This chapter will discuss a more challenging aspect (in terms of consistency of source material) of late medieval education: the children who attended school. In Lyon, the archival sources present an incomplete picture of pupils. This is a widespread problem with the study of the history of children before the twentieth century. Shulamith Shahar admits that she used prescriptive literature – much in the same vein as the treatises referred to throughout this book – in order to put together her work, Childhood in the Middle Ages. Barbara Hanawalt's Growing Up in Medieval London: The Experience of Childhood in History relies heavily on books of courtesy (another form of prescriptive literature) but also on the reports of coroners, guardianship arrangements and contracts of apprenticeship. Even Nicholas Orme's examination of the historical record turns up few specific references to named pupils in English schools and is forced to rely on incidents of literacy amongst non-nobles in order to discuss the education of townspeople and peasants. Very few individual children were named in the documents as being at school. The richest sources of information, the tax rolls and surveys of property, did not mention children whatsoever. The proceedings of the chapter of Saint-Jean sometimes recorded the names of boys who entered the choir there – and therefore the school – but this practice was not consistent. Furthermore, boys who were given permission to leave the cathedral in order to attend schools in the city were usually anonymous. The same variability exists in the proceedings of Saint-Nizier and Saint-Paul.

These irregularities do not allow for the construction of a well-formed prosopography of medieval Lyonnais schoolchildren. Instead, the focus must be on what can be gleamed of the general experience of pupils in elementary and grammar schools in late medieval Lyon. There is not a great deal of information regarding this; but, by amassing references that touch upon everyday matters that arose in the course of instructing these children, we can discover something about how they were treated and what they learned, as well as being able to establish brief biographies of a small number of pupils. This chapter examines four aspects of the pupil experience in Lyon: the school day; the books and other materials used by pupils; the spaces used by schoolchildren; and the individual biographies of a small number of Lyonnais pupils.