In the late sixteenth century, we start to come across accusations of non-belief. Physicians were often labelled atheists because they seemed to be trying to stop God from punishing someone with an illness, which logically meant they were deliberately acting against God’s will. Whether there were many irreligious physicians is not the point: the key issue is that the concept of atheism now existed.
Kitap: Medieval Horizons
İngiliz Okçularının Sosyal Devrimi Tetiklemesi
ordinary Englishmen found they were able to devastate enemy armies with the massed use of the longbow, as mentioned in chapter two. When a peasant earning perhaps £3 per year could bring down and kill a knight whose horse and armour alone were worth £50 or more, it was only natural that he and his kind should question the social order:
Purgatory İnancının Etkisi
People’s increasing levels of self-awareness were boosted even further in the 1140s by the development of the concept of Purgatory. Until then it had been widely believed that when you died you went directly to Heaven or to Hell. But the idea began to spread that while a few saints did go straight to Heaven and some awful sinners were immediately despatched to Hell, most people found themselves in Purgatory. Prayers said by the living could considerably shorten the length of time the soul of the dead person had to stay there. As a result, wealthy lords and ladies founded religious houses in greater numbers than ever before to facilitate the singing of Masses for their souls.
Kralın Papaya İtaat Etmemesinin Riski
If the king could shrug off his obedience to the pope, why couldn’t ordinary people deal with their superiors in a similar manner? As we have already seen in the case of Clement Armstrong, some reckoned they could.
Tyndale’in Papaya Karşı Olması ama Sosyal Otoriteyi Savunması
Despite the revolutionary character of his work, Tyndale, like Luther, was staunchly opposed to social revolution. He wrote The Obedience of a Christian Man specifically to explain to his readers that there was a difference between exposing religious corruption and questioning secular rule.32 As far as he was concerned, Christ had taught people to love their enemy. If you were oppressed by the king or a lord, you should show your devotion to God though accepting your oppression, even if the king threatened you with death and seizure of all your property.33 Unsurprisingly, not everyone agreed. ‘If princes or rulers will deny [the scriptures] when they will be taken for faithful, the said people may deprive them their kingdoms and lordships,’ argued a French writer whose work was translated into English in 1536.34 As for the lords of the realm, by what right had they been appointed? According to Clement Armstrong, an evangelical London grocer writing in the 1530s, the lords had wrongly appropriated the trees and fields that God had given to the people. They had also unjustly appointed their relatives to enjoy the benefit of tithes exacted from farmers. Parliament was not mentioned in the Bible; therefore it should have no authority over the Church.
Bishop’a Biat Etmeme Hakkı
If the lord of your manor was a bishop and you paid rent to him, and if he wielded authority in a way that was contrary to the teachings of Christ – by selling pardons and indulgences, for example – then by paying him rent you were in effect supporting a sinner. Doubting his religious standing also cast doubt on a prelate’s secular position. This gave the English Bible a revolutionary flavour.
Yolculuk Hızının Artmasıyla Merkezi Otorite Güçlendi
The rise in travelling speeds subtly shifted the balance of power away from territorial lords and towards central government. This is a trend which has continued to affect governments and nations ever since. The speed of information thus created a demand for more information.
As Bishop Martival’s register indicates, only 1 per cent of high-status messages moved at more than 40 miles per day. But this changed over the period. Why? The clock. You may recall Thomas Platter and his friends rushing to Dover in 1599 at a rate of 10 mph – the sort of speed at which a Mongol emperor would hope to hear of a rebellion in one of his provinces. Why were they in such a hurry? To catch a boat. Or, to be exact, to make sure they had time to conduct some business before they caught a boat to cross the Channel. They were organising their days according to a timetable.
Ortaçağda Kanda Demir Eksikliği
Meat is a good source of iron, and iron pots and pans significantly enhance the absorption of the mineral, which is especially important for women, who have a greater need of it than men on account of menstruation and pregnancy. Without sufficient iron, people become anaemic, and vulnerable to a number of diseases and ailments. It is thought that this was a prime reason why women did not live as long as men until the late Middle Ages.
Ortaçağda Camın Değeri
Glass was precious, so lords sometimes took it with them as they moved from one house to the next, transporting it in wagons along with their other furniture. The walls might be painted or hung with tapestries and carpets. In the great hall, doorways now led directly to the pantry and buttery. Often a covered passageway led to the kitchen, which took the form of a double-height stone room, with two or three large fireplaces and ovens in the side walls.
Huge amounts of glass represented wealth, which in turn implied power. The windows of great halls accordingly grew bigger and were permanently glazed. Some were given metal frames so they could be opened to let in fresh air.
Ortaçağda Ebeveynlerin Çocuklarını Satması
one of the reasons why freemen sold their children into slavery in the eleventh century was the moral one of giving them a better life – in the hope that both the child and its birth family might thereby escape starvation. We risk imposing modern values on the past if we set a higher priority on personal liberty than on the need to eat,