Children and adolescents in medieval miracle stories

Children and Young People in Medieval Miracle Tales. In Swedish.Miracle tales are a rewarding source material for the study of the conditions of children and young people in the Middle Ages. Other sources originate mainly from the elites of medieval society, whose views on child rearing and childhood were rather extreme. Miracle tales on the other hand were told by people from all segments of society and illustrate the life of medieval children in a great variety of situations of leisure and work. However, all miracle tales are not equally well suited for the use of social history. It is especially the miracle collections of the later Middle Ages–to which the Swedish miracle collections belong–that provide such material. Examples are given in the text.