[Old age in Medieval times]

Europe in the Middle Ages had no experience of gerontology as we know it today. The categorisation of old age was based on symbolic relationships with the world, inherited from Antiquity, and resulted in an ambivalent image of this age. Our knowledge in the area is derived mainly from fiction, from scholarly texts of a philosophical, moralising or medical nature, each interacting with the other. This observation is backed up by a moral treatise on the 'four ages of man' written in the 13th century by Philip of Novara.