The orphans of Byzantium: child welfare in the Christian empire

IX. Did It Work?

IX DID IT WORK? Despite the Judeo-Christian belief that the God of the universe especially loved orphans and protected them with a father ’s care, the Byzantines recognized that from a worldly point of view orphania was the greatest disaster that could befall a child. Archbishop Demetrios Chomatianos described how it caught children when they were too young and too inexperienced to manage their own affairs. As a result, it often scattered their possessions both to relatives and to outsiders. According to Chomatianos, Byzantine law was unable to protect such children from all the evils of orphanhood, but it did provide the help of guardians. The archbishop frankly admitted that relatives and friends frequently despoiled the property of orphans, but he saw the Byzantine laws of guardianship as providing at least some protection against the greed of sinful men and women.1 Was Chomatianos’s faith in the Byzantine system of guardianship justified? The following chapter will examine to what degree the Byzantine laws of guardianship and adoption, backed up by the church-run orphanages, actually protected children who had lost their parents. The lack of records makes such an inquiry extremely difficult. Whereas historians who study Renaissance orphanages in Italy or foundling homes in eighteenth-century France have at their disposal records of how many children entered or left an institution in any given year, how many died while in the orphanage or left to lead normal . Chomatianos, no.  (p. ).  adult lives, no such evidence exists for the Byzantine Empire.2 In fact, only two sources have survived from the one thousand years of East Roman history that offer any indication of how many children Byzantine orphanages housed at any one time. Moreover, no official records exist from any region at any period that reveal how many children were assigned guardians either through the tutela legitima or the tutela testamentaria. The only indication of how many children were under the supervision of guardians comes from the tax records discussed in Chapter One.3 In addition to the lack of any statistical data, one should consider also the difficulty of evaluating child care. What constitutes success? As we saw in the previous chapter, of the two children identified as having studied at the Orphanotropheion, Bogoas and Stilbes’ student, one succeeded and the other failed in terms of material goals. But was Bogoas truly successful because he achieved a secure position in the clergy? Since the Orphanotropheion provided an environment where Bogoas could engage in homosexual activity and even castrate himself, many observers both in Byzantine times and today would classify his training there as a failure. On the other hand, Stilbes’ student died in poverty, but perhaps in sanctity; at least he left one of his former teachers deeply grieved by his death. From a spiritual point of view, then, one might evaluate the experiences of these two orphans far differently .4 Despite these difficulties, this chapter will examine the Byzantine system of orphan care simply to determine whether it protected orphans from physical want by providing food, shelter, and some education . Whether it succeeded in fostering moral and spiritual growth is a question beyond the ken of human scholarship. Although no records survive that provide any statistical information     . For an example of how complete the records are from some orphanages of Renaissance Italy, see Gavitt, Charity, who presents a thorough study of the Ospedale degli Innocenti of Florence from  to . . Theodore of Stoudios, Ep.  (p. ) refers to the early-ninth-century orphanage outside Prousa (see Chapter Five, p. ). Typikon Kecharitomene, chap.  (p. ), describes a twelfth-century monastery for women that was always to care for two orphan girls. . For Bogoas, see Basilakes, Adversus Bogoam, chaps. – (pp. –); for Stilbes’s student , see Stilbes, Monodia, pp. –. concerning the results of guardianship or record vital statistics of children raised in orphanages, we do have the seventy-seven cases that have provided valuable information on the orphans of the Byzantine Empire. An analysis of these seventy-seven children, combined with a consideration of several general statements concerning the fate of orphans during the Byzantine centuries, will give us some indication of whether the East Roman system in fact succeeded in aiding orphans.5 GUARDIANSHIP When the emperor Alexios I returned from Asia Minor bringing with him the many war orphans of Anatolia, he first turned to the Roman laws of guardianship to find relatives to care for these children; he...