Daniel’s Reviews > A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century > Status Update

“On the downward slope of the middle ages, man had lost confidence in his ability to construct a good society.”

While the population of europe dropped 40-50% between 1300-1400, there was pros and cons for the survivors. There were less people to repair and maintain infrastructure and buildings of society, but people had more food and more money circulating. Its like living well enough in a world leftover that was way larger than now.

Decadent fashions in one court: men curling their hair, pointing their beards into two points, women putting huge elaborate shells over their ears so that they had to turn sideways to enter doors. Interesting.

1389 mass Catholic issues over the immaculate conception, even though Thomas Aquinas said she was conceived in original sin and that was the orthodox position. The strife and controversy of the time led the Pope to accept immaculate conception. And some background on King Wenceslaus’s drunken reign and how the hussite rebellion cause him to die in a fit of apoplexy

Knights were waging war for the chivalric opportunity to do valor, not merely for a goal. They enjoyed the struggle of war itself. The Crusades added a religious element to this same impulse.

Chaucer repented of everything he wrote that was not pious before he died so that he might be saved “on the day of doom.”

Authors like Petrarch did not like copyist scribes because they would always add little changes and edits as they wrote copies.

“In the decline of Rome, too, there must have been pockets of wealth and delight in serene days where trouble never penetrated.”