the longed for gift of health, granted the deaf their lost hearing, straightened hunchbacks, made the lame leap with glee, made the crippled jump for joy, made the mute shout . . . ”
Father Bernard of Toulouse “cured twelve blind men, three deaf men, seven cripples, four hunchbacks, and healed other sick people numbering more than thirty.”
Saint Louis “brought back to health an innumerable quantity of people suffering from tumefactions, gout, paralysis, blindness, fistulas, tumors and lameness.”
Death did not reduce the saints’ therapeutic powers. In France, cemeteries kept strict account of the miracles that healed visitors to sacred sepulchres: “41% hemiplegics and paraplegics, 19% blind, 12% demented, 8% deaf, mutes, and deaf-mutes, and 17% suffering from fevers and other maladies.”
ORIGIN OF CHILDHOOD
If the plague didn’t get them, cold or hunger did. Execution by hunger could occur early in a poor child’s life, if not enough milk was left over in Mother’s breasts after nursing the infants of the rich.
But not even babes of a comfortable cradle looked out on an easy life. All over Europe, adults helped boost the infant mortality rate by subjecting their children to an education that tended toward the severe side.
The educational process started with turning babies into mummies. Every day servants wrapped them from head to foot in cloths tightly secured by straps and ties.
That way their pores were closed to plagues and to the satanic vapors that permeated the air, and what’s more the infants would not be a bother. Held prisoner, they could barely breathe, never mind cry, and with arms and legs pinioned they could not kick or fuss.
If bedsores or gangrene did not finish them off, these human packages moved on to the next stage. With belts holding them upright, they learned how to stand and walk as God commands, thus avoiding the animal habit of crawling on all fours. Once they were a bit bigger, they began an intensive course in the many uses of the cat-o-nine-tails, the cane, the paddle, the wooden or iron rod, and other pedagogical tools.
Not even kings were safe. Louis XIII of France was crowned king on his eighth birthday, and he began the day by receiving his quota of lashes.
The king survived childhood.
Other children also survived, who knows how, and became adults well schooled to educate their own children.
GOD’S LITTLE ANGELS
When Flora Tristán traveled to London, she was astounded to find that English mothers never caressed their children. Children occupied the lowest rung on the social ladder, below that of women. They were as deserving of trust as a broken sword.
Nevertheless, three centuries earlier it was an Englishman who became the first high-ranking European to champion children as persons worthy of respect and enjoyment. Thomas More loved them and defended them, spent time with them every chance he got, and shared with them the desire for a life of never-ending play.
His example did not last long.
For centuries, and until very recently, corporal punishment was legal in British schools. Democratically, without regard to social class, adult civilization had the right to correct childhood barbarity by beating girls with straps and striking boys with rods or canes. In the name of morals, for many generations these disciplinary instruments corrected the vices and deviations of those who had gone astray.
Not until 1986 were straps, rods, and canes outlawed in British state schools. Later on, the private schools followed suit.
To keep children from being children, parents may still punish them as long as the blows are applied “in reasonable measure and without leaving a mark.”
FATHER OF THE OGRE
The best-known children’s stories, terrorist creations that they are, also merit inclusion in the arsenal of adult weaponry against little people.
Hansel and Gretel tips you off that your parents are likely to abandon you. Little Red Riding Hood teaches you that
Father Bernard of Toulouse “cured twelve blind men, three deaf men, seven cripples, four hunchbacks, and healed other sick people numbering more than thirty.”
Saint Louis “brought back to health an innumerable quantity of people suffering from tumefactions, gout, paralysis, blindness, fistulas, tumors and lameness.”
Death did not reduce the saints’ therapeutic powers. In France, cemeteries kept strict account of the miracles that healed visitors to sacred sepulchres: “41% hemiplegics and paraplegics, 19% blind, 12% demented, 8% deaf, mutes, and deaf-mutes, and 17% suffering from fevers and other maladies.”
ORIGIN OF CHILDHOOD
If the plague didn’t get them, cold or hunger did. Execution by hunger could occur early in a poor child’s life, if not enough milk was left over in Mother’s breasts after nursing the infants of the rich.
But not even babes of a comfortable cradle looked out on an easy life. All over Europe, adults helped boost the infant mortality rate by subjecting their children to an education that tended toward the severe side.
The educational process started with turning babies into mummies. Every day servants wrapped them from head to foot in cloths tightly secured by straps and ties.
That way their pores were closed to plagues and to the satanic vapors that permeated the air, and what’s more the infants would not be a bother. Held prisoner, they could barely breathe, never mind cry, and with arms and legs pinioned they could not kick or fuss.
If bedsores or gangrene did not finish them off, these human packages moved on to the next stage. With belts holding them upright, they learned how to stand and walk as God commands, thus avoiding the animal habit of crawling on all fours. Once they were a bit bigger, they began an intensive course in the many uses of the cat-o-nine-tails, the cane, the paddle, the wooden or iron rod, and other pedagogical tools.
Not even kings were safe. Louis XIII of France was crowned king on his eighth birthday, and he began the day by receiving his quota of lashes.
The king survived childhood.
Other children also survived, who knows how, and became adults well schooled to educate their own children.
GOD’S LITTLE ANGELS
When Flora Tristán traveled to London, she was astounded to find that English mothers never caressed their children. Children occupied the lowest rung on the social ladder, below that of women. They were as deserving of trust as a broken sword.
Nevertheless, three centuries earlier it was an Englishman who became the first high-ranking European to champion children as persons worthy of respect and enjoyment. Thomas More loved them and defended them, spent time with them every chance he got, and shared with them the desire for a life of never-ending play.
His example did not last long.
For centuries, and until very recently, corporal punishment was legal in British schools. Democratically, without regard to social class, adult civilization had the right to correct childhood barbarity by beating girls with straps and striking boys with rods or canes. In the name of morals, for many generations these disciplinary instruments corrected the vices and deviations of those who had gone astray.
Not until 1986 were straps, rods, and canes outlawed in British state schools. Later on, the private schools followed suit.
To keep children from being children, parents may still punish them as long as the blows are applied “in reasonable measure and without leaving a mark.”
FATHER OF THE OGRE
The best-known children’s stories, terrorist creations that they are, also merit inclusion in the arsenal of adult weaponry against little people.
Hansel and Gretel tips you off that your parents are likely to abandon you. Little Red Riding Hood teaches you that
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