NOTE: This is a sequel to a previous post found here. I recommend you read that prior to this, or at least read the "Introduction" and "Conclusion" section of that post for some background.
THE INTRODUCTION:
Now, the history of this post (the one you're reading, not the one linked) is a bit complex. When I was doing my research for the original post, I did try to look up the citations for the next several paragraphs. I wasn't able to get all of them, however, which was part of the reason my original post only had 24. Still, I kept my notes for the other ones I checked because I might want to do a sequel post that went over more of them. This is that post, though it obviously took quite a while for me to actually get around to writing it.
While this post will be the same in that it will be checking over the citations and including my rating of how accurate the claims were (or at least how accurately the citation was represented), it will not be checking over all of them. How did I decide which ones to do? A variety of reasons, really; some were just the ones checked over when doing research for the original post, some I checked because I was interested specifically in the claims made, some were checked because I was checking some other citation from that same work, and some I actually chose completely at random in the hopes of getting a bit more of a random sampling of the citations.
So, in contrast to the first where I looked up every single one of the first 24, this will be a much more scattered examination of the remaining footnotes, with only about 1/4 of them being checked... although, at the same time, more will be checked over in this post than were in the original.
As a result, there are limitations when using this to judge the chapter as a whole due to the fact so many footnotes were not checked. Nevertheless, it presents a semi-random sample of a substantial portion. And some of the errors made are large enough to fall into the category of "if there's an error this big, should I really trust anything else in this essay?"
Still, the reader may look through this and make their own conclusions. Note it is possible that I will look up some further footnotes in the future and add them to this, so this can still perhaps be considered a work in progress.
A reminder that when examining the accuracy of statements here, I am primarily focusing on how well he presents the sources he cites, not whether the sources themselves are accurate or not. It is entirely possible that, even when presenting a source accurately, that source itself is wrong, but that will generally not be calculated into the score. However, this question of presenting a source accurately is recursive. That is, if his source makes a claim and gives a citation, but his source is misrepresenting that citation, then the score will be lowered, although generally not as much as if he did so of the source itself.
Like that post, this will be divided into an Introduction, Examination,
and Conclusion. Each citation will be graded on accuracy with the same
"levels" as PolitiFact: True, Mostly True, Half-True, Mostly False, and
Pants On Fire!
And now we begin.
THE EXAMINATION:
But the daily assaults upon Christian females along with the male expectation that their wives to work in the fields, sew, make all the meals and somehow also care for their babies after their horribly abusive upbringing is quite impossible for any woman to accomplish. Christian mothers were quite often post-partum depressed after giving birth. They were routinely described in historical documents as being very depressed and withdrawn after birth, showing no signs of wanting to nurse the child, so that newborn are often depicted as not eating for days or even weeks after birth. The paintings of the Madonna and Child for more than the first thousand years of Christianity showed Mary as looking depressed, not looking at or smiling at her baby, and in fact often showed the baby Jesus as trying to cheer her up, wiping her tears away. The first paintings I could find of Mary actually looking or smiling at the baby Jesus in her lap date from the Renaissance, when Mary might be depicted as a “sometimes sad and often adoring mother since actually a child at this age was probably lying swaddled and immobile, and often miserable and starving, fed opiates to quiet them, at the mercy of a wet-nurse often miles away from its mother.”25
25 James Bruce Ross, “The Middle-Class Child in Urban Italy, Fourteenth to Early Sixteenth Century.” In Lloyd deMause, Ed., The History of Childhood, p. 199.
HALF-TRUE. deMause has not given the quote accurately. Here is what the source says:
"One may ask what relation to reality these pictures and sculptures of madonna and child bear. In general, they portray a large, sometimes enormous, well-fed, chubby baby boy, usually nude and often active, its masculinity displayed prominently (even if the genitals are sometimes lightly veiled over) in various positions of intimacy with its young, beautiful, tender—if sometimes sad, and often adoring mother. He pulls at her bosom or veil, snuggles against her, sucks vigorously, rests or sleeps trustingly on her lap, and in dozens of playful ways and postures reveals the close emotional bond between them. Actually a child at this age, about a year or so, was probably lying swaddled and immobile, and often miserable and underfed, at the mercy of a wet-nurse miles away from its mother. In the pictures, the child reigns supreme over the mother, the sole object of her love and attention."
Notice that deMause has, as is not infrequent for him, changed the quote. Rather than simply providing a list of changes, here is deMause's quote with his insertions underlined and removals struck through.
"sometimes sad and often adoring mother since actually a child at this age, about a year or so, was probably lying swaddled and immobile, and often miserable and starving underfed, fed opiates to quiet them, at the mercy of a wet-nurse often miles away from its mother."
One expects that when putting something in quotation marks, they are actually giving a word-for-word transcription, not adding in phrases and removing them. deMause's changes, as usual, seem to be done to try to aid his point. By removing "about a year or so" he can leave the age more ambiguous and make it seem larger. He removes "underfed" and replaces it with the more extreme word of "starving." And he adds "fed opiates to quiet them" to try to make it sound worse. This sort of quotes editing is rather common for deMause, but one would think that deMause would at least manage to accurately quote something that was from a book he edited!
One may point out that the core point of the child not being with the mother are retained. But that does not excuse deMause's edits. Further, this does not provide proof for the various sentences that preceded the last one. As for the claim that there was no image of Mary looking or smiling at Jesus prior to the Renaissance, I guess we'll just have to take deMause's word for it. Your mileage may vary on how much you trust that.
When their children returned from the wet-nurse, mothers in the Renaissance followed the prescriptions of friars like Dominici to avoid “hugging and kissing them” so they won’t be “sensual,” and instead “scare them with a dozen bogies,” to make them more fearful.26
26 Ibid., p. 203
MOSTLY FALSE. deMause appears confused. It is true that it writes "She [the mother] should dress both sexes simply, in decent attire and modest colors; "from three years on" the son is to know no distinction between male and female other than dress and hair. From then on let him be a stranger to being petted, embraced and kissed by you until after the twenty-fifth year. Granted that there will not take place any thought or natural movement before the age of five . . . do not be less solicitous that he be chaste and modest always and, in every place, covered as modestly as if he were a girl."
But this is not a statement to not do this after returning from the wet-nurse, only after the age of three. And then the parts that deMause quotes are taken out of context. Here is what is stated on the applicable page:
"From other kinds of sources it is clear that Dominici’s prescriptions reflect religious attitudes and sexual fears more than the secular reality he observes and deplores:
“At present how much you work and strive to lead them about the whole day, to hug and kiss them, to sing them songs, to tell them foolish stories, to scare them with a dozen bogies, to deceive them, to play hide and seek, with them and to take pains in making them beautiful, healthy, cheerful, laughing and wholly content according to the sensual!”"
The problem is that as we see, scaring them with a dozen bogies is listed in the same portion as hugging and kissing, with the suggestion not to do any of them. Exactly how in the world deMause took this to mean that Dominici is stating they should scare them with a dozen bogies in order to make them fearful instead of hugging and kissing is very unclear. He does get it right that Dominici is urging parents not to play games with children, but he somehow claims that parents "followed" the suggestion of Dominici when the context is that Dominici is complaining about parents playing with their children, hugging and kissing them, etc. How can deMause say that they are following Dominici's advice not to when Dominici is making it plain that parents are not doing that?
Mothers in early Christian literature were described as not getting up from bed, not eating, not washing and not nursing their babies after giving birth because they felt “bewitched by night spirits,” a condition still found in some Eastern European mothers.27
27 Alenka Puhar, “Childhood in Nineteenth-Century Slovenia.” The Journal of Psychohistory 12(1985):293.
MOSTLY FALSE. This only discusses mothers in Slovenia, and thus is not really proof for this being the case for early Christians (no citations are given to that effect). But what is more problematic is that the quote he offers is not found, at least not that I can see. The closest is:
"It is worthwhile recalling the many preventive and medicinal measures with which "spirits of darkness" and "night spirits" were supposed to be kept at bay or expelled."
The article then discusses various ways of doing so, such as throwing splinters on charcoal at the right time. It does not say that people specifically felt bewitched by them. In fact, the primary worry was about how the spirits would harm the child, and the idea was that doing this would protect the child from it.
Maybe one can say that the citation is only for the condition still being found in some Eastern European mothers. But this simply means deMause has not actually offered proof for the earlier part of this sentence, and once again the quote isn't there.
Husbands rarely visited the women’s quarters. Duby’s book on Love and Marriage in the Middle Ages stated the main reason why: “Men were afraid of women, especially their own wives.”31
31 Georges Duby, Love and Marriage in the Middle Ages. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994, p. 96.
MOSTLY TRUE. The quote is actually on page 97. However, it says nothing about that being the reason why husbands rarely visited the women's quarters. To be fair, perhaps the citation was only meant for the quotation--but that means deMause hasn't backed up the claim that husbands rarely visited the women's quarters.... whatever it is he means by "women's quarters."
Shorter found men were excluded from the kitchen and the nursery, and “No man would dare approach the laundry, so feared is this group of women.”32
32 Edward Shorter, A History of Women’s Bodies. New York: Basic Books, 1983, p. 292.
HALF-TRUE. This quote is there. However, while the quote itself is right, the work he is citing says nothing about the kitchen and the nursery on that page. I even did a search for (it's available on archive.org) for "kitchen" and "nursery" and turned up nothing. So deMause stating that Shorter "found men were excluded from the kitchen and the nursery" appears incorrect.
According to Church fathers, Christian men were only rarely supposed to have sexual intercourse with their wives, in order to produce children for the Church to rule over. “A man must not use his wife as if she were a whore, and a woman must not behave with her husband as with a lover.”34
34 Elisabeth Badinter, Mother Love, p. 23.
MOSTLY FALSE. This quote is in fact found there. However, it is attributed to:
"Benedicti, La Somme des péchés, Book II, chapter 5. Cited in Jean-Louis Flandrin, Les Amours paysannes (Paris: Collection Archives, 1977), p. 81."
I have not been able to verify this quotation to see if it may be being misrepresented, but even if it is a perfect representation, we run into a much bigger problem. You see, Jean Benedicti was a sixteen-century writer. He qualifies not in the slightest as a "church father."
Any arrangement was good if it confirmed Christian misogyny. Officially, Christianity was against family love; Jesus himself warned that “He who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.”36
36 Matt. 11.37.
HALF-TRUE. There is no Matthew 11:37. This is a reference to Matthew 10:37. However, the normal interpretation is not that this is not against family love, but rather a statement that love for Jesus should surpass that. In more practical terms, it is a statement that one must be willing to leave one's family if it is necessary to follow Jesus. deMause offers no proof that his claim is/was how people normally understand/understood this verse.
Scholars often depict Christianity as “opposing infanticide.” Most do not mention that what they actually sometimes objected to was killing a child after it was part of the Church. Stein shows that “Jews only until recently regarded any child who dies within thirty days after birth, even by violence, as a miscarriage”40 so they are not considered infanticide.
40 Howard F. Stein, “The Fear of Infanticide and Filicide in the Emotional Journey From Rosh Hashanah Through Yom Kippur.” The Journal of Psychohistory 36(2009): 80.
HALF-TRUE. The page is wrong; the actual page is 50. The problem, however, is that this is talking about Jewish practices--certainly, Christianity grew out of Judaism, but he needs proof of this being a Christian belief. I suppose, to be fair, one can say that he was referring to Jews there, so while it may not support his overall point, it still fits with what he was saying in that particular instance. However, it provides no actual proof for his preceding statement: "Scholars often depict Christianity as 'opposing infanticide.' Most do
not mention that what they actually sometimes objected to was killing a
child after it was part of the Church." This simply does not make sense--abortion, for example, was repeatedly condemned, but the fetus had not yet joined the church. Indeed, deMause's source for #42 (see below) contradicts the claim he makes here.
Philo described Jewish mothers regularly “throttling their infants or throwing them into a river.”41
41 John Cooper, The Child in Jewish History. Northvale: Jason Aronson, 1996, p. 37.
FALSE. deMause, as is typical, seems to have an inability to give a direct citation. Which is odd, given that the work in question does give such a citation. Perhaps he wanted to give credit to where he saw the quote, but why not give the original source with an addition of "quoted by John Cooper, The Child in Jewish History"? For those curious, the source that Cooper gives for it is:
"Philo, The Special Laws, trans. F.H. Colson. Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1950), Vol. 7 (3:112-115) pp. 547 and 549 (hereafter cited as Philo, Special Laws)."
So, here is the quote offered in the book that deMause cites. I had to manually write this, so I apologize if I made any typos. The usage of ellipses was in The Child in Jewish History.
"If the guardians of the children cut them off from these blessings, if at their very birth they deny them all share in them, they must rest assured that they are breaking the laws of Nature and stand self-condemned on the gravest of charges, love of pleasure, hatred of men, murder and, the worst abomination of all, murder of their own children. For they are pleasure-lovers when they mate, not to procreate children and perpetuate the race, but like pigs and goats in quest of the enjoyment which such intercourse gives. . . . For no one is so foolish as to suppose that those who have treated dishonourably their own flesh and blood will deal honourably with strangers. As to the charges of murder in general and murder of their own children in particular the clearest proofs of their truth is supplied by the parents. Some of them do the deed with their own hands; with monstrous cruelty and barbarity they stifle and throttle the first breath which the infants draw or throw them into a river or into the depths of the sea, after attaching some heavy substance to make them sink more quickly under its weight. Others take them to be exposed in some desert place, hoping, they themselves say, that they may be saved, but leaving them in actual truth to suffer the most distressing fate. For all the beasts that feed on human flesh visit the spot and feast unhindered on the infants, a fine banquet provided by their sole guardians, those who above all should keep them safe, their fathers and mothers. Carnivorous birds, too, come flying down and gobble up the fragments . . ."
We find deMause's usual quotes editing. What is actually stated is that Philo is quoted as saying, in reference to parents who kill their infants, that they "throttle the first breath which the infants draw or throw them into a river." Yet another quote edited by deMause. The shift in tense isn't that big of a thing (though again, a quotation is expected to be exact) but he also excised "the first breath which the" and replaced it with "their."
However, you may notice a problem. Nowhere in the above quote does Philo say he is referring to Jewish mothers. This and the misquote would already warrant a low rating; but an examination of Philo's words in context make things even worse. I don't have a copy of the specific translation alluded to above, but here is a different translation:
http://earlyjewishwritings.com/text/philo/book29.html
So let's see what Philo says:
"XX. (110) On account of this commandment he also adds another proposition of greater importance, in which the exposure of infants is forbidden, which has become a very ordinary piece of wickedness among other nations by reason of their natural inhumanity"
Philo says that exposure of infants (the act of abandoning a child and "exposing" it to the elements, resulting in its death if someone else didn't save it) is forbidden among the Jews but is practiced among other nations. Soon afterwards he gives the relevant quote:
"And as for their murders and infanticides they are established by the most undeniable proofs, since some of them slay them with their own hands, and stifle the first breath of their children, and smother it altogether, out of a terribly cruel and unfeeling disposition; others throw them into the depths of a river, or of a sea, after they have attached a weight to them, in order that they may sink to the bottom more speedily because of it."
And then soon after that:
"Therefore, Moses has utterly prohibited the exposure of children, by a tacit prohibition, when he condemns to death, as I have said before, those who are the causes of a miscarriage to a woman whose child conceived within her is already formed."
So Philo's whole point is to contrast the Jews with the Roman world, saying that the Jews prohibit this action, which of course includes the smothering or throwing them into the river. Even limiting ourselves to the quote from The Child in Jewish History, deMause's claim that Philo described Jewish mothers regularly doing this is inaccurate... but when we look at Philo's full context, he actually asserts the opposite of deMause's contention.
I originally gave this a Pants on Fire but re-examined The Child in Jewish History and realized that the key quote of Philo that demonstrates he says the opposite of what deMause claims isn't included in the specific source deMause cited; you have to look at Philo's full work to see it. However, deMause really should have confirmed it in context, and even setting that aside the fact is the quote that is in The Child in Jewish History doesn't say it's talking about Jewish mothers (because, well, it isn't), so deMause still overreaches and misrepresents Philo. Thus a False.
Since political courts paid little attention to infanticide until the 18th century and since Church courts had no interest in the infant until baptized, infanticide was very common. The Church in the 9th century subjected mothers who kill their children at most to “exclusion from the church for forty days.”42
42 Daniele Alexandre-Bidon and Didier Lett, Children in the Middle Ages: Fifth–Fifteenth Centuries. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000, p. 17.
MOSTLY FALSE. He neglects to note what is mentioned immediately after that note. Here it all is in more context:
"At the beginning of the ninth century, the second diocesan statute of Theodulphe d’Orleans condemns a mother who willfully kills her child to exclusion from the church for forty days (as if she had just given birth to it). She must wait four years to be admitted for prayers and ten years to receive the sacrament of communion. But there again, the lawmakers often make distinctions. They do not judge the crime of killing a child who has been baptized as severely as the murder of a non-baptized child, because the latter has not only been assassinated in this world, but is dead for eternity."
As we can see, the punishment is far more lengthy than he makes it sound. But note further what the author mentions, which is that the crime of killing a child who has not baptized is considered a more severe crime than killing a child who was. This is the exact opposite of deMause's earlier claim (#40) that the Church courts "had no interest in the infant until baptized."
“Few cases of infanticide were tried in the king’s courts” even by
the 18th century and these had minimal sentences, the courts being more
interested in punishing “immoral” women who were accused of conceiving
out of wedlock than in protecting infants.43
43 Peter C. Hoffer
and N. E. H. Hull, Murdering Mothers: Infanticide in England and New
England 1558-1803. New York: New York University Press, 1984, p. ix.
MOSTLY FALSE. The
phrase "few cases of infanticide were tried in the king's courts" is
there but his claim this was true even by the 18th century is not. The
more full quote is:
“Between 1558 and 1803, the law concerning
infanticide and the treatment of suspects in the criminal justice
systems of England and New England attained their present form.
Premodern English authorities condemned the act of child murder, but
they did not energetically suppress it. Few cases of infanticide were
tried in the king’s courts. As cases of the crime seemed to multiply in
late Tudor and early Stuart England and her colonies, angered
magistrates and troubled lawmakers reacted decisively.”
The Christian Church punished disobedience to husbands as a worse sin than infanticide, which was a “venial” (minor) sin usually punished if at all by mild dietary restrictions or by performing some prayers.44
44 R. H. Helmholz, “Infanticide in the Province of Canterbury During the Fifteenth Century.” History of Childhood Quarterly: The Journal of Psychohistory 2(1975):379-388.
FALSE. Unhelpfully, he does not give a specific page for it, so I had to read through the article manually. I did not see any statement of it being venial, nor any statement of "disobedience to husbands" being seen as a greater sin. Indeed, its concluding remark is:
"What it does show is that in contemporary eyes, jurisdiction over the crime was properly lodged outside the royal courts. Infanticide, in the present state of the evidence, appears to be one such crime. But the Church was a legitimate public authority in medieval Europe. Its role in punishing unlawful conduct deserves to be taken seriously. The fifteenth-century records of the Province of Canterbury do give reasons for thinking that medieval men did not regard infanticide with the horror we associate with premeditated homicide. But they do not show that society regarded the fate of infants with indifference. On the contrary, they show that some protection was afforded children against both intentional and negligent killing. Infanticide was a crime punishable by a regular system of public courts."
Thus, the article gives the opposite conclusion of what deMause claims.
Children were not considered fully human for many years by the early Church, since priests believed “the majority of children become unprofitable, possessed by demons… performing useless and abominable deeds.”45
45 Acts of Thomas I.12., in New Testament Apocrypha, Vol. 1, Kirsopp Lake, Ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1945, p. 331.
MOSTLY FALSE. For once he cites an actual primary source for a quote. However, I suspect he has made some kind of error in his citation of which translation he used, as I cannot find it. Kirsopp Lake wrote many things about Christianity, but I cannot find any work called "New Testament Apocrypha" (let alone a volume 1). There are books with that name, but not by Kirsopp Lake. I was also unable in WorldCat to find a work with that title printed, regardless of author, in 1945.
But even if we cannot determine which translation he is alluding to, he thankfully does still cite the specific passage of the Acts of Thomas (why can't he do that for more of his quotations from more early Christian writings?), and thus we can simply look at a different translation to see if it contains phrases similar to the ones quote. We can find an older translation here. I will quote the relevant aspect and bold the portions which correspond to deMause's citation:
"For the more part of children become useless oppressed of devils, some openly and some invisibly, for they become either lunatic or half withered or blind or deaf or dumb or paralytic or foolish; and if they be sound, again they will be vain, doing useless or abominable acts, for they will be caught either in adultery or murder or theft or fornication, and by all these will ye be afflicted."
Obviously the words are different, as we would expect in a different translation, but the meaning is the same. You might be wondering why I am still giving it a "Mostly False" if the quote is valid. I do so because the Acts of Thomas is an apocryphal, non-canonical document from around the third century. A few heretical sects apparently considered it scripture (Epiphanius in the Panarion, when discussing the heretical sect the Apostolics, writes "these people rely mostly on the so-called Acts of Andrew and Thomas, and have nothing to do with the ecclesiastical canon"), but not the main portion of the church.
Thus, using this non-canonical document to demonstrate what "priests believed" is akin to quoting from the Book of Mormon to try to prove what Catholic priests believe.
God Himself, Gregory said, killed newborn infants “in order to prevent their full development of their evil passions.”46
46 Graham Gould, “Childhood in Eastern Patristic Thought.” In Diana Wood, Ed. The Church and Childhood. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1994, p. 50.
TRUE. The more full quote is: "God in his love of humanity may see fit to end the lives of people of a particularly evil disposition as infants, in order to prevent the full development of their evil passions." I do not think this does much to aid deMause's overall point, as Gregory appears to be referring to natural deaths, but he does, as far as I can tell, accurately represent the quote.
For those curious, the citation given is: "Ibid, p. 88, 1-8; p. 90, 12-19." Note that the "ibid" refers to On Infants’ Early Deaths. It notes earlier that "Ed. Hadwig Horner, Gregorii Nysseni Opera, 3, I (Leiden, 1987), pp. 67-97; references are given by page and line number. There is a translation in The Nicene and post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, 5, pp. 372-81." That translation is available here, though it unfortunately does not say where in the translation it is (the citation's more specific page numbers refer to the original, not the translation). A search for "infant" in it does not turn the quote up, but I am not sure how accurate the search for this one is. In any event, it is at least found in the source that deMause cites.
Even when infants were found dead in privies, they “might have fallen into it by accident or been placed there after stillbirth” so the mother was usually not thought guilty of anything.47
47 Peter C. Hoffer and N. E. H. Hull, Murdering Mothers, p. 10.
HALF-TRUE. The quote here is actually "Some young, ill-tutored mothers did not know when they were pregnant, much less in labor, and their infant might have fallen into a privy by accident, or been placed there after stillbirth." (deMause replaces "a privy" with "it") So it was stated that this was a way some women were exonerated of murder. However, it does not say that the mother was "usually" not thought guilty of anything. It mentions that sometimes they were exonerated based on this and sometimes did not. Regrettably, it does not state which was the more likely result in such privy cases; it lists only two examples, one being an acquittal and the other being a conviction. But this is insufficient to ground a statement that the mother was usually not thought guilty of anything; had deMause instead said the mother was "sometimes" rather than "usually" I would have scored this higher.
Un-baptized children were so full of sins that they were supposed to be buried below the roof-gutter of a church to have the holy water wash them of their sins.51
51 Jean Delumeau, Sin and Fear: The Emergence of a Western Guilt Culture 13th-18th Centuries. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990, p. 275.
HALF-TRUE. The cited source gives an example of a couple did it in the eighteenth century for the reason deMause claims, but does not say that children were supposed to be buried as such.
It is not surprising that Tertullian concluded that “The laws forbid infanticide—but, of all the laws, there is not one eluded more easily or with more impunity” and that the Council of Toledo said there was a “very widespread practice of parents killing their children.”53
53 E. Semichon, Histoire des enfants abandonnes depuis l’antiquite jusqu’a nos jours. Paris, 1880, p. 292; Daniele Alexandre-Bidon and Didier Lett, Children in the Middle Ages: Fifth-Fifteenth Centuries, p. 16.
HALF-TRUE. Yet again, rather than cite a primary source, he cites a source that quotes the source. Now, the first is on archive.org (https://archive.org/details/histoiredesenfan00semiuoft/page/292). It cites To The Nations, chapter 15, found at http://newadvent.org/fathers/03061.htm. But note that Tertullian is referring to Romans, not Christians.
As for the latter, the quote given at the Council of Toledo is “Clerics and civil judges must united their efforts to destroy this abominable and very widespread practice of parents killing their children in order not to have to feed them.” However, the very source that deMause cites goes on to argue that this does not necessarily translate into very common practices, writing, "They were less interested in describing a reality than in reminding the reader of a Christian message."
Anglo-Saxons considered infanticide a virtue, not a crime, saying, “A child cries when he comes into the world, for he anticipates its wretchedness. It is well for him that he should die…He was placed on a slanting roof [and] if he laughed, he was reared, but if he was frightened and cried, he was thrust out to perish.”54
54 John Thrupp, The Anglo-Saxon Home: A History of the Domestic Institutions and Customs of England. London: Longman, Green, 1862, p. 78.
MOSTLY TRUE. Before anything else, I should note that what the work says is "In the early Saxon period, the Anglo-Saxons did not consider infanticide a crime; on the contrary, under certain circumstances, they regarded it as a virtue." (emphasis added) This would have referred to Britain prior to it becoming Christianized, so while this may be an interesting fact, it doesn't really say anything in regards to it being done in Christian Britain; in fact, on page 81 it says that the Church played a part in stopping the practice.
The quote is also shifted a little (are you surprised at this point?), though not in a way that really matters. While it is nice that deMause adds in "[and]" to show he added something, he doesn't do anything to show what he cut out. The latter portion of the quote, following the ellipses, is this in the book:
"He was placed onto a slanting roof, or on the bough of a tree, or in some other dangerous place: if he laughed and crowed, he was taken down and reared; but if he was frightened and cried, he was thrust out to perish."
But he does represent his quotation accurately otherwise. As noted this seems kind of a random thing for him to say, as it doesn't really relate to what he's talking about, but when judging it in its own right, it is accurate enough, though his quotes editing (even if benign here) and change of it being "sometimes a virtue" to simply stating to be a virtue do drop it down to mostly true.
Children of the wealthy, as Tacitus put it, “as soon as they are born are abandoned to any old Greek servant” to be nursed. More children, however, were given over to neighboring mothers to wet-nurse, partly because “it was better for the wife to put her child out to nurse and keep herself available [for intercourse] to her husband.”59
59 Beatrice Gottlieb, The Family in the Western World From te Black Death to the Industrial Age. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993, p. 124.
MOSTLY TRUE. This came so close to getting an outright True. deMause's second quote is perfectly fine; he quotes it correctly, presents it correctly, and actually puts his extra text in brackets rather than just shoving it into the quote as if it were in the original. However, he gives no source or citation for the Tacitus quote.
Tacitus does make some similar remarks in his work A Dialogue on Oratory, but I do not see something that really matches what deMause claims Tacitus said. It looks like deMause may have combined several different things. Tacitus does write (XXVIII) that in the past, "The infant, as soon as born, was not consigned to the mean dwelling of a hireling nurse, but was reared and cherished in the bosom of a tender parent." As a contrast, soon afterwards (XXIX) he writes "In the present age, what is our practice? The infant is committed to a Greek chambermaid, and a slave or two, chosen for the purpose, generally the worst of the whole household train; all utter strangers to every liberal notion." If we take the sentiment of the first ("as soon as born") and apply it to the second, we can end "As soon as born, the infant is committed to a Greek chambermaid." But even this--which again requires us to slam together different things rather than being an actual quote--still doesn't match up with deMause's quote. I would have been satisfied if it had been a true quote of Tacitus, but as noted it appears to not be... and if it is a quote he said elsewhere and I'm attributing it to the wrong work, deMause really should have said where it was from.
(and in case you are wondering, the typo of "From te Black Death" was in his original citation)
Earlier censuses were comparable. Parents were said to have “seldom inquired about the survival of their infants and were often uninformed as to their whereabouts.”62
62 Elisabeth Badinter, Mother Love: Myth and Reality, p. x.
TRUE. This quote is there. I am not sure of its accuracy, but it is stated in his source.
A typical woman described her mother saying to the wet-nurse as she was returned, “”My God! What have you brought me here! This goggle-eyed, splatter-faced, gabbart-mouthed wretch is not my child! Take her away!” 65
65 George Anne Bellamy, An Apology for the Life of George Anne Bellamy. London: London Press, 1785, p. 26.
TRUE. The source doesn't say this is a typical experience but I will be generous and read it as saying that a woman who was typical described her mother as such, not that this was a typical experience.
Yet priests only opposed abandonment of newborn because a father “might meet his own child later in a brothel and to have sexual relations with his offspring would be a sin,”77 not because of any empathy for the abandoned child.
77 Sander J. Breiner, Slaughter of the Innocents: Child Abuse Through the Ages and Today. New York: Plenum Press, 1990, p. 118.
MOSTLY FALSE. Before anything else, I should explain that to "expose" a child means to just leave it off on a
street or somewhere, exposing it to the elements. Sometimes such
children would be saved by someone, but other times would simply starve
to death. (this was mentioned earlier but for someone who isn't reading through the whole thing, this information might be important)
With that said, we now enter the problems. To begin with, deMause is exaggerating what the book says. The book writes "Church leaders were more concerned about the parents' souls than the destruction of a child's life. St. Justin the Martyr reasoned that it was not right to expose children because a Christian might meet his own child later in a brothel and to have sexual relations with his offspring would be a sin. St. Justin's hypothesis did have some logical merit since many exposed children, male and female, were retrieved by strangers and turned into prostitutes." No statement is given that priests only opposed abandonment of a newborn on that basis; the book simply claims that church leaders were more concerned about that than the child itself.
However, the cited book isn't representing Justin's statement right either, so we have deMause misrepresenting a misrepresentation. Unfortunately, unlike a double negative they don't cancel each other out; instead, they make each other worse. Now, the cited work does not say where Justin Martyr said it (as has been repeatedly noted and will be noted again, deMause rarely gives a direct primary citation for quotes). Fortunately, I was able to find it in The First Apology, Chapter XXVII, which says:
"But as for us, we have been taught that to expose newly-born children is the part of wicked men; and this we have been taught lest we should do any one an injury, and lest we should sin against God, first, because we see that almost all so exposed (not only the girls, but also the males) are brought up to prostitution. And as the ancients are said to have reared herds of oxen, or goats, or sheep, or grazing horses, so now we see you rear children only for this shameful use; and for this pollution a multitude of females and hermaphrodites, and those who commit unmentionable iniquities, are found in every nation. And you receive the hire of these, and duty and taxes from them, whom you ought to exterminate from your realm. And any one who uses such persons, besides the godless and infamous and impure intercourse, may possibly be having intercourse with his own child, or relative, or brother."
First, note that he condemns the act of exposing children strongly, giving the argument that almost all so exposed would become prostitutes. This is treated as a problem for the child, not merely the adult. The mention of having intercourse with a relative as a result is not the main point.
But what of the fact they could die? As Justin Martyr points out shortly afterwards in XXXIX:
"And again [we fear to expose children], lest some of them be not picked up, but die, and we become murderers. But whether we marry, it is only that we may bring up children; or whether we decline marriage, we live continently."
(brackets in original translation)
So, yes, the death of the child is mentioned by Justin as a reason to not expose children. So Justin's argument is that you shouldn't expose children because it would be murder if they weren't saved and that even if they are saved it could lead to them become prostitutes. But through deMause's misrepresentation of his source's misrepresentation, Justin's argument is warped into a claim that Justin (or rather, the ambiguous "priests"--but Justin wasn't even a priest!) didn't care at all about the child itself, and only the possibility the parent might end up having sexual relations with it later, which is not at all what Justin was actually saying. This dodges an outright "False" on the basis that part of the error was in deMause's citation, but that does not fully excuse his error and he misrepresents even that source.
Since slavery continued to exist during the Christian centuries, parents continued to sell their children into slavery, where they often were castrated.79
79 Daniele Alexandre-Bidon and Didier Lett, Children in the Middle Ages: Fifthe-Fifteenth Centuries, pp. 56-57.
MOSTLY FALSE. Pages 56-57 say nothing of slavery. Looking in the Index for slavery, I was unable to find any mention of castration. It does mention children being sold by their parents, but also notes various restrictions on the practice (for example, page 93 mentions that this was only for infidels, even if this fact was not always observed).
Since every sign of independence was considered disobedience and evidence of terrible sins needing Hellish tortures, parents considered themselves “disciples of God” as they beat and tortured their children. Children said they were “frequently whipped for looking blue on a frosty morning; and, whether I deserved it or not, I was sure of correction every day of my life.”96
96 Letitia Pilkington, Memoirs of Mrs. Letitia Pilkington. New York, Dodd, Mead & Co., 1928, p. 331.
MOSTLY TRUE. This quote is in fact found in the work, though on page 31, not 331. It does not say anything about the parents being "disciples of God," however, but perhaps the citation was meant only to be for the second sentence. It should be noted, however, that it states only her mother was like this, and her father more gentle:
"I was their second child, and, my eldest brother dying an infant, for a long time their only one; being of a tender weakly constitution, I was by my father greatly indulged–indeed, I cannot say but it was in some measure necessary he should by this gentleness qualify my mother’s severity to me: otherwise it must have broke my heart for she strictly followed Solomon’s advice, in never sparing the rod; insomuch that I have frequently been whipped for looking blue on a frosty morning; and, whether I deserved it or not, I was sure of correction every day of my life."
Still, one instance does not prove this was done generally. But I would have probably given this a "True" if not for him giving the wrong page number, which almost caused me to label this as outright False until I happened to see the actual one.
“My mother said that one mustn’t spoil children, and she whipped me every morning.”97
97 Elisabeth Badinter, Mother Love, p. 240.
MOSTLY FALSE. There is a rather major problem with this quote. What is it? It's quite simple: This quote is from a fictional work!
Yes, that's right. As stated in Mother Love, this is said by a character from Jules Vallés's The Child, a fictional work. Here is the context of the above quote in Mother Love:
"Vallés’s first words are famous, telling his readers all they need to know about the character of Mme Vingtras: "Was I nursed by my mother? . . . I don’t know. Whoever's breast I nursed, I do not remember a single caress from the time I was small. I was never fondled, patted on the cheek, covered with kisses, but I was often whipped. My mother said that one mustn't spoil children, and she whipped me every morning; if she didn't have time in the morning, she would do so at noon, rarely later than four o'clock." The rest of the book is in the same vein."
(ellipses original)
This manages to escape a full-on "False" because deMause does technically present the quote without any information about it and thus does not technically say it is a quote from an actual person. However, a reader would naturally be inclined to take the interpretation it was by a real person, so it is nevertheless highly misleading.
Beatings began before birth, since fathers’ blows to the mothers’ abdomen badly harmed the fetus. If the mother could not spare the time to beat her children, she could hire a “professional flagellant” who advertised their child-beating services in newspaper ads, or she could hire a “garde-de-ville to whip her three children once a week, naughty or not.”98
98 Richard Heath, Edgar Quinet: His Early Life and Writings. London: Tribner & Co., 1881, p. 3.
HALF-TRUE. Well, this provides no support for the first sentence, but again perhaps it is meant only for the second. However, that turns up as not exactly accurate either. Here is what is written, in referring to the mother of Edgar Quinet's father:
"She was a character. A conventual life of some years had made her terribly hard. Once a week she employed a garde-de-ville to whip her three children (one was a girl) naughty or not."
However, it says nothing of them being a "professional flagellant" that I see; garde-de-ville is simply French for "city guard." Certainly there is no support given for the claim that such a "professional flagellant" advertised their child-beating services. Even if we limit ourselves to just the "garde-de-ville" statement (which is slightly edited), we run into the problem that although deMause clearly wants to impress upon the reader the idea this wasn't uncommon, the writing portrays the mother in question as being unusually strict.
Parents were regularly described as being out of control, “fierce and eager upon the child, striking, flinging, kicking it, as the usual manner is.”99
99 Anthony Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination in England. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995, p. 208.
PANTS ON FIRE! First, that quote isn't there. That is problematic enough. However, if you look at page 208, it turns out that what's written is one big argument against deMause's claims about how commonplace child abuse was. If I may quote an excerpt:
"Some historians have argued that this was a period of severe parental discipline. The view that he who spares the rod spoils the child was deeply embedded in the traditions of Christian society but in this period, as in the middle ages, direct references to the beating of children in the home are extremely sparse. Keith Wrightston's conclusion that, so far from experiencing a reign of parental terror, children suffered physical punishment only occasionally, that it was administered reluctantly and given in moderation is persuasive. Some of those who wrote accounts of their childhood do mention being beaten. Simon Foman recalled being beaten by his mother when he was eleven and his father had died. Richard Norwood remembered how 'often on a Lord's day at night or Monday morning I prayed to escape beating that week'. The worst thing about his mother's beatings, Roger North recalled, was being made to stop crying and thank 'the good rail which she said was to break our spirits'. The age, like all ages, had its child abusers. In 1563 a man was put in the pillory for beating his son with a leather girdle until his skin was peeled off. The boy was made to stand beside him without his clothes on to show how badly he had been hurt and the father, on the lord mayor's orders, was subsequently whipped until he bled."
The book then goes on to give additional arguments against deMause's claims of how common child abuse was. So not only is the quote deMause produces not there, this section is one big argument against deMause's claims of how common this was! This example of the man being beaten by the authorities as punishment for how he treated his child, incidentally, goes against deMause's very next sentence: "As long as children were not killed, no laws protected them."
The most generous interpretation I can offer for this misinterpretation is that maybe he cited the wrong source. It's not impossible, given we've seen errors in citations elsewhere. However, as a matter of representing his source, here deMause has failed utterly, pointing to a source that not only does not have the quote, but argues against deMause's own claims. I am judging these based on the citations themselves, and the citation he did give is so wrong it deserves a "Pants on Fire."
Mothers are not shown as protecting their children against the father’s blows: “She holds not his hand from due strokes, but bares their skins with delight to his fatherly stripes.”103
103 Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage: In England 1500-1800. Abridged Ed., London, Penguin Books, 1979, p. 126.
TRUE. Though with an asterisk. This cites the Abridged Edition, which I did not have. In what I assume is the unabridged edition, the quote is found here, on page 176. The quote is the same, so even if on a different page (due to it being unabridged rather than abridged), this should still be the right citation. Anyway, the citation it gives is:
"B.Batty, op. cit., p. 209, quoted in L.L. Schüking, op. cit., p. 75."
As to what those op cit's are, an earlier footnote writes:
"B.Batty, The Christian Man's Closet (London 1581), p. 26, quoted by L.L.Schüking, The Puritan Family . . . (New York 1966), p. 75."
It was a bit difficult at first to find The Puritan Family, because as it turns out, they misspelled the author's name. It is actually Schücking--they missed the second C. Looking into it, the quote is in fact there (due to being a quote from the 16th century some of the spellings are different, but that is forgivable). What is confusing here is whether or not this quote is in fact from Batty. It writes:
"In a piece of writing that dates back to an early period (The Christian Man's Closet, 1581) Batty explains in a remarkably naive fashion how the providence and wisdom of God had specially formed the human posterior in such a fashion that it could receive blows without incurring serious bodily injury (page 26). Beatings, indeed, seem at that time to have constituted the most essential part of education. So much so, that so delicately minded a writer as Rogers can find no better way of describing the spiritual harmony and agreement of husband and wife than the following:
(she) holdes not his hand from due stroakes, but bares their (the children's) skins with delight, to his fatherly stripes. (page 299)"
As we can see, the quote is not from Batty, but from Rogers. The bibliography lists this as "ROGERS, Daniel, Matrimoniall Honour, 1642."
Page 299 was difficult to read on the version I had (it was a scanned version and not a particularly good scanning), but I did not see the quote. This is why I said the true is with an asterisk, because when one traces it back, it is not clear if the quote was actually there. It is true it maybe could have been a different printing of some kind, so I will nevertheless count it as accurate.
Girls especially needed training to resist their supposed lusts, so were often “put to bed tied up by the hands, made to wear corsets with bone stays, iron bodices and steel collars, and forced to sit many hours a day in stocks, strapped to a backboard, supposedly to teach them restraint.”123
123 Alice Morse Earle, Two Centuries of Costume in America. Vol. I. New York: Macmillan, 1903, p. 317.
MOSTLY FALSE. Well, you can view the page itself here. The obvious fact you might notice is that this quote is not found there. The closest is the statement that "The daughter of General Nathanael Greene, the Revolutionary patriot, told her grandchildren that she sat many hours every day in her girlhood, with her feet in stocks and strapped to a backboard." But the only similarity here is the mention of sitting many hours with feet in stocks and strapped to a backboard, and even that's not quoted quite right. The rest of the quote isn't there. It does mention bone stays, but nothing about being put to bed tied up by the hands, iron bodices, steel collars, or it being done to teach them restraint. And there is no statement that this was training to resist lust.
Christianity is what Susan Brownmiller calls “a rape culture [where] rape functions as a sufficient threat to keep all women in a constant state of intimidation.”142
142 Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975, p. 209.
HALF-TRUE. So, this is a bit of a weird one to evaluate. The quote that is presumably being referred to is found not on page 209, but on page 229. It is possible this was a typo; this is the same edition that deMause cites (archive.org lists it as 1976, but if you look in the book itself it says it was printed in 1975). In any event, while deMause does at least admit he put in the word where, he doesn't admit to other edits. The full quote here is "That some men rape provides a sufficient threat to keep all women in a constant state of intimidation, forever conscious of the knowledge that the biological tool must be held in awe for it may turn to weapon with sudden swiftness borne of harmful intent." (emphasis original) deMause swaps out "that some men rape provides" with "a rape culture [where] rape functions as". While he at least admits the "where" wasn't there originally, he does not acknowledge the fact he changed the words further.
It should be noted that Brownmiller makes no connection with Christianity with that quote. Now, there are two ways to take deMause's claim. One is that Brownmiller was actually asserting that was Christianity, which she does not, and would be a major misrepresentation. The other is that deMause is judging Christianity that way, and is merely using Brownmiller's quote because he liked the phrasing she used (but didn't like it enough to quote it right), thereby meaning he wasn't making a misrepresention in that way. Ultimately I have to look at it in the way I think a normal reader who didn't look it up would, and I think the natural interpretation of this would be that deMause was saying that's exactly how she was describing Christianity, when she was not. But the possibility of taking deMause's statement another way does prevent me from going lower than a Half-True.
A thorough analysis of court records in 15th century Florence shows “the majority of local males at least once during their lifetimes were incriminated for engaging in homosexual relations with boys.”154
154 Michael Rocke, Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996, p. 7.
HALF-TRUE. First, the page number is wrong; this quote is found on page 5. Second, deMause adds the words "with boys" at the end, even though this is not found in the actual quote. Since deMause's argument is regarding the frequency of boys being abused, it means he has once again edited the quote to make it look like it supports his point better.
There is an oddity also. Despite the fact the book appears to assert it as fact here, a later page (146) is more hesitant, saying "in this period probably the majority of local males, at one time or another, were officially incriminated."
The penitentials said when boys were raped by older men the boys were responsible for being too sexually attractive, so the boys were punished, but usually not the rapists.156
156 Allen J. Frantzen, “Where the Boys Are: Children and Sex in the Anglo-Saxon Penitentials.” In Jeffrey J. Cohen, Becoming Male in the Middle Ages, p. 55.
HALF-TRUE. It does state:
"The demand that the boy do penance for an act he did not initiate or even participate in willingly also suggests that he is seen as a temptation to older men, and that even though he is young, he must be held accountable for his effects on them, albeit with a very light penance of seven or 20 days. One does not find penances for the older men and boys who forced younger boys into sexual relations."
First, this idea of them being held accountable for the effects on them is stated as a speculation, which deMause takes as hard fact and then interprets that as the boys being "too sexually attractive" despite this not actually being stated.
But deMause appears to not have read this in better context. What the article is saying with the "One does not find penances for the older men and boys who forced younger boys into sexual relations" is that one does not find penances for the specific forcing of them, but does find penances lasting for years for the sexual act itself. So contrary to deMause's claim, the rapists did receive punishment, even if it was technically for the sex rather than the rape.
There is room to be critical of these penances still. The punishment for an older man having sex with another man is actually greater than him doing it with a boy ("If a baedling [interpreted as referring to a male] has intercourse with a baedling, he is to fast 10 years. If he does this unaware (heedlessly) he is to fast for four years. If it is a child, two years the first time; if he does it again, he is to fast four years." Page 54). That is certainly problematic. Still, that is not deMause's argument, as he claims that there was no punishment; fasting for two years is most certainly one, and it is much greater than the one given to the boys.
Peter Damian said in the 11th century that sex with boys in monasteries usually “rages like a bloodthirsty beast,” yet only the boys and not the priests were punished.158
158 Peter Damian, Book of Gomorrah. Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1988, p. 42.
HALF-TRUE. This quote is not found on that page; it is rather found on page 27. Initially I thought it was because it was a different edition, as the one I looked at was from 1982. However, in another of his works he cites this source and says it was 1982, and there appears to be no 1988 edition that I can find. So perhaps that was simply an error on his part, along with the wrong page number.
However, although the quote is found, it is not really backing up his claims here. Here is what Damian said in a little more context:
"Vice against nature creeps in like a cancer and even touches the order of consecrated men. Sometimes it rages like a bloodthirsty beast in the midst of the sheepfold of Christ with such bold freedom that it would have been much healthier for many to have been oppressed under the yoke of a secular army than to be freely delivered over to the iron rule of diabolical tyranny under the cover of religion, particularly when this is accompanied by scandal to others."
First, the statement of raging "like a bloodthirsty beast" is a general statement regarding vices against nature; sex with boys was one of them (and not the one he appears to spend the most time on either--a skim indicates what he seems to contend as most widespread is priests doing so with each other), but not necessarily what he is specifically referring to with that remark. What is also problematic is that Damian says nothing about only the boys being punished. Perhaps we were supposed to take that conclusion from footnote #156, but as demonstrated there, deMause has overstated his case.
Medieval guilds used to put on “mystery plays which show the course of evil in the world and display the wicked deeds of Satan,” during which children who were cup-bearers would be raped by the drunken revelers.159
159 Norman Simms, “Medieval Guilds, Passions and Abuse.” The Journal of Psychohistory 25(1998): 501.
HALF-TRUE. First, the citation is off; this is actually from 26, not 25. Now, here is the quote from that source:
"It is likely that in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when the guilds we are concerned with were founded, the compotacio included the procurement of young children, boys and girls, brought in to serve as "cup-bearers," that is, to mingle among the drunken revelers, to be verbally and physically abused, to be threatened, and at times to be taken away for sadistic sexual acts and even murder, as occurs in modern societies among "leading citizens" and "pillars of the community." These children were usually, we suggest, orphans and foundlings left to the care of the guilds in the days before proper refuges and orphanages were established in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries."
The article appears rather short on actual proof of its assertion that this happened (no sources are offered, at least not for the above claim), but note that even the article itself only says "It is likely". Even deMause's own source doesn't claim it with certainty, but deMause ignores the usage of "likely" and asserts it as fact.
The lack of proof the article offers for this assertion, coupled with deMause ignoring the usage of "likely," prompt this to be Half-True.
Priests “impregnated girls who had been forced by parents into nunneries” where “drains ran free” of infanticided newborn.160
160 Steven Ozment, When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe, p. 6.
HALF-TRUE. So what does the source say? View it here.
"Heinrich
of Kettenbach, another Franciscan convert to the Reformation and a
Lutheran pamphleteer, accused confessors of impregnating sexually
aggressive women who could not be satisfied by their husbands, alleging
that a single confessor might service as many as twenty such
women–wives, daughters, and maids, "like a steer a herd of cows."
Kettenbach further accused confessors of impregnating young girls who had been forced by parents or circumstance into nunneries, proof which, he claimed, was visible in moated cloisters where the drains ran free (infanticide was here alleged)."
No surprise, deMause
did not quote this exactly. The changing of the verb tense from
impregnating to impregnate is not major, but it is notable he removed
the "or circumstance". The source given, for the record, is:
"Ein new Apologia unnd verantwortung Martini Luther wyder der Papisten Mortgeschrey (Bamberg, 1523), in Flugschriften aus den ersten Jahren der Reformation, I, ed. Otto Clement (Leipzig, 1907), 161."
Although
this work is available on archive.org, it's in German. I barely know
modern German, let alone 16th-century German, so I will be unable to verify the
accuracy of this. However, limiting ourselves to Ozment's account, we
see that this was an accusation by a staunchly anti-Catholic
Protestant. Is this accusation true? It might be. Heinrich, being a former friar, would have possibly been in a position to know about this. On the other hand, as he was writing a polemic against Catholicism, he would have incentive to exaggerate. In any event, what is most important is accurately presenting what the source says. The source says this was an accusation, but deMause presents it as definite fact. Further, the quote deMause provides is in error (I would not be surprised if "or circumstance" was clipped to try to emphasize the part about parents forcing them, as it fits better with his thesis). These combine to Half-True.
Both the manic and depressive states are ways to control suffering by inflicting pains yourself, by “being in charge.” As Henry Suso put it: “Suffering quells my anger [and] makes me no part of the world.”175
175 Jean Delumeau, Sin and Fear: The Emergence of a Western Guilt Culture 13th-18th Centuries, p. 311.
TRUE. I'm not exactly sure where the "being in charge" quote is supposed to come from, but the other quote is there. Well, technically it's stringing together two things, but he correctly uses brackets to demonstrate this fact. It doesn't necessarily back up his claim of "the manic and depressive states" but to be fair it probably was only intended to be a source for the quotation itself.
God is the giant Punishing Parent in the sky who can make you live forever if you confess your badness and worship Him/Her. Life, says St. Benedict, is “dread of Judgment, fearing Hell, and keeping the possibility of death ever before your eyes.”184
184 Helen Ellerbe, The Dark Side of Christian History. New York: Morningstar, 1995, p. 161.
MOSTLY TRUE. The Dark Side of Christian History is not a particularly reliable book; there are various big errors in it I've noticed; I do not want to sidetrack this by going into a list of said errors, but I will note that it repeats the myth that bishops at the Council of Macon voted as to whether women had souls and one may see here for a more in-depth critique of it by someone else (I don't agree with everything in the critique, but by and large it seems to bring up valid points).
But even laying aside any questions of the accuracy of his source, we note again that deMause has declined to give us a direct citation. In fact, he doesn't represent his own source quite right. It actually says "Dread the Day of Judgment, fear Hell, desire eternal life with entirely spiritual ardour, keep the possibility of death ever before your eyes." Once again we see an edited quote. St. Benedict does not state that this description is life, though it is advice he gives concerning life. deMause also cuts out "desire eternal life with entirely spiritual ardour" for no apparent reason. But what is that book’s citation? It is:
"Delumeau, Sin and Fear, 54."
The more full citation, given earlier, is "Jean Delumeau, Sin and Fear, translated by Eric Nicholson (New York:M St. Martins Press, 1990)"
Having gotten a copy of this work and examined it, I do not see this quote on page 54. It is instead on page 55. It says:
"These texts testify to the tradition of quotidie morioir, a doctrine that was initially practiced, and later taught, by the monasteries it originated in. According to this tradition, all of life should be a preparation for death. The fourth chapter of Saint Benedict’s (d. 543) rule, for example, contains the following instructions: "Dread the Day of Judgment, fear Hell, desire eternal life with entirely spiritual ardour, keep the possibility of death ever before your eyes.""
The citation for that is:
"La Regle de saint Benoit (The Benedictine Rule), trans. by H. Rochais (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1980), pp. 24-25. See also Regles des moines, ed. by J.-P. Lapierre (Paris: Seuil, 1982), p. 67."
This did not seem easily available to me, so I closed my examination there. How accurate deMause's source was is thus uncertain, but despite the aforementioned unreliability of The Dark Side of Christian History, I will give the benefit of the doubt and consider it right in this case. But even so, deMause fiddled with the quote, so this is reduced to Mostly True.
St. John Chrysostom tells believers to “constantly think on death, speak of it all the time, visit tombs and attend to dying people, because nothing is so edifying as watching impious people die.”185
185 Jean Delumeau, Sin and Fear, p. 351.
MOSTLY TRUE. deMause has yet again edited this quote. What it actually says is:
"Lalemant’s Saints désirs… takes up one of Saint John Chrysostom’s instructions, namely that “in order to be virtuous, one must constantly think on death, speak of it all the time, become familiar with it, visit tombs and event attend to dying people, because nothing is so edifying and consoling as watching saints die."
His removal of "become familiar with it" is a change, but not a particularly important one. But deMause replaces "watching saints die" with "watching impious people die"! He has replaced a word with its opposite!
I suppose one can say that even with the original quote, his point of John Chrysostom telling believers to think about death remains, so I will be generous and give it a "Mostly True" rather than a "Half-True" even though replacing a word with its opposite is a rather big issue.
Bipolar Christians arranged their lives in two emotional states: during weekdays, families spent many hours together in depressive praying sessions (admitting their sins and internal badness), and then spent the last part of the week switching into grandiose manic trance states in Church, reenacting the central emotions of their childhoods: “Admit you are full of sins and your Killer Mother will forgive you and let you live in Heaven.” The central childhood wish of Christians is “ God will forgive me and let me live if I constantly torture myself.”186
186 Lloyd deMause, The Emotional Life of Nations, p. 413.
MOSTLY
FALSE. It is rather surprising that he should get a citation of his own
work wrong, but he appears to do so. The given quotations are not found
on the page in question. While he does talk some about his ideas on
what he believes to be "Christian masochism", which relates somewhat to the topic above the above quotation, the quotes
are not there, and the above passage is not even really a paraphrase of anything
there. Nor does it discuss the two emotional states he mentions in the passage above. It at
least sort of relates, so it escapes a full False, but its relation
isn't particularly specific and the quotes just aren't there.
The desire for fusion with the Killer Mother is, as Chodorow says, “central to medieval Christian imagery.”187
187 Jean Delumeau, Sin and Fear, p. 185.
FALSE. This quote is not found on that page, and Chodorow isn't mentioned on that page either. In fact, the page in question has nothing to do with what deMause is talking about here; it is a discussion of suicide. I checked the Index to see if maybe he messed up the page number, but Chodorow isn't listed there either. As a result, I feel comfortable assigning this a False.
As Janov puts it: “Suicide is really an attempt at healing, an attempt to conquer death; one would rather be dead than feel it.”192
192 http://primal-page.cm/death.htm
MOSTLY TRUE. There is a typo in the citation: This should be http://primal-page.com/death.htm instead. Anyway, the quote is:
"What this means is that suicide is really an attempt at healing, It is really an attempt to conquer death. It is, ultimately, a testimony to the power of Primal Pain: one would rather be dead than feel it. And not so accidentally, feeling the early death allows us to leave those suicidal feelings behind, forever."
It shouldn't be a surprise at this point, but deMause edits it. Not in any way that really changes the meaning, but one wonders at this point if he has some different idea on what designates quoting something.
The result was that medieval homicide rates were around fifty times higher than today’s rates, a result of their high cortisol levels from their abusive childhoods.195
195 T. R. Gurr, “Historical Trends in Violent Crime: A Critical Review of the Evidence.” Crime and Justice: An Annual Review of Research 3(1981): 313.
HALF-TRUE. Oddly, page 313 is a graph. The actual statement of how much higher they are is on the preceding page, in which it states, after noting various shortcomings of the data: "The general trend which emerges from the evidence is nonetheless unmistakable: rates of violent crime were far higher in medieval and early modern England than in the twentieth century–probably ten and possibly twenty or more times higher." Exactly how deMause goes from "probably ten and possibly twenty or more times higher" to "about fifty times higher" is unclear (emphasis mine in these quotes). Perhaps, due to citing the line chart rather than the actual writing, he thought it was fifty times higher by eyeballing it. In any event, deMause's exaggeration earns this a Half-True.
Even today, says Carol Gilligan, little boys sometimes over-internalize their mothers’ anxieties by saying to them “I am your knight.”201
201 Carol Gilligan, The Birth of Pleasure: A New Map of Love. New York: Vintage Books, 2003, p. 29.
MOSTLY TRUE. This is actually found on page 16. Now, the work I looked at listed its copyright as 2002. I am not sure if deMause made an error with his statement of 2002 or if there actually is another edition which is why the numbers do not match. Another problem is that this is just one case of this stated to be occurring, which deMause expands to refer to little boys in the plural. But, setting aside his questionable analysis of it "over-internalizing" the mothers' anxieties, I judge this as good enough to merit a mostly true.
Mothers then as now regularly held the fantasy that their boys would be “masculine and tough enough” to save them from the beatings and abuses they as females had experienced. “The hated enemy [infidels] were seen as both inferior and feminine,”202 like their mothers, they were created by God to be “weak” and “beaten” like their mothers were beaten by their fathers.
202 Ibid., p. 356-357.
FALSE. There is no pages 356-357 in the book. Attempts to search for the quotes offer turn up nothing.
Enemies were called “poisonous,” and Holy Wars were seen as “searches for masculinity”203 by God’s warriors,
203 Mark Breitenberg, Anxious Masculinity in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
FALSE. Curiously, no page number is cited. You can find the work here. A search for "searches for masculinity" turns up nothing with that phrase, and "poisonous" turns up zero matches as well.
since God Himself promised Holy Warriors in the Bible: “I will cast into panic all the peoples among whom you pass, and will cause all thy enemies to flee before you.”204
204 Exodus 23:27.
TRUE. It is not clear what translation he is using--searching for this phrase turns up only deMause's essay--but the meaning is close enough.
224 Doyne Dawson, The Origins of Western Warfare. Militarism and Morality in the Ancient World. New York: WestviewPress, 1996, p. 175.
FALSE. One may view it here. deMause messed up the page number; it's actually on page 174. But it has been taken quite out of context.
The context here is in a discussion of just war theory. The full sentence is "No one in antiquity gave much thought to the question of who was authorized to declare a war because the answer was nearly always obvious." By editing out the words "in antiquity" at the start and by cutting out the end of the sentence, deMause obscures the fact it was talking about the pre-Christian era in this sentence. His editing further obscures the fact that the reason was that it was obvious who was authorized to declare a war, not (as he claims) because wars were so constant.
The book goes on to say, "But it was not obvious over much of western Europe in the Middle Ages, where authority was fragmented within a confusing network of imperial, royal, clerical, and feudal jurisdictions, so the canonists found themselves spending much time on the problem of who possessed the authority to declare a just war." This is noting how in such a system, it was less obvious who was able to declare a just war. By ignoring context and cutting out important parts of the sentence, deMause twists the book into saying something it really wasn't.
225 Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will, p. 35.
FALSE. Available here, we can see these quotes are not found on that page. And this should be the printing that deMause cites; deMause (in the first time he quotes this at #142) says it is from 1975 and was published by Simon and Schuster. As noted there, archive.org unfortunately lists a different year of 1976, but the date (and the fact Simon and Schuster were involved) can be verified by looking at page 8. So this should be the right source, but the quote is not there.
In fact, the page in question does not even relate to Christian holy wars; it is a discussion of how German soldiers in World War I raped women in Belgium towns they plundered. I attempted to search for these quotes that deMause offered to see if they were perhaps elsewhere in the book, but nothing turned up.
226 Leo Braudy, From Chivalry to Terrorism, p. 91
FALSE. Most of the above, obviously, is just deMause's own ruminations and has no source to give, but I felt it incumbent to quote it all anyway as it is everything that falls between citation 225 and 226. But anyway, the source is found here. But the quotes offered are not found on that page. It does mention "the aloneness of the Christian knight" but that is obviously a different phrase, and it has nothing at all to do with armor.
The manic wild masochistic trances that warriors often switched into (often by becoming drunk) during battle were also not useful to winning battles, and many accounts picture how “berserkers” had to be “cooled down so that they would no longer be a threat to their own side.”229
229 Leo Braudy, From Chivalry to Terrorism: War and the Changing Nature of Masculinity. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003, p. 43.
MOSTLY FALSE. Let's set up a bit of context; for reference, the work is found here (oddly, deMause gives the full citation at 229 and the shortened one at 226; normally someone gives the full version of the citation, and then gives a shortened one afterwards). Now, the book is discussing Cú Chulainn, a mythical Irish hero. It mentions how in one of the myths, Cú Chulainn was supposedly in such a frenzy that they had to pour water on him to make him normal. The author then writes:
"This story is, of course, part of Cú Chulainn's myth, but its basic elements appear historically as well. Tacitus's description of German tribal warriors similarly stresses the contrast between their frenzied activity in war and their inactivity in peace:
When not engaged in warfare, they spend a certain amount of time in hunting, but much more in idleness, thinking of nothing else but sleeping and eating. For the boldest and most warlike men have no regular employment... (114)
This torpor corresponds to the mythic image of the berserkers, who either were exhausted after battle or, like Cú Chulainn, had to be cooled down by stratagem so that they would no longer be a threat. It resembles as well the traits of monsters like Dracula, who are most vulnerable when they are asleep."
In case you are wondering, the 114 appears to be the page number of where the quote is from. The bibliography states for this chapter that the work by Tacitus is "Tacitus. The Agricola and the Germania, tr. H. Mattingly and S.A. Handford. New York: Penguin, 1970."
Anyway, deMause edits the quote to add the phrase "to their own side." This perhaps may not change the meaning on the whole, but it should be mentioned to emphasize how often he is guilty of this kind of editing. The larger problem, however, is that the quote is immediately followed by a statement that this corresponded to the mythic image of the berserkers. But the actual history that is shared says nothing about people needing to be cooled down; it merely says that they didn't do much when they weren't at war, a far cry from the depiction of being a danger to their own side (which is labeled as being part of a myth) that deMause claims is actual history.
The aim of all the apocalyptic Christian wars was what the Bible said would happen to those who survived the Apocalypse in Heaven (Revelation 7:17): “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes”—satisfying the wish that all Christian children retained from their mothers. Finally, like the Killer Mothers with whom they were fused, knights wore gaudy clothes and ribbons and long hair as if they were women, and often actually went into battle as their mothers and other women watched them from a nearby hill and shamed them if they abandoned the fight.230
230 Ibid., p. 194.
MOSTLY FALSE. Page 194 says nothing of the kind; it is a discussion of sexual performance anxiety.
Page 104, which may have been what he meant, says something sort of similar, but it doesn't match up very well with deMause's claims. Viewable here, it mentions how Theodoric sounded a retreat, but his mother rushes up to him and insists he continue the fight. He acquiesces and does not retreat, and goes on to win the battle and kill Odoacer, his enemy.
This does not support deMause's claims well at all, however. This single case of his mother being around hardly supports the claim that they "often" went into battle as their mothers and other women watched. Even worse, this account appears embellished; it claims that he killed Odoacer in the battle, but as the author notes, "in historical fact, Theodoric killed Odoacer treacherously in a concilatory banquet." So even this one example may not be true.
Onlookers reported that “knights are repeatedly spurred on in battle by looking at their ladies.”231
231 Corinne Saunders, “Women and Warfare in Medieval English Writing.” In Corinne Saunders et al, Eds. Writing War: Medieval Literary Responses to Warfare. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2004, p. 198.
MOSTLY FALSE. The problem is that this quote is in reference to FICTIONAL works; more specifically, the stories of King Arthur and his knights. Let's look at a more full quotation; note that part of this is the source ("Women and Warfare in Medieval English Writing") quoting an older English work, which is why the spellings are different:
"Knights are repeatedly spurred on in battle by looking at their ladies. At Lonazep, Palomides sees Isode’s joy at Tristram’s success, and is so cheered that he gains great worship, 'Than sir Palomydes began to double his strengthe, and he ded so mervaylously all men had wondir; and ever he kaste his yee unto La Beall Isode. And whan he saw her make suche chere he fared lyke a lyon, that there myght no man wythstonde hyim' (X, 70, 448)."
It goes on to give additional examples of this. But this quote is from Le Morte d’Arthur, which is about the exploits of King Arthur and his knights, and the rest of the examples are also about King Arthur's knights. These are mythical characters.
Even if one wishes to claim that the folklore was based on an actual
King Arthur, Le Morte d'Arthur is a retelling of the folklore anyway, meaning
that it's probably about as accurate a depiction of the folklore as
Shakespeare's Macbeth was of the actual Macbeth.
Obviously, fiction is often based on fact, but observe what deMause has claimed. He says that "onlookers reported" this. But there were no onlookers to these events any more than there were onlookers to the English army disguising themselves as trees from Birnam Wood as occurs in the play Macbeth!
I had hoped to include an examination of footnote 232, as it is the last one... but deMause gives no page number, and I am not going to look through the entire book to try to verify his claim.
THE CONCLUSION:
Our total for this is:
Pants on Fire!: 1
False: 8
Mostly False: 14
Half True: 15
Mostly True: 8
True: 6
And this is to say nothing of his constant, constant, inability to quote properly. He constantly changes quotes. Sometimes the changes are of no import, but a quotation is supposed to be word for word. And I can't help but notice how frequently the misquotations conveniently serve to make his point look stronger than it actually was. Is this deliberate dishonesty? Simple sloppiness? Or does he have a much looser idea of a quotation than most people? I do not know. But whatever the reason, one cannot trust any quotations he offers as being fully accurate without independently verifying them.
In regards to my scoring, someone might say that I was too harsh in some cases, and should have given them a higher score. There is, admittedly, always some subjectivity in regards to these scores, but conversely there were some cases one might say I was too lenient. Of course, the scores themselves are shorthand. But even if I were to be so lenient as to bump every single score up one slot, we'd still see an awful lot of misrepresented citations. There are simply too many big errors that I do not think a reasonable writer would make.
Simply put, deMause's essay cannot be considered reliable. Even some of the points I marked as "True" might not necessarily be as such, as the error could be in the source material itself. And why should we trust him to be picking accurate source material? If he can't reliably represent his chosen sources correctly, why should we believe he accomplished the more difficult job of discerning accurately which sources to use?
Again, this examination was limited to one chapter of one of his books. But based on this, I would be very hesitant to trust other things deMause has written, as it most likely would have the same sort of issues. I have examined (albeit to a very limited extent) some of his sources from Chapter 8, and have found the same kinds of problems there; perhaps I will one day examine more and make another article based on that. But hopefully this more extensive examination of Chapter 9 serves to reinforce my original point: deMause's conclusions, at least in this chapter, are difficult to trust due to his constant errors and misrepresentations.