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First chapter is a sketch of French society esp the Coucys milieu at the start of the story. It’s a feudal decentralized polity with weak monarchy, strong sumptuary laws and merchant class slowly buying its freedom from bankrupt crusading nobility. Status currency being debased.
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Learned about Simony. The church was basically a deep state for sale. Purely commercial enterprise. Offices being sold to highest bidder, illiterates being appointed to clergy, all sins washable with money. They were practically asking heaven for a plague.
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This book is not recommended if you want reassurance that we’ve been through worse and returned to normal. It’s building up like a doomsday story and we already know how bad it gets. Spoiler alert: doom
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Life for commoners sounds horrible even before the Black Death. Caught between a venal church and a crappy nobility being invaded by a social climbing merchant class. No wonder they clung as fervently to the idea of an afterlife as we do to the idea of a reopening.
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Everybody hates the church in the 14th century it seems. Including reformers within who think it ought to reflect Jesus ideal of poverty. Franciscans excommunicated for such ideas. Kings resist Pope’s right to crown emperor. Merchants change at silly economics.
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Weird just how much centralized power the church laid claim to, and with corrupt staff at that, purely on the strength of a claim to gate-keeping salvation. Interesting contrast to Hinduism, where there was an equally strong claim but no central Pope making the claim.
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Long section on how extremely communal guild life was. Capitalists pretty much owned towns and had captured city governments. Town and rural poor equally oppressed. Also TIL about 1320 Pastoureaux that began as rebellion against oppression and ended in slaughter of Jews.
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The 14th century really couldn’t come to terms with the necessity of interest, and the result was antisemitism as a sort of economic doctrine. Christian usury prohibitions grounded in economic illiteracy made periodic slaughter of Jews necessary to balance the budget?
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Chapter 2 ends on the cusp of war between France and England with the father of our hero drawn in via complicated marriage alliances, dowries, military commitments in exchange for money etc. Our hero Enguerrand de Coucy, who I will call Eng, is born.
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Chapter 3 is a pretty thorough portrait of medieval life in Eng’s milieu. Reads like a history text. Lots of details on child-rearing, education, economic life etc. No big surprises so this is a bit boring. It does surprisingly resemble cartoon views (Monty Python, King Arthur)
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Life kinda sucks, the world doesn’t change, progress is not a concept, everybody is waiting to either die or the second coming when there is a lottery chance it will suck less. Knights must learn how to fight, rude, and... hawk? Why hawks? Toy drones of the time I guess.
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Familiar names popping up: Petrarch, Dante, Ockham. The whole description sounds fairly close to Indian history of the time, which I know better. Just slightly more technologically advanced, and significantly better peasant/commoner conditions. Life is rough. Wouldn’t want it.
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“Yet if the [chivalric] code was but a veneer over violence, greed, and sensuality, it was nevertheless an ideal, as Christianity was an ideal, toward which man’s reach, as usual, exceeded his grasp.” Great sentence.
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Well, with a quick account of the Battle of Crécy and the start of the 100 years war, we’re officially into the plague chapters. Tuchman moves very fast through this, 1948-49. It is depressingly and uncannily similar to what we’re going through.
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Way more death of course, but similar dynamics: poor dying more, animals running wild, labor shortage,... “The sense of a vanishing future created a kind of dementia of despair.”
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“Fields went uncultivated, spring seed unsown. Second growth with nature’s awful energy crept back over cleared land, dikes crumbles, salt water reinvaded and soured the lowlands”
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One big difference: they had no idea how it spread. Didn’t even suspect fleas and rats apparently. Though rats were associated with pestilence generally (the Pied Piper story is from 1284 it seems). That’s our one big advantage. Perhaps the main one.
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Both bubonic and pneumonic plagues were present together so the miasma theory was not entirely wrong even though they thought it was stinky air and malign astrology that caused air transmission. They also believed in sight transmission. Must have been total FUD.
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The official explanation was an astrological one from the professors of the University of Paris. They were widely translated, leading to growth in national languages as a positive effect. Kinda like internet today I guess.
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Lots of prayer and religious life cleansing. “When it became clear that these [penitence] processions were sources of infection, [Pope] Clement VI had to prohibit them” (initially authorized by the pope).
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Apparently very few broad generalizations can be made about the effects of the Black Death. Fir every claimed effect in one place there was an opposite one elsewhere. Labor shortage and stronger peasant/artisan position was the strongest broad effect. Inflation/wages spiral.
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The church got generally richer through legacies and Clement VI 1350 jubilee, where you could get absolutions fir money. But it grew much more hated. I guess the seeds of the reformation were planted here.
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Tuchman argues that dissatisfaction with the meaninglessness of the suffering, with no changes for the better, is what unleashed the social forces of change. Argues it created modern man, hungry for a better answer than mysterious will of god.
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Interesting: in the wake of the Black Death, both England and France raised knightly orders nostalgically modeled on King Arthur’s round table, with the practical purpose of preventing independent withdrawal by feudals in battle. Chivalry was already a fandom larp in 1351.
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Now we’re on to examples of how the whole era was full of ultra-violent psychopaths killing each other, like Charles of Navarre. Tuchman suggests perhaps as a result of Black Death memento mori. This era is motorcycle gangs basically. Pandemics cause Hobbesian conditions.
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Honor killings, rape, torture, heads on stakes, arms, legs, ears cut off for crimes... These are horrible, miserable people. Why does fantasy fiction love this age so much again? Not an age for smart people.
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Tuchman offers theory that since neglect was the standard of childcare till age 7 or so, everyone grew up severely messed up. Sounds about right. A world where having a serial killer psyche is the norm, and being nice is a form of mental illness
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My horrible loud music playing neighbor would have fit right into the post-plague late Middle Ages. Bet he tortures cats. But moving on, having wished a pox on neighbor. We resume our reading.
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Money printer go brr. King Jean tries to get clever debasing currency and trying to reform the military. Long account of Battle of Poitiers, another debacle for the French. The 100 years war seems to develop one confused and stupid battle at a time. Each is harambe-like.
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“Complaints were heard that the archers had killed too many who might have been held for ransom” This business of capturing enemy knights for ransom is hilarious. The business model was ransoms. Like LatAm gangs. Military objectives had to compete with ransom objectives.
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This tension between archers (remote work, pragmatic war) and knights (melee work, honor war) appears to have been a much bigger deal than I thought. It’s like Jane Jacobs commerce vs guardian syndromes. Archers = win effectively, via strategery. Knights = honor points.
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The French apparently underutilized their archers for honor reasons. Besides being limited to crossbows and lacking longbow capacity. Must resist crossbow vs longbow Internet bunny trail and return to book.
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Now we’re talking commerce and urban life in Paris. Apparently streets didn’t have names then and people spent hours lost. Also curfew on economic production work after dark and sumptuary laws still constraining conspicuous consumption . Guardian > Commerce. Economy no go brrr.
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“... furniture was meager. Beds, which served for sitting as well as sleeping, were the most important item. Chairs were few: even kings and popes received ambassadors sitting on beds”
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