The terror of history : on the uncertainties of life in Western civilization

199 Pages·2011·0.91 MB·English

by  Teofilo F Ruiz

THE TERROR OF
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HISTORY
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THE TERROR OF
HISTORY
ON THE UNCERTAINTIES OF LIFE
IN WESTERN CIVILIZATION
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TEOFILO F. RUIZ
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINCETON AND OXFORD
Copyright © 2011 by Princeton University Press
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All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ruiz, Teofi lo F., 1943–
Th e terror of history : on the uncertainties of life in Western civilization /
Teofi lo F. Ruiz.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-691-12413-1 (hardcover : acid-free paper) 1. Civilization, Western.
2. Uncertainty—Social aspects—History. 3. Terror—Social aspects—History.
4. Disasters—Social aspects—History. 5. Adjustment (Psychology)—History.
I. Title.
CB251.R85 2011
909ʹ.09821—dc22 2011011127
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
Th is book has been composed in Minion
Printed on acid-free paper. ∞
Printed in the United States of America
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
To My Students
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contents
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Preface ix
-I-
Th e Terror of History 1
-II-
Religion and the World to Come 35
-III-
Th e World of Matter and the Senses 83
-IV-
Th e Lure of Beauty and Knowledge 129
Conclusion 167
Index 173
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preface
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In early fall 2005 with throngs of tourists still in oppres-
sive display and warmed by a shimmering Tuscan sun, I
m eandered through the streets of Florence, seeking, in the
Oltrarno piazza di Santo Spirito, some relief from the crowds.
Th inking already of this book, I tried to imagine what it would
have been like to walk through the city in 1348. Th ough re-
living the past is not always advisable or even desirable, to a
present-day visitor 1348 Florence would have been both un-
cannily familiar and unfamiliar. For one, the smells, noise, and
activity of a medieval city, especially one as large as Florence
which had around 100,000 inhabitants early that year, would
have shaken the modern sensibilities of most Westerners.
Yet, the signifi cant landmarks that twentieth-fi rst-century
tourists seek so devoutly and in such appalling numbers—
the Duomo, the Palazzo Vecchio, the piazza de la Signoria,
the Ponte Vecchio, or the Franciscan church of Santa Croce—
already dominated the city’s landscape in the mid-fourteenth
century. Nothing however would have prepared the modern
traveler for the horror that beset Florence and other parts of
Europe later that year.
Although we may know—thanks to the works of many
historians that provide comprehensive accounts of the Black
Death and its impact—far better than Florentines did in 1348
all the social, economic, cultural, and demographic conse-
quences of the plague, we have unwittingly reduced the his-
toricizing of these events to mere scholarship. In doing so, we