The care and treatment of children are documented sparsely until the late Middle
Ages, from which period date texts concerning children of the aristocracy and
bourgeoisie. Babies then usually received a ritual bath immediately after birth and were
baptized the following day. They were breast-fed on demand by the mother or sometimes
a wet-nurse and given gruel until about age two, when they adopted an adult diet. Babies
were swaddled for the first year, then dressed in loose robes. Children played with dolls,
balls, hobby horses, and tops and at such games as hide-and-seek, hopscotch, and blind-
man’s-bluff. Although childraising was more a female than a male concern, fathers often
participated in all the tasks of childraising except, apparently, hygiene. By the age of
seven, many children, if not enrolled in a school, were sent outside the family—to train to
be a knight, to enter clerical or religious orders, to train as an apprentice, or to work
directly—according to the social status of the child’s family.
About one out of three children fell victim to the high infant-mortality rate before the
age of five. This fact, among others, has led some historians, like Philippe Ariès, to argue
that parent-child relationships could not have been very intense, but recently such
historians as Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie and Danièle Alexandre-Bidon have emphasized
the warmth and intensity of parental attachment evident in many texts.
Leah L.Otis-Cour
[See also: EDUCATION; FAMILY AND GENDER (BOUR-GEOISIE)]
Alexandre-Bidon, Danièle, and Monique Closson. L’enfant a l’ombre des cathédra les. Lyon:
Presses Universitaires de Lyon/CNRS, 1985.
Metz, René. “L’enfant dans le droit canonique médiéval: orientations de recherche.” In Recueil de
la Société Jean Bodin. Brussels: Éditions de la Librairie Encyclopédique de Bruxelles, 1976,
Vol. 36: L’enfant.
CHILPERIC I
(ca. 537–584). The youngest son of the Merovingian king Clotar I, Chilperic I was king
of the Franks first at Soissons and then at Paris. A panegyric by Venantius Fortunatus
lauds Chilperic for his power and intellectual achievements, but the more famous work of
Gregory of Tours condemns Chilperic as the “Nero and Herod of our time.”
Upon the death of Clotar I in 561, Chilperic received a kingdom centered on Soissons,
but most of his reign was consumed in warfare to gain a larger realm at the expense of his
brothers Charibert, Guntram, and Sigibert. Chilperic’s responsibility for the murder of his
Visigothic wife, Galswintha, and the subsequent elevation of the low-born Fredegunde as
his chief wife intensified his struggle with his brother Sigibert I, who was married to
Galswintha’s sister Brunhilde. After Sigibert’s assassination in 575, Brunhilde married
Chilperic’s son Merovech, whom Chilperic later had killed. By the time of Chilperic’s
own assassination in 584, two decades of internecine struggle had left him in control of
the largest of the four Merovingian kingdoms, comprising Neustria and Aquitaine.
In spite of Gregory’s hostile account, it is clear that Chilperic possessed a keen mind.
He composed verse and hymns, wrote a book questioning the Trinity, added letters to the
Roman alphabet that more accurately reflected Frankish pronunciation, and added a
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