More thoughts on family ties, childcare and children's clothing in Renaissance Italy
My research into medical care & prenatal dietary recommendations in the renaissance has led me into some interesting side paths. In contrast to the often made asertation that pre-modern parents didn't care about their children, weren't bonded to them, or distanced themselves emotionally because of the staggeringly high death rates, I've found lots of little bits of information that indicate that they loved their children very much, just as we do today. While the mindset as far as religion, schooling, expected life paths and age of responsibility are different than what we know today in the US, they still very much cared for their children, and planned for their future.
Excerpts from two letters really drove this home for me. The first is a quote from a letter written by a very well known Florentine author, Giovanni Boccaccio to his friend Petrarch in 1366.
"Your Elitta, my delight, greeted me with a smile although she did not know who I was. I was not only overcome with joy: I took her into my arms eagerly imagining that I was holding my own little girl. What can I say? If you think I exaggerate ask William of Ravenna or our Donato [degli Albizzi], for they both knew her. You child has the idential aspect of the child who was my Eletta, the same expression, the same light and laughter in her eyes, the same gestures and walk, the same fashion of carrying her little self, save that my Eletta was some what taller for her age at five and a half, when I saw her for the last time. She has the same way of talking, the same vocabulary. She has the same simple manner. In truth there is no difference between them except that your little one has golden hair while mine had locks of chestnut. Ah, how often, holding your child in my arms and listening to her prattle, the memory of my own lost little girl has brought to my eyes tears that I conceal from all." 1. Giovanni Boccacchio, Opere latine minore, ed. Francesco Massera (Bari, 1928), ep. 14 in Thomas G. Bergin, Boccaccio (New York,m 1981, 50-51.
The second excerpt is much longer and actually made me tear up a bit. It's a quote from a letter this time from Petrarch to to his friend Donato Albanzani, in condolance on the loss of his son, and grief and rememberance of having lost his much beloved grandson. It also touches on the extremely widespread practice of baptismal sponsorship an co-parents which was part of the Florentine social network, and the belief that children were on loan from God and their death was His calling them to return to Him.
"My own dear boy was your spiritual son, since you sponsored him in baptism. Let me join my own cruel recent loss to yours, that we may both seek wholesome balm. Do not murmer that our wounds are not comparable, tha tyou have lost a son and I a grandson. I swear by Christ and our friendship that I loved him more than a son. What if I did not beget him? HIs parents were Francesco and Francesca [Petrarach's illegitimate daugher], who as you know are both dearer to me than my own soul. Being born of two persons much dearer to me than myself, he was clearer than if he were my son. You gave an illustrious ancient name to your boy; we gave ours a humble family name, or rather you gave them both, since you christened my boy. Your Solon augured a great career, if only fate has been kind; our child recieved the name of both his parents and of myself. He was the fourth Francesco, the solance of our lives, our hope, the joy of our house. " "But I admit I was profoundly shaken to see the sweet promise of his life reft away at it's beginning. And if I were now what I was only a few years ago, I should have assailed all my friends, and you first of all, with my moans and groans. If is irrelevant to remark that my loss was that of a mere infant. For infants my be passionately lvoed; not to mention natural instinct, we are captured by their innocence and purity, whereas we may be repelled by their pretensions and disobedience in later year, and our love may mingle with disfavor...." "Now - to let you know all my weaknesses- I have ordered a marble tomb in Pavia for my little boy. It is inscribed with six elegiac verses. I should hardly do this for anyone else, and I shoudl be most unwilling that anyone should do the same for me. BUt suppressing my tears and lamentations, I was so overcome my my emotions that, having no other recourse, I did what I could. He is in heaven, beyond all earthly cares, and I could offer him nothing but this last vain kind of tribute. If it is useless to him, if is some solace to me. And so I wanted to consecrate something, not to evoke tears, as Virgil says, but to preserve his memory- not in me, who have no need of stones or of poems, but in chance passersby, that they may learn how dear he was to all, from the very beginning of his life. Though Cicero says in his either Philippic that we can pay the dead no other tribute than tombs and statues, we know that we can render them greater service by prayers to God for the salvation of their souls. Of such prayers my little boy has slight need; yet since int he sigh tof God not even the heavens are spotless and a baby not may not spend a single day on earth without sin, I pray to Got to have mercy on him. Now that he is torn from my embrace, my God take him lovingly in his arms. My love for that child so filled my breast that I cannot think that I ever loved anything on earth so much......2. Morris Bishop, trans. , Letters from Petrarch (Bloomington, 1966), 274-76.
Adoption and co-parenting was widely spread in Renaissance Florence, in the upper classes and even upper middle merchant class. These bonds were most often between those of different classes, and went beyond promises of helping to care for and raise the child in the possible event that they become orphaned, it also created an intricate interwoven web in both the social and business spheres. There is an interesting set of tables of the baptismal kinship of a coppersmith, which lists the gender of the child, and the father's occupation (as an indicator of social and economic status), I'll potentially get more into the impressions I got from this information later.
The other set of tables in The Renaissance Man and His Children by Louis Haas that I found fascinating on several levels lists clothing and expenses for the children in the Strozzi family. They are listed by child, date of expense, item, and price broken down into Lire, Soldi, and Denari. These lists contain lots of tidbits of information. How often did they replace shoes, were colors mentioned specifically? The most frequent entry is for cloth slippers with no mention of color or fabric, but occasionally they are specified to be white, or black, with one mention of "red cloth slippers (scharpettino) toddler sized (?)". There are also mentions of shoes, "cloth slippers and wooden-soled sandals", "cloth slippers and wooden clogs", "black boots", and just "wooden-soled sandals". There are a lot of mentions of "hose" for both girls and boys starting at about a year old, lots of cloth purchases, often wool, or silk. Colors were not always mentioned, but when they were it was mostly black, sometimes red, and a couple of times white- although these may have been more an indicator of family colors rather than a broader indicator of color preference for children in Florence.
Wet nursing does not seem to be any indicator that the family did not care for their children. In families where mothers often gave birth every year and there was a medical and social prejudice against pregnant women nursing seems to have contributed to upper class mothers nursing for perhaps the first couple of days before procuring a wet nurse, and working classes either leaving their children with a foundling home or with a woman of lower class to in turn nurse and care for her child. Wetnursing in Florence (and seemingly all across Europe) was big business, and like working mothers today, the working class women would have a hard choice to make in having someone else care for their child while they worked to bring money into their household.
Excerpts from two letters really drove this home for me. The first is a quote from a letter written by a very well known Florentine author, Giovanni Boccaccio to his friend Petrarch in 1366.
"Your Elitta, my delight, greeted me with a smile although she did not know who I was. I was not only overcome with joy: I took her into my arms eagerly imagining that I was holding my own little girl. What can I say? If you think I exaggerate ask William of Ravenna or our Donato [degli Albizzi], for they both knew her. You child has the idential aspect of the child who was my Eletta, the same expression, the same light and laughter in her eyes, the same gestures and walk, the same fashion of carrying her little self, save that my Eletta was some what taller for her age at five and a half, when I saw her for the last time. She has the same way of talking, the same vocabulary. She has the same simple manner. In truth there is no difference between them except that your little one has golden hair while mine had locks of chestnut. Ah, how often, holding your child in my arms and listening to her prattle, the memory of my own lost little girl has brought to my eyes tears that I conceal from all." 1. Giovanni Boccacchio, Opere latine minore, ed. Francesco Massera (Bari, 1928), ep. 14 in Thomas G. Bergin, Boccaccio (New York,m 1981, 50-51.
The second excerpt is much longer and actually made me tear up a bit. It's a quote from a letter this time from Petrarch to to his friend Donato Albanzani, in condolance on the loss of his son, and grief and rememberance of having lost his much beloved grandson. It also touches on the extremely widespread practice of baptismal sponsorship an co-parents which was part of the Florentine social network, and the belief that children were on loan from God and their death was His calling them to return to Him.
"My own dear boy was your spiritual son, since you sponsored him in baptism. Let me join my own cruel recent loss to yours, that we may both seek wholesome balm. Do not murmer that our wounds are not comparable, tha tyou have lost a son and I a grandson. I swear by Christ and our friendship that I loved him more than a son. What if I did not beget him? HIs parents were Francesco and Francesca [Petrarach's illegitimate daugher], who as you know are both dearer to me than my own soul. Being born of two persons much dearer to me than myself, he was clearer than if he were my son. You gave an illustrious ancient name to your boy; we gave ours a humble family name, or rather you gave them both, since you christened my boy. Your Solon augured a great career, if only fate has been kind; our child recieved the name of both his parents and of myself. He was the fourth Francesco, the solance of our lives, our hope, the joy of our house. " "But I admit I was profoundly shaken to see the sweet promise of his life reft away at it's beginning. And if I were now what I was only a few years ago, I should have assailed all my friends, and you first of all, with my moans and groans. If is irrelevant to remark that my loss was that of a mere infant. For infants my be passionately lvoed; not to mention natural instinct, we are captured by their innocence and purity, whereas we may be repelled by their pretensions and disobedience in later year, and our love may mingle with disfavor...." "Now - to let you know all my weaknesses- I have ordered a marble tomb in Pavia for my little boy. It is inscribed with six elegiac verses. I should hardly do this for anyone else, and I shoudl be most unwilling that anyone should do the same for me. BUt suppressing my tears and lamentations, I was so overcome my my emotions that, having no other recourse, I did what I could. He is in heaven, beyond all earthly cares, and I could offer him nothing but this last vain kind of tribute. If it is useless to him, if is some solace to me. And so I wanted to consecrate something, not to evoke tears, as Virgil says, but to preserve his memory- not in me, who have no need of stones or of poems, but in chance passersby, that they may learn how dear he was to all, from the very beginning of his life. Though Cicero says in his either Philippic that we can pay the dead no other tribute than tombs and statues, we know that we can render them greater service by prayers to God for the salvation of their souls. Of such prayers my little boy has slight need; yet since int he sigh tof God not even the heavens are spotless and a baby not may not spend a single day on earth without sin, I pray to Got to have mercy on him. Now that he is torn from my embrace, my God take him lovingly in his arms. My love for that child so filled my breast that I cannot think that I ever loved anything on earth so much......2. Morris Bishop, trans. , Letters from Petrarch (Bloomington, 1966), 274-76.
Adoption and co-parenting was widely spread in Renaissance Florence, in the upper classes and even upper middle merchant class. These bonds were most often between those of different classes, and went beyond promises of helping to care for and raise the child in the possible event that they become orphaned, it also created an intricate interwoven web in both the social and business spheres. There is an interesting set of tables of the baptismal kinship of a coppersmith, which lists the gender of the child, and the father's occupation (as an indicator of social and economic status), I'll potentially get more into the impressions I got from this information later.
The other set of tables in The Renaissance Man and His Children by Louis Haas that I found fascinating on several levels lists clothing and expenses for the children in the Strozzi family. They are listed by child, date of expense, item, and price broken down into Lire, Soldi, and Denari. These lists contain lots of tidbits of information. How often did they replace shoes, were colors mentioned specifically? The most frequent entry is for cloth slippers with no mention of color or fabric, but occasionally they are specified to be white, or black, with one mention of "red cloth slippers (scharpettino) toddler sized (?)". There are also mentions of shoes, "cloth slippers and wooden-soled sandals", "cloth slippers and wooden clogs", "black boots", and just "wooden-soled sandals". There are a lot of mentions of "hose" for both girls and boys starting at about a year old, lots of cloth purchases, often wool, or silk. Colors were not always mentioned, but when they were it was mostly black, sometimes red, and a couple of times white- although these may have been more an indicator of family colors rather than a broader indicator of color preference for children in Florence.
Wet nursing does not seem to be any indicator that the family did not care for their children. In families where mothers often gave birth every year and there was a medical and social prejudice against pregnant women nursing seems to have contributed to upper class mothers nursing for perhaps the first couple of days before procuring a wet nurse, and working classes either leaving their children with a foundling home or with a woman of lower class to in turn nurse and care for her child. Wetnursing in Florence (and seemingly all across Europe) was big business, and like working mothers today, the working class women would have a hard choice to make in having someone else care for their child while they worked to bring money into their household.