[De contemptu mundi]

I shall attempt to bring forward Rabanus original: Rabanus Maurus, a 9th-century theologian in his sixth book in the chapter concerning the ages of man. Indeed, he says in the beginning of the same chapter: There are six degrees of ages, namely: infancy, childhood, adolescence, youth, maturity, and old age. The first age, he says, is our infancy, the childhood of one born into the light, which extends to seven years. O homo O man, behold how you are brought into the light with the great pain of your mother, and with the wailing and weeping of your own self. For no infant has ever been seen to smile immediately upon coming out from the mother’s womb, except for Zoroaster an ancient Persian prophet, who, as soon as he was brought into the light, began to smile (a thing indeed worthy of a miracle). He himself was the first (as histories say) inventor of the arts of magic and necromancy. The second age is childhood, that is, pure and not yet fit for procreation, tending toward the fourteenth year. Behold, O little man, what you do during this age of yours. You are indeed subjected to a tutor, and you never depart from a teacher or your guardian unless well beaten, and no place is left for your own will. The third age is adolescence, adult for procreation, which extends up to twenty-four years. I ask you, O man, tell me what you do in these years