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 1400’s.  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

Renaissance’s 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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