New answers tagged europe
1
The Great Schism of 1054 was a very big deal, particularly with regard to major disagreements in Church Doctrine and institutional power.
The main disagreement which led to a "Schism" between the Roman rite and Eastern rite Churches, was the concept of the Trinity. If my memory is correct, the Roman Catholic Church's position was (and is), that the ...
4
Beverley Nank, who is a curator at the British Museum, says that snails in manuscripts were drawn to symbolize cowardice. She even analyzed the manuscript images posted above.
Nenk said, 'snails were often depicted in the margins of medieval illuminated manuscripts, thought to symbolise cowardice. That could mean it is “a satirical reference to cowardly or ...
2
The Black Death: An Intimate History by John Hatcher
If everyday life is of interest, this one seems to fit the bill:
How the people of a typical English village lived and died in the
worst epidemic in history.
...
With scrupulous attention to historical accuracy, John Hatcher
describes what the parishioners experienced, what they knew and what
they ...
5
The noted diarist Samuel Pepys kept his London Diary from 1660 to 1669, a period which includes the Great Plague of London (1665-1666). While this is not the famed Black Death epidemic of 1346-1353 and no-where near as early, this was still a major outbreak of bubonic plague and a very detailed account of life in a plague environment.
His diaries are ...
18
While the Joseph Byrne book you mentioned is certainly useful, many of its citations are actually from the the Early Modern period, and it usually summarizes a range of sources rather than quoting directly from specific primary sources. The widest selection of quoted primary sources can probably be found in The Black Death by Rosemary Horrox (1990), which ...
12
You can find first-hand accounts in The Black Death: natural and human disaster, by Robert S. Gottfried (Free Press, 1983). For instance, it contains this passage (p. 45):
The mortality in Siena began in May. It was a cruel and horrible thing: and I do not know where to begin to tell of the cruelty and the pitiless ways. It seemed that almost everyone ...
15
Giovanni Boccaccio lived through the Plague and his Decameron is set in that period.
While most of the book does not speak of the Plague (it is a group of young people who have fled Florence to escape the Plague and who entertain themselves telling stories), the introduction to the first day explains the situation that prompted them to move:
How many grand ...
44
Chronicle of the Black Death
There is a chronicle from the British Library which I will link to. It was written at the cathedral priory of Rochester between 1314 and 1350, and deals with everyday life during the Black Death.
Chronicle of the Black Death
This chronicle, written at the cathedral priory of Rochester between 1314 and 1350, includes a firsthand ...
-1
As a rule, they did not speak Greek. Roman generals often wrote in Greek to each other so that their enemies could not understand.
On the other hand, Greek alphabet was as common at the time in Europe as Latin alphabet is today. Even Latin alphabet itself is based on Greek alphabet.
Many unrelated languages used (often modified) Greek letters for writing. ...
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