit.
C. Joly, op. cit. Memoires de Jean Rou, edited by F.
Jesuites en France, 1940, 2 vols, vol.
7
Watson, op.
Somme, series II T, 1933. C. de Robillard de Beaurepaire, op.
Normandie,
tablissements
F.
cit.
20
1895.
L Instruction publique en 6
Allain, op. J.
Canterbury Tales. A. Clerval, Les Ecoles de Chartres au
II,
1658.
18
1871-8.
vol.
Coote, The English Schoolmaster, 1596'
quoted in 16
de
cit.,
(pages 286-314)
15
V instruction
Jztat
op.
p. 83.
'LITTLE SCHOOLS'
C. Joly,
6
Another change: twentieth-century pedagogues no longer share this suspicious view of holidays, which have become a corporate privilege.
cit.
1
4
29
Rollin, Traite des Etudes, 1728.
cit.
cit.
Register of the pupils at SainteBarbe, Archives de la Seine.
cit.
C. de Robillard de Beaurepaire, op.
8
Dupont-Ferrier, op. 28
schools' see the next
'little
chapter, Part
431
27
Furnivall,
Watson, op.
coles de Dijon.
cit.
Museum. d. K.,
pp. 170-1, 1660-5. 88
G. Zaccagnini, La nella
1926.
studio
di
vita dei maestri ...
Bologna,
Geneva,
NOTES
432
W.
84
J. 88
Adamson, op.
Allain, op.
Sciences
cit.
cit.
H. Rigault, op. at.
87
Brinsley, Ludus Litterarius, edition
54
Sicard, Les Etudes classiques avant la
85
Pere
of
1917.
C.
88
C. Joly, op.
40
Military school, register of pupils.
cit.
Archives Nationales,
Watson, op. cit., W. Adamson, op.
F.
42
J.
M.
255.
C. de Robillard de Beaurepaire, op.
44
H. Rigault, op.
48
A. de Charmasse, op.
46
H. Rigault, op. cit. A. de Charmasse, op.
48
Marmontel, Memoires fun
H. Rigault, op.
60
C. Sorel, Maison
op. 62
G.
Ibid.,
Letters
des Jeux,
vol.
Chapter VIII:
la
Chalotais,
68
Mlmoires du
de
fancien
Lable*e, lettres,
J.
Sociltl
ist,
1766.
2 vols,
cardinal de Bernis,
1878.
67
la
1763;
23rd,
I9th, 1766; April
Cf. note 61.
Dupont-Ferner,
Sieves
lajeunesse, 1763.
of February
64 I,
J.
de Troyes. Memoires de
p. 943.
d 'education nationale ou plan
March
68
Les
rUniversite" de
1
cit.
Carre,
Deux Mondes, 1879, R. Caredenc de
d etudes pour
college 58
L.
cit.
pp. 475-6.
C. Jourdain, op.
pere.
p. 531, note.
Appendices, p. 55. Quoted by C. Brunetiere, Revue des
cit.
cit.
cit.,
C. Jourdain, Histoire de
Essais
68
49
61
Sicard, op.
Paris,
62
cit.
C.Joly, op.
feleves de Tancien college
de Troyes.
cit. cit.
p. 531.
58
61
cit.
cit.,
G. Carre, Les
60
cit.
Sicard, op.
57
89
p. 150, 1560.
48
47
1955 and I95786
HenrilVdeLaFlkhe.
41
Revolution, 1884, p. 520. de Dainville, in Populations,
Rochemonteix, Le College
de
1881,
p. 45-
86
88
Arts de I'Aube,
et
des
Memoires d'un homme de
1824.
Estienne, series II
Archives de
la
Somme,
T, 1933, Preface.
THE ROUGHNESS OF SCHOOLCHILDREN (pages 315-328)
1
G.
Carre*,
Les Sieves de fancien
8
college
de Troyes, Memoires de la Societe" des Sciences et Arts de I'Aube, 1881,
Cf. Pere de Dainville,
9
P.
p. 45.
Felibien, vol.
8
L'Estoile, Journal, edited by R. L. Leftvre, 1943, vol. I, p. 544.
4
G.
6
C. Mutteau, Les tcoles de Dijon, 1882. C. de Rochemonteix, Le College
Carre*, op.
Henri 7
naissance de
D. Bourchemin, Les Academies protestantes.
2
6
La
rhumanisme moderne.
V,
p. 812.
10
H. Cook, Winchester
11
Marchal de Bassompierre,
12
M6chin,
IV de La Fleche, cit.
du
cit.
Memoires.
college
royal
Bourbon-Aix, 1892.
cit.
C. Mutteau, op.
Annales
College, op.
1889.
18
Pre
14
P.
de Dainville, op.
cit.
Achard, 'Les Chefs des plaisirs', Annuaire administratif du Vaucluse, 1869.
NOTES P. Achard, op.
M6chin, op.
87
cit.
vol.
pp. 92, 171. L. Legendre, Mimoires. Le Magasin de librairie
cit.,
1860), vol. V.
(c.
G. Carre, op.
28
29
C. de Rochemonteix, op.
80
M.
81
Montaigne, C. Mutteau, op. Mibien, vol. V,
I,
84
p. 26.
Ibid.
85
G. de Pourtales, Wagner,
p. 662. Mibien, vol. V, p. 812.
80
H. C. M. Lyte,
87
Opera, vol.
C. Sorel, Maison desjeux, vol. II, p.
88
C. Mutteau, op.
cit.
13.
cit.
Archer, Secondary Education, 1921. Vie de Thomas Platter [the Elder]. L. Massebieau, op, cit.
82 88
Essais, vol.
Fonds
Massip, Le College de Tournon. Samuel Foote, quoted by R. L.
scolaires,
cit.
MSS
Latin, nos. 10990, 10991.
1878.
Pere de Dainville, op. G. Carre*, op. cit.
cit.
Bibliotheque Nationale,
I,
Pere de Dainville, op. cit. L. Massebieau, Les Colloques
433
p. 21.
Eton, 1889.
p. 31.
II,
cit.
SCHOOL AND THE DURATION OF CHILDHOOD
Conclusion:
(pages 329-33<5) 1
Don
2
L. Cognet,
*
Quixote.
La Reforme
G.
E.
Leonard,
Les
Probtimes
De f education
des filles,
1687. 6
1950, pp. 13, 100. 8
Fenelon,
de Port-Royal,
T.
de
Lavalle'e,
de
Histoire
la
maison
royale de Saint-Cyr, 1862.
farmee, 1958, p. 164.
PART THREE:
Chapter 1
P.
I:
M.
2
PICTURES OF THE FAMILY
Duval, La Vie quotidienne en
Gaule,
6
London, Bridgewater Gallery. 'The Four Ages of Life*.
10
Cf. above, Part
Venturi, Storia del Arte
de
12
Toesca, Storia del Arte
Savoie, Duchesse de Bourgogne,
18
A. Lindner, Der Breslauer
Cf. above, Part
Chantilly. Cf. above, Part
I,
Chap.
I,
Chap. IV.
in the Bacchanalia'
Prado, Madrid.
Hortulus animae, 7 vols, Frankfurt, 1907.
Chap.
I.
italiana, vol.
VI, p. 32.
I.
Adelaide
I,
italiana, vol. II.
Froissart,
1912.
One of the putti at the
7
(pages 339-364)
11
G. Charles Picard, Les Religions de
*Book of Hours of
6
8
*
1952.
I'Afrique antique, 1954. 8
THE FAMILY
14
Basle
16
Cf. F. Bond,Westminster Abbey, 1909. Titian, K. d. K., p. 168.
16 17
Museum.
Victoria and Albert 1951.
Museum,
no.
5,
NOTES
434 18
19
Pourbus, Le Portrait dans Fartflamand, Exhibition, Paris, 1952, no. 71. Titian, 'Sebastian Leers, his wife his son',
reproduced in K,
82
G. Dou, K. 'Child in
and
pitcher to a
d. K.,
Titian, reproduced in
Le
K.
d. K., no.
Portrait dans fartjlamand,
Van Dyck, 'The Pembroke
28
P.
Exhibi-
Family',
engraving, Cabinet des Estampes,
88
G. Dou,
Ee 3 in-f David II Ryckaert Geneva Museum.
80
P.
86
G. Dou, K. Fragonard,
siecles
86
Estampes, EC 35 in-f,
en France sous
Regime*,
la
Sodologie
Aries, in Populations, 1954, p. 692.
roi Alexandre', Petit Palais,
89
40 41
456 f 8. Stella, Cabinet des Estampes, ,
MS.
Da
44
p. 40.
D. Molinier, Geneva Museum. Abraham Bosse, 'The newly-weds go to bed' c also 'The Bride gets ;
up*, Brakenburgh, Lille 42
J.
48
Museum.
Molenaer, 'The Churching*. Steen, 'La Saint-Nicolas', repro-
duced in Gerson, no.
'Woman
Berndt, 754.
region
Guillaume Vrelant, 'Histoire du bon
p. 113.
delousing her child's head', Berndt, 109. P. de Hooch, K. d. K., 60 - Siberechts,
Terboch,
Xlle
88
Dassonville, engraving, Cabinet des
Estampes, Ed. 35 c pet. in-f, 5, 6, 26. G. Dou, K. d. K., 94. G.
et
maconnaise,
Chaucer, 'The Parson's Tale'. Cf.
in-f
engraving,
Xle
87
Exhibition
Cabinet des Estampes, Da 44 in-f , p. 41. Crispin de Pas, Cabinet des
am
comparee de la famille contemporaine, Colloaues du C. AT. R. 5., 1955.
Fragonard, Berne, 1954. G. Dou, d. K., 94- Brouwer, W. de
Stella, 'L'hiver',
la
P. Petiot, *La famille
1'Ancien
d. K., pp. 90, 91, 92.
Bode, p. 73. Berey, engraving, Cabinet des Estampes, Ed. 108
dans
1953-
(1586-1642),
engraving.
Van Mieris,
de Hooch, reproduced in Berndt,
G. Duby, La Societe
K.
81
paying a shop-
399-
Beatitude', Cabinet des Estampes, Ed. 1 13 in-f , vol. I.
in-f.
Fierens, 87.
'Little girl
graving. 84
Bonnart and Sandrart, 'Cinquieme
.
plate
a goose',
Le Nain,
IV.
'Child buying a biscuit and eating it', Berndt, 533. Le Camus, en-
.
29
'Cook plucking
Fiacco,
keeper', K. d. K., 133.
engraving, Cabinet des Estampes, o to 22, vol. VI. Gue*rard, 'La femme en manage',
28
d. K., 57.
the fruit', K. d. K., 166.
'The Gardener',
ampes, Ed. 15 in-f.
27
K.
girl',
Strozzi,
Aertsen, mid-sixteenth century. Reproduced in Gerson, vol. I,
Gue*rard,
28
de
among G.
Humbelot-Huart, Cabinet des Est-
25
little
reproduced in K. d. K., 393.
p. 98. 24
124,
P.
Berndt, 634. being plucked', Velasquez, 'Servant picking up a child to put him on the table
tion, Paris, 1952, nos. 19, 93. 22
kitchen'.
A. de Pope, 'Child watching game
236. 21
K., 122, 123,
the
Hooch, 'Serving-maid passing a
no. 279. 80
d.
87.
The Babees Book, edited by Furnivall, 1868.
44
Civilitl puerile et honnfae, 1753.
F. J.
NOTES 48
La
dvilitl nouvelle contenant bon
etparfaite instruction 4
.
..,
47
48
Cordier, Cotloques, 1536.
usage
Cf. note 45.
Basle, 1671.
La Salle. The first was published in 1713.
<J.-B. de
V. L.
edition
E.
Vives, Dialogues.
Cabinet engraving, EC 10 in-f Estampes,
des
Me'rian,
80 51
'B6ndicite",
graved by 52 53
J. Steen,
(1634-1704),
II:
le
.
C. Loth (1632-1698), reproduced in Fiacco, Venetian Painting, p. 49.
Veronese, 'The Family of Adam', Venice, Palace of the Doges.
p. 63.
Berndt,
Christian
Erasmus,
1714
Marriage,
edition.
p. 358.
Chapter
p. 256.
apres
Rembrandt's carpenter.
p. 311.
en-
Louvre,
Schmidt-Degener,
Heemskerck
religieux
G6bel,vol. I, plate CLXV. Dated 1 573
Sarrabat.
I.
HArt
Carrache, Pesne. Cf. Mile, op. cit,
A. Bosse, engraving, Cabinet des Estampes, Oa 44 pet. in-f, p. 65. LeNain, 'Be'ne'dicite". Lebrun,
Le Baroque, 1957,
Tapie*,
Mile,
candle de Trente, p. 312. Paccaco di Rosa.
.
49
435
FROM THE MEDIEVAL FAMILY TO THE MODERN FAMILY (pages 365-404)
1
A
Relation of the Island of England,
Camden
2
8
1897, p. XIV, quoted in The Babees Book, edited by F.J. Furnivall, 1868.
G. Duby, op. cit., p. 425. C. de Robillard de Beaurepaire,
15
Society,
Instruction publique 3 vols,
au 4
18
14
6 7
8
fran$aise
Dainville,
colleges', *
11
MS.
F.
Biblio-
la
litterature
vol.
sihle,
I,
1951. R. Mousnier,
II,
populates
avant
16
pp. 81-113. de
L'Heros
Laurens
Gracian,
164517
Balthazar Castiglione, Le Courtisan,
French translation by G. Chappuys, des
1955,
PP-
1585. 18
G. della Casa,
Galate'e, translation
by
Hamel, 1666.
Regies
de
19
des enfants, 1661. I'education
80
des
Goussault, Portrait d'unhonnfre homme, 1692.
de
XVIIe
Revue Fronde*, Historique moderne et contemporaine, 1958,
La
civilite*
Quoted Politesse
nouvelle, 1671.
by
M.
Magendie,
La
mondaine au XVIIe sihle.
1925.
enfants, 1687. 18
Histoire
au
Soulevements
J.
'EfFectif
Populations,
G. Duby, op. cit. Varet, De f Education Coustel,
Arts,
*
455-83. 10
des
la
theque Nationale. Conrad Manuel, Berne Museum. Grenoble Museum.
de
1954. universitaires dans
Facultl
1948, vol.
1895.
'L'e*cole des veneurs',
Des grades
A. Adam,
1872. C. Clerval, Les tcoles
Moyen Age,
Ferte*,
1868.
en Normandie,
The Babees Book, edited by
Pere
H.
Tantieme
Furnivall. 6
J. Fourcassie', Villele,
21
Cf. note 18.
22
Nicole, 'De la
civilite'
chr&ienne',
NOTES
436 de
Essais
morale,
vol.
1733,
48 II,
J. Carriere,
88
De
L'Honneste
Grenaille,
CailUere,
La
Bordelon,
La
Fortune des
49
du XVIIe
siecle',
Facultl des Lettres
87
De Grenaille,
Belle
Education,
si&cle',
60
cit.
op.
Bautier, *Feux, population et
structure sociale au milieu
1694.
C. Coustel, op,
R. H.
1661.
aualite,
86
88
la
d'Aix-en-Provence, 1958.
Marshal de gens de
86
la fin
Annales de
gargon,
1642. 84
'La Population d'Aix-en-
Provence a
p. 116.
Annales E.
255-68. Paul Masson, quoted by
cit.
du XVe
1959, pp.
S.,
J.
Carriere,
H. Michel, La Pensee
de L. B.
cit.
op.
Fra Bonvenisco da Ripa, Zinquanta cortesie da Tavola, about 1292.
81
89
The Babees Book.
52
86
Pseudo-Cato, Disticha de moribus. A. de Courtin, Nouveau traitl de
Pere du Colombier, Style Henri Louis XIII, 1941, p. 49.
53
P.
81
civilite
qui
se pratique
la
les
hommes, Pont-a-Mousson, 1617. Quoted in F. Watson, The English
Grammar
Schools
84
C. Sorel.
86
D. Mornet,
De
88
87
Lagniet, in Proverbes.
Mme
3
vols,
de
S^vigne",
Lettres,
August
i9th, 1671. cit.
89
Bar din, Le Lycee, 2
40
L. Gracian, op.
La
Helmont
61
De
62 68
pour
Cf. note 19.
De T education
chretienne
Coustel, op.
vol.
Entretiens,
I,
cit.
64
Don
66
Mme
Locatelli, The Adventures of an Italian priest, edited by W. Blunt, London,
47
But Lagniet,
66
87
de Sevigne*,
Bordelon, op.
Lettres,
January
Paris, edited 68
cit.
S^bastien Mercier, Les Tableaux de
by Desnoit&res,
p. 194.
Correspondance inldite du general de Martange, 1756-1782, edited by
Br&ird, 1898.
1956. in his Proverbes, depicts a tavern in which a child does not
cit.
Quixote.
23rd, 1671.
Ibid.
46
cit.
Bordelon, op.
des
enfants, 1666.
seem out of place.
Gerard,
P- 153-
cit.
puerile et honnete 9 I instruction des enfants, 1761.
*
(1623-1679), Child waiting at table', in Berndt, no. 365.
vols, 1632-4.
civilite
Coustel, op.
60 cit.
L'Honnete Homme.
41
45
Memoires,
Bussy-Rabutin,
59
Grenaille, op.
Varet,
cit.
68
N.
44
Heroard, op. cit. P. H. Michel, op.
M. Magendie,
*Laurens Gracian, op.
48
66
Histoire de la litterature
88
42
65
cit.
Faret,
by Droz and
Piaget, p. 93.
1704.
classique, 1940; also
op.
Codde, reproduced in Berndt,
57
1660.
to
IV et
187.
**Jardin de Plaisance, edited
Bienseance de la conversation entre
88
Alberti, 1930.
en France,
1671. 88
P.
69
J. Fourcassie*, Villele,
70
J.
1954.
Ashton, La Revolution p. 173-
industrielle,
NOTIS 71
H. Bergues, P. Aries, E. Helin, L. Henry, M. Riquet, A. Sauvy, J. Sutter, La Prevention des nais-
iques, Cahier no. 35, 1960.
R.
d'fitudes
Academia
sive
speculum
la
Le Renouveau
famille.
vitae
Institut
C
also
des idles
National
d'fitudes d^mographiques, no. 18,
I954
d^mograph-
CONCLUSION a
Prigent,
sur
sances dans la famille, ses origines dans les temps modernes. Institut
National
437
(pages 411-415)
scholasticae,
Arnheim, 1602.
INDEX
INDEX (Page numbers in
italics refer
ABELARD, 96, 152 academies, 203-8, 213, 217, 371
Basle, 179,
Adamson, J. W., 151, 206, 426 adolescence, 21, 25, 29-30, 32, 50, 206, 261-2, 268, 285, 329 Aelfhc, 146 Aeneid, 21 ^Ertsen, P., 45 age, 15, 16, 17, 18; of college-boy, average, 301; the pupil's, 150-1, 189-240; and
school
class,
198
tables illustrating above, 219-21,
ff;
to bibliographical information.)
connection between,
177,
229-30 limit for age groups, 78, 244, 363-4; schooling, 124-5, 152, 300 ages, medieval mingling of, 62-7, 153-4, 164, 239; separation of, 156, 161, 164, 171, 174-5, 177, 187, 239, 284-5, 314 'ages of life', 18-25, 343, 350-1 Alberti, 394 Alexandre de Villcdieu, 146, 153, 168, 178,
1
86, 191
Bassompierre, Mare*chal de, 196, 296, 319, 428, 431 Baune, Canon Jacques de, 275-6, 278 'bean king', 74 Beauvais-Nangis, Nicolas de, 194, 204, 428 Becket, Thomas, 76 beds, 394-5 begging, 78, 324-6 Bellange, Louise, 305 Bergerac, Cyrano de, 48 Bernard, Claude, 193 Bernis, Cardinal de, 117, 212-14, 311, 425 Berry, Due de, the Hours of the, 43, 340 Berulle, Cardinal de, 122 besaciers,
276, 312
bibeloterie,
69
Bibliotheque Bleue, 97, 98 birth-control, 9, 40, 413 boarders, 272-3 Boethius, 146, 150
Bonnard, 60
183 Aliain, Abbe, 288, 431 altars in classrooms, 185
Bonnart-Sandrart, 352 Bonneval, Claude de, 193, 202, 428
angel, type of adolescent, 34-5; guardian,
Bonzonnet, 47 books, expurgated editions Bordelon, Abbe, 379, 436
123-4; Tobias and the, 124 Anselm, 152 apprenticeship, 192-4, 197, 204, 217, 222, 290-1, 298, 365-8, 370-1, 404 Argonne, M. d', 131 Aristotle, 142, 147, 150 arithmetic, 293 Arnauld, Mere Angdlique, 85 Arnauld, Antoine, 208, 332 Arnold, Dr, 84, 265, 313 Arnoult, 51, 71
(denoting student), 144 instruction in the, 139-40,
'artist'
arts,
167,
144, 155,
1 80
Asson, Marquis auditores,
d',
208-9
270
'BABEES BOOKS', 360, 366, 381, 434. Baduel, 27, 179, 180, 181, 187, 273, 420 Baillet, 25, 195, 218, 222, 224, 228, 419 ball games, 89, 98 bambins, 28, 47 banquets, college, 241, 243, 244 Barberini, Francesco de, 382 Barbier, 70 Barre*, Pere, 122, 305 Bary, R. f 206, 428
Bosse,
Abraham,
109
of,
49, 124, 306, 350-1, 351-2,
36o, 394 Botticelli, 35, 77
Boucher, 54, 57 Bouillon,
Due
de, see Conde*
Bourdon, S., 71 Bourg-Saint-Andeol
college, 213 children,
the first specialized dressed like girls, 58
boys:
58;
Brinsley, 301, 420 Brothers of Christian Doctrine, 108, 262, of the Christian Schools, 122, 311; of the Life (Freres de 305;
Common
Vie Commune), 172, 180, 186 Brouwer, 80 Buchanan, 168, 326 Bussy, 202 la
Byzantine Empire, 21, 137, 144
CAEN COLLEGE,
25, 218-19
cafd, as a meeting-place,
Cailliere,
391
Marechal de, 82-3, 379, 423
calendars, 22, 71-2, 340, 341-3
Callaghan, John, 278 Calve",
441
Mgr, 34
,
344-5, 419
INDEX
442
Cardinal Lemoine college, 160, 161-2, 169, 172, 198,
4W
carnival, 77,
99
404, 406, 413-15
Castiglione, Balthazar, 93, 376, 386 Cato, pseudo-, 120-1, 210, 382
clergeons, 28,
Champaigne, Philippe
Codde,
(see also putto)
;
the
342; portrait of the 105, urinating, deceased, 40-1; as symbol of the soul, 36, 124; the well-bred, 327-8; and Christmas, 64, 75, 359; in the Twelfth Night ritual, in calendars, 342; role
depicted
of
at family meals, 76, 396; saying grace, 359-61; as centre of the family, 133
218,
222;
prodigies, 194-5, 114, 132,
psychology,
childhood: terminology of, 25-9; not porin I3th cent, trayed in medieval art, 33-4; 34-6; I4th cent, religious iconography cent, lay iconof, 36-7; 1 5th and i6th of, 37-8; in funeral effigies, 38, art,
ography
40, 42, 54; in I7th cent, portraiture, 42-3; on ex-votos, 43; special costume of, 57; flower wreaths as symbol of, 78; idea of, 38, 39, 100, 127, 128, 252, 353; importance of 1 7th cent, in developing themes of, 50, 114; new attitudes towards, 82,
P., 394 Coincy, Gauthier de, 95 Colbert, 96, 335 Colet,John, 182 College de Bourgogne, 172, 194, 322 College des Dix-huit, 157 statutes, 169 college registers, 218 ff;
205, 206, 217, 269, 272 ff, 283, 287-8, 307, 309, 312, 378, 380, 427, 4*0. 4301 authoritarian system in, 171-3, 183; admission to,
241-3
;
see also separate entries,
Conde
34, 420, 436 (the 'Grand'), 203, 208, 210;
(son of above), 210, 211; Bouillon), 212
coddling
health of, 133, 401; safeguarding morals of, 205, 206; and servants, 117, 379-8o, see 395-6; and domestic service, 366-7; also dress, children's
Choiseul, Duchesse de, 96 Christianity as a learned religion, 138
Church, and condemnation of gambling and games, 82, 86; and education, 115, 138-40, 279, 303-5; see also Jansenists, Jesuits, Oratorians, Port-Royal
,
(Due de
conscript, 30
conversation, the art of, 376-7, 379 convicti,
277, 279
Cook, H., 264, 430 Coornaert, E., 244, 245, 429 Coote, Edmund, 292, 298, 431 Cordier's dialogues, 18, 53, 109-10, 118, 186, 210, 256, 257, 271, 273, 274, 275, 276, 282, 326, 369, 383. 388, 419
97
Courtier, The,
-
Jesuit
Colombier, Pere du,
awareness 253, 262,? 264; special nature of, ofIdie, 3 3 induration of, 26, 329-34; and social 105, 125-7; see 'also class, children: 'jjtfg 00 of, 47-9, 63; and sex, 100-10, 164; marriage of, 102-3, 331-2; attitude to, 130-1; concern for
and
colleges
cotterie,
112; religious festivals of, -' 1
ff
colleges, 115, 155-75, 178, 192, 200-2, 204,
46-9, of inno106, iiofT, 157, 253, 264; idea cence of, no, 119; notion of weakness of,
Christianity,
430
cock-fighting, 76
Chapelain, Andre" le, 382 Chardin, 361 charlatan (story-teller), 97 Chaucer, 151, 286-7
child paragons, 124-5;
college, 109, 203, 212, 215, Fran9ois de, 222
Clugny,
de, 42, 50-1
Cherubin, 29, 268 Chevert, 193.202, 331 child: the naked, 35, 45-6
34
Clermont
Cebes, 51
73-5;
and childhood, 26, 99, 262; and vocabulary, 48; and dress, 59-61; and games, 91-3, 99; and education, 171-2, 174, 193-4, 205, 225, 272, 303-5, 306-14, 334-6; and discipline, 261; and the family,
class, social:
274 Cange, du, 98 cameristes,
Coulanges, 28, 130, 420
Courcon, Robert de, 148, 150, 245 and similar books, 386-8 Courtin, Antome dc, 115, 383, 424 Coustel, 114, U5, 372, 379, 380, 389, 424 Crousaz, de, 89 curricula, 176, 179, 183, 195, 289 ff, 303
DAINVDLLB, P&RE DE, 103, 181, 218, 308, 319, 370, 423, 429 dancing, 63, 64, 65-6, 80, 85, 89, 94, 204 dating, 16-17 David, Gerard, 358 day-boys, 159, 165, 166, 167-8, 270, 275, 281, 283, 285 demography, 9, 10, 32, 39, 43, 285 Dermia, Charles, 304 Descartes, 199-200
Circumcision, the, 105-6
153, 210 Despautfcre, 146, ' * determinance of students, 244
civility, see etiquette
discipline, scholastic, 108, 115, 156, 168-73,
class,
the school, 176-84, 216-17
252-68, 333-4, 378
INDEX Divina Commedia, 47 dolls, 64-5, 66, 67, 69, 70 domestic pupils, 274
Passos, 30
drama, 80-1, 89 dress, former importance tinction between child
357, of,
no
57;
and
dis-
adult
in
medieval, 50 dress, children's: I7th cent., 50-7; differentia-
tion in according to age, 50-5, 58, not found among girls, 53, 58; archaism in, 57; tendencies in development of, 58-61; see also leading strings, ribbons,
among
robes
353, 365, 434
schoolboys,
3
19-20
192,
194,
the, 10, 345, 349, 353,
375,
development of
392-3,
400, 412-13; 246, 285; the I5th to 17th cent.,
the,
9,
medieval, 365-9; from 369-71; the I7th cent., 403-4; the modern, 404; pictures of the, 343-64; in English
mortuary sculpture, 40, 348-9; and extension of schooling, 369-71 ; and primogeniture, 371-2, 403 ; and society, 375-98, 405-7; relations between line and, 353-6 Family, the Holy, 362-3 46-7;
donors',
secularization of, 349 ff; 17; weddings
COUB POLYTBCHNIQUB, 206
189-91,
3<53-4,
family portraits,
education, 113-14, 411-12; medieval, 137-40; gradation, or lack of, in curricula, 145-8, 158-61; simultaneous teaching of subjects, 148-50; duration of course of studies, 149, 151-2,
externi, 270 Eyck, Margaretha van, 16
FAIRY TALES, 95-8 family: concept of
Dou, Gerard, 299
duelling
195,
333-4;
specialization in, 140; mixing of students of different ages, 150; comparison between
medieval and modern systems of, 141-5, 333; reforms in, 87, 148, 150, 155, 159, 172, 206, 245, 252, 265, 310; new concept of, 264; in England, 142, 143-4, 150-1, 161, 182, 185, 200, 206, 260, 264-6, 268, 289, 312-13, 318-19, 320, 323-4; in France
comments on], 143-5, 15*. 161, 181, 182-3, 184, 200, 204-6, 224, 262 ff; in Germany, 143, 185, 190-1, 206; [special
167,
pictures of, 358;
41, 348; record books,
and
famuli, 194
fancy dress, 74, 75, 99 fanfans, 29, 47 Faret, in, 386, 387, 424 Fe*nelon, 29, 58, 89, 332, festivals,
370
72-9
Communion, 105, 125-7 Fitz Stephen, 76 Fleury, 124, 131, 425
First
350 flower wreaths, as symbol of childhood, 78 forains, 275 Fra Angelico, 35 frereches, 353, 354, 355 friendship in I7th cent, literature, 376 Floris,
Fugger family, 250
military character of, after suppression of the Jesuits, 266-8; Protestant, 109, 208-10; moral, 206; mother's role in children's,
Furetiere's dictionary, 27, 28, 3 1
215; opposition between manual work and, 310-11; according to station, 311-12; treatises on, 111-12, 119-21, 183, 269, 380-90; see also academies; apprenticeship; class,
colleges;
curricula;
military training;
school;
social;
class,
discipline;
girls;
pedagogicas; scholar-
schoolboys; ships; universities
schools;
students;
Elyot, Thomas, 98 6mile, 281, 336
Enghien, Due d', see Cond Erasmus, 51-2, 91, 180, 182, 184, 269, 380,
33 Eros, 34. 43,
4<5
christenings,
worship, 361-2
adult, 300-1; elementary (primary), 141, 239, 286 ff; Napoleon and, 144, 266, 267;
Church;
164,
manuals
of, nr, 115, 117, 119-21, 131, 290. 294, 3<5o, 381-6, 388-90 Eton, 182, 184, 185, 264, 319, 325, 430
etiquette,
Dominiquin, 124 Donat, 146, 150, 152, 159, 178, 188, 190, 191, 287 Dormain-Beauvais college, 165-6, 280, 430
Duby, Georges,
d*, 155, 159, 163,
174, 177, 183, 244, 330
domesticity, 400-1
Dos
443
Estouteville, Cardinal
Fulgentius, 21
p<
GAIGNI&RBS, 38, 40, 42, 420 Galatte, 131, 210, 290, 377, galoche, 168, 270,
384
275
gambling, 71-84 games, no strict division between children's
and
adults*, 62-7, 71-2, 91; children's, 67, 91 ; parlour, 90-2; class distinction in, 91-3 ; in calendar scenes, 342-3
games and pastimes, moral
attitude towards,
81-90 garfon, 367
Geneva
college,
274
Gerard, Colonel, 118, 126, 425 Gerson, 106-8, 158, 168, 255, 258, 330 Ghirlandajo, 35 Girardet, Raoul, 266
INDEX
444
Girardon, 224-5, 308 education of, 58, 205, 297-8, 305. 306,
girls,
331-3, 334, 3?o Goussault, Abbe*, 372 Gracian, Laurens, 376, 386 grammar, instruction in, 145-7, 158-61, 163, 1 80; grammar schools, see schools
Grand
Proprie'taire de toutes choses,
Le, 19-22,
426 greenhorn, relationship of old hand and,
M.
no, 131, 171-2, 173, 197, 198, 202, 203, 211, 213, 215, 218, 260, 267,
270, 301, 322, 424, 425 Jesuits, 88-9, 108, 109, 114, 119, 124-5, 145,
152, 166, 171-2, 173, 176, 177, 181, 187, 200, 206, 210, 212, 255, 262, 263, 265, 267, 269, 273, 277, 281, 301, 308, 310, 311, 322,
331, 377
25, 129, 343, 419 Gratian, Balthazar, 131-2,
247-51 GrenaiUe,
Jenner, 43 Jesuit colleges, 88,
de, 111-13, 377-8, 380, 386-7,
jetjetons
B,
194,
*99, 255, 278,
301, 316-18, 323, 421 La Fontaine, 27, 129, 259
Hals, Franz, 42, 47, 80 Harcourt college, 160, 165, 169, 170, 209,
245, 427
Hautecoeur, L., 45-6, 4 21 Heroard, 49, 5^-3, 62 fF, 74, 75, 77, 80, 94, loo ff, 394, 421 Henriot, 30 Holbein, 41, 45, 299, 348 Innocents, Holy Childhood, 121-2; feast of the, 76 Hooch, Peter de, 352 Hpole, Charles, 109, 296 hoops, 94-5 hours, books of, 71, 73, 90, 105, 340-1 house, the big, of the i6th and I7th cent., 391-8; the modern type of, in i8th cent.,
398-9
Lamen, 79 Lamoignon, Pierre
de, 218, 222
Lancret, 54, 57
languages, study of modern, 204, 206 Largilliere, 42, 46,
La
350
Jean-Baptiste de, see Jean Baptiste de La Salle, St Latin, the study of, 138, 141, 210, 215, 216, Salle,
289 law, instruction in, 140, 195, 203 leading strings, 52-3, 54
Lebrun, 45, 47, 349, 3&> La Camus, 352, 434 Leclerc, Jean, 56 Leclerc, lectio,
Max, 185/425
179-80, 183
Leers, Sebastian, 349
Le Fevre d'Ormesson, Andre*, 198-9, 428;
Humbelot-Huart, 351
,
humanities, the, 145, 163
Olivier, 191-2, 194
Le Nain,
191, 202
humanist tradition, 144, 145, 180, 181, 330 INFANCY: development of vocabulary relating to, 27-9; extension of, 238-9 Infant Jesus, 35, 36, 121; Institute of the, 122, 305
42, 49, 71, 80, 349, 352,
360
Leonard, E. G., 331 Lepautre, 56, 72 Le Plessis college, 280 Lheritier, Mile, 28,
96
Liautard, Abbe*, 231, 429 liberalism, i8th cent.,
and new concept of
childhood, 264, 266, 267 28 Lily's Latin Grammar,
informing, 254, 255-7, 263, 265
244
280
see also PortJANSBNISTS, 263, 264, 331, 377;
Royal de La Salle, St, 116-17, 118, Jean-Baptiste 119, 131, 257, 262-3, 289, 290, 293, 296, 305, 306, 425, 430
JACQUES, 216, 281, 312, 429
La Chalotais, 310-11 La Heche college, 24,
HALLOWE'EN, 78
'institutions',
304, 306,
43^
Mme
initiation rites, students* practices and,
of counting, counters), 293
Jordaens, 74 Joyeuse, Pere Ange de, 82, 195, 428 Jusserand, 98, 422
424 Greuze, 22, 31, 215, 336 Grimoux, 383 Grosley, 214, 429 Gu&ard, 54, 80, no, 351 Gabrielle, 54 Guiard, guilds, trade, 244, 245 gymnasium, 185
humanism,
(art
John of Salisbury, 146, 147, 149 Joly, Ckude, 279, 297, 301-2, 303,
Lipsius, Julius,
222
Lisieux college, 204, 270, 274, 280 lodgings, students' and schoolboys', 275-6 Loth, Carlo, 363, 435
Louis XIII, 52-3, 62 fF, 68, 72, 74, 75, 77, 80, 83,93,94,95, ioo ff, 107 Louis XIV, 41, 83, 98, 375 Louis, St, of Gonzaga, 125
INDEX Louis-le-Grand college, 157, 159, 186, 213, 227, 233, 263, 266-7, 272, 281, 282, 283,
429 lyc&s, 145, i?3, 266, 267, 283
college, 159, 160-1, 162, 165, 169, 192, 194, 198-9, 203, 254
185, 215, 261, 276, 308-9, 429
Abb
Marolles,
Marrou, H. I., Martange, Gen.
44 Michel de, 206, 428 137, 138, 176, 426 de, 43, 133, 400-2, 421
martinets, 168, 275,
Melancthon, 179,
grammar
Novare, Philippe de, 23
ODON DB TOURNAI, 147 old age, 30-2 Oratorians, 173, 186, 265, 267, 269, 273, 308, 33i Ovid, 207, 382
1 86,
tienne, 156, 168, 274, 275,
218
Raymond, 222 de, 194-5, 270,
428
'pensions', 280, 283, 302, 380 Perrault, Charles, 200-1, 42 8 Perrault's tales, 95 petite icok,
286
27; 'petty school', 286 pharmaceutics, 193 philosophy, instruction in, 142-5, 161-3, 181, 'petties',
197 Pibrac's quatrains, 121
Metsu, 74
pickpockets, 341
Michault, Pere, 153, 179, 183, 184, 425 Mignard, 46 military drill, 89-90; training, 193, 202, 204, 206, 331; discipline, 264, 266-8
Pietersz, P., 105
--
Miracles de Notre-Dame, 25, 28, 34, 37, 47,
Pisan, Christine de, 90, 91, 423 pitchoun, 28,
47
, Thomas, 18, 75, 103, 185, 186, 187, 189-91, 192, 247-51, 324, 419, 422
Platter, Felix, 78, 94;
55. 420 Molenaer, 358
Pluvenel,
Mohere,
Poor Law, the English, 303
20, 30, 39, 128, 259, 397
life, dancing and games in, 85; tradition, colleges influenced by, 174
monastic
monitorial system, 256, 265
Montaigne, 38-9, no, in, 130, 260, 321 college, 87, 166, 167, 168, 170, 1 80, 185, 256, 258, 259, 260, 272,
Montaigu 172,
430 More, Thomas, 129 Moreau, Guy de, 309 Mornet, Daniel, 90, 386, 423 Mosellanus, 109, 324-5 Mozart, 63 de, 95 Murat, Murillo, 362 music, 63, 64, 79, 80, 204, 289-90
Mme
427
pedagogicas, 155, 159-61, 164, 165, 277-9
mesnie, 353
-
school of,
pauperes, 87, 272
mendicity, see begging Mercier, Se*bastien, 399 Me're', Chevalier de, 83, 223-4, 4 23 Marian, 39, 94, 98, 360, 421 Merille,
Paris,
168
Pasquier,
Albert, 103-4
Mesmes, Henri
Notre-Dame de
Parva Logicalia, 159 Pas, Crispin de, 62, 89, 93, 205, 270, 323 Pascal, Jacqueline, 27, 103, 114, 115, 122, 126, 420
Massebieau, 325, 423 Massis, 30 mathematics, 203, 204 May Day, 77 Mazarin, 83 Mazot, 75
Memmi,
Niceron, Pere, 218, 429 Nicole, 377 Nocret, 41-2
326
Martinmas, 78
'
86, 169, 170,
Navarre
Mariette, 124 martnousets, 28,
(Paris),
179, 322 'nations' (in univenities), 241
MAES, NICOLAS, 78 Maintenon, Mme de, 58, no, 118, 205, 370 Maltre de Moulins, 42 Mile, mile, 362, 435 mall, 62, 99 Manneken-Pis, see child, the urinating Marmontel,
445
NARBONNB COLLEGE
M.
de, 62, 93, 94, 203, 205, 208
Pordenone, 349 Port-Royal, 27, 108, no, 113, 114-16, 122, 126, 255, 263, 264, 269, 280, 379, 380, 389, 424, 425, 433 potacio, 244, 245,
Pourbus,
1 6,
246
349
preceptor, 269-70, 273, 278 precocity, 227-8 ; see also child prodigies Priscian, 146, 150
punishment, corporal, no, 159, 207, 213, 254, 257, 258-62, 264, 265, 278; revulsion against, 262-3, 266 punishments, 257-8 puppets, 70 putto, 25, 38, 42-5, 48,
<$7,
123
INDEX
44<5 RABELAIS, 269 Rapinius, 181
schools (contd)
Rashdall, 157, 359, 423, 427 rectors, 183
Reni, Guido, 362 Restif dc la Bretonne, 31, 215 ribbons of childhood, 54, 56 Richelieu, 83, in, 205, 320, 335, 375 Rigault, H., 262, 42$ ring-tilting,
Robert of
93-4
Salisbury, 153, 42 6
military, 302 primary, 239, 287, 288 private, 152, 159 public (English), 312-13 in the Rue du Fouarre, 153, 156, 158, 161, 163, 165 rural, 139, 293 ff university, 149 workshop, 298-300 sciences, instruction in the, 161 scribes
robes, 51-7
Rochemonteix, Pere
de, 278
and
scriveners, 294-7
340 moral and educational value
seasons, the,
Rolland, Nicolas, 122
seclusion,
Rolkn, 266, 267, 281, 43 1
281 Seez college, 87, 159, 162, 168, 169, 243 seminaries, 213-14, 216, 266
Roman de la Rose, 381-2 Rou, Jean, 209-10, 295,
421
Rousseau, 119, 269, 281 Rubens, 42, 47 Ruifin, Guillaume (child paragon), 124-5 Ruskin, 321
Sevigne",
Mme
de, 28, 29, 39, 48, 48-9, 73,
75, 95, 96, 99, 105, 130, 208, 296, 331, 39<5,
397, 402
Shrove Tuesday,
Saint-Cyran, 113
Mere Angelique
de, 85
Saint-Jerome college, 183, 186 St Paul's School (London), 142, 177, 182, 184-5 Saint-Sacrament, Marguerite du, 122 Sainte-Barbe college, 160, 171, 227-8, 231, 232, 233-4, 263, 269, 280, 281-2, 427 schola, 153, 184 scholarships, 86, 87, 156, 165, 172, 227, 272
270
scholastici,
servants, 259, 310, 396-8, 399
Shakespeare, 98 shorthand, 292
ST CYB, 118, 267, 332, 425 Saint-Jean,
76,
94
Siegfried, as typical adolescent, 30 social development, and increasing precision
in personal chronology, 15-18 social mobility,
308
Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge,
304 Sorbonne, 144, 200 Sorel, Charles, 67, 81, 91-2, 198, 207, 270,
274, 275, 307, 421, 423 Start College,
206
school, the Latin, and lay culture, 291 school attendance, regularity in, 326; fees, 1 66, 307; mutinies, 316-19; premises, 153, 156, 184-6 schoolboys, armed, 315; licentious habits of,
Standonc, 167, 170 Stanislas college, 23 1 Steen, 74-5, 359, 361 Stella, 47, 71, 352, 358 Stradan, 123
321-4; begging by, 324-6 schoolmasters, 139, 149, 153-4, 155, 159, 160, 161, 166-7, 171, 181-4, 253, 254, 264, 286, 288; salaries of, 178; village, 288, 293-4, 300 schools:
Strasbourg, 180, 181, 183, 184, 185
boarding, 115, 154, 161, 164-7, 207, 227, 270, 277-84; preference for in early I9th cent., 281-3; decline of in France, 283-4 cathedral, 139, 152, 182
Storer,
M.
E., 95,
420
97 the, in medieval iconography, 341;
story-tellers, street,
church, 161 day, 165 rT, 270; see also day-boys
Sturm, 180, 181, 183, 184, 185-6 supervision, 254-5, 283 ; police, of towns with colleges, 323
TEACHERS, 38, 152, 155, 162 tenants ', 274 tennis, 86, 87, 89, 98 '
159, 160, 181, 286-7,
312-13, 424 Latin, 142, 271, 286, 287, 288, 291, 304, 367, 370 licensed,
280
*
little',
27, 118, 141, 262, 286-314
medieval, origins of, 137
as
a meeting-place, 390-1 student corporations, 241-3, 245, 246, 251-2 students, licentious habits of, 321-4
charity, 304-5
grammar, 142-3, 158,
of,
Terence, 109, no theology, instruction in, 140, 200 timetable in colleges, 170-1, 172-3 Tissot, 89 Titian, 31, 44, 45, 342, 343, 349
INDEX Tom
Brown's Schooldays, 84, 195, 265 tournaments, knightly, 93-4 Tournier, 124, 349, 350 toys, 62, 67-71, 95 trades and crafts in art and calendars, 339-41 travel as education, 197, 204
Treviso, 178, 179 trousers,
60
Troyes, Oratory tmands, 327
of, 214, 315, 316, 321,
tuition, individual, 269, 281; new in primary education, 289 rT
432
method of
tutorial system, 274 tutors, 194, 196, 202, 203, 212-13,
269
Twelfth Night, 73-5 UNIVERSITIES, 87, 140, 142, 143, 148, 150, 155-6, 172, 204, 241-3, 265, 279 Ursulmes, 305, 333 ushers, 182, 264
VAN DYCK, Van
447
Varagnac, A., 77, 244, 4*3 Varet, 114, 371, 389, 4*4 Verlac, 311 Verlet, Maltre Guillaume, 159 Veronese, 45, 349, 363 Vinckelbaons, 80 violence, spirit of, 320-1 Virgin, childhood of the, 36-7 Vives, 84, 109, 210, 271, 423 Voltaire, 311 Voos, Martin de, 17, 350 Vrelant, Guillaume, 358
WAGNER,
30, 325
Watteau, 268 Wellington, Duke
of,
313
wet-nurses, 374-5
Winchester College, 159, 165, 264, 318, 430 writing, for use and as an art, 291-3, 295, 297 Wylie, L., 118
42, 45, 47, 121, 343, 349, 350
Marie, 43-4, 72, 419
YOUTH,
30, 32; festivals of, 76-8,
87
(continued from front flap) a seminal influence on the study of contemporary social institutions in America as well.
And M.
Aries
serious scholar
that rare
is
who
phenomenon: a and
writes so colorfully
engagingly that he cannot help attracting the ordinary reader as well as the many specialists
who and
will find his
book
a rich source of ideas
inspiration.
PHILIPPE ARIES born
in Blois, France, in 1914,
historian
a cultural
is
who ranges widely over many
fields
sociology, biology, politics, and economics in his efforts to discover the realities of the daily
of
life
men
in past eras. After
pleting his studies in history at the in
1
tive
com-
Sorbonne
939, he deliberately abandoned a prospecacademic career, and in 1943 he became
director of documents and publications for the Institute of Applied Research for Tropical and Subtropical Fruits, a post he has con-
tinued to hold while pursuing his historical Among his several earlier books are
studies.
Les Traditions so dales dans les pays de France, Histoire des populations franfaises et de leurs attitudes devant la Vie depuis le
and Le Temps de
FHistoire.
XVllle siecle,
He
is
also the
general editor of Librairie Plon's excellent series Civilisations
d'Hier et d*Aujourd'hui,
of which this volume
A
I
is
a
title.
(red A. Knopf, Publisher
NEW YORK PRINTED IN
U.S. A,
