What do the Black Plague, marauding bandits, continuous war, and staggering social inequality have in common? Besides rendering everyday existence chaotic and uncertain, they were each part and parcel of 14th century Europe, or, as Barbara Tuchman labels it, the “calamitous” 14th century.
I began the book expecting to read in detail, descriptions of knights at war - their methods for dispatching opponents, with what weapons, in general, their lifestyle - because I didn't think of knights beyond their being warriors. As it turns out, my assumption about their being full-time warriors was correct; however, while anyone could guess what a warrior did whilst in war, what is less obvious is how they spent time whilst not warring. Because they didn't - and, of course, couldn't fight year-round - they spent much of their time idle, and as the saying goes, idle hands...
Knights were often cruel, particularly to non-knights, or those outside the class of nobles, and they were not above cheating or concocting reasons to war against other knights, when doing so would enhance their standing with the crown or enlarge their land or financial holdings. The crimes against peasants, recounted by Tuchman with near-banality, are numerous, frequent, and generally unremarkable from the perspectives of noblemen. Most of the crimes perpetrated against peasants were consequences of intra-noble warfare, or, in the case of English and France, international warfare. Whether in the form of a preemptive strike against an international opponent or revenge for a slight done by a local knight, peasants payed the price in the form of pillage and plunder, rape, the slaughter of children and the destruction farmable land. Members of this unfortunate lot, even if they avoided the calamities just mentioned, funded their own oppression in the form of heavy taxes. Arbitrary, unpredictable and onerous, taxes levied against peasants by each slice of the medieval hierarchy funded the largess of the noble class in the form of tournaments and games; a greedy and corrupt clergy; continual war against either English or French (depending on whether you were French or English), and the occasional - and almost always spectacularly bungled - Crusades.
It used to be popular to declare "chivalry is dead" when someone failed to extend the politeness of, say, opening a door. After reading this book, however, I was glad that chivalry is, if not dead, at least waning. I don't promote the abandonment of politeness (holding open a door, helping someone across the street, and shaking hands are very good things); I mean, rather, that chivalry as it was lived out in medieval Europe by knights and the noble class is better off dead. What I mean is that it if chivalry ever helped people attain the Good, maybe when it was first adopted, it was nevertheless so corrupt by the dawn of 15th century that people would have been well-advised to abandon it - as many writers of that period were already doing.
About chivalry's self-destruction, Tuchman writes:
Chivalry was not aware of its decadence, or if it was, clung ever more passionately to outward forms and brilliant rites to convince itself that the fiction was still the reality. Outside observers, however, had grown increasingly critical as the fiction grew increasingly implausible. It was now fifty years since the start of the war with England, and fifty years of damaging war could not fail to diminish the prestige of a warrior class that could neither win nor make peace but only pile further injury and misery upon the people.
If you're dreaming of a knight in shinning armor, don't.
To read of the Black Plague (or, Black Death) was as terrifying as it was gross. For those of you who don't know, the Plague was responsible for the death of around one-third of Europe's population. In some parts of Europe, higher. It began somewhere in Asia, perhaps the southeast part, spread to the Middle East and eastern Europe via land and arrived in Italy aboard merchant ships. Rats were not the primary culprit of the plague's spread. That honor belonged to fleas that attached themselves to rats. Eventually the plague became both blood-born and air-born, each as lethal as the other. I'll spare you the details of the grissly deaths that awaited the infected, but suffice it say that upon contraction, death was swift, in some cases, in as little as a week. There was no known cure. Tuchman's description of attempts to quell outbreaks and the measures taken to the heal the sick underscores the chaos sowed by the Plague. Socially, it wrought the same, if not greater, measure of upheaval brought about by perpetual feuds between knights, nobles and brigands. There was wide-spread speculation that the end of the world was at hand.
Although the 14th century produced a few notable saints, the clergy was for the most part corrupt, rapacious for money, land, and prestige, and, by any standard, spectacularly proud.
Tuchman could have adopted an indignant tone, to judge the medievals according to standards of morality and statesmanship that prevail in the 20th century. Thankfully, she judges medievals on terms set by themselves (charity, devotion to God and love of humankind were, if it can be believed, espoused ideals), and we are reminded throughout, by the record of gross misbehavior, that every segment of society during the medieval ear suffered from a crippling inability to live up to its own standards.
At over 700 pages, Tuchman's book represents a feat of reading most will shy away from. Then again, few would do better than The Distant Mirror for a comprehensive, highly-readable treatment of the time and place. The Distant Mirror brims with wit and wisdom, and in more than a few sections, is difficult to put down. Other, longer sections are filled with too many names for those uninitiated in medieval history to sort through or remember (but, thankfully, these are few). Perhaps a shorter, more consise treatment is available. Until I find one, this will gladly do.