[Sca-cooks] Age and maturity in the Middle Ages

Ana Valdés agora158 at gmail.com
Fri Sep 14 09:51:46 PDT 2007


I am not sure I understand the point. Yes, many rulers were teenagers
but they had scores of generals and priests and relatives to help
them. The concept "extended family" was capital in a time where wealth
and power were linked by marriage.
Mary Stuart was a queen when she was only a few days old and she was
married when she was 6 years old. But she ha regents and people around
until she was old enough.
And the same was surely applicable to the most rulers. They ruled
because they were chosen by God or by their peers but they barely
ruled themselves, they were the visible head of a powerful hydra with
many arms and tentacles.
It's impossible to relate to us and to our teenagers, raised in
nuclear families with very few present adults.
Ana

On 9/14/07, Christiane <christianetrue at earthlink.net> wrote:
> There's such a knowledgeable group of people here, I thought I'd ask, even though it's not food related. Have there been any papers on psychosocial development in the middle ages? I recall Barbara Tuchman's observations about how young in age many of the rulers were during the 100 Years War (leading armies as teenagers), and her intimating that some of the problems of the 14th century were because so many of the elites (and people in general) were immature and had poor impulse control. I can see her point: I look back at the asinine things I did at 16 and ask myself what the hell was I thinking, and then realize that at the time, no, I was not thinking at all, I just did it and didn't think about the consequences.
>
>
> Gianotta
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