#A Distant Mirror: the calamitous 14th Century

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

John Hardyng’s Map of Medieval Scotland, 15th century. British Library, London, Lansdowne MS 204   ::   [Scott Horton]

* * * *

“Once people envisioned the possibility of change in a fixed order, the end of an age of submission came in sight; the turn to individual conscience lay ahead. To that extent the Black Death may have been the unrecognized beginning of modern man.”

― Barbara W. Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

* * * *

“Disaster is rarely as pervasive as it seems from recorded accounts. The fact of being on the record makes it appear continuous and ubiquitous whereas it is more likely to have been sporadic both in time and place. Besides, persistence of the normal is usually greater than the effect of the disturbance, as we know from our own times. After absorbing the news of today, one expects to face a world consisting entirely of strikes, crimes, power failures, broken water mains, stalled trains, school shutdowns, muggers, drug addicts, neo-Nazis, and rapists. The fact is that one can come home in the evening--on a lucky day--without having encountered more than one or two of these phenomena. This has led me to formulate Tuchman's Law, as follows: "The fact of being reported multiplies the apparent extent of any deplorable development by five- to tenfold" (or any figure the reader would care to supply).”

― Barbara W. Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

[alive on all channels]

[cesaray]

[lilybarthes]

No female iniquity was more severely condemned than the habit of plucking eyebrows and the hairline to heighten the forehead. For some reason a particular immorality was attached to it, perhaps because it altered God’s arrangements. Demons in purgatory were said to pun ish the practice by sticking “hot burning awls and needles” into every hole from which a hair had been plucked. When a hermit was frightened by a dream about a lady suffering this treatment, an angel comforted him saying, “She had well deserved the pain.”

Barbara Tuchman, "A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century"

[litticism]

A Distant Mirror: the Calamitous 14th Century. Barbara Tuchman. 1978.

[ranaged]

Quote

“No one is so sure of his premises as the man who knows too little.”

-Barbara Tuchman

Tuchman was not a trained historian, and she may be considered by some critics to be more of a writer of so-called ‘popular history’ (as if her WWI, 511-page Pulitzer Prize-winning triumph, The Guns of August, which strictly focused solely on August, 1914 in the build-up to the ‘War to End All Wars’, was not scholarly!), but I say, any author who can write history as readable journalism for the layman as she could is more than worth fifty obscure professors who focus on things that most people don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.  In fact, many intelligent people do NOT know how to craft a story for the average reader.

History is already a topic that is, annoyingly to me at least, not of particular interest to the average American, and part of the reason why I love this woman is because of her mastery of every subject she wrote on (13th-century France, the Vietnam war, colonial America, and many more etcs!).  I have read three of her books, and I plan on reading most, if not all, of her collective canon; again, ‘popular history’ or not, you best bring your thinking-cap when sitting down to crack-open a work by this extremely gifted writer.

Tuchman’s grand ability as a writer worth reading is how she allows the reader to absorb and soak in the times and eras in which she writes about.  My favorite book of hers, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century, takes you into the mindset of the French monarchy, clergy, and peasant classes at the time.  She is superior at painting the landscape and overarching ‘story’, but she’s also able to drop little bits of interesting information onto the discerning reader (I admit it, I’m a history dork, so I like learning about what the inside of a French peasant’s hut looked like in the 14th century!).

[aleelewisharlot]

January

Harrow the ninth (reread) audiobook

The bards of bone plain

The ruin of kings

February

The secret history (reread) audiobook

Fen, Bog and Swamp: Encounters with Peat Wetlands (audiobook)

March:

Unmasking autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity (audiobook)

The dragon prince

April:

What moves the dead (audiobook)

Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness (audiobook)

Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures (audiobook)

May:

The winter prince

Annihilation (audiobook)

Authority (audiobook)

Nona the ninth

The queen of the tearling

June:

The haunting of hill house

Interview with the vampire (audiobook)

The invasion of the tearling

Nona the ninth (reread and audiobook)

The blade itself (audiobook)

Acceptance (audiobook)

All the living and the dead (audiobook)

July:

City of saints and madness (audiobook)

Shriek: an afterword (audiobook)

Finch (audiobook)

Ancillary justice

Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia (audiobook)

The only good Indians (audiobook)

The way of kings (reread audiobook)

August:

The vampire lestat (audiobook)

The queen of the damned (audiobook)

Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places (audiobook)

Pageboy (audiobook)

The name of all things (audiobook)

Jonny Appleseed (audiobook)

The fate of the tearling

The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women (audiobook)

September:

Dark Harvest (audiobook)

Edgedancer (audiobook)

My roommate is a vampire (audiobook)

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century (audiobook)

Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries (audiobook)

Certain dark things (audiobook)

Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II (audiobook)

Words of radiance (reread audiobook)

October:

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (audiobook)

The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party (audiobook)

Deerskin

Burn the place: a memoir (audiobook)

Oathbringer (audiobook)

Dawnshard (audiobook)

Rhythm of war (audiobook)

November:

The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time (audiobook)

The final empire: Mistborn one

Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement (audiobook)

Howl’s moving castle (reread audiobook)

White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color (audiobook)

Against the loveless world (audiobook)

Her body and other parties (audiobook)

The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017 (audiobook)

Dark lover (audiobook)

Saga volumes 1-4

December:

The ninth metal (audiobook)

The ethnic cleansing of Palestine (audiobook)

The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet (audiobook)

Saga volumes 5-6

The final empire (reread via audiobook)

The well of ascension (currently reading but will finish this month)

[picturesofreformation]

The Beguinage in Bruges

One Saturday, we visited Bruges, "The Venice of Northern Europe." While there, we explored the Beguinage. This quaint, peaceful refuge, founded in 1245, is now a home for Benedictine nuns and single women from Bruges, but it was once a home for Beguines. Beguines were single women who lived in community together. Many worked to support themselves, they were deeply religious, and they committed to celibacy for as long as they remained in the community. These women were not immediately whom we would think of when we think of Reformers, but as least some of them criticized the Roman Catholic Church for its corruption, and they were also persecuted by the Catholic Church because they were not a religious order and thus were not fully under the control of the Church. Because they were not an order, they were forbidden to continue practicing their form of community. This mandate weakened them, but the Beguine tradition continued and is still alive today.

I was interested to learn anything at all about these women. I had never heard of them before I visited the Beguinage in Bruges. But the Beguines were a remarkably strong group of people, especially considering that women often did not have much political power or influence during the time when the Beguine movement began. They ought to be talked about for many reasons, not least of which is that, because they were lay women, they demonstrate that an intense relationship with God is for all and is not confined to the monastery or the abbey.

Sources:

[moejommadontpreach]

I’m reading “A Distant Mirror: the calamitous 14th century” by Barbra Tuchman.

Lots to digest here.

There was a lot of tax evasion during the plague. Can’t believe such a thing would happen during a global pandemic.

WILD

[theoutcastrogue]

Rodney Hilton, Bond Men Made Free: Medieval Peasant Movements and the English Rising of 1381 (1973, vanilla marxist approach)

Barbara Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century (1978, stuff in context)

Juliet Barker’s 1381: The Year of the Peasants’ Revolt (2014) is the most up-to-date monograph, AFAIK

Do you have any good reading recommendations that touch on the Peasant's Revolt?

So for nostalgic/family reasons, I'm a fan of Charles Oman's the Great Revolt of 1381, even though it's over a century old at this point and doesn't reflect modern revisions to the academic literature.

For a more modern popularized account of 1381 that does incorporate some of the more recent additions to the literature, I'd recommend Juliet Barker's 1381.

[exhaled-spirals]

Theology being the work of males, original sin was traced to the female.

Barbara Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

[stoweboyd]

Theology being the work of males, original sin was traced to the female.

| Barbara Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

[lilybarthes]

"Because of their extravagance, violence and vainglory, tournaments were continually being denounced by popes and kings, from whom they drained money.

In vain.

When the Dominicans denounced them as a pagan circus, no one listened. When the formidable St. Bernard thundered that anyone killed in a tournament would go to Hell, he spoke for once to deaf ears. Death in a tournament was officially considered the sin of suicide by the Church, besides jeopardizing family and tenantry without cause, but even threats of excommunication had no effect."

Barbara Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

[manuscripts-dontburn]

The Passion of Dolssa

Author: Julie Berry

First published: 2016

Rating: ★★★★★

I adored Julie Berry´s "Lovely War" which made me reach for her previous book . This time we travel further back in time, to the 13th century and the south of France and the story is woven around Catholic mysticism, Catholic inquisition and wonderful characters one cannot help but to love. I was a little confused by the last two chapters, which seemingly come out from nowhere, but other than that this was an immersive and at times genuinely moving reading experience.

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

Author: Barbara W. Tuchman

First published: 1978

Rating: ★★★★★

100-years-war is one of those historical epochs which make my head spin so I am extremely thankful to Barbara Tuchman for writing this book. Excellent! And I finally understand the shit storm that was the 14th-early 15th century France (with a bunch of other nations added as well).

V erbu lvice

Author: Alena Vrbová

First published: 1977

Rating: ★★★★★

Spíše než příběh je tato kniha obraz. Styl autorky mi notně připomínal styl Vančurův. Není to příběh, který by vzrušoval, je to spíše pomalá řeka, do které se potopíte a necháte ji plynout kolem sebe.

The Marriage of Opposites

Author: Alice Hoffman

First published: 2015

Rating: ★★★☆☆

As is usual with Alice Hoffman, this is gorgeously written. The two-generational story of a Jewish family settled in the Caribbean and later Paris focuses on how we view our parents and eventually turn into them, even with much of the things we had despised. However I must say that throughout the book I somehow missed some unifying goals the story, I felt, should pursue. The question I had all the time was: what exactly is the main point? I never really got an answer. It was only with the afterword that I realized this was, in a way, a fictional biography of an actual historical person.

A Spindle Splintered

Author: Alix E. Harrow

First published: 2021

Rating: ★★★☆☆

I loved the first half of this book, the idea of it and I actually did have a few audible chuckles. And yet, somehow, once the second half started rolling, I could hardly way for the story to end, even though it is so short.

Gulag

Author: Anne Applebaum

First published: 2003

Rating: ★★★★★

Spectacular piece of non-fiction, which among other things, points to the importance of our own reflection of the past we inherited. Sadly, it is also, right now, scarily topical. The only complaint comes from the fact I listened to this as an audiobook. The narrator - Laura Merlington, is excellent, unfortunatelly she butchers pretty much every Russian name and word she says. I can forgive her for Dzerzhinsky, but how does Irina become Iri-Anna???

The Nobleman's Guide to Scandal and Shipwrecks

Author: Mackenzi Lee

First published: 2021

Rating: ★★★★★

PRECIOUS. That´s it. That´s the review. I love this series so much!

A Thousand Ships

Author: Natalie Haynes

First published: 2019

Rating: ★★★★★

Rather than a straightforward narrative, this re-telling of the Illiad (and even Odyssey), is more like an interwoven tapestry of short stories. The women we know from the myths - human, Goddesses, Muses - each tell their own story. Natalie Haynes managed to create a poignant, moving - and at times surprisingly funny (looking at you, salty Penelope) addition to familiar story.

Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

Author: Mikki Kendall

First published: 2020

Rating: ★★★☆☆

I feel apprehensive about rating this book because I do feel it has important and true things to say, but at the same time, I had some major problems with the way it was presented to me. Firstly, this book is completely USA centric. I could not make sense of all the numerous utterances and mentions of names, cases and examples that are peppered throughout unless I wanted to Google something every few pages. I live in central Europe and we have our own racist and other serious problems as well, but this particular book can only go as far as helping people in my own country to understand some of the vital mechanisms which power our fucked-up society. I understand that was not the intention of the book, but I still feel this is a valid point to make since Hood Feminism has appeared on European markets as well. Secondly, the writing. I pride myself at being quite proficient in English (I especially pride myself at having read TWO Umberto Eco´s books in the said language), but here I felt half the time words were flying over my head, I had to constantly re-read whole paragraphs to understand what was being said. Some things were repeated over and over too. It just felt like the whole thing needed some more editing. Again - this may only be my own problem, however, books and reading are subjective - and valid. I guess this was just not the book for me, even if I can clearly see it can be a hugely impactful book for others.

The Atlas Six

Author: Olivie Blake

First published: 2020

Rating: ★★★☆☆

This was, in the end, definitely intriguing enough for me to know I would like to read the next book and it was quite well written as well. However, I must say that throughout there were long parts that just felt like nothing at all was happening, to the point I was considering setting the book down. Some of it also flew right over my head. I suppose we shall see what comes out of the story and if this, as a start of a series, will increase or decrease in my estimation.

A Cat's Tale: A Journey Through Feline History

Author: Paul Koudounaris

First published: 2020

Rating: ★★★★☆

Amusing, at times incredibly moving and just perfect for anyone who loves cats. Even more so for people who hate them for no good reason! Cats are precious and their friendship needs to be won and fostered. But history also says that they are always ready to offer that friendship with great loyalty, whenever it is merited.

The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book

Author: J.R.R. Tolkien

First published: 1962

Rating: ★★★★★

There is something about Tolkien that always feels like the sweetest comfort, the kindness of childhood and purity of thought. It does not matter if he chooses to put into a verse about a Shadow Bride or kicking a Troll´s butt. It is all welcome and dear to me. Every single word.

Daughter of the Moon Goddess

Editor: Sue Lynn Tan

First published: 2022

Rating: ★★★★☆

This was a nice and lush mix of myth, romance and a whole lot of adventure. I could have done without some of the many times repeated facts and the amount of introspection, which rarely lead to some extraordinary epiphany. But I enjoyed it still, a lovely fairytale.

Burn

Author: Patrick Ness

First published: 2020

Rating: ★★★★☆

Darker, swifter, more interesting and thrilling than I expected it to be by a lot! Great adventure, which, however, partly read as horror to me. The second part especially swept me away, it was difficult to put the book down.

Compendium of the Miraculous

Author:  Albert E. Graham

First published: 2019

Rating: ★★★★☆

While I read this book nearly from cover to cover, it is exactly what it says: an encyclopedia, and as such you may just look up what you have a particular interest in. Perhaps you are unclear on the various kinds of communication Christians believe God uses to convey his messages. Or perhaps you are interested in how heaven or purgatory have been described by the mystics. Maybe you would like to know a bit about all of the famous Marian apparitions? Or perhaps read a little something on certain saints? Lots of the information is repeated, which one must forgive given the nature of the book (again, this is an encyclopedia - in alphabetical order and while quite comprehensive, not greatly detailed). Richly illustrated by classic works of art, I find this both useful to a Catholic and interesting to anyone interested in Catholicism.

[gnatswatting]

• Contradictions, however, are part of life, not merely a matter of conflicting evidence. —Barbara Tuchman

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century   A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century (at Internet Archive)