The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance

530 Pages·1988·26.818 MB·English

by  John Boswell

n his previous book. Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homo­
sexuality, winner of the 1981 American Book Award for History,
John Boswell defined and charted a whole new field of inquiry. In
his new book, he brings to bear what Michel Foucault called his
“unfailing erudition" on an equally untouched and fascinating
topic. Intrigued by hints in Christian literature that children were
routinely abandoned, not only in the ancient world, but well into
the Middle Ages, and that these children did not die but were used
as servants and prostitutes, or brought up in other households,
Boswell, professor of history at Yale University, undertook to
explore the past of this remarkably topical subject.
Using a wide variety of sources—including civil and canon law,
trial records, foundling-hospital archives, and artistic representa­
tions—Boswell has pieced together the intriguing story behind
ancient and medieval abandonment. And he discovers, as he
describes in this highly readable account, that it was a widespread
and familiar part of domestic life in most of Europe, a custom
accepted and regulated by the church and civil authorities, often
celebrated in literature, and, in the absence of reliable birth con­
trol, a practice that was often essential to the survival of the rest of
the family.
Against the background of modern concerns—both historical and
social—about the family and its problems, Boswell's work provides
a startling perspective on the difficulties faced by parents and
children in earlier societies. It is a story that is moving for the despera­
tion that drove parents to abandon their children, for the tenderness
and generosity that inspired others to rescue them, and for the
many subtle ways Western culture devised to see that abandoned
children would be saved and reared by the kindness of strangers.

THE KINDNESS
OF STRANGERS

T h e
K I N D N E S S
o f S T R A N G E R S
The Abandonment
of Children
in Western Europe
from Late Antiquity
to the Renaissance
J O H N B O S W E L L
P a n t h e o n B o o k s ' N e w Y o r k
Copyright © 1988 by John Boswell
All rights reserved under International and Pan-
American Copyright Conventions. Published in the
United States by Pantheon Books, a division
of Random House, Inc., New York, and simul­
taneously in Canada by Random House of Canada
Limited, Toronto.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Boswell, John.
The kindness of strangers.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Abandoned children—Europe—History.
2. Child welfare—Europe—History.
3. Social history—To 500.
4. Social history—Medieval, 500-1500. I. Title.
HV887.E8B67 1988 362.7Ό44 88-42544
ISBN 0-394-57240-8
Manufactured in the United States of America
Book design by Chris Welch
This book is dedicated
to all loving families,
adoptive and natal,
especially to my own mother and father,
sister and brothers,
and to Elsie, Gram, Sally, Rob,
Jamie John, and Jennifer,
who adopted me
though I was not abandoned