{"product_id":"when-god-did-not-answer-a-gravedigger-in-the-time-of-the-black-death-florence-1348-9798259248663","title":"When God Did Not Answer: A Gravedigger in the Time of the Black Death Florence 1348","description":"\u003cp\u003e • Author(s): Michael McGilbourne\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher: Independently Published\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher Imprint: Independently Published\u003cbr\u003e • BISAC: Historical - Medieval\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA Gravedigger in the Time of the Black Death Florence 1348 \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eWhen God Did Not Answer\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eYou are the end point of an unbroken chain of survival.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEvery person who came before you - through plague, war, famine, and flood - lived long enough to pass forward what was necessary for you to exist. You did not begin when you were born. You began when humanity began.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eEverything between that beginning and this moment is the story of the making of you.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eFlorence. 1348.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA city of one hundred and twenty thousand souls. A Sicilian ship at Messina with twelve crews dying at the oar. Four months later, a third of Florence is in trenches behind the parish churches.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOn the twelfth of June, the Priors silenced every bell in the city at once.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eWhen God Did Not Answer\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e asks what it meant to live inside that silence.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNot as a pope. Not as a prince. As the ordinary man - a gravedigger of the Oltrarno - who carried out of their houses the rich and the poor, the priest and the wool-comber, and laid them in the same trench under the same lime.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ci\u003eWhat does a man believe, when the bells stop?\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ci\u003eWhat does he do, when the institutions die faster than the dying?\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ci\u003eWhat is the difference between a Christian and a man who keeps the Christian gestures because no one else is left to keep them?\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ci\u003eWhat is held up from below, when nothing is sent down from above?\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe facts are extraordinary enough: \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe plague reached Europe through twelve Genoese galleys at Messina in October 1347.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIt traveled four kilometers a day overland, faster by sea.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eFlorence lost between forty-five and seventy-five percent of its population in four months.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003ePope Clement VI consecrated the Rh�ne so that bodies could be dumped into it as into a grave.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eTwo thousand Jews were burned alive at Strasbourg in February 1349 - \u003ci\u003ebefore the plague had reached the city\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWithin five years of the silencing of the bells, Florence installed its first mechanical clock.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe arguments about what broke that summer have never stopped.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eHistory is not a sequence of dates.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt is the record of billions of lives lived forward through a present as urgent as your own.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA widow shelling beans at a board. A grain of sugar on a child's finger. A hand straightening a linen sheet at a stranger's collarbone. A bell that did not ring.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThey were curious about the same things we are curious about. They lived through something that is still asking us questions. This book is the attempt of one ordinary witness - a gravedigger who understood the world by carrying it - to answer.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eFor homeschooling families: \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eYou are already doing the most important thing - putting the story of humanity directly into your children's hands. The \u003ci\u003eBeyond His Story We Stand\u003c\/i\u003e series was written for you. Each book takes one moment in human history and makes it lived rather than memorised, felt rather than filed away. Not a textbook. Not a syllabus. A story your child will not want to put down - and that will leave them asking the questions that no curriculum can generate for them.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe questions that only wonder produces.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eWhen God Did Not Answer\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e is part of \u003ci\u003eBeyond His Story We Stand\u003c\/i\u003e - a chronological journey through human history, told through the eyes of the people official history forgot to record.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe bells fell silent.\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe hands went on.\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eThat is how the world was kept.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Independently Published","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":47883196858519,"sku":"9798259248663","price":1643.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0666\/3471\/1191\/files\/9798259248663.webp?v=1781100174","url":"https:\/\/atlanticbooks.com\/products\/when-god-did-not-answer-a-gravedigger-in-the-time-of-the-black-death-florence-1348-9798259248663","provider":"Atlantic Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}