A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

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By this time Europe’s population was reduced to between 40 and 50 percent of what it had been when the century opened. Her history of the events leading up to World War I, "The Guns of August," earned her the first of two Pulitzer Prizes. Even though challenges to papal supremacy were coming and going throughout the century, the Church occupied such a central part in everyone’s life, that there was always high respect/obedience with regards to all religious matters, especially since the Church was the “only institution” to offer salvation, and it also “affirmed the man’s life on earth” [1978: 34]. Though I respect the hell out of dogged, elbow-patched professors digging through dusty primary sources, I can’t help but believe that most of this criticism is a mark of Tuchman’s commercial success.

William McNeill, writing in the Chicago Tribune, thought that A Distant Mirror, while well-written on a technical level, did not present an intelligible picture of the period.He had known and dealt with every kind of character from the ultra-wicked Charles of Navarre to the ultra-saintly Pierre de Luxemburg. And all those musical instruments speak volumes about how the 14th century was a world away from the plainchant of the early middle ages. Opportunely Enguerrrand is well documented by one of the most striking chroniclers of the time, Jean Froissart. Tuchman has chosen to follow one man of nobility through his lifetime, Enguerrand de Coucy VII(1340-1397).

In Paris in 1390 a woman whose lover had jilted her was tried for taking revenge by employing the magical powers of another woman to render him impotent. Conspicuous consumption became a frenzied excess, a gilded shroud over the Black Death and lost battles, a desperate desire to show oneself fortunate in a time of advancing misfortune. Slightly Foxed introduces its readers to books that are no longer new and fashionable but have lasting appeal.

But what I didn’t know was that after their little parades (where people would come over to them and either drink or use their blood as some odd form of ‘protection’ or treatment) they would then generally head around to the local Jewish quarter and kill as many people as they could get their hands on. The Dukes were in charge and taxed everybody and everything to finance wars to expand their territories. Excelente retrato da França, Inglaterra e as relações/consequências com a igreja católica no final da idade média.

In fact, death in every form (famine, war, disease) stalked the 14th century and death personified as a pale horseman or as a hawk-like old hag, was a recurrent image in the art and literature of the era. There were a handful of sensible strategists and innovators: "It was in truth the non-chivalric qualities of two hard-headed characters, Du Guescline and Charles V, that brought France back from ruin. There is John Wycliffe becoming buddies with, of all people, John of Gaunt (Duke of Lancaster) because they both want the state to be over the church, not the church over the state as it then was.This was a historical period that was deeply paradoxical and chaotic, in which famine, peasant revolts, foreign wars, the bubonic plague and religious struggles were all taking place in a non-stop succession amidst the existence and the proclamation of the high moral code of chivalry among the nobility, and where magic and superstition reigned inexplicably alongside one strict religious canon. The main title, A Distant Mirror, conveys Tuchman's thesis that the death and suffering of the 14th century reflect those of the 20th century, particularly the horrors of World War I. For some, the century was a time of plenty—a time when the arts were reborn and new secular themes were suddenly and surprisingly in vogue. Christians lost faith in the Church as priests too hid in fear or charged exorbitant fees to perform last rites. The author makes a point that this may be due to the fact that deaths of infants were common and pretty much expected, and, this, coupled with frequent child-bearing, meant that love and attachment to children were discouraged since both would, more likely than not, prove to be meaningless in the end and only lead to the experience of sorrow upon sorrow.