Latest Breaking News
In reply to the discussion: Scalia Suggests Women Have No Right to Contraception [View all]JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)It is a historical account, not a novel. I loved Pillars of the Earth too.
Barbara Tuchmann writes very well, but this book is based on the facts -- 600 pages of them. And when the historical record is questionable, she points it out.
In Chapter 14 entitled "England's Turmoil," pages 284-285 in my paperback edition, Tuchmann writes about England in April 1376:
"Seventy-four knights of the shire and sixty town burgesses made up the Commons of the Good Parliament. Acting with some support from the Lords, they demanded redress of 146 grievances before they would consent to a new subsidy (which King Edward III had requested 'to prepare for the prospective end of the truce [with France - 100 years war] a year hence'). Their primary demand was the dismissal of venal ministers together with the King's mistress, who was generally credited with being venal and a witch. In addition they wanted annual Parliaments, election rather than appointment of members, and a long list of restraints upon arbitrary practices and bad government. Two of their strongest discontents were directed not against the government, but against abuses of a foreign Church hierarchy and the demands of a laboring class grown disobedient and disorderly. These issues, too, were great with significance: one was to lead to the ultimate break with Rome and the other, much sooner, to the Peasants' Revolt."
As you can see, A Distant Mirror is a more difficult read than Pillars of the Earth. But it answers a lot of the questions that Pillars of the Earth raises about the history of the 14th century.
Thanks to this book, I now know how to respond to the anarchists, the anti-government people.
And that is to say that there will always be some sort of government. We have no choice. Someone takes charge. If the people do not form a democratic government, a despot will grasp power by force. And as stupid and difficult as a democratic government can be, a dictatorship with some self-centered and perhaps very cruel despot in charge, would be much, much worse.
In addition, this book is an interesting study in how ideas first expressed in one generation or even century spread and become important ideas in future periods.
John Wyclif wrote De Civili Dominio (On Civil Authority) in approximately 1360-1374 in which he advocated for the "disendowment of the temporal property of the Church and the exclusion of the clergy from temporal government." Tuchmann, page 287. That idea ended in King Henry VIII's and Elizabeth I's establishment of the Church of England and contributed to the start of Protestantism. Very interesting how history moves forward.