by Higgenbotham » Thu Nov 05, 2026 3:53 pm
Higgenbotham wrote: Fri Dec 02, 2011 12:02 am
Barbara Tuchman wrote:
If the sixty years seemed full of brilliance and adventure to a few at the top, to most they were a succession of wayward dangers; of the three galloping evils, pillage, plague, and taxes; of fierce and tragic conflicts, bizarre fates, capricious money, sorcery, betrayals, insurrections, murder, madness, and the downfall of princes; of dwindling labor for the fields, of cleared land reverting to waste; and always the recurring black shadow of pestilence carrying its message of guilt and sin and the hostility of God.
Mankind was not improved by the message. Consciousness of wickedness made behavior worse. Violence threw off restraints. It was a time of default. Rules crumbled, institutions failed in their functions. Knighthood did not protect; the Church, more worldly than spiritual, did not guide the way to God; the towns, once agents of progress and the commonweal, were absorbed in mutual hostilities and divided by class war; the population, depleted by the Black Death, did not recover. The war of England and France and the brigandage it spawned revealed the emptiness of chivalry's military pretensions and the falsity of its moral ones. The schism shook the foundations of the central institution, spreading a deep and pervasive uneasiness. People felt subject to events beyond their control, swept like flotsam at sea, hither and yon in a universe without reason or purpose. They lived through a period which suffered and struggled without visible advance. They longed for remedy, for a revival of faith, for stability and order that never came.
The times were not static. Loss of confidence in the guarantors of order opened the way to demands for change, and miseria gave force to the impulse. The oppressed were no longer enduring but rebelling, although, like the bourgeois who tried to compel reform, they were inadequate, unready, and unequipped for the task. Marcel could not impose good government, neither could the Good Parliament. The Jacques could not overthrow the nobles, the popolo minuto of Florence could not advance their status, the English peasants were betrayed by their King; every working-class insurrection was crushed.
Yet change, as always, was taking place. Wyclif and the protestant movement were the natural consequence of default by the church. Monarchy, centralized government, the national state gained in strength, whether for good or bad. Seaborne enterprise, liberated by the compass, was reaching toward the voyages of discovery that were to burst the confines of Europe and find the New World. Literature from Dante to Chaucer was expressing itself in national languages, ready for the great leap forward in print. In the year Enguerrand de Coucy died, Johan Gutenberg was born, although that in itself marked no turn of the tide. The ills and disorders of the 14th Centruy could not be without consequence. Times were to grow worse over the next fifty-odd years, until at some imperceptible moment, by some mysterious chemistry, energies were refreshed, ideas broke out of the mold of the Middle Ages into new realms, and humanity found itself redirected.
A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
1978
I'm seeing comments even from the collapsosphere of late that certain of these things can't happen in this day and age. From my perspective mostly they can. Cleared land reverting to waste? What happens when 5,000 acre farms run out of diesel or the machinery breaks down?
[quote=Higgenbotham post_id=10858 time=1322798532 user_id=100]
[quote="Barbara Tuchman"]
If the sixty years seemed full of brilliance and adventure to a few at the top, to most they were a succession of wayward dangers; of the three galloping evils, pillage, plague, and taxes; of fierce and tragic conflicts, bizarre fates, capricious money, sorcery, betrayals, insurrections, murder, madness, and the downfall of princes; of dwindling labor for the fields, [u]of cleared land reverting to waste[/u]; and always the recurring black shadow of pestilence carrying its message of guilt and sin and the hostility of God.
Mankind was not improved by the message. Consciousness of wickedness made behavior worse. Violence threw off restraints. It was a time of default. Rules crumbled, institutions failed in their functions. Knighthood did not protect; the Church, more worldly than spiritual, did not guide the way to God; the towns, once agents of progress and the commonweal, were absorbed in mutual hostilities and divided by class war; the population, depleted by the Black Death, did not recover. The war of England and France and the brigandage it spawned revealed the emptiness of chivalry's military pretensions and the falsity of its moral ones. The schism shook the foundations of the central institution, spreading a deep and pervasive uneasiness. People felt subject to events beyond their control, swept like flotsam at sea, hither and yon in a universe without reason or purpose. They lived through a period which suffered and struggled without visible advance. They longed for remedy, for a revival of faith, for stability and order that never came.
The times were not static. Loss of confidence in the guarantors of order opened the way to demands for change, and miseria gave force to the impulse. The oppressed were no longer enduring but rebelling, although, like the bourgeois who tried to compel reform, they were inadequate, unready, and unequipped for the task. Marcel could not impose good government, neither could the Good Parliament. The Jacques could not overthrow the nobles, the popolo minuto of Florence could not advance their status, the English peasants were betrayed by their King; every working-class insurrection was crushed.
Yet change, as always, was taking place. Wyclif and the protestant movement were the natural consequence of default by the church. Monarchy, centralized government, the national state gained in strength, whether for good or bad. Seaborne enterprise, liberated by the compass, was reaching toward the voyages of discovery that were to burst the confines of Europe and find the New World. Literature from Dante to Chaucer was expressing itself in national languages, ready for the great leap forward in print. In the year Enguerrand de Coucy died, Johan Gutenberg was born, although that in itself marked no turn of the tide. The ills and disorders of the 14th Centruy could not be without consequence. Times were to grow worse over the next fifty-odd years, until at some imperceptible moment, by some mysterious chemistry, energies were refreshed, ideas broke out of the mold of the Middle Ages into new realms, and humanity found itself redirected.[/quote]
A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
1978
[/quote]
I'm seeing comments even from the collapsosphere of late that certain of these things can't happen in this day and age. From my perspective mostly they can. Cleared land reverting to waste? What happens when 5,000 acre farms run out of diesel or the machinery breaks down?