A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

Product Information

More pillaging, killing, raping and hostage taking ensued from mercenary Free Companies made up of former soldiers, mostly Englishmen who did not want to give up their way of life when the military campaigns ended.

The image used in the site header is a fragment from Benozzo Gozzoli's fresco Procession of the Magi. He was a man of “wicked life” who “corrupted and schooled youth in debaucheries,” and held commoners and the poor in hatred and contempt.Enguerrand in fact acted as both French and English as he had acquired double allegiance: to his own King and to the King and father of his wife. A Distant Mirror also provides a sobering frame of reference for the events in our own recent history.

The fourteenth century reflects two contradictory images: on the one hand, a glittering age of crusades, cathedrals, and chivalry; on the other, a world plunged into chaos and spiritual agony. Medievalists tend to take themselves rather seriously, so it’s fairly easy to ignore their sniffing (and their dry monographs). Christians lost faith in the Church as priests too hid in fear or charged exorbitant fees to perform last rites.In these eminently readable and compelling pages the author brings the insights of a modern historian to bear on the decades of Chaucer and Boccaccio, the time of the Hundred Years' War and the Black Death, of the great fame of Dante, of extravagant civilization and bizarre superstition, of pilgrimage and plague, of revolutionary new technologies and enraged revolt against a poll tax.

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. Then I thought perhaps there was just too much focus on wars during the century – but even so, her other books focus solely on wars and I had no problem with them.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. But by the 14th century the international code of chivalry was breaking down and the armor and horses were proving surprisingly vulnerable to such innovations as the long bow. In 1357, the merchant class tried but failed to impose its will on the Dauphin, Jean II’s son, with a violent end. The Middle Ages present a fascinating conundrum in the history of mankind since it was the period of immense losses, violence and stagnation while, at the same time, there reigned in the land the idea of the chivalric behaviour worthy of every admiration, and religious devotion and loyalty to masters like few periods have seen before or since. Barbara Tuchman anatomizes the century, revealing both the great rhythms of history and the grain and texture of domestic life as it was lived.

To get an idea of the eventfulness of the 14th Century, let’s take a brief look at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356. Drawing heavily on Froissart's Chronicles, Tuchman recounts the histories of the Hundred Years' War, the Black Plague, the Papal Schism, pillaging mercenaries, anti-Semitism, popular revolts including the Jacquerie in France, the liberation of Switzerland, the Battle of the Golden Spurs, and various peasant uprisings. Scientific knowledge was growing, but “could not dispel the sense of a malign influence upon the times.Armies of the time lived off the land so these men were used to taking anything and everything they wanted.