ABSTRACT
The early Byzantine world was full of children. Hagiographical texts provide an excellent means to recover many aspects of children's lives in the first millennium, but because it was adults who authored these texts, they provide a rather indirect access to children's own voices. Although ancient writers, such as John Chrysostom, highlight the necessity that fathers be involved and direct their children's – especially their sons' – lives, early Christian hagiography may give us reason to doubt to what extent such rather prescriptive treatments correspond to ancient culture. Children who lived in monasteries would have joined adult monks when stories of the lives of famous ascetics or biblical heroes were read in the communities. Barsauma's hagiography provides precious insights into even more personal levels on which relationships to other ascetics might replace for a child not so much the family, but the individual parent, and thus the personal guide, mentor, and caring and attentive other.
