Author Topic: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant  (Read 370458 times)

marjifay

  • Posts: 2658
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1640 on: February 18, 2012, 08:57:35 AM »

"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"

   



What are our origins?
Where are we now?
Where are we headed?
Share your thoughts with us!
   Volume Five (The Renaissance)
       
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
 
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
       
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
       
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."




In this volume the  term "Renaissance" refers only to Italy. Will Durant studies the growth of industry, the rise of banking families like the Medici, the conflicts of labor and capital and considers the reasons why Italy was the first nation, and Florence the first city in Italy, to feel the awakening of the modern mind. He follows the cultural flowering from Florence to Milan, Mantua, Ferrata, Verona and Venice, Padua and Parma, Bologna, Rimini, Urbino, Perugia, Siena, and Naples. 

In each city of Italy we witness a colorful pageant of princes, queeens, dukes, or doges -- of poets, historians, scientists, and philosophers -- of painters, sculptors, engravers, illuminators, potters, and architects -- of industry, education, manners, morals, crime, and dress -- of women and love and marriage -- of epidemics, famines, earthquakes, and death.

Dr. Durant draws vivid vignettes -- of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cosimo de' Medici, Fra Angelico, Donatello, Beatrice and Isabella d'Este, Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, Perugino, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Aldus Manutius, Correggio, Alexander VI, Caesar and Lucrezia Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, Raphael, and Michelangelo.

The Renaissance, by recalling classic culture, ended the thousand year rule of the Oriental mind in Europe.


This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.

SeniorLearn Contact: JoanK & Discussion Facilitator: Trevor
 


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"that expected every man whether high born or poor to pay the same money"

Sounds like the Tea Party people of today.  LOL.

Marj


"Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill."  Barbara Tuchman

Emily

  • Posts: 365
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1641 on: February 20, 2012, 09:26:41 PM »
"Men of good will prayed for the nations happy recovery through the King's speedy death"

Their prayers were not answered.

I am reading a book and the setting is Indonesia. In a village one of the villagers comments on the 'tribal leader'. "He is respected, but resented by all."

Sounds like the King of England, when they start praying for you to die, better get a food taster.

Emily

Emily

  • Posts: 365
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1642 on: February 20, 2012, 10:27:54 PM »
Good grief, I just had the mind numbing experience of looking up 'predestination' on Google. I read it all but since psychobabble can be boring and unrepeatable one will not get an honest answer there.

The 'omniscient' god began with Judaism. The know all, see all, god who knew you before you were created, and all that nonsense. Since the Jews wrote both the 'old testament' and the 'new testament' and their words set the stage for 'predestination' it belongs to them.

I know many Christians and none of them believe in 'predestination' as prescribed by John Wyclif. I know many Jews and none of them believe in 'predestination' either. Of course I don't know any 'orthodox jews' or 'calvinist christians' either who do believe in the 'omniscient god' who knows all and sees all and preordains all.

As for Islam, my experience is limited. I organized a group of adults to serve as tutors in the school system for first through third grade. They would spend an hour with students selected by the teacher or an hour with the entire class reading and discussing a book. There was an Egyptian boy in the third grade and he lived directly across the street from the school. I went calling to see if his mother would volunteer for a couple of hours a week. I knocked on the door and the father answered it, I asked to speak to his wife and he said no, I gave him my card and asked if she would call me. He said she would not.

But the other muslim was a blessing. He was attending the 'space center' school for a semester at a nearby military facility. The children loved him. He was a young Iranian who spoke perfect English and kept the children enthralled with a continuing 15 minute story time after their reading.

Since reading comprehension was my goal I had no idea what they believed about religion.

Since I don't believe in gods, faries, ghosts, demons, saints, or any of the other mumbo jumbo put out by the 'cults', predestination is simply foolish and silly in my opinion and not fit for discussion.

Emily

3kings(Trevor)

  • Posts: 347
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1643 on: February 21, 2012, 01:44:10 AM »
The Durants'   S  o  C
Vol VI    The REFORMATION
pages 35 - 39



Wyclif would not admit these ideas were heretical, but this theory of “consubstantiality” alarmed
some of his supporters. John of Gaunt hurried over to Oxford, and urged his friend to say no more about the Eucharist. Wyclif rejected this advice, and reaffirmed his views in a “Confessio “ dated May 10 1381. A month later social revolution broke out in England, and frightened all property owners into discountenancing any doctrine that threatened any form of property, lay or ecclesiastical. Wyclif now lost most of his backing in the government, and the assassination of Archbishop Sudbury by the rebels promoted his most resolute enemy, Bishop Courtenay, to the primacy of England. Courtenay felt that if Wyclif’s conception of the Eucharist were allowed to spread it would undermine the Church’s  moral authority.

Embarrassed by the admiration expressed for him by the priest John Ball, a chief protagonist of the revolt, Wyclif issued several tracts dissociating himself from the rebels; he disclaimed any socialist views and urged his followers to submit patiently to their terrestrial lords in the firm hope of recompense after death. Nevertheless he continued his pamphleteering against the Church, and organized a body of “Poor Preaching Priests “ to spread his Reformation among the people. All went robed in black wool and barefoot; all were warmed by the ardor of men who had rediscovered Christ. Theirs was already the protestant emphasis on an infallible Bible as against the fallible traditions and dogmas of the Church. Wyclif set himself and his aides to translate the Bible as the sole and unerring guide to true religion. He appears to have translated the New Testament himself, leaving the Old Testament to Nicholas Hereford and John Purvey. It was not a model of English prose, but it was a vital event in English history.

In 1384 Pope Urban VI summoned Wyclif to appear before him in Rome. A different summons exceeded it in authority. On Dec 28 1384 the ailing reformer suffered a paralytic stroke as he was attending Mass, and died three days later. Search was made for his writings, and as many as were found were destroyed.

All the major elements of the Reformation were in Wyclif: the revolt against the worldliness of the clergy, and the call to sterner morality; the return of the Church to the Bible, from Aquinas to Augustine, from free will to predestination, from salvation by works to election by divine grace; the rejection of indulgences, auricular confession, and transubstantiation; the deposition of the priest  as an intermediary between God and man; the protest against the alienation of national wealth to Rome; the invitation to the state to end its subordination to the papacy; the attack ( preparing for Henry VIII ) on the temporal possessions of the clergy. If the Great Revolt had not ended the government’s protection of Wyclif’s efforts, the Reformation might have taken form and root in England 130 years before it broke out in Germany.

                                                          THE GREAT REVOLT:  1381

England and Wales had in 1307 a population precariously estimated at 3,000,000 - a slow increase from a supposed 2,500,000 in 1066.  The figures suggest a sluggish advance of agricultural and industrial techniques-- and an effective control of human multiplication by famine, disease, and war -- in a fertile but narrow island never meant to sustain with its own resources any great multitude of men. Probably three fourths of the people were peasants, and half of these were serfs: in this regard England lagged a century behind France.

Class distinctions were sharper than on the continent. Life seemed to revolve about two foci: gracious or arrogant lordship at one end, hopeful or resentful service at the other.  The barons, aside from their limited duties to the king, were masters of all they surveyed, and of much beyond.  The feudal  lord bound his vassal knights and their squires to serve and defend him and wear his “ livery.” The middle classes assumed such manners of the aristocracy as they could manage; they began to address  one and another as Master in England, Mon seigneur in France; soon every man was a Master or Mon seigneur,  and every woman a Mistress or Madame.

Industry progressed faster than agriculture. By 1300 almost all the coalfields of Britain were being worked; silver, iron, lead, and tin were mined, and the export of metals ranked high in the nation’s trade. It was a common remark that “ the Kingdom is of greater value under the land than above “.
The woollen industry began in this century to make England rich. The lords withdrew more and more lands from the common uses formerly allowed to their serfs and tenants, and turned large tracts into sheep enclosures, more money could be made by selling wool than by tilling the land. The wool merchants were for a time the wealthiest traders in England, able to yield great sums in taxes and loans to Edward III, who ruined them. Tired of seeing raw wool go from England to feed the clothing industry of Flanders, Edward (1331 f.)  lured Flemish weavers to Britain and through their instruction established a textile industry there. Then he forbade the export of wool and the import of most foreign cloth. By the end of the fourteenth century the manufacture of clothing had replaced the wool trade as the main source of England’s liquid wealth and had reached a semi-capitalistic stage.

The new industry required the close co-operation of  many crafts-- weaving, falling, carding, dyeing, finishing; the old craft guilds could not arrange the disciplined collaboration needed for economical production; enterprising masters- entrepreneurs - gathered diverse specializations of labour into one organization, which they financed and controlled. However no such factory system arose here as in Florence and Flanders; most of the work was still done in small shops by a master, his apprentices, and a few journeymen. The craft guilds fought the new system with strikes, but its superior productivity overrode all opposition; and the workers who competed to sell their toil and skill were increasingly at the mercy of men who furnished capital and management. Town proletarians “ lived from hand to mouth . . . indifferently clad and housed, in good times fed, but in bad times not fed at all.”

Poverty was bitter, though probably less extreme than in the early nineteenth century. Beggars abounded, and organized to protect and govern their profession. Churches,  monasteries, and guilds provided a limping charity.

Upon this scene the Black Death burst as not only a catastrophic visitation but almost as an economic revolution.
                        .

Emily

  • Posts: 365
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1644 on: February 21, 2012, 11:50:07 PM »
When the feudal lords and land barons heard of Wyclif's call for no ownership of the land by church or lord they immediately went into action. Threaten their 'title to property' and Wyclif was toast. They didn't care about all the other propaganda, but they would kill every serf in England and Wales to keep their titles and property if necessary.

If I had lived in England at this time, I would have been against both the aristocracy and the church. Since both these entities controlled everything in England and Wales, I would have joined the revolt, but not for the same reasons as Wyclif and his followers, I would not want reform of either, but elimination of both practices.

Off with her head.

Emily






mabel1015j

  • Posts: 3656
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1645 on: February 22, 2012, 02:53:06 PM »
Interesting....

Not much time, but i'll repeat, one of the best books about the 14th century is Barbara Tuchman's "The Distant Mirror." Easily readable, but because of the events i read it in bits and pieces.

Jean

marjifay

  • Posts: 2658
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1646 on: February 24, 2012, 12:50:49 PM »
Emily said, "Since I don't believe in gods, faries, ghosts, demons, saints, or any of the other mumbo jumbo put out by the 'cults', predestination is simply foolish and silly in my opinion and not fit for discussion."

I'm with you, Emily, but I fear we are in the minority.  (Suggestion:  don't watch the GOP debates.  They get off on their weird religious ideas and I almost gagged.)

Marj

"Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill."  Barbara Tuchman

3kings(Trevor)

  • Posts: 347
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1647 on: February 24, 2012, 09:31:40 PM »
The DURANTS'   S  o  C
Vol. VI  The REfORMATION
Pgs. 39 - 43



The English people lived in a climate more favourable to vegetation than to health; the fields were green the year round, but the population suffered from gout, rheumatism, asthma, sciatica, tuberculosis, dropsy, and diseases of eyes and skin. All classes ate a heavy diet and kept warm with alcoholic drinks. “Few men now reach the age of forty" said Richard Rolle about 1340, “and fewer still the age of fifty.“

In 1349 bubonic plague crossed from Normandy to England; it returned to England repeatedly during the years  1361 to 1464; all in all it carried away one Englishman out of every three. Nearly half the clergy died; perhaps some of the abuses later complained of in the English Church were due to the necessity of hastily impressing into her service men lacking the proper qualifications of training and character. Morals suffered; family ties were loosed, sexual relations overflowed the banks within which the institution of  marriage sought to confine them for social order’s sake. The laws lacked officers to enforce them, and were frequently ignored.

Many peasants, having lost their children or other aides, deserted their tenancies for the towns; landowners were obliged to hire free workers at twice the former wage, and to commute feudal services into money payments. The landlords appealed to the government to stabilize wages. Parliament issued (February 9, 1351) a Statute of Labourers, specifying that no wages should be paid above the 1346 rate, fixing definite prices for a large number of services and commodities. A further act of 1360 decreed that peasants who left their lands before their contract expired might be brought back by force, before justices of the peace, and might be branded on the brow. Similar measures, were enacted between 1377 and 1381. Wages rose despite them, but the strife so engendered between labourers and government inflamed the conflict of classes, and lent  new weapons to the preachers of revolt. All citizens, even parish priests, denounced the governmental mismanagement of Edward III’s last years, of Richard II’s earliest. They asked why English arms had so regularly been beaten after 1369, and why such heavy taxes had been raised to finance such defeats. They particularly abominated Archbishop Sudbury and Robert Hales, the chief ministers of the young king, and John of Gaunt as the front and protector of governmental corruption and incompetence.

The Lollard preachers had little connection with the movement, but they had shared in preparing minds for the revolt. John Ball, the intellectual of the rebellion, quoted Wyclif approvingly, and Wat Tyler followed Wyclif in demanding disendowment of the Church.  Ball was the “mad priest of Kent.” who taught communism to his congregation, and was excommunicated in 1366. He became an itinerant preacher, calling for a return of the clergy to evangelical poverty, and making fun of rival popes who, in the Schism, were dividing the garments of Christ. Tradition ascribed to him a famous couplet :

                           When Adam delved and Eve span
                             Who was then the gentleman?
i.e., when Adam dug the earth and Eve plied the loom, were there any class divisions in Eden?

He was quoted as saying : My good friends, matters cannot go well in England until all things shall be in common; when there shall be neither vassals nor lords, when the lords shall be no more masters than ourselves. How ill they behave to us! For what reason do they thus hold us in bondage? Are we not all descended from the same parents, Adam and Eve ?  We are called slaves, and if we do not perform our service we are beaten... Let us go to the king and remonstrate with him; he is young, and from him we may obtain a favourable answer; and if not we must  ourselves seek to amend our condition.

The poll tax of 1380 capped the discontent. The government was nearing bankruptcy, the pledged jewels of the king were about to be forfeited, the war in France was crying out for new funds. A tax of 100,000 pounds ( $100,000,000?) was laid upon the people, to be collected from every inhabitant above the age of fifteen. Thousands of persons evaded the collectors, and the total receipts fell far short of the goal. Mass meetings of protest against the tax were held in London; they sent encouragement to the rural rebels, to march upon the capital, and “so press the king that there should no longer be a serf in England.”

A group of tax collectors entering Kent met a riotous repulse. On June 6, 1381, a mob broke open the dungeons at Rochester, freed the prisoners, and plundered the castle. On the following day the rebels chose as their chief Wat Tegheler, or Tyler. Nothing is known of his antecedents; apparently he was an ex-soldier, for he disciplined the disorderly horde into united action, and won its quick obedience to his commands. On June 11 Tyler turned his army toward London. At Maidstone it delivered John Ball from jail; he joined the cavalcade, and preached to it every day. Now, he said, would begin that reign of Christian democracy which he had so long dreamed of and pled for; all social inequalities would be levelled; there would no longer be rich and poor, lords and serfs; every man would be a king.

Meanwhile related uprisings occurred over much of southeast England. At Bury St. Edmund the people cut off the head of the prior, who had too stoutly asserted the feudal rights of the abbey over the town. Wherever possible they destroyed the rolls, leases, or charters that recorded feudal ownership or bondage; hence the townsfolk of Cambridge burned the charters of the University. On June 11 a rebel army from Essex and Hertford approached the northern outskirts of London; on the 12th the Kent insurgents reached Southwark, just across the Thames. Richard II, Sudbury, and Hales hid in the Tower. Tyler sent the King a request for an interview; it was refused. On June 13 the Kent forces marched into the capital, were welcomed by the people, and joined by thousands of labourers. Tyler held  his host fairly well in leash, but appeased its fury by allowing it to sack the palace of John of Gaunt. Nothing was stolen there; one rioter who tried to filch a silver goblet was killed by the crowd. But everything was destroyed; costly furniture was thrown out of the windows, jewellery was smashed to bits; then the house was burned to the ground., and some jolly rebels who had drunk themselves to stupor in the wine cellar were consumed in the flames.

Thereafter the army turned on the Temple, citadel of the lawyers of England; the peasants remembered that lawyers had written the deeds of their servitude, or had assessed their holdings for taxation; there too, they made a holocaust of the records, and burned the buildings to the ground. The jails were destroyed, and the happy inmates joined the mob. Wearied with its efforts to crowd a century into a day, the multitudes lay down in the open spaces in the city, and slept.




mabel1015j

  • Posts: 3656
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1648 on: February 25, 2012, 01:20:37 PM »
WOW! A communist/ capitalist conflict in the mid-14th century! I had forgotten about this uprising and maybe had not thought of it as "communism" when i studied it before, and was surprised to see Durant use the word.

Of course, i was studying the period in the 1950s when the label communism was not attached to anything positive, or conversely, anything that was considered "pink" or "red" was not talked about.....i.e. I was never told that Jane Addams and Emily Green Balch had won Nobel Peace Prizes. "Peace" and internationalism were considered too left wing to let us weak-minded students know about. Hull House and social work was o.k., but not being pacifists to try to end WWI.

JoanK

  • BooksDL
  • Posts: 8685
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1649 on: February 25, 2012, 06:01:52 PM »
I've heard of the rebellion, but knew very little about it. And never thought about the amount of social change and upheaval the deaths of the plague must have brought.

3kings(Trevor)

  • Posts: 347
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1650 on: February 26, 2012, 02:39:33 AM »
The Durants'  S  o  C
 Vol.  VI  The REFORMATION
Pages   43-45



That evening the King’s Council thought better of its refusal to let him talk with Tyler. Shortly after dawn on June 14 the fourteen-year-old King, risking his life, rode out of the tower with all his council except Sudbury and Hales, who dared not show themselves. The little party made its way through the hostile crowd to Mile End, where the Essex rebels were already gathered. Part of the Kent army followed, with Tyler at its head. He was surprised at the readiness of Richard to grant nearly all demands.

 Serfdom was to be abolished throughout England, all feudal dues and services were to end, the rental of the tenants would be as they asked, and a general amnesty would absolve all those who shared in the revolt. One demand the King refused -- that the royal ministers and other traitors should be surrendered to the people.

Not satisfied with this answer Tyler and a selected band rode rapidly to the Tower. They found Sudbury singing Mass in the chapel. they dragged him into the courtyard and severed his head. The insurgents then beheaded Hales and two others. They mounted the heads on pikes, carried them in procession through the city and set them up over the gate of London Bridge. All the remainder of the day was spent in slaughter. London tradesmen, resenting Flemish competition, bade the crowd kill every Fleming found in the capital. Over 150 aliens-- merchants and bankers-- were slain in London on that day in June, and many English lawyers, tax collectors, and adherents of John of Gaunt fell under the axes. Apprentices murdered their masters, debtors their creditors.

Next day, many rebels dispersed. On June 15 the King sent a modest message to the remaining rebels asking them to meet him in the open spaces of Smithfield. Tyler agreed. Before keeping  his rendezvous, Richard, fearing death, confessed and took the Sacrament;  then he rode out with a retinue of 200 men, whose peaceful garb hid swords. At Smithfield Tyler came forward with only a single companion to guard him. He made new demands, uncertainly reported, but apparently including the confiscation of Church property and the distribution of the proceeds among the people. A dispute ensued; one of the King’s escort called Tyler a thief. Tyler directed his aid to strike the man down. Mayor Walworth blocked the way; Tyler stabbed at Walworth, whose life was saved  by the armour under his cloke.. Walworth wounded Tyler with a short cutlass, and one of Richards squires ran Tyler through twice with a sword. Tyler rode back to his host crying treason, and fell dead at their feet. Shocked, the rebels set their arrows, and prepared to shoot. But Richard now rode out bravely toward them, crying out, “ Sirs will you shoot your King? I will be your chief and captain; you shall have from me that which you seek.” He rode out slowly, not sure they would follow. The insurgents hesitated, then followed him, and most of the royal guard mingled in their midst.

Walworth, however, turned sharply back, galloped into the city, and sent orders to the aldermen to join him with all the armed forces they could muster. Many citizens who at first had sympathised with the revolt were now disturbed by the murders and pillage; every man who had property felt his goods and his life in peril; so the mayor found an impromptu army of 7000 men. These he led back to the king, and offered to massacre the rebels. Richard refused; the rebels had spared him when he was at their mercy, and he would not now show himself less generous. The Essex and Hertford remnants rapidly melted away; the London mutineers disappeared; only the Kent contingent stayed. Their way was bared by Walworth's men, but Richard ordered that no one should molest them; they marched off in safety. The King returned to his mother, who greeted him with tears of happy relief. Richard said “now rejoice and praise God, for today I have recovered my heritage that was lost, and the realm of England too.”

On July 2 the embittered King revoked all charters and amnesties granted by him during the outbreak, and opened the way to a judicial inquiry into the identity and actions of the main participants. Hundreds were arrested and tried; 110 or more were put to death. John Ball was caught at Coventry; he avowed his leading role in the insurrection, and refused to ask pardon of the King. He was hanged, drawn and quartered; and his head, with those of Tyler and Jack Straw, replaced those of Sudbury and Hales as adornments of London Bridge.

On November 13 Richard laid before parliament an account of his actions; if, he said, the assembled landowners wished the serfs to be freed he was quite willing. But none did ; they voted that all existing feudal relations should be maintained. The beaten peasants returned to their plows, the sullen workers to their looms.



Brian

  • Posts: 221
    • Brian's Den
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1651 on: February 26, 2012, 11:12:36 AM »
If a writer were to write this story in a novel it would be thought to be unbelievable.

Too much treachery - - -  too much forgiveness - - -  too much trust - - -
but,  in fact,  it's just politics  -  then,  and still to the present time.

If you can beat them,  then go to it.   If you can't beat them,  give in till you can beat them.

Plus ça change !

Brian

Emily

  • Posts: 365
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1652 on: February 26, 2012, 10:09:17 PM »
Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest........Denis Diderot

Emily

mabel1015j

  • Posts: 3656
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1653 on: February 27, 2012, 12:50:03 PM »
Eeuuuwwww!

Emily

  • Posts: 365
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1654 on: February 27, 2012, 08:50:31 PM »
Jean, it is a disgusting practice but the Kings of England used to 'disembowel' those that challenged the King, after they had dragged them through the streets behind a horse, hung them from a ladder until almost dead, disembowel them, cut off their head, cut them into quarters, and send the parts all over the country to show their 'power'.

Here is a description with a drawing of the event to show what it entailed. This covers the era we are currently reading in SOC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanged,_drawn_and_quartered

Emily

mabel1015j

  • Posts: 3656
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1655 on: February 28, 2012, 12:12:26 PM »
I know, Emily. I'll repeat......i'm so happy to be living it the U.S. In the 21st century.

But, as usual, i am analyzing.....what were they thinking? What allows people to do that to another human being? I know life was hard and fragile and, perhaps, not so valued by some, but the cruelty has always amazed me. Was life so hard that compassion for other's pain was extinguished? And what effect does doing something so horrible have on the "actor"?

Jean 

bookad

  • Posts: 284
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1656 on: March 01, 2012, 08:05:44 AM »
just getting caught up in reading this section--finding it really interesting the page with details of Wat Tyler and his role in trying to bring about change for the serfs....and it seems he almost succeeded as the young King Richard granted reforms & abolishing the class of serfs....??if the peasants had not pushed their luck by the brutality they continued with in their further rampages upon the groups that angered them, do you think some bit of reform might have actually began; or was Richard just stringing them along trying to diffuse their anger and revolt;  ...even though he did ride out without any backup which must have taken a lot of courage

even though when something is put into law, it would not mean the reforms would happen overnight but it would have been a beginning and awareness and perhaps English history would have read differently, with its class system and nose in the air group that lasted so long----

I have read that the class system even caused problems as recent as the first world war, in that the aristocrats who bought into their appointments of command did not know the people who were in their units well... keeping more to their separations in 'class'/ while in the Canadian/American forces, their ability to communicate without the barriers of 'class' made it easier for their units to function especially thru times of crisis

Deb
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wildflower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

3kings(Trevor)

  • Posts: 347
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1657 on: March 07, 2012, 04:01:12 AM »
The Durant's   S  o  C
Vol. VI  The Reformation
Pge. 45-57.






                                        The NEW LITERATURE     
The English language was becoming by slow stages a fit vehicle for literature. The Norman invasion of 1066 had stopped the evolution of Anglo-Saxon into English, and for a time French was the official language of the realm. Gradually a new vocabulary and idiom formed, basically Germanic, but mingled and adorned with Gallic words and turns. The long war with France may have spurred the nation to rebel against this linguistic domination by an enemy. In 1362 English was declared to be the language of law and the courts; and in 1363 the chancellor set a precedent by opening Parliament with an English address. Scholars, chroniclers, and philosophers continued to write in Latin to reach an international audience, but poets and dramatists henceforth spoke the speech of England.

The oldest drama extant in English was a “mystery” - a dramatic representation of a religious story - performed in the Midlands about 1350, under the title of  “The Harrowing of Hell ,” which staged a duel in words, at the mouth of hell, between Satan and Christ. In the fourteenth century it became customary for the guilds of a town to present a cycle of mysteries. About 1378 another variety appeared - the “morality “ which pointed a moral by acting a tale; this form would reach its peak in “  Everyman “ (c. 1480 )  In 1348 Exeter raised the first known English theatre, the first European building, since classic Roman structures, specifically and regularly devoted to dramatic representations. From the interludes would evolve the comedies, and from the mysteries and moralities would develop the tragedies, of the lusty Elizabethan stage..

The first major poem -- one of the strangest and strongest poems -- in the English language called itself The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman.” Nothing is known of the author except through his poem; assuming  that this is autobiographical, we may name him William Langland, and place his birth near 1332. He took minor orders, but never became a priest; he wandered to London and earned something short of starvation by singing Psalms at Masses for the dead. He lived dissolutely, sinned with  covetousness of eyes and concupiscence of the flesh , had a daughter, perhaps married the mother and dwelled with them in a hovel in Cornhill. He was fond of his poem and issued it thrice (1362, 1377,1394 ) and each time spun it out to greater length.

Piers the Plowman is a model farmer, honest, friendly, generous, trusted by all, working hard, living faithfully with his wife and children, and always a pious son of the Church. The clergy, says the poet, are no longer a saving remnant, many have become corrupt, they deceive the simple, absolve the rich for a consideration, traffic in sacred things, sell heaven itself for a coin. What is a Christian to do in such a debacle ?  He must , says William, go forth again, over all intervening institutions and corruptions, and seek the living Christ Himself.

Piers became for the rebels of England a symbol of the righteous, fearless peasant; John Ball recommended him to the Essex insurgents of 1381; as late as the Reformation his name was invoked in criticizing the old religious order and demanding a new. If all of us, the poet concluded, were like Piers, simple, practicing Christians, that would be the greatest, the final revolution, no other would ever be needed.

Another poet, John Gower is a less romantic poet and figure than the mysterious William Langland. He was a rich landowner of Kent who imbibed too much scholastic erudition, and achieved dullness in three languages. He, too, attacked the faults of the clergy; but he trembled at the heresies of the Lollards, and marvelled at the insolence of peasants, who, once content with beer and corn, now demanded meat and milk and cheese. Three things, said Gower, are merciless when they get out of hand; water, fire and the mob. Disgusted with this world, worried about the next, moral Gower  retired in old age to a priory, and spent his closing years in blindness and prayer. His contemporaries admired his morals, regretted his temper and his style, and turned with relief to Chaucer.

                                                           Geoffrey  Chaucer  1340-1400

His name, like so much of his language, was of French origin; it meant shoemaker, and probably was pronounced “shosayr’. He won a good education from both books and life; his poetry abounds in knowledge of men and women, literature and history. In 1357 “ Geoffret Chaucer” was listed in the service of a royal household. Two years later he was off to the wars in France; he was captured but was freed for a ransom, to which Edward III contributed. In 1366 he married Philippa, a lady serving the Queen, and lived with her in moderate discord till her death. Richard II gave him a pension to which John of Gaunt added ten pounds. There were other aristocratic gifts, which may explain why Chaucer, who saw so much of life, took little notice of the Great Revolt.

Despite all discounts, Chaucer’s ‘Troilus’ is the first great narrative poem in English. Scott called it “long and somewhat dull ,” which it is. Rossetti called it “ perhaps the most beautiful narrative poem of considerable length in the English language.”  and this too is true. All long poems, however beautiful, become dull; passion is of poetry‘s essence, and a passion that runs to 8,386 lines becomes prose almost as rapidly as desire consummated. Never were so many lines required to bring a lady to bed, and seldom has love hesitated, meditated, procrastinated, and capitulated with such magnificent and irrelevant rhetoric, melodious conceits, and facile felicity of rhyme. Only Richardson’s Mississippi of prose could rival this Nile of verse on the leisurely psychology of love. Yet even the heavy-winged oratory, the infinite wordiness, the obstructive erudition obstinately displayed, fail to destroy the poem. It is, after all, a philosophic tale -- of how a woman is designed for love, and will soon love B if A stays too long away. Chaucer ended his amorous epic with a pious prayer to the Trinity, and sent it, conscience-stricken to “moral Gower, to correct of your benignitee.”

In his last years his joy in life yielded to the melancholy of a man who in the decay of health and sense recalls the carefree lustiness of youth. He died on October 25 1400 and was buried in Westminster Abbey, the first and greatest of many poets who there bear the beat of measured feet.

                                                                   Richard II

“For God’s sake let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings.”
 “Richard II” says Holinshed, “was seemly of shape and favour, and of nature good enough, if the wickedness and naughtie demeanour of such as were about him had not altered it .... He was prodigal, ambitious and much given to pleasure of the bodie.” He loved books, and helped Chaucer and Froissart. He had shown courage, presence of mind, and judicious action in the Great Revolt; but after that enervating crisis he lapsed into enervating luxury and left the government to wasteful ministers. Against these men a powerful opposition formed. This faction dominated the “Merciless Parliament “ of 1388, which impeached and hanged ten of Richard’s aides. But in 1390 the King took active charge and for seven years he governed constitutionally.

The death of Richard’s Bohemian Queen Anne ( 1394 ) deprived him of a wholesome and moderating influence. In 1396 he married Isabelle, daughter of Charles VI, in the hope of cementing peace with France; but as she was only seven years old, he spent his substance on male and female favourites.
When the Parliament of 1397 sent Richard a bill of complaint against the extravagance of the court, he replied haughtily that such matters were outside the jurisdiction of Parliament. He demanded the name of the member who proposed the complaint; Parliament, cowed, condemned the proponent to death; Richard pardoned him.

Soon thereafter Gloucester and Arundel suddenly left London. Suspecting a plot to depose him, the King ordered their arrest. Arundel was beheaded, Gloucester was smothered to death (1397 ) In 1399 John of Gaunt died, leaving a rich estate; Richard, needing funds for an expedition to Ireland, confiscated the Duke’s property, to the horror of the aristocracy. While the King was restoring peace in Ireland, Gaunt’s exiled son and disinherited heir, John Bolingbroke  landed in York with a small army that rapidly grew, as powerful nobles joined his cause. On returning to England, Richard found himself outnumbered. He surrendered his person and throne to Bolingbroke, who was crowned as Henry IV (1399). So ended the Plantagenet dynasty that had begun with Henry II in 1154; so began the Lancastrian dynasty that would end with Henry VI in 1461. Richard II died in prison at Potefract (1400), aged thirty-three, possibly slain, as Holinshed and Shakespeare thought, by servants of the new King.



mabel1015j

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Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1658 on: March 07, 2012, 12:56:04 PM »
What an interesting passage for me. All three examples of literature harks back to my college English lit course, but i remember little of the discussion in that class. ;D

The Durants' humor had me laughing out loud more then once, especially in his description of "Troilus."

The evolution of language is interesting to me. Do you remember a series on PBS that followed the evolution of language? I think i'll go see if it's in their archives and look at some of it again, or maybe my library has the video.

Jean

Brian

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Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1659 on: March 07, 2012, 01:59:07 PM »
Quote
When the Parliament of 1397 sent Richard a bill of complaint against the extravagance of the court, he replied haughtily that such matters were outside the jurisdiction of Parliament. He demanded the name of the member who proposed the complaint; Parliament, cowed, condemned the proponent to death; Richard pardoned him.

And this bit is just beautifully humour too !

Brian.

Frybabe

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Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1660 on: March 07, 2012, 02:32:17 PM »
Jean, I remember The Story of English which, I think, was hosted by Robert MacNeill. I am almost positive that there was another series, but I can't think what it is just now.

I also remember reading articles in Scientific American by Colin Renfrew about language origins and the spread of Indo-European languages. Now retired, Renfrew was an archaeologist.

3kings(Trevor)

  • Posts: 347
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1661 on: March 10, 2012, 02:34:50 AM »
The Durants'   S  o  C
Vol. VI  The Reformation
Pages 58 - 61






                                   France   Besieged    1300-1461
                                                    The  French   Scene.

The France of 1300 was by no means the majestic realm that today reaches from the Channel to the Mediterranean, and from the Vosges and Alps to the Atlantic. On the east it reached only to the Rhone. In the southwest a large area had been added to the English crown by the marriage of Henry II to Eleanor of Aquitaine ( 1152 ). Provence, the Dauphine, and Franche-Comte ( free country ) belonged to the Holy Roman Empire, whose heads were usually Germans. Brittany, Burgundy, and Flanders were French fiefs, but they were, as Shakespeare called them, “ almost kingly  dukedoms “ behaving as virtually independent states.  France was not yet France.

The most vital and volatile of the French fiefs at the opening of the fourteenth century was the county of Flanders. In all Europe north of the Alps only Flanders rivalled Italy in economic development. Used loosely, “Flanders “ included Brabant, Liege. Cambrai, and Hainaut. On the north were seven little principalities roughly composing the Holland of today. These Dutch regions would not reach their flowering till the seventeenth century, when their empire would stretch, so to speak, from Rembrandt to Batavia. But already in 1300 Flanders and Brabant throbbed with industry, commerce, and class war. A canal twelve miles long joined Bruges to the North Sea; a hundred vessels sailed it every day, bringing merchandise from a hundred ports in three continents. The goldsmiths of Bruges made up an entire division of the towns militia; the weavers of Ghent provided twenty-seven regiments of its armed forces, which totalled 189,000 men.

The medieval guild organization, which had dowered the craftsmen with the dignity of freedom and the pride of skill, was now giving way, in the textile and metal industries of Flanders and Brabant, to a capitalist system in witch an employer supplied capital, materials, and machinery, to shop workers paid by the piece and no longer protected by the guild. Admission to a guild became ever costlier; thousands of workers became journeymen -- day labourers -- who went from town to town, from shop to shop, getting only temporary employment, with wages that forced them to live in slums and left them little property beyond the clothes they wore. Communistic ideas appeared among ‘proletaires’ and peasants.; the poor asked why they should go hungry while the barns of the barons and bishops creaked with grain; and all men who did not work with their hands were denounced as parasites. The employers in their turn complained of the risks their investments ran, The uncertainty and periodicity of supplies, the foundering of their cargoes, the fluctuations of the market, the tricks of competitors, and the repeated strikes that raised wages and prices to the edge of solvency. Louis de Nevers, Count of Flanders, sided too strongly with the employers. The populace of Burges and Ypres , supported by the neighbouring peasantry, rose in revolt, deposed Louis, plundered abbeys, and slew a few millionaires. The Church laid an interdict upon the revolted regions. The rebels neverthe less forced the priests to say  Mass and one leader, stealing a march of 450 years on Diderot, vowed he would never  be content till the last priest had been hanged.. Louis appealed to his liege lord, the French King. Philip VI came, defeated the revolutionary forces at Cassel 1328, hanged the burgomaster of Bruges, restored the Louis, and made Flanders a dependency of France.


France in general was much less industrialised than Flanders; Manufacturing for the most part remained in the handicraft stage. Internal commerce was hampered by bad roads and feudal tolls, but favoured by canals and rivers that constituted a system of natural highways throughout France. The rising business class, in alliance with the kings, had attained by 1300 to a high position in the state and to a degree of wealth that shocked the land-rich, money-poor nobility. Merchant oligarchies ruled the cities, controlled the guilds, and jealously restricted production and trade. Here, as in Flanders, a revolutionary proletariate simmered in the towns.

In 1300 an uprising of poor peasants, known to history as ‘Pastoureaux’-- shepherds-- surged through the cities as in 1251,. Led by a rebel monk they marched southward, proclaiming Jerusalem as their goal. Philip IV shut himself up in the Louvre, the nobles retired to their strongholds, the merchants cowered in their homes. The horde passed on, swelled by the destitute; it now numbered 40,000 men and women, ruffians and priests. At Verdun, Auch, and Toulouse they slaughted all available Jews. When they gathered on the Mediterranean, the sheriff of Carcassonne surrounded them with his forces, cut off their supplies, and waited till all rebels had died of starvation or pestilence except a few, whom he hanged.
What kind of government was it that left France at the mercy of greedy wealth and lawless poverty? In many ways it was the ablest government in Europe. The strong kings of the thirteenth century had subjected the feudal lords to the state, had organised a national judiciary and administration with a trained civil service, and had on occasion summoned an Estates or Estates-General: originally a general gathering of estate owners, then a consultative assembly of delegates from the nobility, the clergy, and the burgesses or middle class. All Europe admired the French court, where powerful dukes, counts, and knights mingled with silk-robed women in elegant festivities and graceful cuckoldry, and clashing jousts in glittering tournaments sustained the glamour of Chivalry. King John of Bohemia called Paris “the most chivalrous residence in the world”.

Philip IV, despite his quasi-piratical confiscations from Templars and Jews, bequeathed an almost empty treasury to his son. ( 1314 ) Louis X died after a brief reign (1316), leaving no heir but a pregnant wife. After an interval, his brother was crowned as Philip V. A rival faction sought the throne for Louis’ four year old daughter Jeanne; but an assembly of nobles and clergy issued the famous ruling ( 1316 ) that “ the laws and customs inviolably observed among the Franks excluded daughters from the crown.” Very probably the decision aimed also to exclude from the succession the sister of Philip IV, Isabelle, who had married Edward II of England and had borne Edward III ( 1312 ) The French were resolved that no English king should rule France.

When Charles IV died without male issue ( 1328 ) the direct line of Capetian kings came to an end. Edward III, who had become King of England the year before, presented to the assembled aristocracy of France his claim to the French throne as a  grandson of Philip IV. The assembly denied his claim as the barons preferred a nephew of Philip IV. So Philip VI began that Valois dynasty which ruled France till Henry IV inaugurated the Bourbon line ( 1589 ). Edward protested but in 1329 came to Amiens and did homage, and pledged full loyalty to Philip VI as his feudal lord. As Edward grew in years and wile, he repented his homage. His advisers assured him that the new Philip was a weakling, who planned to leave soon on a crusade to the Holy Land. It seemed a propitious time to begin the Hundred Years War.


3kings(Trevor)

  • Posts: 347
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1662 on: March 13, 2012, 02:49:09 AM »
Durant's   S  o   C
Vol VI   The Reformation
Pages  61 - 64


                              THE  ROAD  TO  CRÉCY :  1337 - 47

In 1337 Edward formally renewed his claim to the French Crown. The rejection of his claim was only the proximate cause of war. After the Norman conquest of England, Normandy had for 138 years belonged to the English kings; Philip II had reconquered it for France (1204 ); now many English nobles of Norman descent could look upon the coming war as an attempt to regain their motherland. Part of English Guienne had been nibbled away by Philip IV and Charles IV. Guienne  was fragrant with vineyards, and the wine trade of Bordeaux was too precious a boon to England to be lamely lost, merely to defer by a few years the deaths of 10,000 Englishmen. Scotland was a burr in England’s side; and the French had repeatedly allied themselves with Scotland in its wars with England. The North Sea was full of fish; the English navy claimed sovereignty in those waters, in the channel, in the Bay of Biscay, and it captured French ships that flouted this first proclamation of English rule over the waves. Flanders was a vital outlet for British wool; English nobles whose sheep grew the wool, English merchants who exported it, disliked the dependence of their prime market on the good will  of the King of France.

In 1336 the Count of Flanders ordered all Britons there to be jailed; Edward III retaliated by ordering the arrest of all Flemings in England, and forbidding the export of wool to Flanders. Within a week the Flemish looms stopped for lack of material; workers darkened the streets crying for employment. At Ghent artisans and manufacturers united in renouncing allegiance to the Count; they chose an alleged brewer, Jacob van Artevelde, as governor of the city, and approved his policy of seeking the friendship and wool of England. ( 1337 ) Edward lifted the embargo; the Count fled to Paris; all Flanders accepted Artevelde’s dictatorship and agreed to join England in war on France. On November 1, 1337, Edward III, following the custom of chivalry, sent to Philip VI a formal declaration that after three days England would begin hostilities.

The first major encounter of the Hundred Years’ War was a naval engagement off the Flemish coast at Sluis (1340), where the English navy destroyed 142 of 172 vessels in the French fleet. Later that year Joan of Valois, sister of Philip and mother-in- law of Edward, left her convent at Fontenelle and induced the French king to commission her as an emissary of peace. Proceeding through many perils to the camp of the English leaders, she won their consent to a conference, and her heroic mediation persuaded the Kings to a nine month truce. By the efforts of Pope Clement VI, peace was maintained till 1346. 

During this lucid interval class war seized the stage. The well organized weavers of Ghent were the aristocracy of labour in the Lowlands. They denounced Artevelde as a cruel tyrant, an embezzler of public funds, a tool of England, and a ‘bourgeoisie.’ Artevelde had proposed that Flanders should accept the Prince of Wales as its ruler, and Edward III came to Sluis to confirm the arrangement. When Artevelde returned from Sluis to Ghent his house was surrounded by an angry crowd. He pleaded for his life as a true Flemish patriot, but was dragged into the street and hacked to death ( 1345 ) The weavers  established a proletarian dictatorship in Ghent, and sent agents through Flanders to urge the workers to revolt. But the Ghent fullers fell out with the weavers, the weavers were deposed and many of them massacred, the people tired of their new government, and Louis de Male, now Count of Flanders, brought all its cities under his rule.

 The truce having expired, Edward III invaded and devastated Normandy. On August 26  1346, the English and French armies met at Crécy and prepared for a decisive battle. Leaders and men of both sides heard Mass, ate the body and drank the blood of Jesus Christ, and asked His aid in dispatching one another. Then they fought with courage and ferocity, giving no quarter. Edward the Black Prince earned on that day the praise of his victorious father; Philip himself stood his ground till only six of his soldiers were left on the field. Thirty thousand men, in Froissart’s loose estimate died in that one engagement. Feudalism almost died there, too; the mounted chivalry of France, charging gallantly with short lances, stopped helpless before a wall of long English pikes pointed at their horses’ breasts. The long heyday of cavalry, which had dawned at Adrianople 986 years before, here began to fade; infantry came to the fore, and military supremacy of the aristocracy declined. Artillery was used at Crécy on a small scale, but the difficulties of moving and reloading it made it more troublesome than effective, so that Villani limited its usefulness to its noise.

From Crécy Edward led his army to the siege of Calais, and there employed cannon against the walls ( 1347 ) The town held out for a year, then starving, it accepted Edward’s condition that the survivors might leave in peace if  six principal citizens would come to him with ropes around their necks, and the keys of the city in their hands. Six so volunteered, and when they stood before the king he ordered them beheaded. The Queen of England knelt before  him and begged for their lives; he yielded to her, and she had the men escorted to their homes in safety. The women stand out with more credit than the kings in history, and fight bravely a desperate battle to civilize the men.

Calais became now, and remained till 1558, a part of England, a strategic outlet for her goods and troops on the Continent. In 1348 it rebelled; Edward besieged it again, and himself, incognito, fought in the assault. A French knight, Eustace de Ribeaumont, twice struck Edward down, but was overpowered and made prisoner. When the city was retaken, Edward entertained his noble captives at dinner;  English lords and the Prince of Wales waited upon them, and Edward said to Ribeaumont:

“Sir Eustace, you are the most valiant knight in Christendom that I ever saw attack an enemy.....
....I adjudge to you the prize of valour above all the knights of my court.”

Removing from his head a rich Chaplet that he wore, the English King placed it upon the head of the French Chevalier, saying;

“Sir Eustace, I present you with this chaplet......and beg of you to wear it this year for love of me. I know you are lively and amorous and love the company of ladies and damsels; therefore say, where ever you go, that I gave it to you. I also give you your liberty, free of ransom, and you may go wither you will.”


Here and there, amid greed and slaughter, chivalry survived, and the legends of Arthur came close to living history in the pages of Froissart.


JoanK

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  • Posts: 8685
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1663 on: March 13, 2012, 03:11:53 PM »
"The long heyday of cavalry, which had dawned at Adrianople 986 years before, here began to fade; infantry came to the fore, and military supremacy of the aristocracy declined."

An early indication of the eventual decline of the importance of the aristocracy?

Emily

  • Posts: 365
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1664 on: March 13, 2012, 11:12:25 PM »
"The long heyday of cavalry, which had dawned at Adrianople 986 years before, here began to fade; infantry came to the fore, and military supremacy of the aristocracy declined."

An early indication of the eventual decline of the importance of the aristocracy?

Joan, that quote caught my attention also. The man who had a horse had heretofore had an advantage over the regular foot soldier. Whoever thought of 'going for the horse' instead of the rider was a very smart man. Get rid of the horse and it was more of a fair fight.

My answer to your question would be NO on the aristocracy. At least the decline would not happen for too many years. Hundreds of thousands would have to die first.

Even today the aristocracy are trotted out and photographed and regaled in magazines like Vanity Fair. They are still considered the elite and certainly still live pretty high on the hog. They now play with the 'Socialites' which are mostly a motley crew of robbers and thieves. The former aristocrats that come here are called, 'Eurotrash'.

I've met a few (through my work) and personally put them all in the trash bin, whether former or current.

Emily


Brian

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Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1665 on: March 14, 2012, 04:55:09 AM »
Quote
The former aristocrats that come here are called, 'Eurotrash'.

I've met a few (through my work) and personally put them all in the trash bin, whether former or current.

My goodness,  Emily,  that's pretty radical.

Brian

Emily

  • Posts: 365
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1666 on: March 14, 2012, 11:10:11 PM »
Quote
The former aristocrats that come here are called, 'Eurotrash'.

I've met a few (through my work) and personally put them all in the trash bin, whether former or current.

My goodness,  Emily,  that's pretty radical.

Brian

Brian, the term 'Eurotrash' was coined by the New York City press back in the Eighties to describe those former 'aristocrats' who no longer ruled and had long been exiles. Their parents had however absconded with the treasury so that their parasitic children could live well without working.

I did not coin the term 'Eurotrash', but I agree with it whole heartedly.

My family landed on Manhattan in the 1600's. Later (before the Revolution) one grandfather many times removed spoke out in public against the British King. He was arrested and hauled before a judge where he was fined for his opinion. That record is in the archives of the NYC court. His sons fought in the Revolution.

They paved the way so that I might speak my mind. I am anti-monarchy in all its forms. I consider them all parasites.

Emily

3kings(Trevor)

  • Posts: 347
Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1667 on: March 21, 2012, 04:09:15 AM »
Durants'  S  o  C
Vol VI  The REFORMATION
Pgs. 64-67



                                       BLACK DEATH AND OTHER     

The Great Plague fell impartially upon an England prosperous with French spoils and a France desolate in defeat. Pestilence was a normal incident in medieval history; it harried Europe during thirty-two years of the fourteenth century, forty-one years of the fifteenth, thirty years of the sixteenth; so nature and human ignorance, those resolute Malthusians, co-operated with war and famine to counteract the reproductive ecstasies of mankind. The Black death was the worst of these visitations and probably the most terrible physical calamity in historic times. It came into Provence from France and Italy, and perhaps more directly from the Near East through Oriental rats landing at Marseille. The medical profession was helpless, it did not know the cause of the disease ( Kitazato and Yersin discovered the bacillus of the bubonic plague in 1894 ), and could only recommend bleedings, purges, cordials, cleanliness of home and person, and fumigation with vapours of vinegar. A few physicians and priests, fearing infection, refused to treat the sick, but the great  majority of them faced the ordeal manfully; thousands of doctors and clergymen gave their lives. Of twenty-eight cardinals alive in 1348, nine were dead a year later; of sixty-four archbishops, twenty-five; of 375 bishops, 207.

As the poor died in greater proportion than the rich, a shortage of labour followed; thousands of acres were left untilled, millions of herring died a natural death. Labour enjoyed for a while an improved bargaining power; it raised wages, repudiated many surviving feudal obligations, and staged revolts that kept noble teeth on edge for half a century; even priests struck for higher pay. Serfs left farms for cities, industry expanded, the business class made further gains on the landed aristocracy. The immensity of the suffering and the tragedy weakened many minds, producing contagious neuroses, whole groups seemed to go mad in unison, like the Flagellants who in 1349, as they had done in the thirteenth century, marched through the city streets almost naked, beating themselves in penitence, preaching the Last Judgment, Utopias , and pogroms. Even the business of war suffered a passing decline; from the siege of Calais to the battle of Poitiers ( 1356 ) the Hundred Years’ War dallied in reluctant truce, while the decimated ranks of the infantry were replenished  with men too poor to value life at more than a few shillings above death.

Philip VI consoled himself for plague  and defeat by marrying, at fifty-six, Blanche of Navarre, eighteen, whom he had intended for his son. Seven months  later he died. His son, John II, “the Good “, ( 1350-54 ) was good indeed to the nobles; he absolved them from taxes, paid them to defend their lands against the English, and maintained all the forms and graces of Chivalry. He also debased the currency, as an old way to pay war debts, repeatedly raised taxes on the lower and middle classes, and marched off in splendour to meet the English at Poitiers. There his 15000 knights, Scots, and servitors, were routed, slain, or captured by 7000 men of the Black Prince; and King John himself, fighting lustily, leading foolishly, was among the prisoners, along with his son Philip, seventeen earls, and countless barons, knights, and squires.  Most of these were allowed to ransom themselves on the spot, and many were freed on their promise to bring their ransom to Bordeaux by Christmas. The prince treated the King royally, and took him leisurely to England..

                                   REVOLUTION AND RENEWAL: 1357-80 

All France fell into chaos after the disaster at Poitiers. The dishonesty and
incompetence of the government; the depreciation of the currency, the costly  ransoms of King and knights, the desolations of war and plague, brought the nation to desperate revolt. A States-General of the northern provinces, summoned to Paris by the nineteen-year-old Dauphin,* Charles of Valois, to raise new taxes, undertook to establish a parliamentary government in France. This States-General, controlled by a transient coalition of clergy and Bourgeoisie, demanded of the royal council why the vast sums raised for war had produced only undisciplined troops and shameful defeats; it ordered the arrest of twenty-two government agents, and commanded the administrators of the treasury to return the sums they were accused of embezzling; it imposed restrictions on the royal prerogative; it thought even of deposing John the Good, barring his sons from the succession, and giving the throne of France to King Charles the Bad of Navarre, a lineal descendant of Hugh Caper. Appeased by the prudent humility of the Dauphin, it recognised him as regent, and appointed a committee of thirty-six men to keep an eye on the operations and expenditures of government. This “Great Ordinance” of 1357 also forbade the nobles to leave France or to wage private war, and instructed the local authorities of the towns to arrest any noble violating this edict. In effect the aristocracy was to be subject to the communes, the nobles to the business class; king, prince, and barons were to obey the chosen representatives of the people. France was to have a constitutional government four centuries before the revolution.

The Dauphin signed the ordinance in March, and began to evade it in April. The English were demanding a ruinous  ransom for his father, and were threatening to advance upon Paris. Hard pressed for cash, Charles further debased the currency to increase his funds. On February 2 Étienne Marcel, a rich merchant who, as head of the merchant guilds, had played a leading part in formulating the “Great Ordinance” and had been governing Paris for a year, led an armed band of citizens into the royal palace. He rebuked Charles for disobeying the instructions of the “States General“. and when the Prince would not pledge obedience Marcel had his men kill two chamberlains who guarded the Dauphin, so that the blood spurted upon the royal robe. The Dauphin took refuge with nobles in Picardy, raised an army, and called upon the people of Paris to surrender. Marcel organized the capital for defence, ringed it with new walls, and occupied the Louvre.

While revolution captured Paris the peasants of the countryside thought it an opportune time to revenge themselves on their masters. Still mostly serf, taxed to equip their lords, taxed to ransom them, pillaged by soldiers and brigands, tortured to disclose their laborious savings, decimated by plague and starved by war, they rose in uncalculating fury, forced their way into feudal castles, cut all the noble throats their knives could reach, and relieved their hunger and thirst in baronial hoards and cellars. The nobles had traditionally given the typically good-natured peasant the nickname of Jacques Bonhomme -- James Goodman ; now thousands of such Jacques, their patience spent, plunged into ferocious ‘jacqueries’, slew their lords, violated the ladies, murdered the heirs, and dressed their own wives in the finery of the dead.

* This was apparently at first a proper name, Delphinus ( Dolphin ), which often repeated in the ruling families of Vienne and Auvergne, became ( c. 1250 ) a title of dignity. In 1283 it was officially conferred upon the eldest son of the Count of Vienne, and Delphinatus or Dauphiné was henceforth used to designate the county, of which Grenoble is now the principal seat. In 1349 Count Humboldt II of the Vennois sold the Dauphiné , with the title Dauphin, to Charles of Valois, son of King John II. When Charles became king in 1364 he transferred the title to his eldest son; and thereafter the eldest son of a French king was regularly known as the Dauphin of the Viennois.




mabel1015j

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Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1668 on: March 21, 2012, 11:44:08 AM »
As the poor died in greater proportion than the rich, a shortage of labour followed; thousands of acres were left untilled, millions of herring died a natural death. Labour enjoyed for a while an improved bargaining power; it raised wages, repudiated many surviving feudal obligations, and staged revolts that kept noble teeth on edge for half a century; even priests struck for higher pay. Serfs left farms for cities, industry expanded, the business class made further gains on the landed aristocracy. The immensity of the suffering and the tragedy weakened many minds, producing contagious neuroses, whole groups seemed to go mad in unison, like the Flagellants who in 1349, as they had done in the thirteenth century, marched through the city streets almost naked, beating themselves in penitence, preaching the Last Judgment, Utopias , and pogroms. Even the business of war suffered a passing decline; from the siege of Calais to the battle of Poitiers ( 1356 ) the Hundred Years’ War dallied in reluctant truce, while the decimated ranks of the infantry were replenished  with men too poor to value

life at more than a few shillings above death.


This effect from the plague  is one of my favorite pieces of European history. I learned about the plague in my high school world history course, but didn't learn about the positive effects until college and grad school and thot that was fascinating.

The info about the Dauphin's name is very interesting. I love those kinds of bits and pieces from history.

Jean

JoanK

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Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1669 on: March 21, 2012, 03:04:55 PM »
Can you imagine what it was like to live in a time  like this? Whole towns were wiped out, maybe your whole family gone in a week, and you never knew from one day to the next if you would be next. it's a wonder there was any semblance of order left at all.

Emily

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Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1670 on: March 21, 2012, 09:35:46 PM »
Quote
Pestilence was a normal incident in medieval history; it harried Europe during thirty-two years of the fourteenth century, forty-one years of the fifteenth, thirty years of the sixteenth

At least one third of each century was consumed by the plague. Why did the plague abate? Did the middle east rats die out or did the survivors get immunity? Then in the next century it all happened over again, and eventurally went off and on for over 300 years.

If the survivors had some immunity, their future children and grandchildren would have none once it abated. When the next influx of plague hit, it was played out all over again.

What do others think caused the plague to suddenly abate only to reappear again in the next century? Did the rats just die out, only to come back on another ship? Or did the population get immunity, or something else enitirely?

Emily

Brian

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Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1671 on: March 21, 2012, 11:02:18 PM »
Bubonic plague is carried by rats and transferred to humans by fleas.
The abating of the pestilence after the Black Death  -  and after each
subsequent outbreak - is due to the death of the fleas and the rats
associated with the increased care by the affected population in keeping
better hygiene.

Vaccines against the organism have not yet proved to be effective.

Brian

JoanK

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Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1672 on: March 22, 2012, 02:32:29 PM »
There was a case of it in New Mexico when I was there. I understand there are still rare cases.

3kings(Trevor)

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Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1673 on: March 27, 2012, 11:52:12 PM »
Duirants'  S  o  C
Vol. VI   The REFORMATION
Pges 67-71




Hoping that this rural revolution would divert the Dauphin from attacking Paris, Marcel sent 800 of his men to aid the peasants. So reinforced, they marched upon Meaux. The Duchesses of Orléans and Normandy, and many more women of lofty pedigree, had sought refuge there; now they saw a mob of serfs and tenants pouring into the town, and gave themselves up as lost in both virtue and life. Then miraculously, as in some Arthurian romance, a knightly band returning from a crusade galloped into Meaux, fell upon the peasants, killed thousands of them, and flung them by heaps into neighbouring streams. The nobles came out of hiding, laid  punitive fines upon the villages, and went through the countryside massacring 20,000 rustic s, rebel and innocent ( June 1358).

The forces of the dauphin approached Paris, and cut off its food supply. Despairing of successful resistance by other means, Marcel offered the crown to Charles the Bad, and prepared to admit his forces to the city. Rejecting this plan as treason, Marcel’s aide and friend, Jean Maillart, made a secret agreement with the Dauphin, and on July 31 Jean and others slew Marcel with an axe. The Dauphin entered Paris at the head of the armed nobility. He behaved with moderation and caution, and set himself to ransom his father and to restore the morale and economy of France. The men who had tried to create a sovereign parliament retreated into obscurity and silence; the grateful nobles rallied around the throne; and the States-General became the obedient instrument of a strengthened monarchy.

In November 1359, Edward III landed with a fresh army at Calais. He avoided Paris, respecting the walls recently raised by Marcel, but he subjected the surrounding countryside, from Reims to Chartres, to so systematic a destruction of crops that Paris again starved. Charles pleaded for peace on abject terms; France would yield Gascony and Guinenne to England, free from all feudal bond to the French king; it would also cede (much territory ); and it would pay 3,000,000 crowns for the return of the French king. In return Edward renounced, for himself and his descendants, all claim to the French throne. This peace of Brétigny was signed on May the 8th 1360, and one third of France fretted and fumed under English rule. Two sons of king John were sent to England as hostages for French fidelity to the treaty; John returned to Paris amid the ringing of bells and the joy of the noble and the simple. When one of the sons broke parole and escaped to join his wife, king John returned to England to replace his son as hostage, and in the hope of negotiating a milder peace. Edward received him as a guest, and feted him daily, as the flower of Chivalry. John died in London in 1364, and was  buried at St. Paul’s, captive in death. The Dauphin aged twenty-six, became Charles V of France. He deserved the name le Sage, the Wise, which his people gave him, if only because he knew how to win battles without raising his hand. His right hand was perpetually swollen, so he could not lift a lance. Half forced to a sedentary life, he gathered about him prudent councillors, reorganized every department of Government, reformed the judiciary, rebuilt the army, encouraged industry, stabilized the currency, supported literature and art, and collected in the Louvre the royal library that provided classic texts and translations for the French Renaissance, and formed the nucleus of the Bibliothèque Nationale. He yielded to the nobles in restoring feudal tolls, but he went over their heads to appoint as constable-- commander-in-chief of all French armies-- a swarthy, flat nosed, thick-necked, massive-headed Breton , Bertrand Du Guesclin. Faith in the superiority of this “Eagle of Brittany “ to all English  generals shared in determining Charles to undertake the redemption of France from English rule. In 1369 he sent Edward III a formal declaration of war.

The Black prince responded by subduing Limoges and massacring 3,000 men, women, and children; this was his conception of political education. It proved inadequate; every city in his path fortified, garrisoned, and provisioned itself to successful defence, and the Prince was reduced to laying waste the open country, burning crops and raising deserted homes of the peasantry. Du Guesclin refrained from giving battle, but harassed the princely rear, capturing foragers, and waited for the English troops to starve. They did, and retreated; Du Guesclin advanced; one by one the ceded provinces were reclaimed; and after two years of remarkable general ship, and the mutual loyalty of commander and king, the English were driven from all France except Bordeaux, Brest, Cherbourg, and Calais; France for the first time reached to the Pyrenees. Charles and his great constable could die with honours in the same year ( 1380) on the crest of victory.

                                                                     

                                                                 THE MAD KING: 1380-1422

The gamble of hereditary monarchy now replaced a competent ruler with a lovable idiot. Charles VI was twelve when his father died; his uncles acted as regents till he was twenty, and allowed him to grow up in irresponsible debauchery while half Europe marched to the brink of revolution. In 1359 the workingmen of Bruges, wearing red hats, stormed the historic hotel de ville in transient revolt. In 1366 the lower classes of Ypres rose in rebellion preaching a holy war against the rich. In 1378 the ciompi established in Florence the dictatorship of the proletariat. In1379 the starving peasants of Languedoc -- south central France -- began six years of  guerrilla warfare against nobles and priests under a leader who gave orders to “kill all who have soft hands “ Workers revolted in Strasbourg in 1380, in London in 1381, in Cologne in 1396. from 1379 to 1382 a revolutionary government ruled Ghent. In Rouen a stout draper was crowned king by an uprising of town labourers; and in Paris the people killed with leaden mallets the tax collectors of the king.( 1382 )

Charles VI took the reigns of government in 1388 and for four years reigned so well that he won the name Bien-Aime, Well Beloved. But in 1392 he went insane. He could no longer recognize his wife, and begged the strange woman to cease her importunities. For five months he had no change of clothes, and when at last it was decided to bathe him a dozen men were needed to overcome his reluctance. For thirty years the French crown was worn by a  pitiful imbecile, while a virlle young king prepared to renew the English attack upon France.

On August 11 1415, Henry V sailed from England with 1300 vessels and 11,000 men. On the fourteenth they landed near Harfleur, at the mouth of the Seine. Harfleur resisted gallantly and in vain. Jubilant with victory and hurried by dysentery, the English marched toward Calais. The chivalry of France met them at Agincourt. The French having learned nothing from Crécy and Poitiers, still relied upon cavalry. Many of the horses were immobilized by mud; those that advanced met the sharp stakes that the English had planted at an angle in the ground around the bowmen.  The discouraged  horses turned and charged their own army; the English fell upon this chaotic mass with maces, hatchets, and swords; their king Hal led them valiantly, too excited for fear; and their victory was overwhelming. French historians estimated the English loss at 1,600, the French at 10,000.

Henry returned to France in 1417, and besieged Rouen. The citizens ate up their food supply, then their horses, their dogs, their cats. To save food, women, children, and old men were thrust forth beyond the city walls; they sought passage through the English lines, were refused, remained foodless and shelter less between their relatives and their enemies, and starved to death; 50,000 French died of starvation in that merciless siege. When the town surrendered, Henry restrained his  army from massacring the survivors, but levied upon them a fine of 300,000 crowns, and kept them in prison till the total was paid. In 1419 he advanced upon a Paris in which nothing remained but corruption, destitution, brutality, and class war. Outdoing the humiliation of 1360, France by the Treaty of Troyes ( 1420 ), surrendered everything, even honour. Charles gave his daughter Katherine to Henry V in marriage, promised to bequeath the French throne, turned over to him the governance of France, and to clear up any ambiguity, disowned the Dauphin as his son. Queen Isabelle, for an annuity of 24,000 francs, made no defence against this charge of adultery; and, indeed, in the royal courts of that age it was not easy for a woman to know who was the father of her children. The Dauphin, holding south France, repudiated the treaty, and organised his Gascon and Armagnac bands to carry on the war. But the King of England reigned in the Louvre.

Two years later Henry V died of dysentery; the germs had not signed the treaty. When Charles VI followed him(1422), Henry VI of England was crowned King of France; but as he was not yet a year old the duke of Bedford ruled as his regent. The Duke governed severely,  but as justly as any Englishman could govern France. He suppressed brigandage by hanging 10,000 bandits in a year;  judge there from the condition of the land. Demobilized soldiers -- écorcheurs ( skinners ), coquillards  (shell men )--  made the highways perilous, and terrorized even large cities like Paris and Dijon. Over Normandy the ravage of war had passed back and forth like an infernal, murderous tide; peasants fled to cities, or hid in caves, or fortified themselves in churches, as armies  or feudal factions or robber bands approached. Many peasants never returned to their precarious holdings, but lived by thievery or beggary, died of starvation or plague. Churches, farms, whole towns were abandoned and left to decay. In Paris in 1422 there were 24,000 empty houses, 80,000 beggars in a population of some 300,000. People ate the flesh and entrails of dogs. The cries of hungry children haunted the streets.





Sun

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Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1674 on: March 28, 2012, 03:54:33 AM »
Forgive me....I know I'm in the wrong place.  Thrilled to see the SofC still going strong after all these years.  I'll try to make my way back here later.

I'm trying to get to information about the Latin Classes and when they might be starting again.  Nothing I click takes me there.  If someone would just point me in the right direction....?  I'd really appreciate it. 

Thanks,  Sun (sunknow from a good while back).

Brian

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Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1675 on: March 28, 2012, 06:47:50 AM »
sunknow  as you know,    jane (search for her name) runs the Latin classes  - - -  you can get the information you want directly from her.   I believe they are in recess until early April.

Brian

Frybabe

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Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1676 on: March 28, 2012, 09:00:45 AM »
Sunknow, you can find Latin class information here: http://seniorlearn.org/classics/

If you click on the course description link at the beginning of the page and scroll down to near the bottom of that page, you will find Jane's email address.


I have some catching up to do here. My accounting classes this semester are taking up most of my time, just when we are getting into more interesting stuff (for me anyway). Got mighty tired of the Popes. Anyhow, classes end in the second week of May. Then I can devote more time to SoC

JoanK

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Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1677 on: March 28, 2012, 06:42:45 PM »
What a time to live in. Agincourt doesn't sound as noble from the French side as it does in Shakespeare.

"In Rouen a STOUT draper was crowned king by an uprising of town labourers." (my caps). It is rediculous, crowning a draper, but crowning a stout draper is absurd beyond belief. He must be a fool! (as someone who is stout, I resent this).

Emily

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Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1678 on: March 28, 2012, 11:25:50 PM »
Quote
The gamble of hereditary monarchy now replaced a competent ruler with a loveable idiot.......for thirty years the French crown was worn by a pitiful imbecile.

The above statement by Durant is one of the best arguments against inherited monarchy. One day an idiot, the next day an imbecile.

I agree with Joan, calling the Draper 'stout' had nothing to do with his leadership and was insulting. He does seem to be the only 'man' with desireable qualities (such as a brain) in this entire episode.

Emily

Sun

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Re: Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant
« Reply #1679 on: March 29, 2012, 12:42:43 AM »
Thanks, Brian and Frybabe.   

Carry on......

Sun