Medieval Europe: Crash Course European History #1 (2)

but for fame and career, as a French chronicler observed.

Cutting through the 116 years of back and forth victories and losses, this proverb arose about warfare:

"That's the way it is with fighting. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose."

As for life in these years, people recited proverbs like

"There's nothing more certain than death." (someone along the way added "and taxes")

Other proverbs emphasized that life had begun to feel like a zero-sum game.

"The big fishes eat the smaller."

"Men are good so long as it saves their skin."

But in the midst of that, there was also new thinking.

Not just that of The Ciompi and peasants, but of artists and philosophers and architects and others,

who were simultaneously creating Europe's rebirth or Renaissance.

The Great Renaissance Cathedral of Florence was even completed before the end of the Hundred Years War.

And next week, we'll start there, in Florence, which was home to so much of that so-called rebirth.

Thanks for watching. I'll see you then.

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God, it's nice to be back.