Part 1 - Introduction
Part 2 - The Testimony of Augustine
Part 3 - Family Discipleship in Medieval Theology
Part 4 - The Challenge of Christian Training in the Middle Ages
Part 5 - Godparents and Godchildren in the Middle Ages
Although discipleship within the family seems to have been promoted primarily by local priests and revolved around parents and godparents teaching their children basic doctrinal statements and prayers, evidence reveals that other resources were available for some. In the Netherlands and Belgium, for example, several “household codices”- manuscripts containing the Apostles’ Creed, the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, and other prayers that were deemed important for the faith and morals of the family-have survived. In a few cases, resourceful pastors or laypersons may have produced manuals for family discipleship (1).
John Bromyard, a fourteenth-century Dominican friar in Hereford, produced a work that was intended as an aid for Dominican preachers in their mission. Bromyard called upon parents to discipline their children appropriately, to teach them God’s commandments, and to teach them to restrain their tongues. Bromyard scolded parents for caring more for their children’s physical wellbeing than for their spiritual vitality: “If they should see them poor they are saddened and sigh. If they see them sinning, nobody is sad.” To make matters worse, he complained, wealthy parents send their children to the courts of nobles to complete their education and training, but neglect to provide for the education of their souls, “rejoicing to see them led to the gallows of hell with oaths, fopperies, bad manners and dissolute company, grieving and weeping when they see them learning the art of a good life” (2).
Such challenges undoubtedly encouraged family discipleship. If Bromyard’s preaching was representative of other Dominican preaching, then perhaps the Dominican order was a useful resource for encouraging family discipleship in the late Middle Ages.
A number of factors made the promotion of family discipleship a challenge for the medieval church. Certainly the most significant challenge was illiteracy. Not only were many fathers and mothers illiterate, low literacy rates made the production books, and especially Bibles, expensive. This was a problem peculiar to medieval Europe, since literacy rates and educational levels in the regions that had once comprised the eastern Roman Empire were considerably better (3). The poor state of preparation among many parish priests did not help the situation. Further complicating matters, a large number of the clergy-and many of its best educated-were removed from parish life because of their service in monasteries. They were not involved in the spiritual development of families and produced very little to aid those who were. While in some cases a few other resources were available, many times the church’s main effort to promote family discipleship consisted of encouraging parents and godparents to teach children basic truths and prayers.
Next: Conclusion
Notes
(1) Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker, “The Household as a Site of Civic and Religious Instruction: Two Household Books from Late Medieval Brabant,” in Household, Women, and Christianities in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, ed. Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2005), 199.
(2) G. R. Oust, Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England: a Neglected Chapter in the History of English Letters and of the English People (Oxford: Basil & Blackwell, 1966), 463-466.
(3) At age seven, children in Constantinople were sent to study at a neighborhood school, where they would study the Psalms, various selections from the Bible (especially Proverbs and Ecclesiastes), and Homer. Parents assisted children as they learned these lessons. See Marcus Rautman, Daily Life in Byzantium (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006), 54.By the sixth century, schools were open to educate a large proportion of the children of freedmen. In the eleventh century, emperor Alexius Comnenus opened free schools for all, regardless of social class; Tamara Talbot Rice, Everyday Life in Byzantium (New York: Dorsett Press, 1967), 192.
[Editor's Note: This article was adapted from the book Trained in the Fear of God, edited by Randy Stinson and Timothy Paul Jones. Used by Permission.]
