Miracle babies: historical narratives as windows into babies’ social and spiritual lives

Babies rarely appear as historical subjects in their own right, but tend to be presented as adults-in-waiting or as blank slates for the projection of contemporary ideas about childhood. This problem is compounded when researching the Middle Ages, because high infant mortality rates mean that many babies have left little historical record; moreover, a dominant historical interpretation has emphasised parents’ cost-benefit analysis for investing emotional, social and material resources in babies whose survival was always in question. To challenge these perspectives, this chapter attempts to write a history which centres a baby and his interactions with the society and culture around him. I present a miracle story from late sixth-century Tours (modern France) which, read in its historical context, allows us to identify the creation of social connections and the development of social institutions to provide spiritual and physical sustenance for babies. Babies’ specific vulnerabilities and behaviours interacted with processes of Christianisation, resulting in a changing understanding of babies as persons. The chapter provides an example of how a cultural history of babyhood contributes to postdevelopmental perspectives by highlighting the variability of babies’ experiences and challenging us to rethink the entanglements of nature and culture in babies’ lives.