***The statement was to the effect that the average person didn’t know much about anything more than 10 miles from his birthplace (and gravestone) and didn’t travel any further in the first millennium. How would the serf in Nottingham know anything about the Cathars?
This sort of arrogance is both institutional and profound, and is one of the things sparking my research into Europe. ***
I wish you the best of luck. One of the constraints in my debates with many fundamentalists is their ignorance of history. Even here, there are many who confuse the means and the conveniences of today with everyday life 2000 years ago.
***While it is certainly true that folks of this age could not simply pick up a telephone, don’t think that there wasn’t communication, especially along trading routes. ***
Please consider that 2000 years ago, or even 500 years ago, that 95% to 99% of the population were uneducated serfs or slaves. They had no access to communication along trading routes.
***Something as large scale as the slaughter of the Cathari would be all over the continent in a matter of weeks...***
It wasn’t. 99% of the population of Europe never heard of the Cathars until at least the 19th century if not the 20th.
And I must admit that anything more contemporary than the venerable Bede is beyond my area of interest- but I can still hold my own, especially up through the reformation, having read much from original (albeit translated) sources.
Please consider that 2000 years ago, or even 500 years ago, that 95% to 99% of the population were uneducated serfs or slaves. They had no access to communication along trading routes.
And I will disagree most profoundly. The problem with your statement is found in the presence of large towns and even large cities throughout the region. Cities and towns must rely on the outlying countryside for miles around in order to simply exist- Everything ran on horsepower back in that day... Just the trade in horses alone, and the hay to feed them is a huge undertaking. Mills require raw logs; brick makers and potters require clay; butchers require beef, pork, venison, hare, and chicken; grocers require vegetables and grains... It may be that the lord owns the goods and the wagons, but you can bet money that those serfs are the poor buggars loading and unloading.
And traffic went the other way as well... the manors and the boroughs required exotics like spices and medicines, and there were services that traveled to outlying areas like bards and friars, tinsmiths and coopers...
Consider this, perhaps: If the communities were as isolated as you assume, how could the plague have spread so very quickly, and so very completely? Using the plague as an indicator, only Poland and parts of Austria were remote enough to have escaped it's clutches.
The very same vector pathways that spread the plague, also spread the news.