The dearth of labor held a fearful prospect because the 14th century lived close to the annual harvest both for food and for next year’s seed. “So few servants and laborers were left,” wrote Knighton, “that no one knew where to turn for help.” The sense of a vanishing future created a kind of dementia of despair. A Bavarian chronicler of Neuberg on the Danube recorded that “Men and women … wandered around as if mad” and let their cattle stray “because no one had any inclination to concern themselves about the future.” Fields went uncultivated, spring seed unsown. Second growth with nature’s
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