Old age in the Dark Ages: the status of old age during the early Middle Ages

Abstract

This paper reviews the position of old age in the societies of post-Roman Europe, from the fifth to the 10th centuries. Drawing on both primary and secondary literary and material sources of the period, I suggest that living beyond the age of 60 years was an uncommon experience throughout the early Middle Ages. Not only was achieving old age a minority experience, it seems to have been particularly concentrated among the senior clergy. This, together with the growing importance of the Christian Church as the institution that stabilised post-Roman society, the decline of urban living and its attendant culture of leisure and literacy, and the transformation of kinship into a symbolic 'family under God ' contributed to a more favourable status for old age, or at least one that was particularly favourable for older men. This was based not so much upon the accumulation with age of wealth and privilege, but upon the moral worth of old age as a stage of life. The early Middle Ages, the so-called ' Dark Ages ', was in this respect a relatively distinctive period in the history of old age. With all around instability and the future uncertain and often threatening, survival into old age was a rare but frequently revered attainment.

Subjective Age and Its Correlates Among Middle-Aged and Older Adults

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Macro- and micro-level predictors of age categorization: results from the European Social Survey

“…Similar to the diverse opinions concerning the entrance to young adulthood and its determinants, there is no uniformly agreed upon definition of old age (Kaufman and Elder 2002;Kirk 1992). Although in the developed world, the age of 65 is often considered the official beginning of old age (Sanderson and Sergei 2008), variations in the perception of the beginning of old age and its determinants have been noted (Covey 1992;Denton and Spencer 2002;Gilleard 2009). …”

Dementia, personhood and embodiment: What can we learn from the medieval history of memory?

“…As Dove (1986) notes, 'wheel of life' models positioned every age as fluid symbolic points of contact between the time of the body and the timelessness of the soul. Historians have also illustrated that, while age definitions and chronological categories were not as elaborated nor as strictly identified as they would later become, medieval experiences and narratives of aging were still complex and diverse (Gilleard 2002(Gilleard , 2009Pelling & Smith, 1991;Rosenthal, 1996;Shahar, 1997;Van Houts, 2001). Medieval memory, constituted communally and collectively, lived across and between individuals, ages, groups and regions and the practices of recollection were rendered meaningful through shared memorable narratives.…”