Cura e aspettativa di vita dei bambini nella letteratura inglese antica: se la perdita degli 'infantes' diviene proverbiale

Care and life expectancy of children in Old English literature: When the loss of infantes becomes proverbial · The untimely death of children, the 'mors acerba' or 'immatura' in Latin sources, represents an endemic phenomenon in medieval society. One can also assume a high incidence of infant mortality in Anglo-Saxon England, although studies focusing on the subject tend to refer rather to much later sources. However, some clues are also found in the Old English period, and they become evident when one cross-checks the more or less direct allusions or logical implications of many statements, accounts or narratives of various kinds and purposes. In the present paper an attempt will first be made to trace evidence of parental care and infant mortality in Old English documentary sources of a mainly legal-normative, historical, homiletic and hagiographic character (§ 2). The perception of the thin borderline between life and death before and immediately after the crucial moment of birth will then be investigated, in particular by examining some medical-prognostic texts, which can occasionally be partly related to the rhythmic-poetic tradition, as is the case with the so-called Metrical Charms for Birth in the Lacnunga manuscript compilation (§ 3). Finally, a passage from the Exeter Maxims – namely Maxims I A 22-35 – will be examined in a new light, where the theme of procreation and of the possible death of children unfolds along scriptural and patristic lines hitherto not highlighted by scholars (§ 4). It is generally confirmed from the discussion in the first paragraphs that the ‘social’ acceptance of the phenomenon of infant mortality could indeed face physiological and strong resistance from individuals, and that therefore the Anglo-Saxons experienced a fundamental dichotomy, with child death being at once foreshadowed and grieved, common and feared, often considered unavoidable yet accepted only with much distress. A careful re-reading of the passage from Maxims I A, on the other hand, allows for a series of considerations that can be placed in the Christian theological background. Especially relevant to the understanding of the passage is the patristic reflection on marriage and chastity, on the important procreative function of the couple, but also on the changed conditions of a world that Tertullian and Jerome already perceived as overpopulated. Finally, through the theme of the inevitability of death, without anyone – apart from God – being able to foresee when and in what form it will arrive, the particular desolation of the loss of children emerges as if interrupting the ‘natural’ flow of the cycle of life. The death of these infants is to their parents like leaves falling to the ground from branches that remain bare, according to an intense arboreal metaphor drawn from the old Anglo-Norse poetic tradition. It is only within the order of the world resulting from the infinite wisdom of God that an event as ‘unnatural’ as a deadly pestilence affecting children can be accepted and listed among the various sententious, proverbial or practical sayings of Old English gnomic poetry.