A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century – Barbara W. Tuchman 597 pgs.

I have to say that this book turned out to be a really nice surprise. I found it in a used bookshop in Buenos Aires for 10 pesos and thought what the hell, I already knew a bit about the 14th century from a class I took in university and figured I could stand to learn a bit more. As soon as I began reading it I knew I had found a rarity among history books, an interesting read and actually exciting read! This stems from the style employed by Tuchman. Having chosen the area she wanted to cover, namely Western Europe in the 14th century, she needed something to provide a focus and uniting thread. For this she took the somewhat unusual approach of selecting not a person of royalty, a religious figure, or a member of the lower social class, but a noble that has the advantage of straddling in various ways all three of the aforementioned roles. Her noble, the Lord of Coucy, holding lands in the realm of northern France in the area of Picardy was an extraordinary figure by any consideration, involved in almost all the major military, political, and religious events of his. Of course it helped his cause that the three spheres so often, if not always overlapped in his day. Come to think of it, it still seems like those three spheres overlap quite often in our own age. Funny how history has a way repeating itself, or as it has been said, history never repeats itself, men always do.
The 14th century was a time of profound change and upheaval for the people of Europe. A long and destructive war was waged between the Kingdoms of England and France, known to posterity as the Hundred Years War, which was to leave both countries and much of Europe devastated long after the fighting had stopped. During the middle of the century a new terror descended on all the peoples of Europe, the Black Death or Bubonic Plague. Sparing neither rich nor poor, devout nor unbeliever, the great wave of death that swept through Europe multiple times in the last half of the century killed around half the total population, which was not to recover its 1300 level until around the 1550’s. So terrible was the Black Death and its consequences that it was simply known as the ‘great mortality’ to the people of the day. To throw one more destabilizing agent in the mix, the later half of the 14th century also gave rise to the Pope’s leaving of Rome in favor of a new residence in southern France at Avigion. This eventually lead to what is known as the papal schism, where for a time there were rival claimants to the papacy with one residing in Rome and one in Avigion, with the countries of Europe forced to take sides between them. For a time there were even three Popes at once. In a world destroyed by war and death, people looked to God for answers and when they found a split Church more corrupted and ungodly than ever change was only just around the corner.
Tuchman does a wonderful job of tying together the major events of the time around a narrative centered on Coucy. More often than not he is certainly a part of these events. Throughout the narrative are sprinkled social, economical, religious, and further historical background, painting a vivid picture of the life in France and England, and to a lesser extent the Italian states, the Holy Roman Empire and the Iberian kingdoms at the time. To this extent I think that Tuchman’s book is a success. As with all narrative histories though there are evitable flaws. To say that one event leads to another in an continuous flow of cause and effect, especially when it is centered around one character, is to deny and miss a lot of areas where a constant interaction of multiple forces help to shape and form that particular time in history. The tendency shown by Tuchman to attribute actions to individual leaders personalities and whims seems to me to be a throwback to the ancient historians of the classical world.
Another flaw that I see is the taking the life of a noble as a representation of the time. A noble by definition is a person set apart from the masses of humanity. To think that the Lord of Coucy or any of his associates in anyway represents what most people of the time experienced is to be deceived. He was primarily concerned with his own class, namely the ruling class, and the power that was derived from the position. Tuchman does much to paint him as a brilliant, enlightened man ahead of his time in many ways. That may be true to some extent but it is nevertheless also true that he used all the means available to him to exploit those of a lower class, as did all in the ruling class.
Even though I have criticisms for the book, I still believe it carried out its function well, namely to illuminate that age of European history often known as the Dark Ages. The choice of narrative as the vehicle for the history has its limitations as stated above but it also has many positives as well. Anyone looking to gain a preliminary understanding of this very eventful time would do well to pick up Tuchman’s book. I can only guarantee that it will whet the appetite for deeper search into the age.