In the words of Didier Lett, emeritus professor of medieval history at the University Paris Cité, his newest book, Enfants au Moyen Âge (XII^e–XV^e siècle) about the last 400 years of the Middle Ages, is a »new synthesis« of the history of the child in the Middle Ages, and was published 65 years after the publication of the pioneering study by Philippe Ariès, L’enfant et la vie familiale sous l’Ancien Régime (1960). Lett explicitly distances himself from both Ariès and his followers regarding the assumption of the lack of a »sentiment de l’enfance« in the Middle Ages. On the back cover of Lett’s book, it is even written in bold red letters: »Rien, pourtant, n’est plus faux que cette vision misérabiliste«. It seems, however, that he might underestimate how pioneering Ariès was in the way he wrote about childhood in history. For his view, precisely with that most certainly wrong assumption about childhood in the Middle Ages, set in motion an entire movement of historians, especially of antiquity and the Middle Ages, ready to overturn his thesis. This would result into an enormous amount of new knowledge about the child in the Middle Ages.

This book is indeed a new synthesis, founded on Lett’s own impressive œuvre about the Middle Ages and on the results of that new historiography of the child in the Middle Ages, often written in response to Ariès’ book. Lett wrote extensively about men and women in the Middle Ages, with recently a book on crime (Crimes, genre et châtiments au Moyen Âge. Hommes et femmes face à la justice [XII^e–XV^e siècle], 2024). In the context of his newest book, his earlier contributions to child history are particularly significant, among them Famille et parenté dans l’Occident médiéval (V^e–XV^e siècle) (2000), and Viol d’enfants au Moyen Âge. Genre et pédocriminalité à Bologne, XIV^e–XV^e siècle (2021) about the dark side of the lives of children in the Middle Ages.

Enfants au Moyen Âge has a clear structure of three parts and 14 chapters which each start with a brief introduction which clarifies the chapter’s subject. The first part, »Les âges de l’enfance«, covers almost all aspects of early childhood. To take one of those many aspects, I mention birth, baptism, and death. This received considerable attention, for in this Christian culture a child who died prematurely and was not baptized would never be able to enter heaven due to the presence of original sin, even if they themselves had not yet committed a single sin. Therefore, also the Purgatory, the space in this period constructed in between heaven and hell, was excluded. Only the Limbo of Infants, as an additional space between heaven and hell, remained for these children. Thus, an unbaptized child who died shortly after birth, something that happened very often, meant an additional disaster for the already deeply affected parents.

The second part, »L’enfance en famille«, deals with the emotional relationship between parents and children and with the education of children through school and apprenticeship. It tells how parents approach their children’s education in a period of increase of schooling and with moralists and pedagogues recommending parents to send their children to school. Lett also discusses in detail the seemingly horizontal relationship between the children within the family. In reality, this relationship was often less horizontal due to the important role of the eldest child, who frequently replaced the father or mother. This occurred in families that were not particularly large due to the high infant and child mortality rates. But the average high number of births, usually around ten, often resulted in a large gap between the eldest still living child and the youngest child. This often resulted in a more vertical than horizontal relationship. Also, the sister-brother relationship is discussed in detail. In this first part, the reader is taken into the inner world of the family in the late Middle Ages and observes a world of affection, of parental love, and of grief over the many deaths.

In the third part, »Les malheurs de l’enfance«, Lett focuses on the dark side of child’s life in the Middle Ages. He notes that for a long time, historians had to be either for or against Ariès’ view on the child in the Middle Ages and the absence of the sentiment de l’enfance. Many studies on childhood in the Middle Ages were motivated to try to refute Ariès’s view – or their misinterpretation of that view: although Ariès denied the existence of a sentiment de l’enfance in the Middle Ages, he did not deny parental affection – by conveying a rather positive message about the world of the child in the Middle Ages. Lett warns against this. He wants to look at the child in this period »in its entirety and complexity« rather than to present a primarily positive or negative image. Indeed, much could go wrong in the life of a medieval child. Lett puts himself in the child’s shoes and imagines the violence children witnessed during this period, starting with what they could see with their own eyes. In the church, where almost everyone came very regularly, they looked at frescoes which showed not only explicit images of Christ’s suffering, but also all sorts of tortures of the saints in a way that left nothing to the imagination. On the street, there was a good chance they witnessed one of the many public executions, often combined with additional torture beforehand, a gruesome experience for everyone, but even more so for children’s minds. And it did not stop just with looking at it. Lett extensively discusses infanticide, paedophilia, sexual abuse, and abandonment. For the child was often in the wrong place at the wrong time. One of his many examples, based on judicial sources, tells how, in Reggio, at the end of the fourteenth century, a certain Giovanni lured an eight-year-old girl named Giovanna, playing with other children under her window, to him with the words: »Viens dans ma maison, que je te donne du pain et du vin«. And then he sexually abused the child. Lett provides numerous examples of dangers for children, but he also explains that these acts were subject to severe, usually capital, penalties. For they were considered and condemned as very serious crimes. Among the children’s misfortunes were also the frequent, dangerous, and often fatal childhood illnesses that affected infants and young children particularly. Accidents were also common, as being crushed by a wild boar or by a horse or falling out of a window. In sum, Lett shows how dangerous many places in the Middle Ages could be for children, and he also highlights the often exceptionally difficult and risky lives of children with disabilities, such as blindness and deafness.

The book reveals a great erudition of both literature and sources, and it is written in a clear and attractive style, with numerous examples bringing the reader closer to the child in the Middle Ages. The numerous sources used originate from several European countries, including France, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands, and vary from legal to personal documents and from the lives of the saints and of martyrs to (humanist) tractates of educators and moralists. The use of such diverse sources enabled Lett to address various levels of his subject, from the pedagogical and moral discourse on children and upbringing to the concrete behavior of parents and children. This makes this book both appealing and compelling.