A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
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Reflections of the Past

Contrived and Boring

Wrong Title

A Narrative History

A Distant Mirror

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
Barbara W. Tuchman
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Europe | History | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0345349571
Release Date: 1987-07-12

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In this sweeping historical narrative, Barbara Tuchman writes of the cataclysmic 14th century, when the energies of medieval Europe were devoted to fighting internecine wars and warding off the plague. Some medieval thinkers viewed these disasters as divine punishment for mortal wrongs; others, more practically, viewed them as opportunities to accumulate wealth and power. One of the latter, whose life informs much of Tuchman's book, was the French nobleman Enguerrand de Coucy, who enjoyed the opulence and elegance of the courtly tradition while ruthlessly exploiting the peasants under his thrall. Tuchman looks into such events as the Hundred Years War, the collapse of the medieval church, and the rise of various heresies, pogroms, and other events that caused medieval Europeans to wonder what they had done to deserve such horrors.

Book Description

"Wise, witty, and wonderful . . . A great book, in a great historical tradition." Commentary

The 14th century gives us back two contradictory images: a glittering time of crusades and castles, cathedrals and chivalry, and a dark time of ferocity and spiritual agony, a world plunged into a chaos of war, fear and the Plague. Barbara Tuchman anatomizes the century, revealing both the great rhythms of history and the grain and texture of domestic life as it was lived.

Customer Reviews:

Reflections of the Past.......2007-10-16

"A Distant Mirror" is a far cry from Tuchman's usual work. However that shouldn't deter one from picking up this splendid piece of work. Although the book tends to drag a bit in places, it still holds up well enough to appeal to a general audience and is more than capable of entertaining the reader along the way.

While Tuchman states early that the book will be centered around Edguerrand de Coucy, he doesn't make a truly formal appearance until after the first third of the book. Instead of striking out to appeal to our sense of pity for this truly confused man pulled between two loves, his country and wife, and seeing how he is constantly swept up in mainstream events, Tuchman comes out of the gate with the sex, religion and life of the average player in the 14th century.

Tuchman does an amazing job making the medieval world come to life, and an even better job creating parallels between our world and the world of the starving peasant and plump noble. As such her work reads like a modern story set in an older world. Whether or not one agrees with Tuchman's conclusions becomes irrelevant: the world she creates is just too good.

The only real problem with the book is that Tuchman tends to repeat herself a little during the work, and it is hard to get past the realization that she is an expert in 20th century American history, not the middle ages. But if you are interested in learning a little about what life was like for our European ancestors, and if you are willing to see a man whose life will break your heart, then open up the work and dive in.

Contrived and Boring.......2007-10-03

Ms. Tuchman, who was generally a first rate author and whose works I usually find absorbing, must have been strapped for subject matter for a new work when she wrote this tome as I found it incredibly boring and contrived, partially because, imbued with the modern prejudice born of the Renaissance and Enlightenment, I find this era uninspiring, if not culturally backward, and because of the tedious way she focused on one particular relatively obscure individual from a minor principality.

Moreover, Tuchman's theme that somehow this era is uniquely a distant reflection or cousin of our own more than any other isn't one that leaps to my mind at all. Rather, I would think if any era comes close to holding that distinction, of having a similar zeitgeist, it would be the "modern" era of Late Republican Rome, emerging victorious from global like conflict against its imperial rival Carthage (whose final defeat was effectuated though a major act of genocide) and ruled over by a Senate and abused by usurping dictators etc. Isn't it telling, for example, that 20th Century fascism adopted the stiff armed salute of the Roman Army and that the term dictator, reflecting a constitutional office under the Roman Republic, has truly come into its own infamous notoriety in our own time.

For a more easily readable and enlightening book on medieval history, culture and mythology I suggest Thomas B. Costain's "The Magnificent Century" about the previous century to the one addressed by Ms. Tuchman with such labored tedium.

Wrong Title.......2007-06-14

You get tired of one name: de Coucy. The book should have been titled "Enguerrand VII, Lord of Coucy." I slogged through it. Seems he and his issue were everywhere at once, to quote an old AbFab episode: "...beside the rich and famous, behind the rich and famous, under the rich and famous..." When Barbara Tuchman could get off her favorite subject of his lordship, she would get back to the 14th century and was quite entertaining and informative about how you would live your life in that time. Yes, she used him as her north star to keep the book anchored, but you pretty much got tired of him halfway through the book and wished Edward had cut off his head or the Black Death had got him. Had the book been advertised as a history of the de Coucy family instead of a history of the 14th century I would have been more forgiving. She really needs to retitle this book.

A Narrative History.......2007-05-13

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 informative and actually an 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 of constant interaction of multiple forces that 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 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 a deeper search into the age.

A Distant Mirror.......2007-04-18

Even a brief summary of all Barbara Tuchman's themes would lead to several pages. A Distant Mirror tries to describe the major political and religious machinations of 14th century Europe. Her constant is Enguerrand Coucy VII, a prominent noble, kingmaker,diplomat and warrior of the time. Coucy attracted Tuchman's attention because of his atypical eminence. He was one of the few lords who was not deceitful, barbaric, vainglorious or libertine. The times forced him to make some crucial choices as to which king and pope deserved his support. (He chose French in both cases.) But, his thoughtfulness, sincerity and success as an honest broker and fierce commander enable him to stand above the dreadful examples of humanity that attempted leadership of the 1300s.

This was a time when provincial warlords struggled for power and influence. Many knights were mercenaries or roving brigands. Church corruption was entrenched. Commoners were overtaxed to pay for wars, crusades, tributes or ransom. The Black Death kept the population well below levels of the previous century. An exasperating aspect of this history is how little most of the principals learned about governance or warfare. They were continually arrogant, parochial, greedy and treacherous.

Ms. Tuchman's history encompasses scores of characters- most of whom I will never read of again. I do wish she had put the most notable into a brief biographical compendium so the reader could refresh his memory as to their particular deviance. One of the pleasures of A Distant Mirror is reading Tuchman's acerbic comments about these horrid people and their times. I will close with a typical Tuchman comment regarding the Christian kings' defeat by the Turks. They were trounced because most of the warlords wanted singular recognition for heroism and refused military cooperation. "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 - The Calamitous 14th Century

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Binding: Hardcover
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