“You are bringing up your child for God. Therefore, let the thought of God await his first consciousness. For such as him, God became a Little Child. Show him that Little Child; have His image and that of Saint John in your homes, and let your baby make a playmate of Jesukin. (Does that not make one think a little of Iosagan playing with the children along the stone ditches of the Connemara roads?) For the girl have pictures of the girl-saints: Agnes with her lamb; Elizabeth and Cecilia with their roses; and Catherine with her wheel. But if you cannot afford to have these pictures in your homes (for those were not the days of colour printing and lithography) be sure to bring the little ones often to the Church, and let them see them there.”
I like to think that a great master, painting in those years, had a thought of dear, little, chubby, dark-eyed boys and girls being taken, one of the days soon to follow, into the church, when the masterpiece should be hanging in its place, and making friends with his “Bambino.”
Not by “sight” alone shall you teach your little ones to know God. “While they lie against your breast, and you feed them with your own substance, feed their souls with the sweetness of the love of Jesus, that wells first from your own heart; let the first words they utter be: ‘Jesus, Ave Maria, Deo Gratias, Pater noster qui es in coelo.’
“Have a little altar for the children,” the author counsels, “and teach them the different colours and the different vestments for the several festivals. Let them ring the ‘Hours’ with their own small bell. Nor were it ill done to let them preach to you; to the which preaching do you listen with all due attention and reverence. So shall they learn more easily, and more exactly, their Christian Doctrine, and you will have an opportunity of judging what progress they are really making in it.”
Dominici loves to see the young things gambol about. “As for games,” he says, “let them run and jump, and gambol and play”—but never so as to scare away the little playmate, Jesukin. He throws in a word of warning about the choice of their companions among the neighbour’s children.
Dominici is not in favour of sending children to the schools, as things then were. (It must be remembered that he was engaged in a work of reform among those responsible for those schools.) He advises the mother to teach the children as much as she can at home herself. Here the question of what they should study meets him. Is it safe to let their young and innocent minds come into contact with pagan morality? He strongly regrets the old days and the old ways. Our ancestors were wiser. First they taught the Psalter, and Sacred Doctrine. Then, if the child was to go further: the Morality of Cato, the Fictions of Aesop, the profitable wisdom of Prospero (i.e., certain “sentences” taken from the works of Saint Augustine); the Fidei Confessio of Bœthius; the philosophy of the “Eva Columello,”[10] the “Tres leo Naturas”[11]; and to help them to memorize the Sacred Story, the poem “Aethiopium Terras.”
He was writing this book for a woman who had known much trouble, who had seen her husband’s family driven into exile by the Medici. It behoves her then to rear up her children in the possession of that liberty of which no Cosimo can dispossess them—the liberty which is in the heart of every true man who has emancipated his Will from the thraldom of his passions. Again and again, he returns to this point: train their will. Teach them to know Good from Evil, and to choose good. No man can be free who is not free from these three things: free from sin, free from vengeance, free from debt. Nor can a man be free whose soul is in bondage to the appetites of his body. Rear your children hardily; so shall they have no fear of future evil fortune. Again he goes into detail: “Teach them to eat bitter things, lest too great daintiness be their undoing.” And again: “if they are sick, do not show them too much compassion, for so shall you take from them the opportunity of practising patience.”
Be careful with whom your children associate. “None of the things entrusted to you are so precious as your children. Their souls are worth more in God’s eyes than Heaven and Earth, and the whole of the irrational creation; and you do Him a greater service in bringing up your children well than if you possessed the whole world, and gave all away to the poor.”
When treating of the relation of the child to his parents, Dominici lays great stress on the observance of those outward forms, which express the reverence due from him to them. In the presence of parents, children shall not sit down unless desired to do so; they must stand in a respectful attitude, humbly bow the head when any command is addressed to them, and uncover when they meet their father or mother. “Twice a day at least shall they kneel and beg your blessing. The child must say: ‘Benedicite,’ and you shall answer: ‘May God bless thee with an everlasting blessing,’ or ‘may the blessing of God be always with thee.’ And let the child, kneeling to ask a blessing from you, remind you to ask a blessing from your Father who is in Heaven—not twice a day only, but as often as you change your occupation.”