Chapter 8 Moving on from ‘the Milk of Simpler Teaching’: Weaning and Religious Education in Early Medieval England
In: Early Medieval English Life CoursesSearch for other papers by Katherine Cross in
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Abstract
Weaning – the process by which a child moves from complete reliance on milk to eating an adult diet – is a period of social transition as well as a crucial moment for an individual’s health and development. This chapter presents a historical examination of written sources from the eighth and ninth centuries to complement recent archaeological analysis investigating infant feeding practices in early medieval England. Bede developed a metaphor of the weaning process in his exegesis of the Song of Songs, and then applied it to the conversion of pagans in his Historia ecclesiastica. Bede departs from his sources in emphasizing the gradual nature of weaning – and thus of conversion. References to weaning in the hagiography of missionary saints allude to the biblical model of Hannah and Samuel. They present weaning as associated with the transfer of parental responsibility from mother to father, and the beginning of a child’s education.