Medieval Life Cycles: Continuity and Change ed. by Isabelle Cochelin and Karen Smyth (review)

Few edited volumes are quite so well structured to their purpose as Medieval Life Cycles. It is an important and useful book that is also a pleasure to read. Dealing with conceptions of human time over a spectrum of different periods and places is no simple task. The chapters gently move from studies of infancy to adolescence, then through adulthood, middle age, old age, and death, and from the Anglo-Saxon through the late medieval periods. Impressively for a volume of studies of the boundaries between different ages, there is a great deal of congruence between papers, periods, and disciplines.

Isabelle Cochelin and Karen Smyth set the parameters of the study nicely, showing the unifying logic of the collection. As ‘medieval people rarely conceived of one age independently from the others’ (p. xi), Cochelin and Smyth note the need for a whole-of-life study of the way that age and ages were understood across, rather than in, the Middle Ages. This is a good complement to existing studies of specific ages or genders, reminding readers of the relational nature of medieval thought and experience. Additionally, in pointing to the multi-disciplinary nature of the collection, the editors propose ‘underlining the complexity of medieval discourses of the life cycle’ (p. xiii). Serving further as an introduction to the period, range of conceptions, and the variety of sources, Cochelin’s own study of over eighty life-cycle definitions from late antiquity to the twelfth century also introduces the focus on continuities and changes. Identifying a broad definitional shift across the centuries, the chapter is concluded with an annotated bibliography of relevant sources, which will be useful for scholars.

Sally Crawford deals with two specific problems related to infant burial in Anglo-Saxon England. The first concerns sources that prescribe a particular burial pattern for unbaptised infants, and the second is the actual burial patterns discernible in the archaeological record. It is an excellent study of attitudes to infancy and baptism and will be of interest to scholars focused on the processes of, and problems with interpreting, the Christianisation of Europe. Mary Dzon’s study of the presentation of Jesus, in antique sources and their later translations, as ‘wanton’ in the narratives of his early life, is a fascinating study of the way that stories are conveyed across cultures and times, as well as a detailed exploration of notions regarding gendered behaviour in children.

Cochelin’s second contribution to the volume is an examination of Cluniac definitions and perceptions of adolescence in the Middle Ages. It specifically charts shifts that occurred in about the tenth and twelfth centuries, drawn from customaries, hagiographies, and the definitions she had identified in the Introduction to the book. Although noting several explanations for various attitudinal changes, Cochelin is also sensibly open to the possibility of actual teenage rebellion being reflected in the sources. Looking in an entirely different setting, the conversion of Jewish adults and children, Jessie Sherwood also engages with the problems of adolescent obedience and definition, and the grey divide between childhood and adulthood. It is a study with broader applications for those interested in Christian-Jewish relations during the medieval world.

Family, generational gaps, and the fluidity of definitions are themes that are again reflected in Christine Kuhn’s survey of a merchant family’s letters. Highlighting that the sources served to maintain hierarchy, this study will also be of use to those interested in the methodologies of discerning historical emotion. Counterbalancing an assumed ‘adulthood’ as the norm against which more specific studies of ‘youth’ and ‘old age’ are often set, Deborah Youngs’s survey of the problem of defining adulthood is a welcome addition. Examining in particular detail various spiritual discourses of midlife, Young suggests that ‘medieval adulthood existed as a desire, as an ideology, and as an achievement’ (p. 258). Margery Kempe’s...