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

The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance
ISBN-10
0226067122
ISBN-13
9780226067124
Series
The Kindness of Strangers
Category
History
Pages
488
Language
English
Published
1998-11
Publisher
University of Chicago Press
Author
John Boswell

Description

Using a wide variety of sources, John Boswell examines the evidence that parents of all classes gave up unwanted children, "exposing" them in public places, donating them to the church, or delivering them in later centuries to foundling hospitals. He shows what happened to these children, and he illuminates the moral codes that condoned abandonment.

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