Grand Ladies

This album begins with the first recorded image of a farthingale, in 1470-1480, and extends up to 1550. The renaissance was not the first high post-Roman civilization. There was a high middle ages, the time of the Canterbury Tales, when civilization flourished, a very faith-centered civilization dominated by the Roman faith. This era came to an end not by war, but by fleas, with the plague of 1348-1350. The solidity of the old order was ended and new ideas were able to take root, particularly in southern Europe where refugees from the collapse of the Byzantine Empire infused new learning into Europe.