A Distant Mirror by Barbara W. Tuchman Read Free Book Online Page A

bells and trinkets, their infinity of hats—puffed tam-o’shanters and furred caps, hoods and brims, chaplets of flowers, coiled turbans, coverings ofevery shape, puffed, pleated, scalloped, or curled into a long tailed pocket called a liripipe—they were beyond imitation.
    When the 14th century opened, France was supreme. Her superiority in chivalry, learning, and Christian devotion was taken for granted, and as traditional champion of the Church, her monarch was accorded the formula of “Most Christian King.” The people of his realm considered themselves the chosen objects of divine favor through whom God expressed his will on earth. The classic French account of the First Crusade was entitled
Gesta Dei per Francos (God’s Deeds Done by the French)
. Divine favor was confirmed in 1297 when, a bare quarter-century after his death, France’s twice-crusading King, Louis IX, was canonized as a saint.
    “The fame of French knights,” acknowledged Giraldus Cambrensis in the 12th century, “dominates the world.” France was the land of “well-conducted chivalry” where uncouth German nobles came to learn good manners and taste at the courts of French princes, and knights and sovereigns from all over Europe assembled at the royal court to enjoy jousts and festivals and amorous gallantries. Residence there, according to blind King John of Bohemia, who preferred the French court to his own, offered “the most chivalrous sojourn in the world.” The French, as described by the renowned Spanish knight Don Pero Niño, “are generous and great givers of presents.” They know how to treat strangers honorably, they praise fair deeds, they are courteous and gracious in speech and “very gay, giving themselves up to pleasure and seeking it. They are very amorous, women as well as men, and proud of it.”
    As a result of Norman conquests and the crusades, French was spoken as a second mother tongue by the noble estate in England, Flanders, and the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily. It was used as the language of business by Flemish magnates, by law courts in the remnants of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, by scholars and poets of other lands. Marco Polo dictated his
Travels
in French, St. Francis sang French songs, foreign troubadours modeled their tales of adventure on the French
chansons de geste
. When a Venetian scholar translated a Latin chronicle of his city into French rather than Italian, he explained his choice on the ground that “the French language is current throughout the world and more delightful to hear and read than any other.”
    The architecture of Gothic cathedrals was called the “French style”; a French architect was invited to design London Bridge; Venice imported dolls from France dressed in the latest mode in order to keepup with French fashions; exquisitely carved French ivories, easily transportable, penetrated to the limits of the Christian world. Above all, the University of Paris elevated the name of the French capital, surpassing all others in the fame of its masters and the prestige of its studies in theology and philosophy, though these were already petrifying in the rigid doctrines of Scholasticism. Its faculty at the opening of the 14th century numbered over 500, its students, attracted from all countries, were too numerous to count. It was a magnet for the greatest minds: Thomas Aquinas of Italy taught there in the 13th century, as did his own teacher Albertus Magnus of Germany, his philosophical opponent Duns Scotus of Scotland, and in the next century, the two great political thinkers, Marsilius of Padua and the English Franciscan William of Ockham. By virtue of the university, Paris was the “Athens of Europe”; the Goddess of Wisdom, it was said, after leaving Greece and then Rome, had made it her home.
    The University’s charter of privileges, dating from 1200, was its greatest pride. Exempted from civil control, the University was equally haughty in regard to ecclesiastical authority, and