The fourteenth century was a time of legendary crusades and chivalry, glittering cathedrals and magnificent castles. It was also a time of wildness and spiritual torment, a world of chaos and plague.

Here, Barbara Tuchman masterfully reveals the two contradictory images of this era by examining the great rhythms of history as well as the nature and character of everyday life: what childhood was like; what marriage meant; how money, taxes, and war shaped the lives of serfs, nobles, and clerics.

By acknowledging the loyalties, betrayals, and guilty passions of her protagonists, Tuchman reconstructs the lives of proud cardinals, university scholars, food merchants and clerks, saints and mystics, lawyers and mercenaries, and above all, knights. The result is an astonishing reflection on medieval Europe, a historical masterpiece.