Against an Incompetent and Biassed View of Old Age in the Middle Ages

Surviving the Middle Ages as an Old Person...
MedievalMadness | 11 Aug. 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqGQRmZ4W1g

1:02 You are citing two very disparate types of data from Georges Minoy.

The 5th C. data gives a medium age of death, but you have not clarified what it was based on. Also, it's very probable that the first cause lowering the medium lifespan was child mortality, the second was death of women in child labour or in infections post partum. This has no bearing on how old you could get.

The 9th C. data seems highly well documented, but you are not giving a medium lifespan of people born at the same year, and the low percentage of people over 60 is first of all not all that low, and second, could well be due to having lots of children, so that the younger generations outnumber the older.

It is very probable that between 5th and 9th C. child mortality went down. It is not totally improbable that Georges Minoy even indicated that, and you cite him selectively.

1:17 If serfs, who are clearly common people, could include 11 % people over 60, it stands to reason that living above 50 is not unusual.

The shortness of people is not an indicator of their medium age at death.

1:22 For more privileged Medievals, as in nobility or royalty, I would say there was even a chance of living a shorter life than if they had been common or clergy.

For royalty, I tend to get a 56 year median. For non-royal known people a 65 year median.

For instance some ancestry back to the 4 or 8 ancestors in relation to St. Lewis IX of France, and his wife, and children born of them, I get 55 years. For those dying outside childhood and outside childbirth, the minimum was 20, the lower quartile 39/40 (depending on insecurities of exact age), the median 55, higher quartile 63, maximum 75. Sample size 51 persons.*

Compared to 2 dead in childbirth, one at 18, one at 20, and for children and teens dying, I count it to 17.

Compare that to a sample of men connected to the university of Paris, I think I took in some side issues, and I get a sample size of 117 men, where according to shorter and longer versions of their lifespans I get:

33 — 55 — 65 — 72 — 96
36 — 57 — 65 — 72 — 96.**

* Moyen Âge, Royautés (ten years ago tomorrow)

** Et le Moyen Âge? Hormis royautés (ten years ago, to the day)