“The erthe . . . Quaked as quykke thinge and al bequasht the roche.” This quote from Piers Plowman’s B Version, the modern English version could be written, “The earth quaked rapidly and shattered the rock.”
This passage is descriptive of an earthquake strong enough to shatter rocks. The exact circumstances surrounding the earthquake are less important to this post than the fact that England experienced earthquakes with the strength to shatter rock numerous times in its history.
At least twenty five earth shaking events occurred between 900 AD and 1500 AD a number of those caused damage to buildings and most likely injury and death to people caught unawares. Whether the Piers Plowman poet ever experienced an earthquake is impossible to say. Regardless historical record demonstrates that knowledge of such events was common. Fear of these phenomena would also have been common, shared by strangers old friends and new friends alike.
Earthquakes are terrifying enough nowdays, when we know the causes. One can easily imagine the fright and panic that a person would feel during an earthquake when nothing was known of the cause. The imagination conjures explanations for the unknown (most often inaccurate explanations), and in Medieval England folks had vivid imaginations. Just take a look at this:
Buildings and rocks appear to rain down from the sky killing those who cower and pray
Stephen Casta in his MA Thesis, Natural Disasters and the Crusades: Framing Earthquakes in Historical Narratives, 1095-1170, states, “Chroniclers perceived earthquakes as omens of future disaster or the apocalypse, and associated them with a need for repentance due to their belief that seismic disasters were divine punishment for moral failings.” These beliefs coupled with experiential narratives pursuade me that medieval English men and women would be justified in their terror of even a small magnitude earthquake. The assosiation with forecasts of future disasters is reminiscent of Sam Cooke’s ‘Change is Gonna Come.’ That reminiscense teaches us that human beings have not changed all that much since the middle ages. We still fear catastrophic events because as Cooke’s lyrics state, “It’s been too hard living, but I’m afraid to die, Cause I don’t know what’s up there beyond the sky.” The threat alone of catastrophic events is enough to frighten anyone.
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