Popes ruled from Avignon from 1307 to 1377 with ever increasing domination by the French kings, which was deeply resented outside of France. Forty villages were robbed and wrecked, inhabitants killed or raped, monasteries and convents burned to the ground. However, “ if children survived to the age of seven”…”their recognised life began, more or less, as miniature adults” [1978: 52]. Barbara Tuchman achieved prominence as a historian with The Zimmerman Telegram and international fame with the Pulitzer-Prize winning The Guns of August. A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century is a narrative history book by the American historian Barbara Tuchman, first published by Alfred A.

A wonderful, beautiful book painting a brilliant and detailed picture of France and Europe in the disastrous 14th century. The tradition of chivalry of the knights was shown to be hollow, the knights themselves to be petty, the Church to be a charade and its leaders self-serving. Her clear, dramatic storytelling covered topics as diverse as the 14th century and World War I, and sold millions of copies.For the aborted 1348 French invasion of England, the French packed a vast prefab camp with numbered panels. Tuchman has no such issues as her tome is a vast story that unfolds through the troubled 14th Century. I hadn’t studied the 14th century at all before reading Tuchman, but that was part of the charm the book: it was look into a world that was so thoroughly bizarre that I couldn’t not interested by it.

Read around Richard III and - love him or hate him - along the way you’re not only going to get into the foreground detail of the Wars of the Roses, you’ll begin making some sense of the backstory of the Plantagenet dynasty. There were more than a few idiots, but no heroes, no chivalrous knights, just ugly opportunists laying waste to their own countryside, killing for no reason, looting, and burning towns to the ground. A Distant Mirror opens to us a journey not only into the Middle Ages, into that distant land full of fragmented power, magic and superstition, but also into the medieval mind and mentality of people living at that time. Excelente retrato da França, Inglaterra e as relações/consequências com a igreja católica no final da idade média. The desperation of kings for more money to fight their wars and the extent of political manoeuvring and corruption suggest that they could match anything we witness in the modern world.Tuchman (1912-1989), American historian, was born in New York City and graduated from Radcliffe College in 1933. Both England and France were ruled by minors and prey to factions, but the seeds of effective rebellion and reform would lie dormant for many decades more. A similar story took place in England where Richard II, only 13 in 1380, was likewise guided by the recently departed Edward III’s relatives.

To become a subscriber to Slightly Foxed: The Real Reader’s Quarterly Magazine, please visit our subscriptions page. At no other historic period, the theory and practice of living have been in a greater discord, and Tuchman comments and elaborates on these paradoxes in such an immersive manner that her readers often find themselves in the midst of all events and actions, in the vicinity of battles and inside the domestic life of medieval men and women.That said, her chronological sections are just as engaging, displaying her rare gift for giving life to people who lived hundreds of years ago. By this time Europe’s population was reduced to between 40 and 50 percent of what it had been when the century opened. The Middle Ages present a fascinating conundrum in the history of mankind since it was the period of immense losses, violence and stagnation while, at the same time, there reigned in the land the idea of the chivalric behaviour worthy of every admiration, and religious devotion and loyalty to masters like few periods have seen before or since. And indeed the reflection of humanity you see in this "distant mirror" is almost unrecognizable, but all the more fascinating for that.

From the high and mighty to the low and overworked, Tuchman touches on all the social, economic, and military changes, and disasters, of the time. I will look into Le Goff books, thanks a lot for this recommendation, and I highly recommend this book by Tuchman.For some, the century was a time of plenty—a time when the arts were reborn and new secular themes were suddenly and surprisingly in vogue. Most of what I've read has been deeply thought-provoking, on the one hand, if somewhat tiresome to read, on the other. However, in my opinion, that “casual attitude towards life” has a more straightforward explanation and that is the simple fact that death itself was so common and present everything, contributing to the development of a fatalistic attitude in people. You can unsubscribe from our list at any point by changing your preferences, or contacting us directly.