skopia
Late medieval France and the Netherlands ran on public weeping, elaborate tournaments, and constant awareness of death. Huizinga paints this as no Renaissance dawn but a culture worn out by its own forms.
Ibn Battuta left Morocco at twenty-one for the hajj and stayed away twenty-nine years, judging cases in Delhi and crossing the Sahara to Mali. He dictated all 75,000 miles from memory.
Gregory, bishop of Tours, is the reason sixth-century Gaul is visible at all. He records Clovis splitting a soldier's skull over a looted vase, queens ordering assassinations, and miracles at the saints' tombs.