Images of Children in Byzantium (review)

Byzantium, argues Cecily Hennessy, was a society in which almost half the population was made up of those we would now call young people and in which representations of children were both widespread and centrally located. In her fascinating and stimulating book, Images of Children in Byzantium, she urges us to take off our adult spectacles and look at the Byzantine world with fresh eyes. Her work makes an important contribution to recent scholarly interest in Byzantine childhood and is well worth reading by those with a more general interest in the field, especially in relation to the premodern era.

As Hennessy takes pains to point out in her solid, if somewhat convoluted, introductory chapter "Settings," hers is a work of art, not social history, based on imagery, not text. Nevertheless she grapples here with recent historical scholarship on the subject before opting for a "commonsense" approach that firmly rejects the notion that childhood as we know it is a modern occurrence. "There seems," she asserts, "no substantial evidence to suggest that in general emotions towards children [in Byzantium] were dissimilar to our own" (p. 33). In a helpful, if necessarily brief, section, Hennessy establishes her understanding of the legal and cultural status occupied by Byzantine children in relation to family, education, workplace, church, and the imperial court. Occasionally, challenging and possibly important notions are mentioned in passing. For example, she claims that childhood for the church fathers "is often not seen in positive terms, but rather as something to be feared" (p. 18). Another assertion, repeated several times here and picked up consistently throughout the book, is, however, certainly significant, even if extrapolated from rather lean data—about half the population of Byzantium were children or teenagers.

In the general chapter "Childhood" that opens the book, Hennessy discusses the range of relevant images in terms of both chronology and media. Through detailed consideration of scenes from everyday life as well religious or cultural set pieces, she engages many basic problems: difficulties in distinguishing images of children from those of low-status adults, or boys from girls, and issues raised by evidence that childhood in Byzantine times "was not a distinct phase marked only by activities that are associated with modern childhood, such as learning or playing, but a period in life with many options" including work and serious pursuits (p. 80). Here, too, Hennessy allows the reader a glimpse of the extraordinarily varied and fanciful meanings that have been read into such images by scholars. Her own interpretations are attractively down to earth. For example, she takes the wrestling boys that appear in images of the miracle of the loaves and fishes as simply depicting what little boys would do to pass the day, rather than as "symbolic of a negative force" (p. 72).

Subsequent chapters focus on the representation of children as part of the general Byzantine family, as saintly individuals, and as members of the imperial dynasty. A final chapter looks at images of Jesus and Mary as children. In each case, using detailed discussion of key exemplars, Hennessy skillfully elaborates an articulate and thorough interpretation of the imagery under consideration. Thus she sees her evidence as refuting past suggestions that families were not close in the medieval period and demonstrating that children did indeed hold an integrated, recognized, and important place in Byzantine society. The prominent presence of saintly (and ordinary) children in some religious scenes demonstrates the key role they played in providing age-appropriate exemplars and in drawing other children to the sacred. Dynastic portraiture shows that imperial children were invested with a share of religious and political power from a young age and their presence assured continuity, peace, and security for the future. Images of the young Jesus and Mary provide accessible and attractive models of childhood behavior, but their evident popularity also reflects societal acceptance of and enthusiasm for the power and significance of the young and suggests that the Byzantines were...