On Old Age: Approaching Death in Antiquity and the Middle Ages

368 Pages·2011·10.6 MB·English

by  Christian Krötzl

ON OLD AGE
THE HISTORY OF DAILY LIFE
Editorial Board
Gerhard Jaritz, Central European University (Budapest) and Austrian Academy of Sciences
David Austin, University of Wales Lampeter
Claude Gauvard, Université Paris 1
Christian Krötzl, University of Tampere
Katharina Simon-Muscheid, University of Bern
Daniel Smail, Harvard University
Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of this book
Volume 2
ON OLD AGE:
Approaching Death in
Antiquity and the Middle Ages
edited by
Christian Krötzl and Katariina Mustakallio
H

F
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
On old age : approaching death in antiquity and the Middle
Ages. -- (History of daily life ; v. 2)
1. Old age--Social aspects--Europe--History--To 1500--
Cross-cultural studies. 2. Older people--Europe--
Attitudes--History--To 1500--Cross-cultural studies.
3. Death--Social aspects--Europe--History--To 1500--
Cross-cultural studies. 4. Funeral rites and ceremonies,
Ancient--Europe--Cross-cultural studies. 5. Funeral rites
and ceremonies, Medieval--Europe--Cross-cultural studies.
6. Civilization, Classical. 7. Civilization, Greco-Roman.
8. Civilization, Medieval. 9. Old age in literature.
10. Death in literature.
I. Series II. Krotzl, Christian. III. Mustakallio,
Katariina.
306.9'094'0901-dc23

ISBN-13: 9782503532165
© 2011, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher.
D/2011/0095/199
ISBN: 978-2-503-53216-5
Printed on acid-free paper
CONTENTS
Preface ix
List of Illustrations xvii
Part I: Coping with Old Age and Death: Views and Values
Viewing the Old: Recording and Respecting the Elderly 3
at Rome and in the Empire
MARY HARLOW AND RAY LAURENCE
The Elderly Children of Greece and Rome 25
TIM PARKIN
Representing Older Women: Hersilia, Veturia, Virgo 41
Vestalis Maxima
KATARIINA MUSTAKALLIO
The Changing Face of Death: The Iconography of the 57
Personification of Death in the Early Middle Ages
JILL BRADLEY
‘I wish my body to hallowed ground’: Testamentary Orders of 89
the Burghers of Late Medieval Pressburg about their Own Burial
JUDIT MAJOROSSY
Part II: Social Meaning of Old Age and Death
Old Age as a Principle of Social Organization: Gerousiai 127
in the Poleis of Hellenistic and Roman Southern Asia Minor
ENNIO BAUER
The Massacre of Old Men by the Gauls in 390 BC and the 153
Social Meaning of Old Age in Early Rome
ALEKSANDR KOPTEV
What Happened to Aged Priests in the Late Middle Ages? 183
KIRSI SALONEN
Coping with Old Age in Medieval Hungarian Towns
KATALIN SZENDE 197
Burials and Politics of the Living and the Dead in Scotland 217
and Pomerania in the High Middle Ages: The Case
of Two Cistercian Monasteries
EMILIA JAMROZIAK
Part III: Coping with Death: Remembrance and Oblivion
No Place for the Dead: Ludi Saeculares of 17 BC and the 235
Purificatory Cults of May as Part of the Roman Ritual Year
JUSSI RANTALA
Disease, Death, Destiny: The Healer as Soter in Miraculous Cures 253
ILDIKÓ CSEPREGI
Medical Perspectives on Death in Late Medieval and 277
Early Modern Europe
IONA MCCLEERY
Who Deserves the Crown of Martyrdom? Martyrs 293
in the Crusade Ideology of Jacques de Vitry (1160/70–1240)
MIIKKA TAMMINEN
Rituals and Reputation: Immature Death in the Fourteenth-Century 315
Canonization Processes
SARI KATAJALA-PELTOMAA
Pulpits and Tombs in Renaissance Florence 333
NIRIT BEN-ARYEH DEBBY

PREFACE
Christian Krötzl and Katariina Mustakallio
In all cultures, social and religious practices and rites usually mark the passing
from one status to another. In Antiquity and the Middle Ages the end of the
individual life span and especially the different stages of old age had various
markers and meanings in different societies and communities. This volume
concentrates on the means and ways of coping with old age and death in pre-
modern societies. In Classical Rome and medieval Europe, the status of older
people of the upper classes was rather high. However, the situation changed
rapidly if they lost their control over their wealth. After the death a rich variety
of ritual practices and regulations was needed to cope with the loss and to
uphold, reconfirm, and recreate the social bonds in a community. Earlier research
has rarely concentrated on old age and death from the longue durée perspective;
the topic has until recently been treated rather superficially in overviews or as a
subordinated part of larger biographical, religious, and art historical studies.1
This volume has been developed from the papers presented at the conference
‘Ageing, Old Age and Death: Passages from Antiquity to the Middle Ages II’ at
the University of Tampere in 2005, which examined issues of ageing, old age, and
death in ancient and medieval societies from a comparative perspective. The aim
of the conference was, as represented in the present volume, to cross the
1 See, for example, Philippe Ariès, Essais sur l’histoire de la mort en occident du moyen âge à nos
jours (Paris: Seuil, 1975); La Mort, les morts et l’au-delà dans le monde romain, Actes du colloque,
Caen, 20–22 novembre 1985, ed. by François Hinard (Caen: Université de Caen, 1987); Georges
Minois, Histoire de la vieillesse en occident: De l’Antiquité à la Renaissance (Paris: Fayard, 1987);
Jean Prieur, La morte nell’antica Roma (Genova: ECIG, 1991); Jocelyn M. C. Toynbee, Death and
Burial in the Roman World (London: Thames and Hudson, 1982).
x Preface
traditional boundaries of time periods, scholarships as well as themes.2 Old Age
and death in ancient and medieval societies have never before been treated and
presented in such a single, comparative publication.
With some minor exceptions historians of Antiquity and of the Middle Ages
have, astonishingly enough, until now very rarely worked together systematically
or even compared their results on topics of social, cultural, and everyday life
history. The conference series ‘Passages from Antiquity to the Middle Ages’,
organized by the Department of History and the research unit ‘Trivium’ at the
University of Tampere (Finland) from 2003 onwards, constitutes in that sense
a new approach and has already led to fruitful exchange and cooperation both on
an inter-Nordic and wider international level.3 The lack of collaboration and
even comparison over the antique-medieval boundary is even more astonishing
when compared to lively and well-established contacts between late medieval and
early modern research.4 Classical and medieval societies differ in many important
features of political organization and in the cultural life of the higher classes of
society. This has, however, led to a bias both in research and in wider perception,
which has far too strongly obstructed and prevented fruitful comparisons of
fundamental continuities and similarities in everyday life organization, culture,
and structures of mentality.
In Antiquity as well as during the Middle Ages the average life expectance was
low, statistical estimations ranging mostly between twenty-five and forty years.
This observation is, however, rather misleading when considering everyday life
and the functioning of local communities. The low average was mainly due to a
very high mortality at childbirth, during the very first years of life, and to a lesser
degree during the years of youth. Death and dying of small children and of young
boys and girls were thus constantly present and an integral part of daily life.
The consequence was not, as often assumed, that communities and daily life
were dominated by younger people only and that old age was marginalized and
2 19–21 August 2005, Department of History, University of Tampere, Finland.
3 For the publication of the papers based on the first conference in the series Passages from
Antiquity to the Middle Ages (2003) see Hoping for Continuity: Childhood, Education and Death
in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, ed. by Katariina Mustakallio, Jussi Hanska, and others (Rome:
Institutum Romanum Finlandiae, 2005).
4 See the journal Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung: Vierteljahresschrift zur Erforschung des
Spätmittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, from 1974 onwards, as well as the series Veröffent-
lichungen des Instituts für Realienkunde des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit (Vienna:
Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften), from 1976 onwards.