ABSTRACT
Around 400 CE, three men, Jerome, Chrysostom, and Augustine, all of them church celebrities and future saints, spent much energy writing about children and their formation. Drawing on their own childhood experiences and on a certain measure of familiarity with children's lives, they reflected on the problems and potentials of this stage of life and offered advice on how children ought to be brought up. This chapter focuses on them because they not only were influential figures in their time but also represented the attitudes and ways of thinking of many, both in the ancient world in general and in the early Christian movement in particular. The chapter explores how do the three writers justify their views about children and their formation, both ideologically and, above all, theologically, how these three authors describe the relationships between adults and children, and what kind of perceptions or ideas do Jerome, Chrysostom, and Augustine have of children as human beings.
