Since the time of the ancient Greeks, western scholars had debated about how many
stages made up a man’s life. Some argued for four, corresponding to the four seasons,
some twelve, corresponding to the months and the signs of the zodiac, and some
three, fi ve, six, eight, or ten. The most common number was seven, corresponding to
the seven known planets (the planets out to Saturn plus the moon), and identifi ed by
St. Ambrose in the fourth century as infancy, boyhood, adolescence, young manhood,
mature manhood, older manhood, and old age. The “ages of man” show up textually
in philosophical discussions, essays, and poetry, verbally in songs, plays, and sermons,
and visually in manuscript illuminations, stained-glass windows, wall paintings, and
cathedral fl oors, so that everyone was familiar with them.
The ages of man began with stages of physical and emotional maturing, and then were
differentiated by increasing and decreasing involvement in the world of work and public
affairs. As Jacques says, a man moved from schoolboy to lover to soldier to offi cial, roughly
the same progression shown in the engraving by Isaac, with the clean-shaven lover in a
fancy plumed hat, the mustached soldier carrying a long pike, and the bearded offi cial in
the elegant cape. As men moved from one stage to another, they were often shown with
different objects symbolizing changing occupations or responsibilities. For men, only in
adolescence was sexuality a factor, and marriage or fatherhood was almost never viewed as
a signifi cant turning point. When people described the stages of a woman’s life, it was her
sexual status and relationship to a man that mattered most: a woman was a virgin, wife, or
widow, or alternately a daughter, wife, or mother.
The ages-of-man motif shows people as individuals – or occasionally as couples –
and one of the marks traditionally associated with “modernity” is the increasing importance
of persons as individuals rather than members of social groups. The nineteenthcentury
Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt, who really created the modern idea of what
the Renaissance was, saw “individuality” as one of its defi ning features: “In the Middle
Ages … man was conscious of himself only as a member of a race, people, party, family,
or corporation – only through some general category. In Italy [of the Renaissance] …
man became a spiritual individual .” 1
In the century and a half since Burckhardt wrote, his notion of the individualism
of the Renaissance has been rejected, rethought, and revised along several lines. Medieval
historians have asserted that the individual was important in learned philosophy,
theology, and political theory, as well as popular songs, poems, and stories, since at
least the tenth century, or perhaps far earlier. Conversely, scholars of the Renaissance
and early modern periods have emphasized that groups of all sorts – families, clans,
neighborhoods, guilds – remained extremely important into the eighteenth century,
or even into the twenty-fi rst century for many people. This was particularly true for
the nobility and for the broad mass of common people, but even among the subjects
of Burckhardt’s study – upper-class Italian men living in cities – corporate groups remained
central to their understanding of themselves and their place in the world.
Along with these doubts about the “individualism” of the Renaissance, however, has
come new interest in aspects of people’s lives as individuals that were not part of what
concerned Burckhardt. He focused on intellectual and cultural factors, but more recently
historians have investigated people’s physical bodies, identities as men and women, sexuality,
and experiences with aging, thus returning to many of the same topics that for so long
were part of discussions of the “ages of man.” This newer scholarship on the individual simultaneously
broadens and problematizes earlier studies. We now know a great deal more
about all kinds of individuals than we did even twenty years ago, but we also recognize
how much those individuals are enmeshed in various social relationships and networks
of power, and how much they perceived of themselves as members of various groups. The
brief discussion of the individual in society in the previous chapter worked inward from
conceptualizations of the entire social order; this chapter will work outward from the individual
to the ever-widening social circles that surrounded him or her.
World History
