Abstract
The collective monograph is focused on how elderly women were conceptualized in the Middle Ages. We chose the politically incorrect term "old crone" for our subject of study, because we are trying to analyze not only the conditions and way of life of old European women in a particular historical epoch but mainly their manner of representation.
Such tactless, alienating term smelling of derision and disdain is closer to a caricature, it stirs emotions and raises questions that are hard to answer without a pause. In the medieval imagination, old woman could equally serve as a reminder of the approaching death and of the approaching eternal life; together with old age and the transience of life comes the chance to escape the limits of mortal life and the constraints of time.
The discussion of living conditions, power, luck, rights and duties of a particular social group is interwoven with the discourse of the connotations of its figuration in medieval art and literature, and those in turn are observed as part of medieval actualization of older Hebrew, Greek, Roman and other traditions. The character of old crone - as a physical body and as a statement about a person's place in the world - personifies the negative value medieval cultures accorded to the changes of matter in time.