Growing Old in the Middle Ages (review)

202 Reviews Shahar, Shulamith, Growing Old in the Middle Ages, trans. Yael Lotan, London and N e w York, Routledge, 1997; cloth; pp. x, 243; R.R.P. US$75.00, £45.00. Following on her studies of women and children in the Middle Ages, Shulamith Shahar turns her attention in her most recent book to another socially marginalised group. This is not a comprehensive overview of old age in the medieval period. A brief survey of the image of old people and their role in the symbolic order, attitudes to old age and behavioral expectations, is followed by an account of the socio-economic situation of the elderly in various social strata (churchmen and nuns, rulers, minor office holders and soldiers, town dwellers and peasants). Shahar draws on primary sources and specialist publications chiefly relating to Italy and England. She concludes, not surprisingly, that the social realities of old age have undergone profound changes since the Middle Ages, but that there have been few changes in images, expectations and attitudes, although they have undergone secularisation. Shahar dismisses the view that medieval people regarded themselves as old at 40, and that they did not fear old age because they did not expect to live long. Ages of Man texts and personal statements, such as Michelangelo's reflections on his o w n mortality, are a far less reliable guide to medieval definitions of old age than are legal exemptions from offices and duties, where the threshold is defined as either 60 or 70. The percentage of people over 60 in medieval Europe, estimated by demographic historians as generally between five and eight percent, increased in the fifteenth century as a result of the Black Death, and in some parts of Italy it was much the same as it is today in developed countries. Shahar disagrees strongly, however, that the aged were more highly valued when there were fewer of them. Comparing the neutral view of 'the old body' in medical treatises with its depiction in moral and symbolic discourse, Shahar finds that the descriptions of old men are as merciless as those of old women, but whereas old men symbolise transience, old w o m e n are symbols of ugliness and evil. To explain these grotesque, and profoundly alienating images merely as an expression of their authors' anxiety about aging scarcely seems adequate. Old people were expected to retire to the margins and concern themselves with their own salvation (though some resisted this view). Of much greater interest than the moral exhortations are the four ideals of transcending age which Shahar identifies. These include Roger Bacon's proposals for attaining longevity and Eckharfs sermon on the ever-youthful soul and its capacity for spiritual renewal. All literature, including clerical literature, assumed that children would care for their aged parents, but there was, simultaneously, an awareness that this could not be relied upon, which is reflected in cautionary tales such as the medieval analogues to King Lear. Macfarlane relates these to the individualisation of land ownership in thirteenth-century England which freed sons from the obligation to support Reviews 203 their aged parents. Warnings against bequeathing property in one's lifetime are virtually universal, however, and Shahar considers that these also are an expression of anxiety about aging, as well as the pain caused by the asymmetry in the love between parents and their offspring. The undifferentiated conception of old people (more accurately, of old men) in the literature discussed in the cultural-historical chapters of Shahar's study is offset by her examination of a number of sub-groups, which aims to show that the status and participation of the elderly varied according to gender, social stratum, position, regional custom, level of functioning and personality. A summary of the conclusions to which this examination points would have been helpful. Shahar's postscript emphasises the existence of tensions between the older and younger generations, arising from the limited nature of resources, irrespective of the system of division adopted. This theme also figures in her final chapter, on charity, which concludes that although old people are not defined by scripture as especially deserving, destitute old people were not victims of a...