39 quotes
Economic man and sensual man are not suppressible.
A Distant Mirror (1978)
If all were equalized by death, as the medieval idea constantly emphasized, was it not possible that inequalities on earth were contrary to the will of God?
A Distant Mirror (1978)
When reproached for spending too much time with books and clerks, Charles answered, “As long as knowledge is honored in this country, so long will it prosper.”
A Distant Mirror (1978)
What is government but an arrangement by which the many accept the authority of the few?
A Distant Mirror (1978)
On being shown a relic said to be a bone of St. Elizabeth, he (Sigismund) turned it over and remarked that it could just as well be that of a dead cobbler.
A Distant Mirror (1978)
The system was aided by the Church, whose natural interests allied it more to the great than to the meek.
A Distant Mirror (1978)
Voluntary self-directed religion was more dangerous to the Church than any number of infidels.
A Distant Mirror (1978)
Whatever solace the Christian faith could give was balanced by the anxiety it generated.
A Distant Mirror (1978)
Perhaps by this time the 14th century was not quite sane. If enlightened self-interest is the criterion of sanity, in the verdict of Michelet, “no epoch was more naturally mad.”
A Distant Mirror (1978)
The Hundred Years' War, like the crises of the Church in the same period, broke apart medieval unity.
A Distant Mirror (1978)
The social damage was not in the failure but in the undertaking, which was expensive. The cost of war was the poison running through the 14th century.
A Distant Mirror (1978)
Money was the crux. Raising money to pay the cost of war was to cause more damage to 14th century society than the physical destruction of war itself.
A Distant Mirror (1978)
The emphasis on sorcery reflected accusations by the authorities more than it did actual practice. Being threatened, the Church responded by virulent persecution.
A Distant Mirror (1978)
Modern historians have suggested that in his last years he (Richard II) was overtaken by mental disease, but that is only a modern view of the malfunction common to 14th century rulers: inability to inhibit impulse.
A Distant Mirror (1978)
One cannot help feeling that its guardians sometimes miss the point of literature, which is not to cut gems of flashing and exquisite rarity but to communicate, to convey a meaning, an art, a story, a fantasy, even a mystery, to someone.
Vainglory, however, no matter how much medieval Christianity insisted it was a sin, is a motor of mankind, no more eradicable than sex. As long as combat was desirable as the source of honor and glory, the knight had no wish to share it with the commoner, even for the sake of success.
A Distant Mirror (1978)
The ills and disorders of the 14th century could not be without consequence. Times were to grow worse over the next fifty-odd years until at some imperceptible moment, by the some mysterious chemistry, energies were refreshed, ideas broke out of the mold of the Middle Ages into new realms, and humanity found itself redirected.
A Distant Mirror (1978)
The real reason for his attitude lay deeper. Essentially, Gloucester and the barons of his party were opposed to peace because they felt war to be their occupation. Behind them were the poorer knights and squires and archers of England, who, unconcerned with rights or wrongs, were “inclined to war such as had been their livelihood.”
A Distant Mirror (1978)
His (Deschamps’) complaint of court life was the same as is made of government at the top in any age: it was composed of hypocrisy, flattery, lying, paying and betraying; it was where calumny and cupidity reigned, common sense lacked, truth dared not appear, and where to survive one had to be deaf, blind, and dumb.
A Distant Mirror (1978)