| A widespread transformation of the perception, definition, and experience of adolescence occurred in England and France between the mid-eleventh and thirteenth centuries. Classical and early Christian ideas were revived that described adolescents as lustful, irresponsible, and prone to engage in misdirected violence. The age of majority in many law codes rose from the mid-teens to twenty-one or even twenty-five. Child oblation was banned in most religious orders, and many orders refused to admit adolescents, expressing concern about their ability to make an informed choice or submit to discipline. Where adolescents were admitted, they were often isolated and controlled through elaborate restrictions and liturgical ritual. New forms of education for adolescents developed, including apprenticeship, knighthood training, and the universities, all of which ended with elaborate exit rituals that symbolically terminated adolescence, although a liminal period of youth in which individuals demonstrated their newly acquired skills often followed. At courts and universities, where adolescents gathered together in large numbers, rich subcultures developed along with literature celebrating the joys and concerns of youth. The roots of this transformation lay not only in the population explosion, economic "take-off", political centralization, religious reformation, and cultural renaissance of the high Middle Ages, but also in earlier monastic reform movements and revivals of classical literature that raised questions about the character and maturity of adolescents. These changes did not affect women equally. Adolescent girls were not admitted to knighthood training or the universities, tended to be placed in monasteries and apprenticeship at much younger ages than men, and often continued to have ages of majority in the mid-teens. While both men and women frequently married at young ages, marriage was the principal rite of passage into adulthood for women, although a liminal period of youth might follow. Medieval authors, showing little awareness of female growth, used the same words to refer to 9 unmarried girls, changing their vocabulary only after marriage or sometimes sexual activity, in contrast to the varied vocabulary applied to male life stages. Thus adolescence was neither experienced nor described in the same way for men and women. |
