14th Century Quotes

[Church] Doctrine tied itself into infinite knots over the realities of sex.

I think it would be over-exaggeration to think that there are millions of viruses ready to jump on us and bring us back to the 14th century. That would be looking over a ledge that isn't there.

It is as though a portal in time has opened, and the Christians of the 14th century are pouring into our world.

Money was the crux. Raising money to pay the cost of war was to cause more damage to 14th century society than the physical destruction of war itself.

I can only perceive the royal family as an entity historically. I think I know more about the royal family from the Plantagenets in the 14th Century than the modern family.

I think every period - except for the 14th century, or something - has some merits.

For most people reform meant relief from ecclesiastical extortions.

For belligerent purposes, the 14th century, like the 20th, commanded a technology more sophisticated than the mental and moral capacity that guided its use.

Health, money. That's what people worried about in the 14th century as much as today. I find it so much more interesting than the supposed activities of kings, queens, generals.

With the World War II era, there's so much written material to draw on. When you go back to the 14th century, you have to imagine more.

… the Church, whose natural interests allied it more to the great than to the meek …

Modern historians have suggested that in his last years he (Richard II) was overtaken by mental disease, but that is only a modern view of the malfunction common to 14th century rulers: inability to inhibit impulse.

Tarot cards likely originated in northern Italy during the late 14th or early 15th century. The oldest surviving set, known as the Visconti-Sforza deck, was created for the Duke of Milan's family around 1440. The cards were used to play a bridge-like game known as tarocchi, popular at the time among nobles and other leisure lovers.

That the Jews were unholy was a belief so ingrained by the Church [by the 14th century] that the most devout persons were the harshest in their antipathy, none more so than St. Louis.

Anyone who was alive during the outbreak of the bubonic plague in the 14th century experienced something terrifyingly close to the widespread death and chaos of an apocalyptic event.

When commerce with Moslems flourished, zeal for their massacre declined [Among Christians].

I think ceramics are so amazing because they're incredibly educational - you can buy something made in the 14th century, and it looks like it was made yesterday. There's something to be learned there, and ceramics can tell you the history of the time because they're functional vessels, ultimately.

Voluntary self-directed religion was more dangerous to the Church than any number of infidels

Heading a ferocious army, he blazed through Asia in the closing decades of the 14th century, razing cities to the ground, mercilessly torturing their inhabitants and ruthlessly decapitating his enemies…. Temur was no infidel, for Islam governed his military career. And the crescent always surmounted his royal standard. More, all his conquests were prosecuted under its banner. That Islam and wholesale slaughter were incompatible bedfellows was beside the point. So were Christian faith and the Crusaders!

The social damage was not in the failure but in the undertaking, which was expensive. The cost of war was the poison running through the 14th century.

The nastiness of women [in the 14th century] was generally perceived at the close of life when a man began to worry about hell, and his sexual desire in any case fading.