A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

by Barbara W. Tuchman

“Time past had virtue and righteousness, but today reigns only vice,” is Deschamps’ lament. How may safe-conducts be trusted? asks Christine de Pisan, discussing the failures of chivalry, “seeing the little truth and fidelity that this day runneth through all the world.” Elsewhere she writes, “All good customs fail and virtues are held at discount. Learning which once governed is now of no account.” Her complaint had some justification, for even the University had taken to selling degrees in theology to candidates unwilling to undertake its long and difficult studies or fearful of failing the examination. License to grant the degree was extended to other universities, even to towns which had no university, giving rise to the sarcastic saying, “Why not [a degree] from a pigsty?” Denouncing the age for decadence was in fashion, but the decadence was felt as real, and the sense of a moral decline from some better day in the past was insistent. The poets wrote for the very circles they denounced and they must have touched some responsive chord. Deschamps—who never left off scolding—was made chamberlain to Louis d’Orléans in 1382. All ranks of life shared in the blame. Deeply shaken by the Peasants’ Revolt, Gower wrote a jeremiad on the corruptions of the age called Vox Clamantis, in which he unfolds a “manifold pestilence of vices” among poor as well as rich. The unknown author of another indictment entitled it “Vices of the Different Orders of Society,” and found all equally ...