BOOKS: The Distant Mirror

The 14^th century seems somewhat distant. Barbara Tuchman’s classic book, A Distant Mirror, as such, is aptly named as it covers that dark and tumultuous century. Why then study the 14^th century, so far removed from our own? Who cares other than historians? But what historians know is that the 14^th century parallels our own times, both the 20^th and 21^st centuries, in many uncanny ways. It was a tortuous century, both in its wars and its treatment of people. The Hundred Years War, the massacre of Jewish people, the crusades, the corruption, the natural disasters, including the black plague, make it very similar to the problems faced in our recent past. But Tuchman doesn’t merely list a chronology of dry facts and events for benefit of comparison.. She is a clever storyteller and instead we are taken on the elbow of French nobleman Enguerrand de Coucy (1340-1397), whose life is intertwined in many of the events of his times and who we follow through the battles, plagues, bankruptcies, and turmoil that decimated the populations of Europe. Coucy exposes us to all of the 14^th centuries nasty brutalities. Tuchman does a perfect job of weaving through the story the political rivalries and struggles that drove and motivated the primary players: the nobles, kingdoms and church. The effect: misery and degradation of people. Characters and events from the period come alive and are combined with a clear sighted psychological analyses of the times. But so what, this was all so long ago? But there is a moral to this story. Tuchman seems to be saying we can learn from this distant century it is a reflection in a “distant mirror” of our own and a constant reminder of the darker side that humans are capable. She contends that society must be on a constant vigil to keep those darker forces of greed and cruelty in check. The reader never realizes that he is being preached to because the book is so interesting. At the end the reader discovers all the while he has been looking through a “distant mirror.” This is a classic historical work and shouldn’t be missed.