Quotes from book

A Distant Mirror

“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.””

“If it is not profitable for the common good that authority should be retained, it ought to be relinquished.”

“The emphasis on sorcery reflected accusations by the authorities more than it did actual practice. Being threatened, the Church responded by virulent persecution.”

“Against men habituated to lawless force, violent punishment failed to bring the violence under control.”

“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.”

“In the midst of events there is no perspective.”

“For belligerent purposes, the 14th century, like the 20th, commanded a technology more sophisticated than the mental and moral capacity that guided its use.”

“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.”

“Left to face a hungry winter robbed of their hard-earned harvests, the people experienced their own warrior class not as protectors but ravagers.”

“Whatever solace the Christian faith could give was balanced by the anxiety it generated.”

“In individuals as in nations, contentment is silent, which tends to unbalance the historical record.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“What counts is not so much the fact as what the public perceives to be the fact.”

“Nothing is more certain than death and nothing uncertain but its hour.”

“When truth and reason cannot be heard, then must presumption rule.”

“Voluntary self-directed religion was more dangerous to the Church than any number of infidels.”