Inquiring into childhood is one of the most appropriate ways to address the perennial and essential question of what it is that makes human beings - each of us - human. In Childhood in History: Perceptions of Children in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds, Aasgaard, Horn, and Cojocaru bring together the groundbreaking work of nineteen leading scholars in order to advance interdisciplinary historical research into ideas about children and childhood in the premodern history of European civilization. The volume gathers rich insights from fields as varied as pedagogy and medicine, and literature and history. Drawing on a range of sources in genres that extend from philosophical, theological, and educational treatises to law, art, and poetry, from hagiography and autobiography to school lessons and sagas, these studies aim to bring together these diverse fields and source materials, and to allow the development of new conversations. This book will have fulfilled its unifying and explicit goal if it provides an impetus to further research in social and intellectual history, and if it prompts both researchers and the interested wider public to ask new questions about the experiences of children, and to listen to their voices.

The Chronicle attributed to Zachariah of Mytilene is one of the most important sources for the history of the church from the Council of Chalcedon in 451 to the early years of the reign of Justinian (527-565). The author who compiled the work in Syriac in A.D. 568/9 drew extensively on the Ecclesiastical History of Zachariah the Rhetor, who later became bishop of Mytilene and ended up giving his name to the whole work. But Zachariah's Ecclesiastical History, which forms books iii to vi of Pseudo-Zachariah's work and covers the period from 451 to 491, is just one of a range of sources cited by this later compiler. For the period that follows, he turned to other well-informed sources, which cover both church and secular affairs. His reporting of the siege of Amida in 502-3 clearly derives from an eye-witness account, while for the reign of the Emperor Justinian he offers not only numerous documents, but also an independent narrative of the Persian war, as well as notices on the Nika riot and events in the West.
This translation (of books iii-xii) is the first into a modern language since 1899 and is equipped with a detailed commentary and introduction, along with contributions by two eminent Syriac scholars, Sebastian Brock and Witold Witakowski.

The Chronicle attributed to Zachariah of Mytilene is one of the most important sources for the history of the church from the Council of Chalcedon in 451 to the early years of the reign of Justinian (527-565). The author who compiled the work in Syriac in A.D. 568/9 drew extensively on the Ecclesiastical History of Zachariah the Rhetor, who later became bishop of Mytilene and ended up giving his name to the whole work. But Zachariah's Ecclesiastical History, which forms books iii to vi of Pseudo-Zachariah's work and covers the period from 451 to 491, is just one of a range of sources cited by this later compiler. For the period that follows, he turned to other well-informed sources, which cover both church and secular affairs. His reporting of the siege of Amida in 502-3 clearly derives from an eye-witness account, while for the reign of the Emperor Justinian he offers not only numerous documents, but also an independent narrative of the Persian war, as well as notices on the Nika riot and events in the West. This translation (of books iii-xii) is the first into a modern language since 1899 and is equipped with a detailed commentary and introduction, along with contributions by two eminent Syriac scholars, Sebastian Brock and Witold Witakowski.

Inquiring into childhood is one of the most appropriate ways to address the perennial and essential question of what it is that makes human beings - each of us - human. In Childhood in History: Perceptions of Children in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds, Aasgaard, Horn, and Cojocaru bring together the groundbreaking work of nineteen leading scholars in order to advance interdisciplinary historical research into ideas about children and childhood in the premodern history of European civilization. The volume gathers rich insights from fields as varied as pedagogy and medicine, and literature and history. Drawing on a range of sources in genres that extend from philosophical, theological, and educational treatises to law, art, and poetry, from hagiography and autobiography to school lessons and sagas, these studies aim to bring together these diverse fields and source materials, and to allow the development of new conversations. This book will have fulfilled its unifying and explicit goal if it provides an impetus to further research in social and intellectual history, and if it prompts both researchers and the interested wider public to ask new questions about the experiences of children, and to listen to their voices.