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6 results

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

  • CHRIS GILLEARD
  • Journal:
    Ageing & Society / Volume 29 / Issue 7 / October 2009
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    18 September 2009, pp. 1065-1084
    Print publication:
    October 2009

  • 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.

  • 5 - The theological framework

  • from PART II - FORGING A CHRISTIAN WORLD, 1200–1300
  • Edited by Miri Rubin, Queen Mary University of London, Walter Simons, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Christianity
    Published online:
    28 March 2010
    Print publication:
    02 July 2009, pp 73-88

  • Summary

    The thirteenth century was one of the most theologically vibrant periods in the history of the Christian church. It was in this period that the subject matter of theology was more closely defined, and that theology became a subject for study in educational institutions. One of the features of the Renaissance was urban life, which experienced a growth and popularity it had not known since the Roman era. By 1200, anyone who aspired to the best education in theology made their way to Paris. Under Aristotelian influence, it was easy to produce theologies that were pantheistic or subsumed incorporeal individuals into a single undivided intelligence. As Christian theologians grew more knowledgeable of Jewish biblical interpretation, commentators from that tradition, especially Maimonides and Rashi, were quoted with admiration, and even given preference over some Christian readings of texts. Over time, philosophical theology was confined to an increasingly narrow academic ghetto, and science and rationality moved to conquer the world.

  • 10 - Christians and Jews

  • from PART III - THE ERECTION OF BOUNDARIES
  • Edited by Miri Rubin, Queen Mary University of London, Walter Simons, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Christianity
    Published online:
    28 March 2010
    Print publication:
    02 July 2009, pp 133-148

  • Summary

    Like Muslims, Jews were outside the Christian faith but, unlike the Muslims, they were present within Christian society. The concept of boundary and that of the imagined Jew are both keys for deciphering the code of the relations between Christians and Jews in the Middle Ages, particularly in the thirteenth century. Medieval ecclesiastical legislation upheld the rights of Jews to protection and to an existence with a modicum of honour in the Christian world, and several popes issued protective bulls. An important milestone in the attitude of the church towards the Jews was the Fourth Lateran Council, convened in the Lateran Palace in Rome by Pope Innocent III. In the Middle Ages conversion generally operates in a single direction, from Judaism to Christianity, and traditionally the church continued to oppose forced conversions. The first recorded instance of Jews being accused of the ritual murder of Christians is in the mid-twelfth century.

  • 8 - The church as a public institution

  • from PART II - GOVERNMENT AND INSTITUTIONS
  • Edited by Averil Cameron, University of Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    11 December 1997, pp 238-276

  • Summary

    The Christian church in the Roman empire had been transformed from an object of official indifference and active hostility into the recipient of favour, privilege and protection. The bishops at Sardica in 343 began to formulate the appellate jurisdiction of the Roman bishop ostensibly as a reaction against the rush to involve the imperial power as a court of last resort for settling church issues. At Constantinople the tally of church buildings increased steadily in the generations after Constantine, while in the time of bishop Macedonius, under Constantius II, the eastern capital also began to witness the emergence of a network of monasteries and charitable establishments. Although the bishop's role of judge and arbitrator for his fellow citizens had a history in earlier church procedure, and was enhanced by the increased public profile of the church in the fourth century, it was also given an institutional footing by the endorsement of imperial decrees.

  • 6 - CANONICAL AND NON-CANONICAL

  • from III - THE OLD TESTAMENT
  • Edited by P. R. Ackroyd, C. F. Evans
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Bible
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 1970, pp 113-159

  • Summary

    This chapter considers the terms that are used to describe the canonical writings and the definition of canonisation and canonicity within the relevant period. It discusses the evidence for acts of canonisation by which the several sections, and the collection as a whole, came to be recognised as canonical. The chapter describes the relation between canonical and non-canonical literature. A famous passage in Josephus provides both a descriptive terminology and a definition of the nature of the Canon as it was understood in his time. The discovery of the book of the Law in the Temple at Jerusalem in the eighteenth year of the reign of Josiah led to a decisive development in the emergence of the Canon. The Greek-speaking Christian Church took over the Septuagint, which contained other works and in which, moreover, some of the canonical books included additional sections.

  • 13 - BIBLICAL EXEGESIS IN THE EARLY CHURCH

  • from V - THE BIBLE IN THE EARLY CHURCH
  • Edited by P. R. Ackroyd, C. F. Evans
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Bible
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    01 April 1970, pp 412-453

  • Summary

    The exegesis of the primitive Christian Church was a direct and unselfconscious continuation of the type of exegesis practised by ancient Judaism in its later period. The discovery of the Qumran literature has opened to another type of Jewish exegesis, the list of proof-texts. The greater part of Christian exegesis for a hundred and fifty years after the resurrection is of course exegesis of the Old Testament. One of the most important new features in all Christian exegesis from the end of the second century onwards is the acceptance by the Church of the Fourth Gospel as fully authoritative. The Western tradition of exegesis showed its conservatism and caution, however, in another direction, and that is in its treatment of eschatology. The Christian gospel was being transposed from a basically Jewish frame of reference and form to a basically Greek frame of reference.