I often talk about morality not being subjective and one of the examples I give when facing someone who believes that morality is always a traditional affair, I ask them if they think that it was morally right for a 12-year-old to marry an adult in medieval times.
That's why I am asking if we have proof or writings about children being married off to adults who we can tell were traumatized by it? It doesn't have to be in a particular era or place. I was just wondering if we have proof that children, even though they lived in a different era, with different cultures, were still similar enough to us to be negatively impacted by such practices?
/u/sunagainstgold has previously answered:
I can give an example that touches research I have done. When dealing with early medieval history in Europe, one of the best sources available is the bishop Gregory of Tours. He lived in the 6th century AD and wrote 10 books of history about the Frankish kings. He has a lot to tell about the sometimes murderous history at that time, and he tells a lot about the wives as well as the concubines of said kings. (shortened english version here: https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/gregory-hist.asp
A second source for this time and area would be someone named "Fredegar" also writing a history.
These two were mainly used during the research for an exhibition that was shown in Frankfurt in Germany in 2012. It was issued as a cooperation project between the Archaeological Museum of Frankfurt, the Treasure Chamber Museum of the Cologne Cathedral and the Musèe d'Archeologie nationale in Saint-Germain-en-Laye ("Königinnen der Merowinger. Adelsgräber aus den Kirchen von Köln, Saint-Denis, Chelles und Frankfurt am Main, edited by Egon Wamers und Patrick Périn 2012) While the exhibition itself focused on the grave goods and garments of several early medieval queens and ladies, the above mentioned catalogue dives into said sources and the knowledge that can be achieved about the lifes of the women in those time. Martina Hartmann wrote an essay is this catalogue where she sums up the information of the available sources, which I am referring to now.
You have to understand that in this time, monogamy is not quite established, and the Frankish kings notoriously had at least one concubine and sometimes several wives. For example, King Clothar I. (511-561) had 5 (!) wives at once. Those women could be from noble birth and could have been married to form alliances with their families, but it is also known for serving maids or slave girls to become Queen. For Late Antiquity before the Frankish Kings, an evaluation of grave incriptions indicates the age of marriage for men around 30. For the Merowingian time it is thought to be 22-25. For women, the marriage age in this time period can be established between 14 and 15. As some of those women lived to be relatively old and gave birth through a timespan of around 20 years, their age for the beginning of their relationship with a king can be established quite well. One example mentioned in this essay is Ingunde, one of the wives of Clothar I., who was born between 500 and 505. She gave birth to her first child in 517/18 and to her last child in 536/37.