A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

by Barbara W. Tuchman

go. To the grands

Pastoureaux.

The childishness noticeable in medieval behavior, with its marked inability to restrain any kind of impulse, may have been simply due to the fact that so large a proportion of active society was actually very young in years. About half the population, it has been estimated, was under twenty-one, and about one third under fourteen.

chanson de geste

Jeanne de Penthièvre.

Medicine was the one aspect of medieval life, perhaps because of its links with the Arabs, not shaped by Christian doctrine. Clerics detested astrology, but could not dislodge its influence.

the doctors ascribed it to a triple conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars in the 40th degree of Aquarius said to have occurred on March 20, 1345.

the theory of humors, along with astrology, governed practice. All human temperaments were considered to belong to one or another of the four humors—sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric, and melancholic. In various permutations with the signs of the zodiac, each of which governed a particular part of the body, the humors and constellations determined the degrees of bodily heat, moisture, and proportion of masculinity and femininity of each person.

Notwithstanding all their charts and stars, and medicaments barely short of witches’ brews, doctors gave great attention to diet, bodily health, and mental attitude. Nor were they lacking in practical skills. They could set broken bones, extract teeth, remove bladder stones, remove cataracts of the eye with a silver needle, and restore a

mutilated face by skin graft from the arm. They understood epilepsy and apoplexy as spasms of the brain. They used urinalysis and pulse beat for diagnosis, knew what substances served as laxatives and diuretics, applied a truss for hernia, a mixture of oil, vinegar, and sulfur for toothache, and ground peony root with oil of ...

not unknown to modern medicine, that a patient’s sense of therapeutic value is in proportion to the expense.

Blood and cruelty were ubiquitous in Christian art, indeed essential to it, for Christ became Redeemer, and the saints sanctified, only through suffering violence at the hands of their fellow man.

Accustomed in their own lives to physical hardship and injury, medieval men and women were not necessarily repelled by the spectacle of pain, but rather enjoyed it.

It may be that the untender medieval infancy produced adults who valued others no more than they had been valued in their own formative years.

Third Estate

Charles of Navarre.

The upper level of the Third Estate, made up of merchants, manufacturers, lawyers, office-holders, and purveyors to the crown,

had nothing left in common with its working-class base except the fact of being non-noble.

When capitalism became feasible through the techniques of banking and credit, it became respectable.

The theory of a non-acquisitive society faded, and accumulation of surplus wealth lost its odium—indeed, became enviable.

The right bank, which had expanded beyond the old walls, was the side of commerce, industry, public markets, luxury trades, and wealthy residences, while the left bank, much smaller in populated area, was dominated by the University.

Poitiers, he had been released on paying his ransom, and on return

In May 1358 an act of the Dauphin-Regent precipitated the ferocious uprising of the peasantry called the Jacquerie,

A serf was someone in personal bondage who belonged by birth to a particular lord, and, so that his children should follow him, was forbidden under a rule called formariage from marrying outside the domain. If

Without even the tenure of serfs, they were a new agricultural proletariat created as the old manorial system was changing to a money basis.

For no other class is that famous goal of the historian, wie es wirklich war (how it really was), so elusive.

In March 1359 when the truce was about to expire, King Jean yielded, trading half his kingdom for his own release. By the Treaty of London he surrendered virtually all of western France from Calais to the Pyrenees, and agreed to an augmented and catastrophic ransom of 4 million gold écus, payable at fixed installments, to be guaranteed by the delivery of forty royal and noble hostages, of whom Enguerrand de Coucy was designated as one.

fourth degree of consanguinity,

Poets and writers served frequently as ambassadors because their rhetorical powers conferred distinction on the elaborate speeches required on these occasions.

Diplomacy was a ceremonial and verbose procedure with great attention paid to juridical detail and points of honor, which may have been one reason why it so often failed to produce agreement.

the Salle des Preux or Hall of the Nine Worthies, the heroes of history most admired in the Middle Ages. They were three ancients—Hector of Troy, Alexander the Great, and Julius Caesar; three Biblical Jews—Joshua, King David, and Judas Maccabeus; three Christians—King Arthur, Charlemagne, and the crusader Godfrey of Bouillon. An adjoining hall 30 by 60 feet, was dedicated to the feminine worthies, Hippolyta, Semiramis, Penthisilea, and other legendary queens.

cannot. As “a man of approved honor, valor, chivalry and great renown,

Emperor Wenceslas

States function only in terms of what those in control perceive as power or personal ambition,

and both of these wear blinkers.

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

The worshiper of a caste often upholds higher ideals for it than its members.

Churchmen and moralists in apocalyptic mood stressed more than ever the vanity of worldly things—though without visibly diminishing anyone’s desire for, and pride in, possessions.

Madness was familiar in the Middle Ages in all its varieties. William of Hainault-Bavaria, a nephew of Queen Philippa of England, “tall, young, strong, dark and lively,” had been a raving maniac confined in a castle for thirty years, most of the time with both hands

By the 1390s witchcraft had been officially recognized by the Inquisition as equivalent to heresy.

They were caught in that common irony of human endeavor when one self-interest cancels out another.

The crown was not yet prepared to withhold obedience, though it was to come to that stage three years later. Fourteen years were to pass before Europe could achieve the momentary unity for a General Council, which even then did not succeed.

For nearly thirty years to come, despite French withdrawal of obedience, siege of Avignon, desertion by his cardinals, deposition by two Councils, and the rivalry of three other popes, he would not step down. Retreating to a Spanish fortress, he died in 1422 at the age of 94 still maintaining his claim.

Not quite twenty years after the reconciliation, Henry V was to call to his followers, “Once more unto the breach!”

Battle of Nicopolis

the fatal shores of Troy across the straits where the most famous, most foolish, most grievous war of myth or history, the archetype of human bellicosity, had been played out. Nothing mean nor great, sorrowful, heroic nor absurd had been missing from that ten years’ catalogue of woe. Agamemnon had sacrificed a daughter for a wind to fill his sails, Cassandra had warned her city and was not believed, Helen regretted in bitterness her fatal elopement, Achilles, to vent rage for the death of his friend, seven times dragged dead Hector through the dust at his chariot wheels. When the combatants offered each other peace, the gods whispered lies and played tricks until they quarreled and fought again. Troy fell and flames consumed it, and from that prodigious ruin Agamemnon went home to be betrayed and murdered. Since then, through some 2,500 years, how much had changed? The romance of Troy was a favorite of the Middle Ages; Hector was one of the Nine Worthies carved on Coucy’s castle walls. Did he, the Odysseus of this new war, think of that ancient siege and hollow triumph as he gazed across the straits?

According to an anonymous poem of the mid-14th century, life’s span was 72 years, consisting of twelve ages corresponding to the months of the year. At 18, the youth begins to tremble like March with the approach of spring; at 24, he becomes amorous as the blossoming of April, and nobility and virtue enter his soul along with love; at 36, he is at the summer solstice, his blood as hot as the sun of June; at 42, he has acquired experience; at 48, he should think of harvesting; at 54, he is in the September of life when goods should be stored up; age 60, the October of life, is the onset of old age; 66 is dark November when all green withers and dies and a man should think on death, for his heirs are waiting for him to go if he is poor and waiting more eagerly if he is rich; 72 is December, when life is as mournful as winter and there is nothing left to do but die.

Vainglory, however, no matter how much medieval Christianity insisted it was a sin, is a motor of mankind, no more eradicable than sex. As long as combat was desirable as the source of honor and glory, the knight had no wish to share it with the commoner, even for the sake of success.

Absorbed in its own factions and schisms, Europe failed to seize the occasion to break the Ottoman hold on the Balkans. Except for a brave but minor expedition led by Boucicaut—the last trickle of the crusades—Constantinople could obtain no more help from the West; Sigismund was embroiled with the Germans and Bohemia; France and England were each torn by domestic conflict. Bajazet’s son held his own against Tamerlane, the Mongol eruption subsided, Bajazet’s grandson advanced again in Europe, and in 1453 his great-grandson Mohammed II conquered Constantinople.

Cabochiens after their leader Caboche, broke into fierce revolt, reproducing