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negations of the family 407
iii. negations of the family
One of the most conspicuous factors of discontinuity between the earlier
centuries and the late antique period concerns one particular aspect of
family history: the negation of the family. The behaviour associated with
this phenomenon can be classified into two broad categories. The first,
which centres on the absolute primacy of virginity in the system of values,
includes the rejection (expressed both before and after marriage) of the
sexual act, of childbirth and of family life. 54 The second includes the following:
the inability to form a new family through lack of economic
resources; the practices of exclusion considered criminal, such as infanticide
and the custom of the ius vitae ac necis, now (at least from 318) likened
to parricidium; 55 and, finally, the actions deriving from the exercise of patria
potestas, which principally meant the exposure and sale of infants, the temporary
cession of grown-up children and the forced entry of daughters –
and, to a lesser extent, sons – into monastic life. In the first category, moral
motivations strongly prevailed over material conditioning; in the second,
the opposite held true.
The lowering of the minimum age for entry into monastic life (and,
though to a lesser extent, into anchoritism) was a development that paralleled
the lowering of the minimum age for betrothal. 56 We learn, for
example, that Symeon Stylites the Younger mounted his first pillar at the
age of seven. Considered individually, this and other similar feats 57 could
be taken as exaggerations aimed at establishing a heroic model: that of the
saint who displayed a fully mature devotion to God in earliest childhood
and an almost primordial purity in adulthood. Symeon, it is worth remembering,
was still in his mother’s womb when John the Baptist appeared to
prescribe the ascetic diet on which the future child was to be raised. 58 But
in fact such stories substantially agree with the data from the legal documents,
which suggest that the phenomenon was widespread: a conciliar
measure of 692 fixed the lower age-limit for entry into a monastery at ten
years. 59 Significantly, the monastic world was strongly pervaded by family
lexis (which was used to describe the system of relationships within the
community) and the monastery itself often ended up by carrying out many
of the functions of a nuclear or extended family. 60
Unlike other practices, the exposure and sale of children, as well as the
hiring-out of sons, was a type of negation of family that often implied entry
into another family: as adopted children, as slaves or as hired labour. A small
proportion of the exposed were either forced into prostitution or intro-
54 See ch. 26 (Brown), pp. 791,5 below. 55 Harris (1986) 92.
56 See above, p. 400. Another problem concerns the imposition of monastic status for punitive
reasons: Goria (1975) 131ff. 57 Vita Sym. Styl. Jun. 15; Patlagean (1973). 58 Vita Sym. Styl. Jun. 3.
59 Conc. in Trullo 40. 60 Talbot (1990).
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