Welcome to the 14th Century Society website!
We are an interdisciplinary and multinational group of professional
scholars whose research interests focus on the European fourteenth
century, a period of history most tactfully described as an "age of
adversity." Such an assessment, however, does not tell the whole story.
While it is reasonably well known that the fourteenth century brought
plague, warfare, famine, schism, and lousy weather to Europe, the same
time period also produced some of the greatest authors, artists,
musicians, mystics, philosophers, and theologians of the medieval
period. It set the stage for
the technologies and ideas which would shape the modern era. It was, in
short, incredibly important. Not that we're biased or anything.
The 14th Century Society was founded for the purposes of fostering
scholarship on this period and providing opportunities for dialogue
between fourteenth-century specialists in fields including art history,
history, music, language and literature studies, philosophy, and
religious studies. We sponsor sessions annually at the International
Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, Michigan, and have
entertained plans to do so at the International Medieval Congress in
Leeds, England.
Disclaimers: The images on this page come from a
fifteenth-century manuscript of Jean Froissart's Chronicles
(written between c. 1370 and 1410); the manuscript (BNF fr 2646) is
owned by the Bibliothèque
Nationale
de
France, and the original scans were part of its
exhibit on The
Age of Charles V. The horn-player in the "14th Century Society"
logo comes from a model-book from Napoli (c. 1370-1380), now in New
York at the Pierpont Morgan Library (MS 86). All opinions expressed
herein are those of the 14th Century Society and its members, not those
of the colleges and universities with which they are affiliated, and
not those of our online host. Please do not reproduce without
permission.