A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

by Barbara W. Tuchman

Indoors the noble residences were decorated with murals and tapestries, but furniture was meager. Beds, which served for sitting as well as sleeping, were the most important item. Chairs were few; even kings and popes received ambassadors sitting on beds furnished with elaborate curtains and spreads; otherwise, people sat on benches. Torches in wall sconces lit the rooms, and massive fireplaces were built into the walls. These wall chimneys “in the French fashion,” as they were called in Italy, were the greatest luxury of middle-class homes. The only other warmth came from the oven and cooking fire and warming pans in bed at night. Like sanitation, heating was an arrangement that the age seems technologically equipped to have handled better than it did, were it not that man is as irrational about his comfort as about other activities. Fur coverlets, fur-lined clothes, or separate fur linings worn under tunics and robes substituted for active sources of heat. The furs of otter, cat, miniver, squirrel, and fox were less expensive than heavy wool cloth; ermine and marten adorned the rich. Floors were strewn in summer with fragrant herbs and grasses and at other times by rushes or straw changed four times a year, or once a year in poorer homes, by which time it was filled with fleas and rank with dog droppings and refuse. A well-off merchant scattered violets and other flowers on his floor before a dinner party and decorated his walls and table with fresh greens bought in the ...

Indoors the noble residences were decorated with murals and tapestries, but furniture was meager. Beds, which served for sitting as well as sleeping, were the most important item. Chairs were few; even kings and popes received ambassadors sitting on beds furnished with elaborate curtains and spreads; otherwise, people sat on benches. Torches in wall sconces lit the rooms, and massive fireplaces were built into the walls. These wall chimneys “in the French fashion,” as they were called in Italy, were the greatest luxury of middle-class homes. The only other warmth came from the oven and cooking fire and warming pans in bed at night. Like sanitation, heating was an arrangement that the age seems technologically equipped to have handled better than it did, were it not that man is as irrational about his comfort as about other activities. Fur coverlets, fur-lined clothes, or separate fur linings worn under tunics and robes substituted for active sources of heat. The furs of otter, cat, miniver, squirrel, and fox were less expensive than heavy wool cloth; ermine and marten adorned the rich. Floors were strewn in summer with fragrant herbs and grasses and at other times by rushes or straw changed four times a year, or once a year in poorer homes, by which time it was filled with fleas and rank with dog droppings and refuse. A well-off merchant scattered violets and other flowers on his floor before a dinner party and decorated his walls and table with fresh greens bought in the market at early morning.