ABOUT

Let us take a moment to imagine a time of war, pestilence, and disease.  A time when word traveled as fast as the horse, and wars were fought for royal claim and territorial gain.  A time of great castles and lurking superstitions.  Great achievement and crippling calamity will forever mark the 14th and early 15th centuries, and serve as a great reminder of the hardships that our ancestors endured, teaching us much about the time of disease and hardship that we must endure today.  With the Covid-19 Pandemic consuming our world for the past year and a half, we have been given ample time to reflect upon our history and draw parallels between present day and past human experiences that have shaped our world.  The parallels that can be drawn between today and the 14th and early 15th centuries is truly astonishing, the people of this long forgotten time having dealt with many of the same issues we deal with today.  First and foremost the fourteenth century brought about a time of great pestilence with the arrival of the Bubonic Plague in Europe in 1348.  Much like today, the populace of Europe was forced to adjust to a time of suffering and contagion, the plague hitting Europe in two waves much like the resurgence of Covid-19 today with the Delta Variant.  The fourteenth century also saw a time of great climate change with what is today known as the “Little Ice Age”, which afflicted Europe in 1303.  The Little Ice Age only dropped global temperatures by 0.1 degrees Celsius, but led to universal crop failure across northern and western Europe, coercing a time of great famine and population decrease.  This subtle yet extremely consequential change in global temperatures serves as a warning to us today about the potential effects of global warming on humanity.  Domestic and international turmoil are also a landmark of the fourteenth century, very similar to today with such political division in our country and many countries across the world.  The 1380’s saw great revolts among the populace of England against their government for levying taxes to fund the Hundred Years War, today remembered as “The Great Rising”.  One cannot help but be reminded of the polarizing state of political affairs in our country today, and the unrest which has been prevalent in our nation for the past year.  Today the fourteenth and early fifteenth century is remembered in popular media, Game of Thrones taking inspiration from the late Hundred Years War and subsequent War of the Roses, Henry V’s campaign remembered by Shakespeare, video games such as Kingdom Come Deliverance attempt to recreate what this time may have looked like.  What I hope to accomplish  is to gain a new perspective on this time and its lasting effects on present society.  My journey will take me through the former battlefields of a war long past, the former medieval epicenters of medieval life, and to the relics which still stand from this elusive and mystifying time.