To ensure that no one gained an advantage over anyone else, commercial law prohibited innovation in tools or techniques, underselling below a fixed price, working late by artificial light, employing extra apprentices or wife and underage children, or advertising of wares or praising them to the detriment of others.

Bachrach, Bernard S. (1979). "Review". The American Historical Review. 84 (3): 724. doi: 10.2307/1855427. JSTOR 1855427. The lessons of the fourteenth century were not lost on the monk, Honore Bonet. In his book written in 1387, The Tree of Battles, he asked “Whether this world can by nature be without conflict and at peace?” answering “No, it can by no means be so.” The 14th century’s toll of countless wars, rampaging mercenaries, ruthless governance and mindless preoccupation with glory and indulgence of those in power left France and England in serious decline. The killing, dislocation and destruction combined with recurring plague epidemics reduced the population of Europe to half its 1347 count by the end of the century. The tradition of chivalry of the knights was shown to be hollow, the knights themselves to be petty, the Church to be a charade and its leaders self-serving. The Middle Ages were coming to an end as its religious and feudal traditions were undermined. Somehow, miraculously, in the next century the Renaissance was able to spring from this morass.Deschamps is a scold but not an advocate of fundamental change… he is a bourgeois in sympathy, deplores injustice to the peasant… but he denounces peasants who attempt to become squires urn:oclc:59964831 Scandate 20110930221845 Scanner scribe20.shenzhen.archive.org Scanningcenter shenzhen Source Long section on predictable antisemitism followed by fascinating but, new to me, about how flagellants were a heretical movement that challenged the intercessionary authority of priests by claiming their self-flagellation as saving humanity/Christianity.

The internal lawlessness was also prevalent, especially after 1376, when the Statute of Labourers meant that the wages of farmers remained those of pre-plague years. Tuchman talks about the new “Robin Hood” lawlessness that descended on the country after that period, fuelled also by the general feelings of the futility of wars: “ England caught the contagion of lawlessness which the war has spread across the continue” [Tuchman, 1978: 285], the author writers, saying that the “ whole generation accustomed itself to brigandage”, with the breakdown of justice following and the legend of Robin Hood gaining the greatest popularity at that period. Tuchman’s ability to paint vivid pictures of a far-away time and place is astonishing. Often, I felt that, like Connie Willis’ time traveler, I had suddenly arrived, transported through the distant mirror….

The 14th century really couldn’t come to terms with the necessity of interest [on debt], and the result was antisemitism as a sort of economic doctrine. Christian usury prohibitions grounded in economic illiteracy made periodic slaughter of Jews necessary to balance the budget?