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«they play upon the willing suspension of disbelief as much as any tale of King Arthur. But they are important for the same reason that Arthur’s tales are important. They are inspirational as well as enjoyable. Columbus will one day acknowledge his debt to Sir John Mandeville. And within a hundred years of Mandeville’s travels being translated into English, an English ship will land on the shores of North America. The captain, John Cabot, will announce he has found the land of Mandeville’s ‘great khan’.»

Many of them see literature as a satisfying and enjoyable way to spend time. Of course, they might not actually pick up a book themselves; lords and their families, together with members of their households, are accustomed to having books read to them as they sit in the hall or chamber of an evening.45 Nevertheless the music of a tale told well is as popular as any other form of minstrelsy, and as enjoyable as literature in the modern world
…

As only a twentieth of the rural population can read, literature is still a minority activity. Most story-telling is done by minstrels, or story-tellers travelling with minstrels, who recite their stories from memory. Nor can you separate this oral tradition from written culture and say the two are different. Lords might listen to a story being read to them from a book, or they might equally listen to a minstrel in the hall recite a tale from memory. And just as some stories move from the written word to being performed from memory, so there are stories which begin as oral tales told at fairs and end up being written down

The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England
Ian Mortimer

«For much of the century the only law relating to football is the one banning it. In 1314 the mayor of London forbids the game being played anywhere near the city. Edward III bans it throughout the kingdom in 1331, and again in 1363. It creates a lot of noise. It distracts people from practising their archery. It results in damage to property and crops; many people are injured and some are killed»

«The foremost popular sport is archery. When Edward III prohibits football, it is very much with the idea that men should spend their time shooting longbows. From 1337 archery becomes almost the only legal sport for commoners. There is a rather extreme proclamation in that year that the penalty for playing any other game is death.30»

The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England
Ian Mortimer

«In the thirteenth century they are little more than battles without a cause. Men are frequently killed: in 1241 eighty knights are killed in a single tournament. But you need to remember that in those days it is said that a man ‘is not fit for battle unless he has seen his own blood flow, and heard his teeth crunch under the blow of an opponent’.17 A fourteenth-century behourd is gentle by comparison – undertaken for the benefit of the spectators rather than actual military training. »


The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England
Ian Mortimer

«Roger de Wensley is hired to track down both the Folvilles and the other notorious gang in the region, the Coterel gang (led by James Coterel), but when he finds the Coterels he simply joins them.»

Хыхы ⭐

“As a result of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), the Church forbids priests of the rank of subdeacon or above from engaging in any activity likely to draw blood. They are forbidden to cut into the skin, and anatomy is regarded as unholy (the Church refuses to permit Christians to dissect corpses until the late fifteenth century). The division leads to the growing separation of the professions of physic (medicine) and surgery”

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«The Great Plague – the term ‘Black Death’ is not invented until the nineteenth century – is one of the most horrific events in human history, comparable only with those traumas which people have inflicted on each other in modern times. Arriving at the eastern end of the Mediterranean in 1347, spreading along the sea lanes to «France, Southern Spain and Italy, and making its way up across the continent to England by August 1348, it shakes society in every conceivable respect. It destroys large portions of the population and leaves parts of the country completely empty of people. It starkly reveals the limits of both professional and amateur medical assistance. No doctor of medicine can help the victims; no one can attend the dying with any feeling but revulsion and despair. It reveals the inadequacy of a concept of society based on the ‘three estates’. Frankly, if ‘those who pray’ cannot protect the population, and ‘those who fight «simply run away, why should ‘those who work’ feed them? Similarly, the plague forces men to reappraise the fundamental relationship between themselves and God. This horrific disease does not just affect the sinful; it kills the innocent too. If this is the work of God, then He is indiscriminate in his judgements.»

The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England
Ian Mortimer