212Chapter 11
which was not uncommon in a world of high mortality.
Godparents were nominally responsible for the care of
children whose parents had died. The task was more of-
ten undertaken by aunts, uncles, or other relatives.
Stepparenting was also common because men, at least,
tended to remarry upon the death of their wives. This
created a form of extended family that has once again
become common as a result of divorce. Legends about
wicked stepmothers indicate that the new relationships
were often difficult for all concerned. However, step-
parents who loved their spouse’s children as their own
were common enough to be accepted as the ideal.
Wardship in any form created problems because
children were sometimes financially or sexually ex-
ploited by their guardians. A substantial body of case
law developed around these issues. Orphanages as such
were unknown until the fourteenth century when
foundling hospitals were opened in several Italian
towns. The work of these institutions is not to be con-
fused with oblation, in which children were given to the
church by placing them in monastic houses at an early
age. Such placements required a substantial donation.
For the rich it was an effective means of providing a liv-
ing for children without encumbering the family estate.
The practice fell into disfavor during the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries when churchmen began to realize
that those consigned to a monastery or convent at the
age of seven did not necessarily have a secure vocation.
The available evidence seems to indicate that me-
dieval attitudes toward children were not radically dif-
ferent from those of today. Noble families sent their
sons to learn courtesy and the profession of arms in the
household of a powerful friend or patron. Townsmen
sent their children to be apprenticed, and those who
could afford to do so offered them to the church at an
early age. None of these practices implied indifference.
They were in some ways analagous to sending a child
to boarding school, and the normal expectation was
that contact with the family would be maintained or, at
least, resumed at some point in the future.
Medieval attitudes toward death are less familiar.
They were conditioned by the realization that life was
likely to be short and by the universal belief in a here-
after. Death was seen in Christian terms as a transition.
The preservation of life, though an important value,
was not the all-consuming passion that it was later to
become, in part because the soul was meant to live eter-
nally. This was why heresy was thought by most jurists
to be worse than murder. It killed the soul, whereas
murder killed only that which was destined in any case
to perish.
People tried to live as long as possible, but they also
hoped to make a “good death.” They knew that the
means of preserving life indefinitely in the face of dis-
ease or injury were severely limited, and they were
deeply concerned for the future of their souls. When the
end drew near, they prepared themselves with prayer,
pious reflections, and the last rites of the church. Suffer-
ing was regarded as a trial sent by God, to be born with
patience and Christian fortitude. Above all, they hoped
to die with dignity, because death, like so many other
aspects of medieval life, was a public affair. Medieval
people wanted to die in their own beds, surrounded by
family, friends, and neighbors who could ease their pas-
sage to a better world. Most of them appear to have suc-
ceeded. Hospitals were few and were intended for
travelers, the homeless, and other unfortunates. The in-
jured, if possible, were carried to their homes, and a
priest was called if one were available. Not everyone
died well, but edifying deathbed scenes were by no
means uncommon and few people reached adulthood
without having been present at a number of them. In a
sense, death was a part of everyday experience.
Burial was in the churchyard. It, too, was a commu-
nal experience because space was limited and an under-
standable reluctance existed to use good agricultural
land as cemeteries. Archaeological digs reveal that bod-
ies were often buried several layers deep. The dead
slept as they had lived, in close proximity to their
friends and relatives with no monument to mark their
passing. The wealthy, as in so many other things, were
the exception. Their graves were marked, increasingly
decorated by their effigies, and located indoors, either
within the parish church or in a separate crypt. Hus-
band and wife were typically portrayed together; he in
his armor, she in court attire. In the later Middle Ages,
humility of a sort set in and tombs were sometimes
adorned with effigies of corpses or skeletons (see illus-
tration 11.6), but the idea of the grave as a memorial to
the deceased remained.
Medieval society differed in almost every respect
from that of the modern industrial world. The basic
conditions of material life had changed little since the
Neolithic revolution and would remain relatively con-
stant until the industrial revolution. Social behavior,
however, was influenced by feudal and Christian values
that had been unknown to the ancients. Those values
achieved gradual acceptance in the early Middle Ages
but would, at least among the privileged, undergo sub-
stantial modification in the centuries after the Black
Death. The breakdown of the feudal system and the in-
tellectual upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth