A Medieval Pageant

...But the greatest, most pervasive horror of the century was Pasteurella pes-tis, bubonic plague...

...Released after three days in a state of shock, the Pope died a month later...

...Crusaders eagerly slaughtered infidels...

...It was a debacle for the Christian warriors directly traceable to their reckless, if gallant, style of combat...

...served three French kings...

...Thus the plague, a terrible shadow throughout the century (there were three more epidemics), haunted men's minds more than wars or political and religious corruption...

...One of the death-blows to chivalric warfare, Tuchman notes, was the battle against the Ottoman Turks in 1396 at Nico-polis, a city in Bulgaria...

...It is the circumstances of his death at the hands of the Ottoman Turks, in fact, that are described most movingly...

...The indelible symbol of these forebodings was a new kind of play that appeared in the latter part of the century, the Danse Macabre, the dance of death...

...Just as the Renaissance served to bridge the Middle Ages and the modern world, the 14th century saw the Middle Ages give way to the Renaissance...

...Medieval physicians, unable to extricate themselves from the coils of astrology, were helpless...

...And all of this serves to make the momentous 14th century more immediate...

...As a result, qualities of conduct that we recognize as familiar amid these alien surroundings are revealed as permanent in human nature...

...The plague, says Tuchman, was "the most lethal catastrophe in recorded history...

...Jews were despised as Christ-killers and suffered hideous massacres...

...Reviewed by Howard Schneider At the beginning of her new book about 14th-century Europe, Barbara Tuchman writes: "The interval of 600 years permits what is significant in human character to stand out...

...On the contrary, their dedication to a romantic code of chivalry left them confused and defeated in a time of emerging nationalism that undermined the old feudal relationships among lords, vassals and serfs...

...Politically and psychologically, the structure of society and the authority of the Church began to break apart...

...Still, A Distant Mirror abounds with other, more successfully drawn personalities of the 14th century...

...Before long, a curious relationship between violence and religion emerged, with piety and sadism complementing each other: "In every church they saw pictures of saints undergoing varieties of atrocious martyrdom—by arrow, spears, fire, cut-off breasts—usually dripping blood...

...True, flesh-and-blood knights never quite lived up to the splendid ideals of Arthurian legend, yet neither did they simply pay lip service to them...

...paid in compensation for Lord Andrew Lutterall's dead horse...

...The first attack struck Europe in 1347, and within three years about one-third of the Continent's population—some 20 million people —had died...

...Major events (like the battles of Crecy and Poitiers, where the English unveiled a new weapon—the longbow—that decimated the French) are smoothly woven together with the homely but piquant detail...

...The Crucifixion with its nails, spears, thorns, whips, and more dripping blood was inescapable...

...Although the tables were frequently turned...

...This encourages the hope that the author will avoid specious analogies between the 14th and 20th centuries, and she does not disappoint: A Distant Mirror is a lucid, intelligent, and witty popular history of a fascinating era...

...The dour message of the "characters" in these theatrical pageants?corpses and skeletons—was: We too were once like you...

...fought in wars throughout Europe and North Africa), a dearth of personal details prevents him from ever really coming alive...

...And the flagellants, wandering bands of zealots who were perhaps the apotheosis of religious fanaticism, atoned for the sins of mankind by lashing themselves with iron-spiked whips...

...Its origin was central Asia, its carrier flea-infested rats, and it was spread by trading vessels...

...The function of a nobleman was to defend the two other estates, the clergy and the commoners, and to maintain "justice and order...

...There is the sensual and hedonistic, yet kind and decent Pope Clement VI, who came to the aid of Jews accused of causing the plague and initiated the Jubilee Year every half-century (when pilgrims could travel to Rome to receive pardon for their sins) because, he said, "a pontiff should make his subjects happy...

...Violence, in fact, was the leitmotif of the period...

...It seemed to prove that the world was not only incomprehensible but malevolent...

...The symptoms were ghastly: "The diseased sailors showed strange black swellings about the size of an egg or an apple in the armpits and groin...

...The peasantry, on the other hand, was crushed under the tax burden and its frustrations periodically exploded into furious violence (the Jacquerie in France, the Peasants' Revolt in England...

...Mercenaries and brigands plundered and terrorized cities and rural areas...

...There is the English poet Chaucer, who was held in esteem even in his day: "While in a foraging party outside Reims, he had been captured by the French and ransomed by King Edward for ?6, which compared favorably with the ? 13s...

...The bourgeois merchants, just coming into power, used their wealth to acquire new leverage...

...Simultaneously, the nobility confronted similarly profound changes...

...Blood and cruelty were ubiquitous in Christian art, indeed essential to it, for Christ became Redeemer, and the saints sanctified, only through suffering violence at the hands of their fellow man...

...Radical religious thinkers like the Englishman John Wyclif (who rejected the necessity of a priesthood) might be condemned as heretical by the Pope and the religious establishment, but the reformist anger they expressed was too powerful to be silenced...

...In 1303, France's King Philip the Fair ordered Pope Boniface VIII abducted as he prepared to excommunicate Philip...

...Although the desire for faith and salvation remained strong, it was becoming impossible to ignore the corruption and venality of the clerical hierarchy—up to and including the Papal Court...

...In sum, Tuchman has done an admirable job of organizing an enormous amount of material...

...Despite the sweep of his career (he married the daughter of England's King Edward III...

...One of the main strands of Tuch-man's narrative is the life of Enguer-rand de Coucy, an esteemed noble from Picardy, in Northern France...

...In this milieu, the Inquisition used torture to root out heretics and dissenters...

...There is the Countess of Montfort, who showed a genius for military strategy while defending her realm in Britanny against allies of the French Crown...

...Philip's brazen action was a milestone in Western history: Secular rulers would no longer be curbed by traditional restraints...

...In France especially, nationalism slowly replaced loyalty to a particular domain or individual lord—a trend fostered by a series of ambitious kings...

...In the interim, the enormous revenue required to continue hostilities had made collecting taxes a matter of urgency...

...Dynasties, diplomacy, diverse ways of life and the arts of love are integrated into a colorful panorama...

...Constant internecine strife tore Italy apart...

...People of the Middle Ages existed under mental, moral, and physical circumstances so different from our own as to constitute almost a foreign civilization...

...The swellings oozed blood and pus and were followed by spreading boils and black blotches on the skin from internal bleeding . .. everything that issued from the buboes and lungs, bloody urine and blood-blackened excrement?smelled foul...

...from that point on, they were able—and willing—to invade the spiritual realm if that helped consolidate their authority...

...The more determined they were to strengthen the monarchy, the more ruthless their efforts to thwart any power that might clash with their own...

...By the end of that struggle in the 15th century, both sides had learned the value of disciplined fighting formations (as opposed to the freewheeling style of the knights), and had accepted the use of nonaristocratic soldiers...

...Inevitably, the rise of national sovereignty and sentiment also led to conflicts over territory, such as the Hundred Years War between England and France, which irrevocably discredited the antiquated ideas of chivalry...