The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance

In his first book, John Boswell defined and charted a whole new field of inquiry. In this one, he brings to bear what Michel Foucault called his "unfailing erudition" on an equally untouched topic. Intrigued by hints in Christian literature that children were routinely abandoned, not only in the ancient world, but well into the Middle Ages, and that these children did not die but were used as servants and prostitutes, or brought up in other households, Boswell undertook to explore the past of this remarkable subject. Using a wide variety of sources--including civil and canon law, trial records, foundling-hospital archives, and artistic representations--Boswell has pieced together the intriguing story behind ancient and medieval abandonment. He discovers that it was a widespread and familiar part of domestic life in most of Europe, a custom accepted and regulated by the church and civil authorities, often celebrated in literature, and, in the absence of reliable birth control, a practice that was often essential to the survival of the rest of the family. Against the background of modern concerns--both historical and social--about the family and its problems, Boswell's work provides a startling perspective on the difficulties faced by parents and children in earlier societies. It is a story that is moving for the desperation that drove parents to abandon their children, for the tenderness and generosity that inspired others to rescue them, and for the many subtle ways Western culture devised to see that abandoned children would be saved and reared by the kindness of strangers. --Adapted from dust jacket.