exact gradations
“Proclaimed by criers in the county courts and public assemblies, exact gradations of fabric, color, fur trimming, ornaments, and jewels were laid down for every rank and income level. Bourgeois might be forbidden to own a carriage or wear ermine, and peasants to wear any color but black or brown. Florence allowed doctors and magistrates to share the nobles’ privilege of ermine, but ruled out for merchants’ wives multicolored, striped, and checked gowns, brocades, figured velvets, and fabrics embroidered in silver and gold.”
—Barbara W. Tuchman, from A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, 1978.
long pointed shoes of red leather from Cordova
“To the grands seigneurs of multiple fiefs and castles, identity was no problem. In their gold-embossed surcoats and velvet mantles lined in ermine, their slashed and parti-colored tunics embroidered with family crest or verses or a lady-love’s initials, their hanging scalloped sleeves with colored linings, their long pointed shoes of red leather from Cordova, their rings and chamois gloves and belts hung with bells and trinkets, their infinity of hats—puffed tam-o’shanters and furred caps, hoods and brims, chaplets of flowers, coiled turbans, coverings of every shape, puffed, pleated, scalloped, or curled into a long tailed pocket called a liripipe—they were beyond imitation.”
—Barbara W. Tuchman, from A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, 1978.
checkerboard squares of red and green
“Many were the complaints, like that of the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1342, that the clergy were dressing like laymen, in checkerboard squares of red and green, short coats, “notably scant,” with excessively wide sleeves to show linings of fur or silk, hoods and tippets of “wonderful length,” pointed and slashed shoes, jeweled girdles hung with gilt purses. Worse, . . . they wore beards and long hair to the shoulders contrary to canonical rule. . . .”
—Barbara W. Tuchman, from A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, 1978.
close to the inexplicable
“People lived close to the inexplicable. the flickering lights of marsh gas could only be fairies or goblins; fireflies were the souls of unbaptized dead infants. In the terrible trembling and fissures of an earthquake or the setting afire of a tree by lightning, the supernatural was close at hand.”
—Barbara W. Tuchman, from A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, 1978.
the earthly Paradise
“The garden of Eden . . . had an earthly existence which often appeared on maps, located far to the east, where it was believed cut off from the rest of the world by a great mountain or ocean barrier or fiery wall. In the earthly Paradise grow every kind of tree and flowers of surpassing colors and a thousand scents which never fade and have healing qualities. Birds’ songs harmonize with the rustling of forest leaves and the rippling of streams flowing over jeweled rocks or over sands brighter than silver. A palace with columns of crystal and jasper sheds marvelous light. . . . The mountain peak on which it is situated is so high it touches the sphere of the moon—but here the scientific mind intervened: that would be impossible, pronounced the 14th century author of Polychronicon, because it would cause an eclipse.”
—Barbara W. Tuchman, from A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, 1978.
black flags
“When the plague entered northern France in July 1348, . . . [e]ither in mourning or warning, black flags were flown from church towers of the worst-stricken villages of Normandy.”
—Barbara W. Tuchman, from A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, 1978.
like black smoke
“The physical suffering of the disease and its aspect of evil mystery were expressed in a strange Welsh lament which saw ‘death coming into our midst like black smoke. . . . Woe is me of the shilling in the armpit!’ It is seething, terrible . . . a head that gives pain and causes a loud cry . . . a painful angry knob. . . . Great is its seething like a burning cinder . . . a grievous thing of ashy color. Its eruption is ugly like the ‘seeds of black peas, broken fragments of brittle sea-coal . . . the early ornaments of black death, cinders of the peelings of the cockle weed, a mixed multitude, a black plague like halfpence, like berries. . . .’”
—Barbara W. Tuchman, from A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, 1978.
The Oriflamme
“The Oriflamme [was the] forked-tongue scarlet banner of the Kings of France. . . . Legend derived the banner from Charlemagne, who was said to have carried it to the Holy Land in response to an angel’s prophecy that a knight armed with a golden lance from whose tip flames of “great marvel” burned would deliver the land from the Saracens. [It was embroidered with [the] golden flames that gave it its name. . . .”
—Barbara W. Tuchman, from A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, 1978.
a tooth the size of an armchair
“Shop signs were gargantuan, the better to overwhelm customers. . . . A tooth-puller was represented by a tooth the size of an armchair, a glover by a glove with each finger big enough to hold a baby.”
—Barbara W. Tuchman, from A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, 1978.
gilded.
[Glazed with] a paste of powdered egg yolk, saffron, and flour sometimes mixed with real gold leaf.
—Barbara W. Tuchman, from A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, 1978.