In York yesterday, we:
visited the Minster;
visited the home of a Catholic martyr, which is now a chapel;
bought Yorkshire curd tart;
bought hand-made wooden kitchen cutlery from a Ukrainian market stall holder;
had a good time.
We are still reading SM Stirling's The Lords Of Creation for the first time.
7 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Occasionally, ghosts of the old feud between Lancastrians and Yorkists gets stirred up, as when the remains of Richard III were rediscovered and then reburied.
I too visited the shrine of St. Margaret Clitherow when I visited York in 1996.
Ad astra! Sean
George Martin used the Wars of the Roses as an inspiration for his series. Tho' the Wars of the Roses weren't how a feudal system operated -- they were how a feudal system slagged down and destroyed itself.
The Anarchy of Stephen and Matilda was a better example of how feudalism functioned at its peak.
(West European feudalism never really recovered from the Black Death, btw.)
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Yes, the Wars of the Roses, as we got them, was not only a vicious feud between rival branches of the same family, but also late feudalism slagging down. I think those civil wars could have been mitigated/averted if the reigning king, Henry VI, had not been weak and ineffectual.
The struggle between Stephen and Matilda was far more "feudalistic," as it was supposed to be.
Ditto, what you said about the Black Death. What might have happened without the Bubonic Plague?
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: Well, the Black Death massively increased the standard of living in Western Europe for several centuries. By the 1330's, Europe was in a Malthusian trap -- wages were declining, famine becoming more common, and a lot of land that shouldn't have been intensively farmed was being cultivated.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
That I had not known. Iow, Medieval society circa 1340 was pushing the limits of what was technologically available. The end result would have been just as bad as the Plague?
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: well, it would have been longer, though not so abrupt. But dense populations were an invitation to plague of various sorts, and so were malnourished ones.
The Black Death probably reduced European populations by 40-50%, and it recurred for a century and a half. That had severely distorting effects on culture -- witness the "dance of death" motif in European art of the time.
England's population was probably 3-4 million in late Roman times, about 1.5 million in 1066 (after a long period of recovery), 3-4 million in the early 14th century, and it went down to 1.5 million again after the black death. Then it gradually recovered, hitting 3 million again in the 17th century. But 1660-1700 was a period of stable or declining population, and emigration from the British Isles actually hit (proportionately) higher levels in that period than in the Victorian explosion of overseas migration.
The actual breakthrough to modern levels was in the 18th century, when agricultural yields drastically improved in the run-up to the Industrial Revolution.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Makes sense to me: dense population hitting the limits of what was technologically available circa 1340. Plagues of one kind or another were still going to happen, even absent the Great Plague.
Ugh, the despair and devastation caused by the Black Death of 1348-51 was horrific! I can easily how that would have a morbid effect in Western European art.
it was fortunate for the UK that 18th century advances in population and agriculture were supplemented by the new wealth created by the Industrial Revolution starting around 1790. That wealth made it possible to import food.
Ad astra! Sean
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