misery in churches. Every order and estate, every rank and 
     profession, was distinguished by its costume. The great 
     lords never moved about without a glorious display of 
     arms and liveries, exciting fear and envy. Executions and 
     other public acts of justice, hawking, marriages and 
     funerals, were all announced by cries and processions, 
     songs and music.

     Associating the developments of five hundred years of 
Gutenberg technology with uniformity, quiet privacy, and 
individualism, Huizinga finds it easy to give us the pre-
Gutenberg world in terms of diversity, passionate group life, 
and communal rituals. That is exactly what he does on page 
40: “Here, then, we have attained a point of view from which 
we can consider the lay culture of the waning Middle Ages; 
aristocratic life decorated by ideal forms, gilded by chivalrous