The 14th century optically discerned the advent of many natural and man-made

disasters. The climatic, natural disaster was kenned as the little Frozen dihydrogen
monoxide Age. Many different academics utilize the term Little Frozen dihydrogen
monoxide Age to describe this period, and it has traditionally been subdivided to include
two periods of cooling temperatures. One lasted between the 13th and the early 17th
century, and the other ranged from the 18th all the way to the 19th century. The earlier
period of cooling caused the Baltic Sea to freeze thoroughly in 1303, 1306 and 1307,
something never afore recorded. Glaciers in the north and alpine tundra expanded and
grew greatly. Many settlements of vikings in Greenland became isolated and Iceland no
longer optically discerned agriculture as viable as it was afore. The final viking ship
sailed from Iceland remarkably proximate to the departure of Christopher Columbus in
the 1400s. Conclusively, when the frozen dihydrogen monoxide thawed enough for
trade and interaction internationally to resume, the settlements were forsook. Starvation,
pestilence, attack by English pirates and native conflict have all subsisted as academically
suggested causes of the abandonment by philomaths, and all most likely played a
component in the downfall of the colonies. In France, agriculture took a downwards
spiral after 1315 torrential rain, resulting in disease, famine, and reports of cannibalism.
If the Little Frozen dihydrogen monoxide Age emasculated Europe's agricultural
productivity and made life uncomfortable, the Bubonic Plague brought life to a virtual
standstill. In October 1347, two months after the fall of Calais, Genoese trading ships put

into the port of Messina in Sicily with the dead and dying men at the oars. The ships had
emanate from the Ebony Sea port of Caffa (now Feodosiya) in the Crimea, where the
Genoese maintained a trading post. The diseased seafarers showed peculiar ebony
swellings about the size of an egg or an apple in the armpits and groin. The swellings
oozed with pus and blood, followed by spreading boils and ebony blotches on the skin
from internal bleeding. The ailing people suffered rigorous pain and died expeditiously
within five days of the first symptoms. As the disease spread, other symptoms of
perpetual fever and expectoration of blood appeared in lieu of the swellings or buboes.
These victims coughed and sweated heavily and died even more expeditiously, within
three days or less, sometimes in 24 hours. In both types everything that issued from the
body- breath, sweat, blood from the buboes and lungs, bloody urine, and blood-blackened
excrement- smelled foul. Despondence and despair accompanied the physical symptoms,
and afore the terminus "death is optically discerned seated on the face."
The disease kenned as the Ebony death, or the bubonic plague, subsisted in two
forms: one that infected the bloodstream, causing the buboes and internal bleeding, and
was spread by contact; and a second, more virulent pneumonic type that infected the
lungs and was spread by respiratory infection. The esse of both at once caused the high
death rate and speed of contagion. So pernicious was the disease that cases were kenned
of persons going to bed well and dying afore they woke, of medicos catching the illness
at a bedside and dying afore the patient. So rapidly did it spread from one to another that
to a French medico, Simon de Covino, it seemed as if one sick person "could infect the
whole world." The malignity of the pestilence appeared more terrible because its victims
kenned no obviation and no remedy. As integrated up by Pope Clement VI at Avignon,

the total of reported dead reached 23,840,000. In the absence of a concept of contagion,
no earnest alarm was felt in Europe until the trading ships brought their ebony
encumbrance of pestilence into Messina while other infected ships from the Levant
carried it to Genoa and Venice.
A third of Europe would have betokened about 20 million deaths. No one kens in
truth how many died. Contemporary reports were an awed impression, not a precise
count. In crowded Avignon, it was verbally expressed, 400 died daily; 7,000 houses
evacuated by death were shut up; a single graveyard received 11,000 corpses in six
weeks; half the city's inhabitants reportedly died, including 9 cardinals or one third of the
total, and 70 lesser prelates. Optically canvassing the illimitably passing death carts,
chroniclers let mundane aggrandizement take wings and put the Avignon death toll at
62,000 and even at 120,000, albeit the city's total population was probably less than
50,000.
The results of many quandaries that were wrought unto Western Europe were
numerous. In the immediate wake of the plague, the natural replication was shock and
apathy. There are accounts of animals going untended and crops going unharvested.
Later, many of the survivors sought comfort in self-indulgence. Self-indulgence was
availed by the fact that the survivors inherited the wealth of the dead, and wages
incremented because of rigorous labor shortages. Episodes of hysteria and religious
fanaticism were withal prevalent. One sinister outlet for fear and frustration was the
search for scapegoats. Two came yarely to mind. In some places, the Jews were
incriminated, albeit they died of the plague as much as anyone else. Often outbreaks of
anti-Semitism were linked to resentment over mazuma-lending and a desire to expunge

debts. By curious coincidence, account ledgers inclined to vanish during attacks on the
Jews.
Another scapegoat was witches. Contrary to popular stereotype, the Middle Ages placed
very little accentuation on witchcraft. Those who did indite on the subject inclined to
dismiss purported witches as deluded. But a sensational event in France in the early 14th
century raised public consciousness of witchcraft to all-time highs. It involved a peculiar
military religious order called the Knights Templars, a uniquely medieval institution that
was a coalescence religious order and private army. The Knights Templars were pristinely
conceived as the military arm of the Church during the Crusades, and by the 1300's they
had amassed an astronomical treasury. King Philip the Fair of France visually perceived
the Templars as a source of revenue, and in 1307 he swept down on the Templars and had
everyone in France apprehended on the same night.
In the year of 1393 a dramatic event occurred in France that came to denote the
pessimism of the age. At a royal masquerade ball, the King and five of his friends
appeared as "wood savages" in costumes with shaggy hemp glued on by pitch and wax.
In an effort to visually perceive through the dissimulations, an onlooker got too
proximate with a torch, a costume caught fire and rapidly ignited the other costumes. The
King's life was preserved by an expeditious-cerebrating onlooker, and another reveler
dove into a dihydrogen monoxide container, but the rest were not so auspicious. One died
on the spot, three others lingered several days in agony pre mortem. The last to die had
been acridly detested for his contempt and maltreatment of the prevalent people, who
generally felt that he got what he deserved and who jeered his casket as it passed through
the streets. Concurrently, the people were enraged that the King's life had been

perfunctorily imperilled, and even the King was hard put to cool their vexation at the
organizers of the event. This event became a popular subject for illustration. In general,
graphic, even morbid, realism commenced to pervade art (yet another kindred attribute
with the 20th Century). In 1300 a knight might opt to be represented on his tombstone as
an adolescent knight in all his vigor; by 1400 graphic depictions of skeletons and decay
as an admonition of mortality were in vogue.
(Closer goes here)

The Western World has seen ages of enduring progress. Europe in particular has
seen centuries of concentrated, inter and extra-governmental power wax and wane with
time. However, as significant powers have arisen, they have fostered both a world-view
that is ever expanding and ever hungry, prosperity and collective improvement that
engendered evolving senses of materialistic desire, and corruption from political bosses
and machines that rivaled the kings and governments themselves.
Perhaps the most recent and most comprehensive example of how all three of
these interact lies in the period of the Renaissance. This period of time, unique to the
Western world, saw the rise of political and socio economic progress, a new focus on
culture and worldliness spurred on by exploration, trade, and conquest, coupled with a
rise in materialistic, superficial desires, and of course the infamous political machine

known ubiquitously as Medici. Discoveries of relics and statues in Greece, trade along
the silk road, and the rise of the merchant class drove a culture of discovery. Painters,
sculptors, and philosophers became valued as thought, knowledge, and expansion became
primary concerns of Europeans. The orient became a source of inspiration, and no longer
was cultural progress and artistic evolution limited to Christian tastes. Artists took
inspiration from Africa and Asia. Along with this worldliness came a materialistic focus
on things.

People had more money, and began to value paintings and sculptures

immensely. They bought art, better clothes, and this eventually led to a counter-culture
movement, known only by its fiery leader: Savonarola. Savonarola, a missionary and
extreme religious fanatic, saw the extreme indulgences that many in society took upon
themselves, and decided to move against the excess, resulting in his bonfire of the
vanities, where many great works of art were destroyed. Such was the height of the
Renaissances materialism; it drove conservative figures like Savonarola insane. Along
with the progress and movements, however, came the Medici, the wealth patrons of the
Florence Renaissance. They controlled much of the politics and wielded great power of
the city, and arguably over Italy. They acted as the quasi kings of the city, engaging in
battles of subterfuge and assassination with rival families. Essentially, they existed as the
quintessential essence of power for the time.
The roots of the worldliness, materialism, and corruption can be traced farther
back to the Crusades and the Hiberno Saxon era. The Crusades saw the expansion of
European forces, namely those of England and various other kingdoms in Germany and
in France. They moved to areas near Jerusalem in the Holy lands as part of a divine
conquest to take back lands for Christianity. The motivations for the movement were in

themselves corrupt, as the Pope wished to use the movement and the enemy to unite the
Eastern church under one banner, increasing his power and influence greatly. The
interactions and conquest of the holy lands, however, led directly to the intermixing and
expansion of culture as people brought back spices, books, art, and indirectly, knowledge.
People in Europe became uniquely aware of the world around them, in books and music
and poetry, mathematics, literature, and science. Their worldview expanded greatly, an
expansion mirrored later on by Charlemagne during his reign over France. Charlemagne,
upon becoming the Holy Roman Emperor, drove what became known as the Carolingian
Renaissance, rejuvenating a desire for Roman art and sculpture, as seen in many statues
that draw parallels between Charlemagne and Constantine. He encouraged the learning
of the written language, of reading, and of other languages like Greek and Latin.
However, this only occurred in the wake of a bloody unification campaign that he drove
himself to complete, belying the corruption underneath his empire.
Even stronger roots that surround the western world in worldliness, materialism,
and corruption, lie in Ancient Rome and Greece. As evidenced in literature like The
Histories by Herodotus and the History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, the
ancient empires of both Greece and Rome saw themselves as parts of a large world of
many diverse, and unique peoples of fascinating customs. In fact, most of modern
knowledge about Egyptians regarding religious, burial customs and mummification,
stems from what was written by in the Histories by Herodotus, not to mention knowledge
about Persians and Africans. Materialism was strong as well in Greek and Roman
society. Symposiums, parties inspired by the Greek god Dionysus, and even homosexual
orgies were common among the higher echelons of society, revealing a haphazard,

superficial view of the world centered around pleasure, physical objects, and ownership
of fancy art and sculpture that party hosts would showcase to their guests. All in all,
while Greek and Roman society saw strong progress, it was faced with moral and
political corruption stemming in part from materialism.
Worldliness, corruption, and materialism are enduring themes in Western
Civilization because of the great and long history the western world has in dealing with
these topics. Throughout the ages, these themes have only intensified and will only
continue to intensify.
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