A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

by Barbara W. Tuchman

“For mankind is ever the same and nothing is lost out of nature, though everything is altered.” —JOHN DRYDEN,

An event of great agony is bearable only in the belief that it will bring about a better world. When it does not, as in the aftermath of another vast calamity in 1914–18, disillusion is deep and moves on to self-doubt and self-disgust.

Margery Kempe was obviously an uncomfortable neighbor to have, like all those who cannot conceal the painfulness of life.

In a culminating heresy, he transferred salvation from the agency of the Church to the individual: “For each man that shall be damned shall be damned by his own guilt, and each man that is saved shall be saved by his own merit.” Unperceived, here was the start of the modern world.

Even riddled by the schism, the Church was still in control. The cracking of old and famous structures is slow and internal, while the façade holds.

In an era without guns or tear gas, mobs inspired immediate terror.

He was a vagrant priest, scholar, and zealot who had been wandering the country for twenty years, frequently hauled in by the authorities for prophesying against Church and state and preaching radical doctrines of equality.

What had happened in the last thirty years, as a result of plague, war, oppression, and incompetence, was a weakened acceptance of the system, a mistrust of government and governors, lay and ecclesiastical, an awakening sense that authority could be challenged—that change was in fact possible.

Whatever solace the Christian faith could give was balanced by the anxiety it generated.