The first European firearms — essentially, tubes mounted on a pole — date to the end of the fourteenth century and are known as "hand cannons".
The codpiece, known as the brachetta in Italian and the braguette in French, originated at the end of the fourteenth century, as a utilitarian flap covering the area above the tops of the stockings.
"The Good Wife's Guide," or "Le Ménagier de Paris," is an anonymous text written around the end of the fourteenth century, in the voice of an elderly Parisian to his fifteen-year-old bride.
The next two centuries, however, witnessed a profound revolution which, by the end of the fourteenth century, transformed the landscape into an economy filled with merchants, vibrant towns and great fairs.
At the end of the fourteenth century, Russian metal foundries began forging both bells and cannons, inaugurating an uneasy partnership between the two great noisemakers: during times of war, the former were in constant danger of being melted down into the latter.
For him, the subject of Protestants and Jews (who had been barred from practicing their religion in France since the end of the fourteenth century) seems to have been, at most, food for his meditations on the absurdities of persecution and the fatal distractions of disharmony.
