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leaving their birthplace, there was seldom need for any tag beyond One-Eye, or
     Roussie (Redhead), or Bionda (Blondie), or the like.
    Their villages were frequently innominate for the same reason. If war took a man even a short distance from a nameless hamlet,
     the chances of his returning to it were slight; he could not identify it, and finding his way back alone was virtually impossible.
     Each hamlet was inbred, isolated, unaware of the world beyond the most familiar local landmark: a creek, or mill, or tall
     tree scarred by lightning. There were no newspapers or magazines to inform the common people of great events; occasional pamphlets
     might reach them, but they were usually theological and, like the Bible, were always published in Latin, a language they no
     longer understood. Between 1378 and 1417, Popes Clement VII and Benedict XIII reigned in Avignon, excommunicating Rome’s Urban
     VI, Boniface IX, Innocent VII, and Gregory XII, who excommunicated them right back. Yet the toiling peasantry was unaware
     of the estrangement in the Church. Who would have told them? The village priest knew nothing himself; his archbishop had every
     reason to keep it quiet. The folk (
Leute, popolo, pueblo, gens, gente
) were baptized, shriven, attended mass, received the host at communion, married, and received the last rites never dreaming
     that they should be informed about great events, let alone have any voice in them. Their anonymity approached the absolute.
     So did their mute acceptance of it.
    In later ages, when identities became necessary, their descendants would either adopt the surname of the local lord—a custom
     later followed by American slaves after their emancipation—or take the name of an honest occupation (Miller, Taylor, Smith).
     Even then they were casual in spelling it; in the 1580s the founder of Germany’s great munitions dynasty variously spelled
     his name as Krupp, Krupe, Kripp, Kripe, and Krapp. Among the implications of this lack of selfhood was an almost total indifference
     to privacy. In summertime peasants went about naked.
    In the medieval mind there was also no awareness of time, which is even more difficult to grasp. Inhabitants of the twentieth
     century are instinctively aware of past, present, and future. At any given moment most can quickly identify where they are
     on this temporal scale—the year, usually the date or day of the week, and frequently, by glancing at their wrists, the time
     of day. Medieval men were rarely aware of which century they were living in. There was no reason they should have been. There
     are great differences between everyday life in 1791 and 1991, but there were very few between 791 and 991. Life then revolved
     around the passing of the seasons and such cyclical events as religious holidays, harvest time, and local fetes. In all Christendom
     there was no such thing as a watch, a clock, or, apart from a copy of the Easter tables in the nearest church or monastery,
     anything resembling a calendar. * Generations succeeded one another in a meaningless, timeless blur. In the whole of Europe, which was the world as they knew
     it, very little happened. Popes, emperors, and kings died and were succeeded by new popes, emperors, and kings; wars were
     fought, spoils divided; communities suffered, then recovered from, natural disasters. But the impact on the masses was negligible.
     This lockstep continued for a period of time roughly corresponding in length to the time between the Norman conquest of England,
     in 1066, and the end of the twentieth century. Inertia reinforced the immobility. Any innovation was inconceivable; to suggest
     the possibility of one would have invited suspicion, and because the accused were guilty until they had proved themselves
     innocent by surviving impossible ordeals—by fire, water, or combat—to be suspect was to be doomed.

    E VEN DURING the Great Schism, as the interstice of the rival popes came to be known, the Holy See