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Renaissance treatises on ‘successful ageing’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 December 2011

CHRIS GILLEARD
CHRIS GILLEARD*
Affiliation:
Unit of Mental Health Sciences, University College London, UK.
*
Address for correspondence: Chris Gilleard, Unit of Mental Health Sciences, University College London, Charles Bell House, 67–73 Riding House Street, London W1W 7EY, UK. E-mail: CGilleard@aol.com
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Abstract

Numerous treatises on ‘successful ageing’ were published during the late Renaissance. Zerbi's Gerontocomia and Cornaro's Trattato della Vita Sobria, in particular, have been considered as early precursors of modern gerontology. In this paper I revisit these two treatises, outline their content and common themes, and set them in the context of other literature written about ageing in this period. The rise of civic humanism, increased access to classical texts on health and hygiene, and the emergence of environmental and public health concerns, particularly in the Italian city states, are some of the factors that influenced this writing. The powerful yet insecure position of older men in the upper ranks of Italian society gave the topic of ‘seniority’ added relevance. While their roots in the scholastic tradition prevent them from serving as forerunners of scientific gerontology, their humanist concern with ‘lifestyle’ succeeds in making them the prototypes of the ‘do-it-yourself’ manuals for successful ageing that now proliferate in our late modernity.

Keywords

renaissancehumanismsuccessful ageing
Type
Articles
Information
Ageing & Society , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , February 2013 , pp. 189 - 215
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

References

Alberti, Leon Battista 1443/2004. I libri della famiglia [The Family in Renaissance Florence], Books One to Four. Translator Watkins, R. N., Waveland Press, Long Grove, Illinois.Google Scholar
Anselmi, Aurelio 1606. Gerocomica sive De Senum Regimene. Venice.Google Scholar
Bacon, Roger. 1240?/1928. De retardione accidentium senectutis cum aliis opusculis de rebus medicinalibus. Translator and editors Little, A. G. and Withington, E., Clarendon Press, Oxford.Google Scholar
Bacon, Roger 1240?/1683. De retardandis senectutis accidentibus et de sensibus conservandis [The Cure of Old Age and the Preservation of Youth]. Translator Browne, R., London.Google Scholar
Cardano, Girolamo [Cardani, Hieronymi] 1580. Opus novum cunctis de sanitate tuenda, ac vita producenda studiosis apprimè necessarium: in quatuor libros digestum. Rome.Google Scholar
Castiglione, Baldassare 1528/1996. Il Cortegiano [The Book of the Courtier]. Translator Hoby, T., Dent, London.Google Scholar
Cornaro, Luigi (Alvise) 1558/1903. Trattato della Vita Sobria [The Art of Living Long]. Translator Butler, W. F., BiblioLife, Charleston, South Carolina.Google Scholar
Dati, G. 1430/1991. Il Libro Segreto di Gregori Dati [The Diary of Gregario Dati]. Translator Martines, J.. In Bruckner, G. (ed.), Two Memoirs of Renaissance Florence (107–141). Waveland Press, Long Grove, Illinois.Google Scholar
de Mediolano, Joannes 1099/1528. Regimen sanitatis Salerni [The Regiment of Helthe]. Translator Paynell, T., London.Google Scholar
de Villanova, Arnold 1309/1540. De conservanda juventute et retardanda senectute [The Defence of Age, and Recovery of Youth]. Translator Drummond, J., Robert Wyer, London.Google Scholar
du Laurens, André 1594/1599. Discours de la conservation de la veue; des maladies mélancholiques; des catarrhes; et de la vieillesse [A Discourse of the Preservation of the Sight: of Melancholic Diseases; of Rheumes, and of Old Age]. Translator Surphlet, R., Ralph Jackson, London.Google Scholar
Ferdinandi, Epifanio 1612/2004. De vita propoganda: seu Iuventute conservanda et senectute retardanda: tò Makróbion. Translator (Italian) and editors Portulano-Scoditti, M. L. and Distante, A. E., Giordano, Milan.Google Scholar
Ficino, Marcelo 1489/1994. Liber de Vita sive De Vita Triplici [The Book of Life]. Translator Boer, C., Spring Publications, Woodstock, Connecticut.Google Scholar
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Rangone, Tomasso 1550. De vita hominis ultra CXX annos protrahenda. Venice.Google Scholar
Zerbi, Gabriele 1489/1988. Gerontocomia [On the Care of the Aged]. Translator Lind, L. R., American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia.Google Scholar
Adamson, M. W. 2007. Wellness guides for seniors in the Middle Ages. Fifteenth Century Studies, 32, 1–16.Google Scholar
Allen, M. J. B. 1990. Review of M. Ficino's Three Books on Life. Translator C. V. Kaske and J. R. Clark. Renaissance Quarterly, 43, 829–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Axon, W. E. 1901. Cornaro in English. The Library, s2-II, 120–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bell, R. M. 1999. How to Do It: Guides to Good Living for Renaissance Italians. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.Google Scholar
Bergdolt, K. 2008. Wellbeing: A Cultural History of Healthy Living. Translator Dewhurst, J., Polity, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Blanshei, S. R. 1979. Population, wealth and patronage in medieval and Renaissance Perugia. Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 9, 597–619.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brotton, J. 2006. The Renaissance: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, Oxford.Google Scholar
Brown, J. C. 1989. Prosperity or hard times in Renaissance Italy? Renaissance Quarterly, 42, 761–80.Google Scholar
Burkhardt, J. 1990. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. Penguin, London.Google Scholar
Campbell, E. J. 1998. The art of aging gracefully: the elderly artist as courtier in early modern art theory and criticism. Sixteenth Century Journal, 33, 321–31.Google Scholar
Cipolla, C. M. 1976. Public Health and the Medical Profession in the Renaissance. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Cipolla, C. M. 1992. Miasmas and Disease: Public Health and the Environment in the Pre-industrial Age. Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, J. R. 1986. Roger Bacon and the composition of Marsilio Ficino's De Vita Longa (De Vita, Book II). Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 49, 230–3.Google Scholar
Classen, A. 2007. Introduction. In Classen, A. (ed.), Old Age in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Interdisciplinary Approaches to a Neglected Topic. W. D. de Gruyter, Berlin, 1–84.Google Scholar
Dannenfeldt, K. H. 1986. Sleep: theory and practice in the late Renaissance. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 41, 415–41.Google Scholar
Elias, N. 1982. The History of Manners. Pantheon Books, New York. (English translation of Über den Prozess der Zivilisation, 1939)Google Scholar
Ellis, A. 2009. Old Age, Masculinity and Early Modern Drama: Comic Elders on the Italian and Shakespearean Stage. Ashgate, Farnham, UK.Google Scholar
Finlay, R. 1978. The Venetian Republic as gerontocracy: age and politics in the Renaissance. Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 8, 157–78.Google Scholar
Fratiglioni, L. D., Launer, L. J., Andersen, K., Breteler, M. M. B., Copeland, J. R. M., Dartigues, J.-F., Lobo, A., Martinez-Lage, J., Soininen, H. and Hofman, A. 2000. Incidence of dementia and major subtypes in Europe: a collaborative study of population-based cohorts. Neurology, 54, Supplement 5, S10–15.Google Scholar
Freeman, J. T. 1979. Aging: Its History and Literature. Human Sciences Press, New York.Google Scholar
French, R. K. 1985. Berengario da Carpi and the use of commentary in anatomical teaching. In Wear, A., French, R. K. and Lonie, I. M. (eds), The Medical Renaissance of the Sixteenth Century. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 42–74.Google Scholar
French, R. 2003. Medicine Before Science: The Business of Medicine from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Garcia-Ballester, L. 1991. Dietetic and pharmacological therapy: a dilemma among fourteenth century Jewish practitioners in the Montpelier area. In Bynum, W. F. and Nutton, V. (eds), Essays in the History of Therapeutics. Clio Medica, Volume 22, Rodopi B. V. Editions, Amsterdam, 22–37.Google Scholar
Garcia-Ballester, L. 1993. On the origin of the ‘six non-natural things.’. In Kollesch, J. and Nickel, D. (eds), Galen und das Hellenistische Erbe. Proceedings of the IV International Galen Symposium, Stuttgart. Franz Steimne Verlag, Stuttgart, 105–15.Google Scholar
Gil Sotres, P. 1998. The regimens of health. In Grmek, M. D. (ed.), Western Medical Thought from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 291–318.Google Scholar
Gilbert, C. 1967. When does a man in the Renaissance grow old? Studies in the Renaissance, 14, 7–32.Google Scholar
Gilleard, C. 2002. Aging and old age in medieval society and the transition of modernity. Journal of Aging and Identity, 7, 25–41.Google Scholar
Goldschmidt, E. P. 1938. Hieronymous Muenzer and other fifteenth century bibliophiles. Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, 14, 491–508.Google Scholar
Greenspan, P., Heinz, G. and Hargrove, J. L. 2008. Lives of the artists: differences in longevity between Old Master sculptors and painters. Age & Ageing, 37, 102–4.Google Scholar
Gruman, G. J. 2003. A History of Ideas About the Prolongation of Life. Springer Publishing Company, New York.Google Scholar
Hale, J. 1971. Renaissance Europe 1480–1520. Fontana History of Europe, Collins, London.Google Scholar
Hale, J. 1993. The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance. Harper Perennial, London.Google Scholar
Hajnal, J. 1965. European marriage patterns in perspective. In Glass, D. V. and Eversley, D. E. C. (eds), Population in History: Essays in Historical Demography. Edward Arnold, London, 101–43.Google Scholar
Hatcher, J. 1986. Mortality in the fifteenth century: some new evidence. Economic History Review, 39, 19–38.Google Scholar
Hayflick, L. 1996. How and Why We Age. Ballantine Books, New York.Google Scholar
Herlihy, D. 1972. Mapping households in medieval Italy. The Catholic History Review, 58, 1–24.Google Scholar
Herlihy, D. and Klapisch-Zuber, C. 1988. Tuscans and Their Families: A Study of the Florentine Catasto of 1427. Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut.Google Scholar
Homet, R. 1997. Los Viejos y La Vejez en la Edad Media: Sociedad e Imaginario. Catholic University of Argentina, Buenos Aires.Google Scholar
Jacquart, D. 1998. Medical scholasticism. In Grmek, M. D. (ed.), Western Medical Thought from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 197–240.Google Scholar
Jaques, E. 1965. Death and the mid-life crisis. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 46, 502–14.Google Scholar
Joutsivuo, T. 2007. Passions and old men in Renaissance gerontology. In Lagerlund, H. (ed.), Forming the Mind. Essays on the Internal Senses and the Mind/Body Problem from Avicenna to the Medical Enlightenment. Springer, New York, 169–86.Google Scholar
Kallendorf, C. W. 2008. Humanist Educational Treatises. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.Google Scholar
Laslett, P. 1989. A Fresh Map of Life: The Emergence of the Third Age. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London.Google Scholar
Lewin, A. W. 2008. Age does not matter: Venetian doges in reality and depiction. In Peterson, D. S. with Bornstein, D. E. (eds), Florence and Beyond: Culture, Society and Politics in Renaissance Italy. Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies, Toronto, 305–17.Google Scholar
Lind, L. R. 1988. Introduction to Gabriele Zerbi's Gerontocomia: On the care of the aged. American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 3–16.Google Scholar
McKenzie, R. 1760. The History of Health and the Art of Preserving It. R. Gordon, Edinburgh.Google Scholar
McKhann, G. and Albert, M. 2002. Keep Your Brain Young: The complete guide to physical and emotional health and longevity. John Wiley & Sons, Chichester.Google Scholar
McManus, I. C. 1975. Life expectation of Italian Renaissance artists. The Lancet, 305, 266–7.Google Scholar
Minois, G. 1989. History of Old Age: From Antiquity to the Renaissance. Polity Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Nauert, C. G. 2006. Humanism and the Culture of Renaissance Europe. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Niebyl, P. H. 1971. The non-naturals. Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 45, 486–92.Google Scholar
Park, K. and Henderson, J. 1991. The first hospital among Christians: the Ospedale di Santa Nuova in early sixteenth century Florence. Medical History, 35, 164–88.Google Scholar
Pettegree, A. 2010. The Book in the Renaissance. Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut.Google Scholar
Poos, L. R. 1989. The historical demography of Renaissance Europe: recent research and current issues. Renaissance Quarterly, 42, 794–811.Google Scholar
Romano, D. 2005. Vecchi, poveri e impotenti: the elderly in Renaissance Venice. In Milner, S. J. (ed.), At the Margins: Minority Groups in Premodern Italy. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 249–71.Google Scholar
Rowe, J. and Kahn, R. 1998. Successful Aging. Pantheon, New York.Google Scholar
Schäfer, D. 2002. ‘That senescence itself is an illness’: a transitional medical concept of age and ageing in the eighteenth century. Medical History, 46, 525–48.Google Scholar
Seidler, E. 1989. Medieval Western hospitals. In Kawakita, Y., Sakei, S. and Otsuka, Y. (eds), History of Hospitals: The Evolution of Health Care Facilities. Ishiyaku EuroAmerica, Tokyo, 8–19.Google Scholar
Seigel, J. E. 1966. ‘Civic humanism’ or Ciceronian rhetoric? The culture of Petrarch and Bruni. Past & Present, 34, 3–48.Google Scholar
Sinclair, J. 1808. The Code of Health and Longevity, or a Concise View of the Principles Calculated for the Preservation of Life and the Attainment of Long Life. Constable & Co., Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Siraisi, N. 1997. The Clock and the Mirror: Girolamo Cardano and Renaissance Medicine. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey.Google Scholar
Taunton, N. 2007. Fictions of Old Age in Early Modern Literature. Routledge, London.Google Scholar
Theoharides, T. C. 1971. Galen on Marasmus. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 26, 369–90.Google Scholar
Trexler, R. 1980. Public Life in Renaissance Florence. Academic Press, New York.Google Scholar
Trüeb, R. M. 2006. Anti-Aging: Von der Antike zur Moderne. Steinkopff Verlag, Darmstadt, Germany.Google Scholar
Vandenbroucke, J. P. 1985. Survival and expectation of life from the 1400's to the present. American Journal of Epidemiology, 122, 1007–16.Google Scholar
Welch, E. 2005. Shopping in the Renaissance. Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut.Google Scholar
Alberti, Leon Battista 1443/2004. I libri della famiglia [The Family in Renaissance Florence], Books One to Four. Translator Watkins, R. N., Waveland Press, Long Grove, Illinois.Google Scholar
Anselmi, Aurelio 1606. Gerocomica sive De Senum Regimene. Venice.Google Scholar
Bacon, Roger. 1240?/1928. De retardione accidentium senectutis cum aliis opusculis de rebus medicinalibus. Translator and editors Little, A. G. and Withington, E., Clarendon Press, Oxford.Google Scholar
Bacon, Roger 1240?/1683. De retardandis senectutis accidentibus et de sensibus conservandis [The Cure of Old Age and the Preservation of Youth]. Translator Browne, R., London.Google Scholar
Cardano, Girolamo [Cardani, Hieronymi] 1580. Opus novum cunctis de sanitate tuenda, ac vita producenda studiosis apprimè necessarium: in quatuor libros digestum. Rome.Google Scholar
Castiglione, Baldassare 1528/1996. Il Cortegiano [The Book of the Courtier]. Translator Hoby, T., Dent, London.Google Scholar
Cornaro, Luigi (Alvise) 1558/1903. Trattato della Vita Sobria [The Art of Living Long]. Translator Butler, W. F., BiblioLife, Charleston, South Carolina.Google Scholar
Dati, G. 1430/1991. Il Libro Segreto di Gregori Dati [The Diary of Gregario Dati]. Translator Martines, J.. In Bruckner, G. (ed.), Two Memoirs of Renaissance Florence (107–141). Waveland Press, Long Grove, Illinois.Google Scholar
de Mediolano, Joannes 1099/1528. Regimen sanitatis Salerni [The Regiment of Helthe]. Translator Paynell, T., London.Google Scholar
de Villanova, Arnold 1309/1540. De conservanda juventute et retardanda senectute [The Defence of Age, and Recovery of Youth]. Translator Drummond, J., Robert Wyer, London.Google Scholar
du Laurens, André 1594/1599. Discours de la conservation de la veue; des maladies mélancholiques; des catarrhes; et de la vieillesse [A Discourse of the Preservation of the Sight: of Melancholic Diseases; of Rheumes, and of Old Age]. Translator Surphlet, R., Ralph Jackson, London.Google Scholar
Ferdinandi, Epifanio 1612/2004. De vita propoganda: seu Iuventute conservanda et senectute retardanda: tò Makróbion. Translator (Italian) and editors Portulano-Scoditti, M. L. and Distante, A. E., Giordano, Milan.Google Scholar
Ficino, Marcelo 1489/1994. Liber de Vita sive De Vita Triplici [The Book of Life]. Translator Boer, C., Spring Publications, Woodstock, Connecticut.Google Scholar
Lessius, Leonardo 1613/1634. Hygiasticon seu Vera ratio valetudinis bonae et vitae, una cum sensuum, judicii et memoriae integritate ad extremam senectutem conservandae [Hygiasticon or the Right Course of Preserving Life and Health into Extreme Old Age]. Translator Ferrer, N., Roger Daniel, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Paleotti, Gabriele 1595. De Bono Senectutis. Rome.Google Scholar
Rangone, Tomasso 1550. De vita hominis ultra CXX annos protrahenda. Venice.Google Scholar
Zerbi, Gabriele 1489/1988. Gerontocomia [On the Care of the Aged]. Translator Lind, L. R., American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia.Google Scholar
Adamson, M. W. 2007. Wellness guides for seniors in the Middle Ages. Fifteenth Century Studies, 32, 1–16.Google Scholar
Allen, M. J. B. 1990. Review of M. Ficino's Three Books on Life. Translator C. V. Kaske and J. R. Clark. Renaissance Quarterly, 43, 829–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Axon, W. E. 1901. Cornaro in English. The Library, s2-II, 120–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bell, R. M. 1999. How to Do It: Guides to Good Living for Renaissance Italians. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.Google Scholar
Bergdolt, K. 2008. Wellbeing: A Cultural History of Healthy Living. Translator Dewhurst, J., Polity, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Blanshei, S. R. 1979. Population, wealth and patronage in medieval and Renaissance Perugia. Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 9, 597–619.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brotton, J. 2006. The Renaissance: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, Oxford.Google Scholar
Brown, J. C. 1989. Prosperity or hard times in Renaissance Italy? Renaissance Quarterly, 42, 761–80.Google Scholar
Burkhardt, J. 1990. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. Penguin, London.Google Scholar
Campbell, E. J. 1998. The art of aging gracefully: the elderly artist as courtier in early modern art theory and criticism. Sixteenth Century Journal, 33, 321–31.Google Scholar
Cipolla, C. M. 1976. Public Health and the Medical Profession in the Renaissance. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Cipolla, C. M. 1992. Miasmas and Disease: Public Health and the Environment in the Pre-industrial Age. Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, J. R. 1986. Roger Bacon and the composition of Marsilio Ficino's De Vita Longa (De Vita, Book II). Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 49, 230–3.Google Scholar
Classen, A. 2007. Introduction. In Classen, A. (ed.), Old Age in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Interdisciplinary Approaches to a Neglected Topic. W. D. de Gruyter, Berlin, 1–84.Google Scholar
Dannenfeldt, K. H. 1986. Sleep: theory and practice in the late Renaissance. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 41, 415–41.Google Scholar
Elias, N. 1982. The History of Manners. Pantheon Books, New York. (English translation of Über den Prozess der Zivilisation, 1939)Google Scholar
Ellis, A. 2009. Old Age, Masculinity and Early Modern Drama: Comic Elders on the Italian and Shakespearean Stage. Ashgate, Farnham, UK.Google Scholar
Finlay, R. 1978. The Venetian Republic as gerontocracy: age and politics in the Renaissance. Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 8, 157–78.Google Scholar
Fratiglioni, L. D., Launer, L. J., Andersen, K., Breteler, M. M. B., Copeland, J. R. M., Dartigues, J.-F., Lobo, A., Martinez-Lage, J., Soininen, H. and Hofman, A. 2000. Incidence of dementia and major subtypes in Europe: a collaborative study of population-based cohorts. Neurology, 54, Supplement 5, S10–15.Google Scholar
Freeman, J. T. 1979. Aging: Its History and Literature. Human Sciences Press, New York.Google Scholar
French, R. K. 1985. Berengario da Carpi and the use of commentary in anatomical teaching. In Wear, A., French, R. K. and Lonie, I. M. (eds), The Medical Renaissance of the Sixteenth Century. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 42–74.Google Scholar
French, R. 2003. Medicine Before Science: The Business of Medicine from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Garcia-Ballester, L. 1991. Dietetic and pharmacological therapy: a dilemma among fourteenth century Jewish practitioners in the Montpelier area. In Bynum, W. F. and Nutton, V. (eds), Essays in the History of Therapeutics. Clio Medica, Volume 22, Rodopi B. V. Editions, Amsterdam, 22–37.Google Scholar
Garcia-Ballester, L. 1993. On the origin of the ‘six non-natural things.’. In Kollesch, J. and Nickel, D. (eds), Galen und das Hellenistische Erbe. Proceedings of the IV International Galen Symposium, Stuttgart. Franz Steimne Verlag, Stuttgart, 105–15.Google Scholar
Gil Sotres, P. 1998. The regimens of health. In Grmek, M. D. (ed.), Western Medical Thought from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 291–318.Google Scholar
Gilbert, C. 1967. When does a man in the Renaissance grow old? Studies in the Renaissance, 14, 7–32.Google Scholar
Gilleard, C. 2002. Aging and old age in medieval society and the transition of modernity. Journal of Aging and Identity, 7, 25–41.Google Scholar
Goldschmidt, E. P. 1938. Hieronymous Muenzer and other fifteenth century bibliophiles. Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, 14, 491–508.Google Scholar
Greenspan, P., Heinz, G. and Hargrove, J. L. 2008. Lives of the artists: differences in longevity between Old Master sculptors and painters. Age & Ageing, 37, 102–4.Google Scholar
Gruman, G. J. 2003. A History of Ideas About the Prolongation of Life. Springer Publishing Company, New York.Google Scholar
Hale, J. 1971. Renaissance Europe 1480–1520. Fontana History of Europe, Collins, London.Google Scholar
Hale, J. 1993. The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance. Harper Perennial, London.Google Scholar
Hajnal, J. 1965. European marriage patterns in perspective. In Glass, D. V. and Eversley, D. E. C. (eds), Population in History: Essays in Historical Demography. Edward Arnold, London, 101–43.Google Scholar
Hatcher, J. 1986. Mortality in the fifteenth century: some new evidence. Economic History Review, 39, 19–38.Google Scholar
Hayflick, L. 1996. How and Why We Age. Ballantine Books, New York.Google Scholar
Herlihy, D. 1972. Mapping households in medieval Italy. The Catholic History Review, 58, 1–24.Google Scholar
Herlihy, D. and Klapisch-Zuber, C. 1988. Tuscans and Their Families: A Study of the Florentine Catasto of 1427. Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut.Google Scholar
Homet, R. 1997. Los Viejos y La Vejez en la Edad Media: Sociedad e Imaginario. Catholic University of Argentina, Buenos Aires.Google Scholar
Jacquart, D. 1998. Medical scholasticism. In Grmek, M. D. (ed.), Western Medical Thought from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 197–240.Google Scholar
Jaques, E. 1965. Death and the mid-life crisis. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 46, 502–14.Google Scholar
Joutsivuo, T. 2007. Passions and old men in Renaissance gerontology. In Lagerlund, H. (ed.), Forming the Mind. Essays on the Internal Senses and the Mind/Body Problem from Avicenna to the Medical Enlightenment. Springer, New York, 169–86.Google Scholar
Kallendorf, C. W. 2008. Humanist Educational Treatises. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.Google Scholar
Laslett, P. 1989. A Fresh Map of Life: The Emergence of the Third Age. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London.Google Scholar
Lewin, A. W. 2008. Age does not matter: Venetian doges in reality and depiction. In Peterson, D. S. with Bornstein, D. E. (eds), Florence and Beyond: Culture, Society and Politics in Renaissance Italy. Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies, Toronto, 305–17.Google Scholar
Lind, L. R. 1988. Introduction to Gabriele Zerbi's Gerontocomia: On the care of the aged. American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 3–16.Google Scholar
McKenzie, R. 1760. The History of Health and the Art of Preserving It. R. Gordon, Edinburgh.Google Scholar
McKhann, G. and Albert, M. 2002. Keep Your Brain Young: The complete guide to physical and emotional health and longevity. John Wiley & Sons, Chichester.Google Scholar
McManus, I. C. 1975. Life expectation of Italian Renaissance artists. The Lancet, 305, 266–7.Google Scholar
Minois, G. 1989. History of Old Age: From Antiquity to the Renaissance. Polity Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Nauert, C. G. 2006. Humanism and the Culture of Renaissance Europe. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Niebyl, P. H. 1971. The non-naturals. Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 45, 486–92.Google Scholar
Park, K. and Henderson, J. 1991. The first hospital among Christians: the Ospedale di Santa Nuova in early sixteenth century Florence. Medical History, 35, 164–88.Google Scholar
Pettegree, A. 2010. The Book in the Renaissance. Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut.Google Scholar
Poos, L. R. 1989. The historical demography of Renaissance Europe: recent research and current issues. Renaissance Quarterly, 42, 794–811.Google Scholar
Romano, D. 2005. Vecchi, poveri e impotenti: the elderly in Renaissance Venice. In Milner, S. J. (ed.), At the Margins: Minority Groups in Premodern Italy. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 249–71.Google Scholar
Rowe, J. and Kahn, R. 1998. Successful Aging. Pantheon, New York.Google Scholar
Schäfer, D. 2002. ‘That senescence itself is an illness’: a transitional medical concept of age and ageing in the eighteenth century. Medical History, 46, 525–48.Google Scholar
Seidler, E. 1989. Medieval Western hospitals. In Kawakita, Y., Sakei, S. and Otsuka, Y. (eds), History of Hospitals: The Evolution of Health Care Facilities. Ishiyaku EuroAmerica, Tokyo, 8–19.Google Scholar
Seigel, J. E. 1966. ‘Civic humanism’ or Ciceronian rhetoric? The culture of Petrarch and Bruni. Past & Present, 34, 3–48.Google Scholar
Sinclair, J. 1808. The Code of Health and Longevity, or a Concise View of the Principles Calculated for the Preservation of Life and the Attainment of Long Life. Constable & Co., Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Siraisi, N. 1997. The Clock and the Mirror: Girolamo Cardano and Renaissance Medicine. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey.Google Scholar
Taunton, N. 2007. Fictions of Old Age in Early Modern Literature. Routledge, London.Google Scholar
Theoharides, T. C. 1971. Galen on Marasmus. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 26, 369–90.Google Scholar
Trexler, R. 1980. Public Life in Renaissance Florence. Academic Press, New York.Google Scholar
Trüeb, R. M. 2006. Anti-Aging: Von der Antike zur Moderne. Steinkopff Verlag, Darmstadt, Germany.Google Scholar
Vandenbroucke, J. P. 1985. Survival and expectation of life from the 1400's to the present. American Journal of Epidemiology, 122, 1007–16.Google Scholar
Welch, E. 2005. Shopping in the Renaissance. Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut.Google Scholar