2024/03/05 by Janna Coomans, Bente Marschall · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · #Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes #Reformation and Early Modern Christianity
paper · doi:10.1080/03044181.2024.2321581
openalex publication_date 2024/03/05 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/15
Administrative sources and miracle accounts from six Netherlandish urban shrine cults help to explore the interests of inhabitants and urban institutions in intervening in children’s safety, behaviour, and upbringing. Care for children was much more central to the politics of communal well-being in the late Medieval Netherlands than often assumed. Various agents, including both lay and religious authorities, participated in what we call the biopolitics of childhood: a type of power negotiation in which knowledge of health was employed in local politics and as part of the broader governance of a population. This approach offers new directions in both the study of public health and medieval childhood, as it emphasises the complex meaning and function of caring for children and the social-political interests involved in such acts.