practice. While incest laws restricted co-parents’ future relationships with the
child they sponsored and his or her descendants, no such laws existed in the
Jewish framework. From the Carolingian period onward, church authorities
emphasized time and again that co-parents could not be relatives and that they
could not be married in the future. As for Jewish society, we have no medieval
registrar to inform us whether, as a rule, this honor was accorded to relatives
or friends. From the rather sporadic accounts of circumcision ceremonies and
their participants, however, I would suggest that both possibilities existed in
Jewish reality. Although the parents of the baby were never ba’alei brit, grand-
parents and relatives were often ba’alei brit, as were friends. Since it was cus-
tomary not to honor the same people as ba’alei brit for two children of the same
parents, it is of course possible that any family with more than one son, or per-
haps more than two sons, could distribute the honors to both family and
friends.^114
This difference between Jewish and Christian practices raises further ques-
tions. The first is why the Jewish institution of co-parenthood did not include
the marriage restrictions that were part of the corresponding Christian institu-
tion of co-parenthood. The answer seems to be both social and ideological.
From a practical point of view, in the medieval European world, Jews lived in
small communities, often founded by a handful of families. Imposing such a
restriction would have been nearly impossible. In addition, while medieval
Christianity in general was marked by the development and expansion of re-
strictions on incest and marriage, medieval Judaism was not.^115 Thus, these
differences between Jewish ba’alei brit and Christian co-parenthood were
probably reflective of wider issues, which were only incidental to co-parenting
ba’alei britand the significance of each in the two communities.^116
Recently historians studying co-parenthood in medieval Christian society
have emphasized the social implications of sponsorship. They have suggested
two main ways of understanding the function of co-parents. John Bossy has sug-
gested that the role of co-parenthood was meant to mediate violence and ag-
gression within medieval society. The connection forged between the natural
parents of the baby and the co-parents neutralized tensions that might other-
wise have been displayed in ways harmful to society. Ties of co-parents, forged
between men and women of different social classes who were very unlikely to
intermarry, facilitated more amicable relationships.^117 Bossy emphasized the
cordial gestures that accompanied the ritual—the giving of a gift to the infant
as well as the hosting of a meal by the co-parents. He also dwelt at length on
the prohibitions that accompanied the honor. He was especially interested in
the incest restrictions that such a connection introduced, and his analysis fo-
cused on the social-class differences between the co-parents and the natural
parents. Bossy’s approach is characteristic of a school of thought that sees rit-
ual as a means of neutralizing tensions and fostering greater harmony within
society.^118 The biological parents and the co-parents reached a higher level of
rick simeone
(Rick Simeone)
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