The Medieval Shock of the New

In 1700 a mathematician submitted a paper to the Royal Society in which he attempted to calculate, amongst other things, the rate at which oral testimony (that is, memory) decayed over long periods of time. It’s a quixotic idea, to be sure, but that such a thing might even be attempted speaks not only to the emergence of an empirical mindset. It also speaks to the transformations wrought on how people conceived of themselves, their contemporaries and their families — and how they remembered the past — by the processes of what we call the Reformation.