Childhood in postclassical world history: The impact of religious change

All world historians note several key changes during the centuries between 500 and 1450, after the fall of the classical empires. We do not know how, if at all, some of the key developments affected children and childhood. The decline of the classical empires themselves involved growing instability, raids by nomadic peoples, and significant increase in epidemic disease. We can assume that children suffered in many cases – they were, along with the elderly, the group most vulnerable to death and disease. But we lack details. Late in the postclassical period, Mongol invaders conquered many areas, from China to Russia to part of the Middle East, but it is not clear – beyond the bloodshed associated with Mongol warfare – that there was any distinctive Mongol impact on childhood. Three related themes that shaped these centuries unquestionably affected

childhood. The spread of missionary religions – religions that came to believe in an obligation to convert peoples across political and cultural boundaries – had the clearest effect. This chapter focuses on the changes the expanding religions introduced, particularly Buddhism and Islam, but with attention also to Christianity. These were the three religions whose expansion helped shape the whole postclassical period, with Islam actually established for the first time in this period. The religions resembled faiths like Hinduism and Judaism in many ways, but they introduced important innovations (collectively, but also through separate features) as well. The following chapter picks up more clearly on the two other dominant

themes of the postclassical period, while continuing the discussion of religious change. First, the areas organized as complex societies or civilizations expanded, which meant that new regions gained formal states, law codes, and growing cities, all of which could affect how childhood was defined and managed. Several new areas also began deliberately to imitate more established centers, as with Japanese efforts to import Chinese forms; this, too, could measurably affect childhood. Finally, trade accelerated, including inter-regional trade. This promoted further urban growth, in new centers but also in established regions such as China, which meant that a larger minority of children were involved with manufacturing and apprenticeship, even

though agricultural activities continued to predominate for the majority. Islamic merchants reached out in trade from bases in the Middle East and North Africa, interacting with Europe, central Asia, the whole Indian Ocean basin, and several parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Mongol conquests accelerated trade contacts as well, and the end of the period saw great Chinese commercial voyages for several decades. The spread of civilization, imitation, and mounting trade contributed to a changing framework for childhood in several areas, particularly between the tenth and the fifteenth centuries. It was the rapid advance of the missionary religions, however, that intro-

duced the clearest and earliest set of changes for this period, generating several significant alterations in childhood away from classical patterns. The religions also require a new set of mutual comparisons, for each of the three expanding belief systems had its own conception of what childhood was and how children’s religious responsibilities should be defined. We have already seen that some of the implications of Hinduism shaped aspects of childhood in the classical period rather differently from patterns in societies where an overarching religious emphasis was lacking. The spread of major religions to other societies picked up some of the same interests that Hinduism had developed in treating the child as a spiritual being. Yet the major religions were not alike, which suggests the new compara-

tive assignment along with attention to more general forces of change. Religious comparison is admittedly delicate, for each major religion had certain emphases that may strike contemporary readers as better or worse than others, casting light on the religion more generally and on current religious affiliations. In this chapter, we consider the implications of more extensive religious commitments for childhood, and the approaches of Buddhism and Islam more particularly. Comparisons with Christianity will be extended in Chapter 5, as a central element in the mix of factors shaping childhood in Western Europe. The nature of the expanding world religions, and their obvious applic-

ability to childhood, partially modified the patterns that had predominated in the classical period. Childhoods in classical China and the Mediterranean, as we have seen, resembled each other more than they differed. They were more shaped by the needs of agricultural society, including the insistence on obedience and on managed transitions to adult seriousness, by the institutional backing that new legal and political arrangements gave to children’s inferiority, and by the basic distinction between elite (schooled) and ordinary (working) childhoods, than by particular cultural or political components. As a result, childhoods in the classical period had varied less, across societies, than had been the case for hunting and gathering groups, where the lower reliance on child labor created more options. The new commitment to missionary religions altered this equation,

producing more distinctions in ideas about childhood and approaches to children than had characterized the classical centuries. At the same time, the

religions introduced some common patterns of change and continuity from the classical period, which was another important development. The expanding religions shared some significant ideas about childhood, which

marked them off, collectively, from the approaches that had predominated in the classical period, particularly in China and the Mediterranean. Writings in most of the major religions emphasized the importance of children. Christianity, with its stories and ubiquitous artistic representations of the Christ child, gave more symbolic attention to a young child than any cultural system had ever offered before. All three of the religions that sprang from the Middle East – Christianity and Islam, like their earlier antecedent, Judaism – also highlighted the pride and responsibility of parenthood, and particularly fatherhood (though Christianity, uniquely, also had the strong image of the loving mother of Jesus). These religions also stressed the importance of obedience to parents – “honor thy father and mother” – which in turn could support a number of disciplinary devices. This was carried further still in Christianity, with references to God the Father in the Trinity, which could be taken as an archetype for the father in the family. (It was true that some Christian writers noted that, for children, love of parents should be secondary to devotion to God, which could introduce a discordant note if taken literally; but the obedience theme more commonly predominated.) Here, of course, religions offered new words to maintain a well established emphasis for childhoods in the context of an agricultural economy. Early Christianity even frowned on the emotional grieving some Romans displayed on the death of adolescent sons, urging a more “internal mourning” and a recognition that God’s will must be done and that too much grief might displace proper devotion to the Almighty. Though again in different language, this in many ways constituted a return to the more muted reactions to children’s deaths, at least in official rhetoric, characteristic of agricultural societies more generally. In addition to praise for children and parenting, the world religions

brought two other elements to childhood, capable of generating significant change. All, in one way or another, stressed a divine element in every human being – a soul, or some participation in the divine essence. This belief – with many specific variants – in turn enhanced the sense of responsibility for protecting children as God’s creatures or participants in a divine connection. Most particularly, the major religions vigorously opposed infanticide, which had been widely practiced in many areas dominated either by secular or polytheistic beliefs. Judiasm also turned more decisively in this direction, partly in association with Christianity or Islam. One of Christianity’s early results as it gained ground in the later Roman Empire, for example, was to generate new edicts outlawing infanticide. Thus a Christian Emperor in 374 CE had decreed, “If anyone, man or woman, should commit the sin of killing an infant, that crime should be punishable by death.” Laws to protect children proliferated, including efforts to ban the sale of children.

Early Christians even tried to discourage wetnursing, in order to protect children and increase the bonds between mother and child. Islam, similarly, quickly developed protective recommendations. Muhammad specifically renounced the Arab tradition of infanticide, and here too there were attempts to prevent the sale of children. While adherence to the various protective measures was surely imperfect, and there were many ways to jeopardize children without admitting outright infanticide, the rate of killing of infants as a means of birth control almost certainly declined under the aegis of the world religions; the practice continued most clearly in areas such as China, where the religions had a less complete foothold. Children were part of the religious community from birth, and this had important implications for real behaviors. The world religions all paid attention to the need for religious training for

children (as Hinduism and Judaism had long done), providing particular rituals soon after birth, to launch the connection between children and the religion, and then, at least for some children, to provide opportunities for more formal religious education. This was the second general impact of the new religious surge. The result was twofold: a redefinition of what education was about – an early goal of Christian educators, attacking the classical curriculum in the Mediterranean in favor of spiritual edification; and, on the whole, an impulse to spread elements of education more widely than had been the case in the classical centuries. Sometimes, for busy peasant or worker families, where children’s labor remained essential, religious training consisted of little more than inculcation of certain memorized passages that would serve as prayers and qualify for more formal entry into religious maturity; there is no reason to exaggerate the change. For a minority, however, all the major religions provided rich doctrines and moral and legal codes that could inspire serious scholarship and the kind of schooling that this scholarship in turn required. Many parents, particularly in elite families, were interested in identifying children who seemed to have an aptitude for this kind of education. Two of the great world religions (again along with Judaism) were specifically religions of a book, and this could motivate wider exposure to literacy to provide access to the Bible or the Quran even without profound commitment to the higher reaches of religious scholarship. The world religions, in other words, both encouraged schooling and gave it a particular bent, affecting many children to some degree and, for a few, providing access to spiritual and scholarly vocations. By 1000 CE, and outside East Asia, where Confucianism motivated much of the available education, almost all schooling occurred under religious guidance and, at least officially, for primarily religious purposes. Strictness and physical discipline often persisted – this was not always a thorough overhaul of earlier educational traditions – but there was real change. Beyond the two basic impacts, the major world religions introduced some

new tensions into the gendering of childhood. On the one hand, they all

emphasized – and this was part of the idea of souls or participation in the divine essence – that girls as well as boys shared in religious life and opportunities. They reduced the assertions of gender inequality that had been present in earlier Judaism or in Hinduism (where, in the classical period, some religious scholars discussed whether women had to be reincarnated as men before they could contemplate any further spiritual advancement). Both Christianity and Buddhism provided explicit religious outlets for women, in the convents, and some girls could be sent there for training and for longer-term vocations. Individual girls also might receive religious education – this was not uncommon in Islam, sometimes at the hands of loving fathers who realized their daughters’ talents. But the religions were also patriarchal, clearly judging that advanced religious training was far more important for boys than for girls. While some rituals, like Christian baptism, were common to both sexes, others aimed particularly at connecting boys with the religious experience. Any formal religious education available included far more boys than girls. The spread of religion in the postclassical centuries involved one other

common feature relevant to childhood: wide diversity in the impact of religious beliefs about children. Despite extensive conversions to Islam, Christianity or Buddhism, people varied in how much they knew about doctrines bearing on issues like childhood, and they varied also in how much they cared. Different economic circumstances affected responses as well. The very poor might be influenced by the encouragement toward protecting children, for example, but their circumstances might still seem to require that a child be abandoned, or left on the doorstep of a religious institution (a new recourse, that might, however, often lead to the child’s death because of inadequate care before or after the separation). As we turn to consider some of the particular flavor of individual world religions, it is important to remember the obvious: actual practices toward children may have differed less, from one society to the next, than the beliefs implied. In addition, religious authorities themselves argued over some key concerns, which could add to the complexity. Buddhism, the oldest of the world religions, but spreading in the post-

classical period to various parts of East and Southeast Asia, had rather diffuse implications for childhood, certainly compared with Islam and even Christianity. This was partly because the religion was unusually flexible, often blending with local patterns (including Confucianism in China) in ways that might leave childhood relatively untouched. Buddhism also emphasized spiritual goals over detailed, legalistic prescriptions for daily life, defining criteria for family practice with less precision, certainly in comparison with Islam. And while there were many Buddhist writings, there was no single, canonical book, as with Islam and Christianity – another reason for more latitude where childhood was concerned. Because of its intense otherworldliness, Buddhism could generate some

concern about attachments to children. The Buddha himself was said to have

told a story about a holy man who had left his wife and child, and was then indifferent to their visits. “He feels no pleasure when she comes, no sorrow when she goes; him, I call a true saint released from passion.” Add to this a strong belief that celibacy was the holiest possible state, and that childbirth was a polluting act, and Buddhism could become a religion with little concern for children save that they not consume too much attention. Similar strands, including the organization of celibate communities, by definition without recognized children, cropped up in Christianity. But Buddhism, as a major religion rather than a limited sect, embraced a

large majority of followers who had children, and it did offer some guidance and protection. Most obviously, it helped organize a variety of rituals for children, to ward off harm and prepare for a religious life – in this, it resembled Hinduism and indeed all the major religions. Many Buddhist children attended religious schools, and even more heard inspiring stories of holy lives. Buddhists also reacted to some earlier practices applicable to children that

had developed in India and elsewhere. They opposed the marriage of girls during childhood, believing that marriage was a contract that required mature assent. In certain cases, Buddhist devotion could also provide children, by ado-

lescence, with a religious vocation in defiance of their parents’ wishes, a spiritual alternative to the standard arrangements in the transitions from childhood to adulthood. This was an important tension for Buddhism in China, where Confucianists often attacked religion as undermining family loyalties. A Chinese Buddhist story involved Miao-shan, youngest daughter of a king, who defied her father by entering a convent, which her father (who had wanted the girl to accept an arranged marriage) then tried to burn. The story had a family-friendly twist, however: later, Miao-shan cut off her arm to use for magic medicine that restored her blind father’s sight. Other moral stories told of Buddhist children whose prayers for their parents saved them from hell. Some accounts overlapped with Confucianism outright, as when a young man praised his mother for pushing him to study in Buddhist schools: “that I am an official today is due to my mother’s daily training.” Certain Buddhist concepts for children were translated into Confucian terms to make the religion more acceptable in China: thus a Buddhist (Sanskrit) word for morality became “filial submission and obedience.” Buddhism obviously influenced childhood, particularly through the new

set of religious lessons and rituals; but the otherworldly orientation, and the compromises with existing beliefs about children, constrained a more sweeping impact. Islamic childhood proved to be far more fully defined than its Buddhist

counterpart, offering important distinctions as well from Christianity. The fastest-growing religion during the postclassical period, Islam evinced several special interests concerning childhood, some of which blended with other

aspects of Middle Eastern civilization. The Prophet Muhammad himself deliberately intended to introduce some changes in the way childhood was defined and guided among Arabs, and his approach encouraged wider initiatives. There was no question that the advent of this new religion had significant implications for childhood. Muhammed noted, “when a man has children, he has fulfilled half his religion, so let him fear God for the remaining half.” Many Muslim writers, both religious and medical, stressed the need for

considerable attention to babies. Islam itself – and this was a contrast with Christianity, at least at the doctrinal level – stressed the innocence of newborns. These infants had not had time to sin, and they were potential believers; further, Allah himself was merciful. So there was no debate about what happened to infants if they died: they would ascend to paradise. Scholars did discuss the fates of children born to infidel – non-Muslim – families, but most agreed that they too were innocent; Christian theologians had similar debates with, on the whole, different conclusions about babies, tainted with original sin, born to non-Christian families. The Prophet Muhammad, whose own kindness to children was often cited, in specifically condemning the practice of infanticide in Arab tradition, offered another indication that early childhood commanded real and sympathetic attention in this new religion. The Quran also emphasized care for children if a marriage dissolved, and insisted on the property rights of orphans: “meddle not with the substance of an orphan,” “clothe them, and speak kindly unto them.” An adult who adopted a child was responsible for providing suitable training, so the child could have some security for its future; Islamic law in this sense provided a number of “rights” for children in potentially vulnerable situations. (The concept of rights is in some respects modern, but it has been applied retroactively to the careful provision for children in Islamic legal codes.) Religious concern for the very young was heightened by the strong medical tradition in the region, which had been enhanced during the Hellenistic period when scientists in places such as Egypt adapted the Greek scientific achievement toward more practical application. There was a great deal of pediatric advice available on children’s health needs, which complemented the religious emphasis. An influential childrearing manual by Ibn Qayyim, in the fourteenth century, discussed infant crying (caused by physical stimuli plus a “poke” by the devil), feeding, and teething, but also the importance of children’s individual interests and aptitudes that adults should take into account. Many aspects of Middle Eastern childhood reflected older family practices

that had little to do with religion, though they did not contradict it. Sons were clearly identified in terms of their kin relationships, their names chosen largely in advance to indicate what family group they belonged to. Infants were swaddled – wrapped in cloth – to protect them from accidents and in the belief that their limbs would grow better. As we have seen, this tradition

persists in the region to the present day. Young children bonded tightly with their mother; weaning occurred relatively late for an agricultural society, from age two to four, and most children would stay close to their mother until age seven. This created intense emotional ties that would outlast early childhood, carrying on into adulthood, and contrasted with the more distant position of fathers. But at age seven, fathers would take over the upbringing of boys. Paternal authority was strongly emphasized in principle, with children enjoined to respect the father or older male, who in turn had the duty to provide for the family. Children’s family life was also conditioned by the active role of the other family members, such as aunts and uncles. Training in manners, including hospitality, received much attention. At the same time, religion was constantly present in a proper home. A

prayer was whispered into the ears of newborns to assure that they would be faithful to Islam, while premasticated dates were rubbed on the infants’ palates to transfer blessings. When first-born sons were seven days old, their hair was cut and a sheep sacrificed, constituting fathers’ official recognition of the children. If the father identified particular gifts, and the family had sufficient means, he might place a four-or five-year-old boy in a religious training program, beginning a commitment to education; religion, in this case, interrupted the normal maternal oversight for young boys. Fathers’ responsibility for the religious training of children was widely stressed – “at this age learning is like engraving on a stone” – that is, it will last a lifetime. Indeed, the religiously inspired commitment to education constituted one

of Islam’s great contributions to changing patterns of childhood, bridging between the more limited, elite-focused efforts of the classical period and the still more extensive schooling characteristic of modern societies. Even poor families tried to give boys some religious training in the mosque or in a Quranic school or kuttab. Girls might attend a Quranic school also, though usually for shorter periods. In elite families, tutors instructed girls in the home. As a thirteenth-century text put it, for a pious Muslim “learning is prescribed for us all.” Rates of school formation in the major cities of the Middle East and North Africa began to soar from the ninth century onward, and in some cases the number of major schools rose by over 1000 percent during the next 400 years. A new movement for schools called maktabs, aimed at younger children, dated back to the tenth century. The idea was that children learned better when taught as a group than when tutored individually, mainly because of competition, but also because of group discussions. Maktab education, widely defined by a Persian philosopher named Ibn Sina, harked back in part to earlier Greek and Persian traditions, but involved far more extensive outreach. Education might begin at age 6 and extend to 14, when elite children were expected to choose a career (including Islamic study and law) and select any further education accordingly. Maktab schools taught not only religion and ethics, but literacy, literature, and broader philosophy. One of the earliest handbooks for elementary educators

emanated from this general interest, written by Ibn Sahnud in 870 and discussing basic reading, writing, and arithmetic training along with worship and good manners, and some sports and games. Girls had less access to the formal schools, though there were many women teachers and considerable praise for a female tradition of scholarship; one male Sunni scholar, Ibn Asakir, wrote of having had more than 80 women teachers, many of whom were quite erudite. Even aside from the issue of gender, it is not easy to determine the full extent of Islamic education. Some training, particularly in the countryside, aimed more at memorizing passages from the Quran than at actual reading, and Islamic education tended to narrow in scope to a more purely religious focus, toward the end of the postclassical period. Still, it’s been estimated that about 30 percent of the adult population was literate, undoubtedly the highest in the world up to that point. After 1500, Islamic educators wrote glowingly about books as “indispensable tools for learning,” arguing that it was “more important to spend your time studying books rather than copying them.” All in all, expansion of education was a vital part of Islam’s impact on childhood, with potential influence even on other regions – though without yet making schooling, rather than work, the core obligation of childhood. Islam also offered less formal features for children and for adults who

dealt with them. Young children were greatly indulged, which may have reflected the religious belief in their innocence and certainly expressed parental pleasure. As the family economy permitted, there were special foods and entertainments. There are indications that teenagers were less valued, with little delight taken in their special energy; indeed, childhood itself was seen as ending with puberty. Apprenticeships were often brief, and there was every encouragement to move quickly from childhood to adulthood. Children arranged their own play, with little sense here of parental responsibility, which focused more on the serious business of preparing for adulthood both economically and religiously. Careful arrangements, including considerable seclusion, aimed at maintaining the virginity of girls before marriage. Islam had no special commitment to lifelong celibacy, however, in contrast to strong strains in both Christianity and Buddhism; this may have linked to the belief in childish innocence. Children were given chores at an early age, and this, along with the religious education, gave childhood a tone of seriousness, at least in adult perceptions. Religious authorities widely debated the role of physical discipline, a

debate frankly unusual in this period in world history and perhaps reflecting the religious valuation of children. It was widely assumed that parents, particularly fathers, should punish children who misbehaved, and the practice was common in schools as well. A number of writers, however, urged restraint here. The great North African historian Ibn Khaldun noted that undue punishment for students “makes them feel oppressed, causes them to lose their energy.” Islamic law also regulated how children could be

beaten – how many blows for what kinds of offenses, and on what parts of the body (the head and hands should never be struck at all); the goal was to avoid excess and to assure a dispassionate rather than angry administration of discipline. Late in the postclassical period, Islamic writers also produced an extra-

ordinary array of condolence books, designed to comfort parents in their grief at the loss of a child. More than 20 bereavement books appeared in Egypt and Syria between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, in interesting contrast to Western Europe at the same period, where the genre was virtually unknown. Titles such as Book of Anxiety about Children’s Death or Consolation for Those in Distress on the Death of Children show the intent. Almost certainly, the series reflected the results of increased disease – bubonic plague hit the Middle East in the mid-fourteenth century, before reaching Europe. Did it also show a growing level of emotional attachment to children? There’s a bit of a puzzle here, though the outpouring was consistent with the kind of attention Islam more generally encouraged toward young children. The implications of religion reached more deeply into childhood, and into

ideas about children, than classical cultures had done, particularly in China and the Mediterranean. This is why the spread of world religions promoted significant change, particularly in the common rethinking of infanticide, but also in the new approaches to education. This is why new differences in discussions of childhood opened up, depending on which specific religion was involved. At the same time, a more religious period in world history hardly overturned the basic features of childhood in agricultural economies. Religion provided new reasons for urging obedience, to take the most important continuity. It might permit some new discussion of physical discipline, as with Islam, but it could also impose new psychological pressures – the onus of disobedience against parents translated into disobedience to God’s will – which powerfully reinforced the themes that agricultural civilizations had already developed. Even attitudes toward the frequent deaths of children, though again open to new discussion about possible receptions in the hereafter, were hardly revolutionized, for the very good reason that the religions generated no real change in this aspect of traditional childhood. Religion mattered to childhood, but its powers to change, even its desire to change, were hardly unlimited.