from The Autumn of the Middle Ages

Johan Huizinga, trans. Ronald Payton and Ulrich Mammitzsch

But a surplus of tears came not only from great mourning, a vigorous sermon, or the mysteries of faith. Each secular festival also unleashed a flood of tears. . . . In his description of the peace congress at Arras in 1435, Jean Germain makes the audience fall to the ground filled with emotions, speechless, sighing, sobbing and crying during the moving addresses by the delegates. This, most likely, did not happen in this manner, but the bishop of Chalons found that it had to be that way. In the exaggeration, one can detect the underlying truth.