Chapter 12: The Crisis of the Later Middle Ages

  1. Prelude to Disaster
  1. Agricultural Crisis
  1. In the early 14th century severe weather damaged crops, leading to famine (1315-1322)
  1. Poor nutrition increased susceptibility to disease and facilitated epidemics. (for example, typhoid)
  1. Social consequences of famines and epidemics included:
  2. Abandonment of homesteads.
  3. Urban migration by young males.
  4. Rise in vagabondage.
  5. A volatile land market
  6. Unstable international trade.
  1. To cope with the agrarian crisis, monarchs resorted to:
  2. condemnation of speculation
  3. strict regulation of the grain trade
  4. importation of grain from abroad
  5. price controls on grain
  1. But these government measures were ineffective.
  1. The starving scapegoated and attacked Jews, lepers, and the wealthy.
  1. The Black Death
  2. Arrival in Europe and Spread
  1. Genoese ships brought the plague to Italy in 1347
  1. From there it spread to southern Germany, France, and then England.
  1. Pathology and Care
  1. The plague was transmitted in two forms, bubonic and pneumonic.
  1. Fleas often living on black rats bore the plague bacillus
  1. The high infectious nature of the plague was enhanced by urban congestion and lack of sanitation.
  1. Poor sanitary conditions and lack of bathing facilitated the spread of the disease.
  1. The appearance of a single boil was followed by bleeding under the skin, vomiting of blood, and death.
  1. Medieval doctors had no way of coping with the plague.
  1. Black rats mostly stayed in cities, so the disease was concentrated there.
  1. In England perhaps one-third of the population died; in some Italian cities more than one-half.
  1. The census taken in the city of Florence between 1427 and 1430 suggests that the Black Death hit the youngest hardest.
  1. The plague reached Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and Russia.
  1. Social, Economic, and Cultural Consequences
  1. In general the Catholic clergy cared for the sick and buried the dead.
  1. As a result, priests had a high mortality rate.
  2. Church officials sanctioned unorthodox measure in the emergency, such as laymen administering extreme unction.
  1. The plague resulted in a shortage of labor, which caused a rise in wages that benefited peasants and artisans.
  1. The decline in production caused inflation.
  1. In the wake of the Black Death, many guilds aimed to keep their membership numbers constant by accepting many new members, often unrelated to old guild members.
  1. The plague caused profound pessimism, religions fanaticism (flagellants), suspicion of travelers and pilgrims, and slighting of funeral rites.
  1. New colleges were endowed to deal with the shortage of priests.
  1. By traumatizing medieval society and the Church, the plague ultimately contributed to the Protestant Reformation.
  1. The establishment of new colleges and universities in the years following the Black Death greatly weakened the international nature of medieval culture.
  1. The Hundred Years’ War (ca. 1337 to 1453)
  2. Causes
  1. In 1328 French barons denied the claim of English King Edward III to the French throne and chose as king Philip VI of Valois
  1. The direct cause of the war occurred in 1337 when Philip confiscated Edward III’s holding of Aquitaine.
  1. The Hundred Years’ War also became a French civil war as some French barons supported Edward III’s claims to stop the centralizing drive of the French monarch.
  1. The Popular Response
  1. Both English and French kings used priests to deliver patriotic sermons among the people
  1. War provided poor knights and others (criminals who enlisted, for example) with opportunities for plunder and new estates.
  1. Course of the War to 1419
  1. The English scored successes early on. At Crecy (1346), Poitiers (1356), and Agincourt (1415), the English longbowmen were instrumental in defeating the French.
  1. The Hundred Years’ War saw the use of new weapons such as the longbow and the cannon.
  1. In 1429 the French peasant girl Joan of Arc claimed divine inspiration and helped turn the tide in favor of the French. She was captured by the English, tried, and executed on charges of witchcraft.
  1. The war ended in 1453 with the English holding only the port of Calais in France.
  1. Costs and Consequences
  1. The war was terrifically costly for both sides and local government in England fell into disarray as so many sheriffs were serving abroad as knights.
  2. As a result, there was significant economic and social dislocation.
  1. To pay for the war, Edward III had to negotiate almost constantly with the barons in Parliament, thus strengthening the institution.
  1. The representative assembly in the English Parliament, the “Commons,” that originally was made up of knights and burgesses and controlled all nonfeudal levies (taxes).
  1. The war promoted the growth of nationalism in both countries.
  1. The Decline of the Church’s Prestige
  1. The Babylonian Captivity
  1. From 1309-1376 the popes resided in Avignon, France, under control of the French monarchy.
  1. In the absence of the papacy, Rome was left poverty-stricken.
  2. After returning to Rome in 1377, Urban VI succeeded to the papacy.
  3. Antagonized by Urban’s anti-corruption campaign, a number of cardinals returned to France and chose a different pope, Clement VII, who would reside in Avignon.
  1. The Great Schism
  2. In the struggle for power between competing popes, secular rulers (kings) aligned themselves behind one pope or the other based on political considerations.
  1. The schism confused common people and discredited the Church among some.
  1. The Conciliar Movement
  1. Before the schism, Marsiglio, rector of the University of Paris, argued that the Church should be led a council superior to the pope.
  1. Conciliarists, such as theologians Pierre d’Ailly and Conrad Gelnhausen, maintained all of the following:
  2. Reform could best be accomplished by general assemblies representing all Christians.
  3. The pope’s authority derived from the Christian community he was to serve.
  4. A constitutional form of church government was preferable to the monarchial form.
  5. The pope could make mistakes in matters of doctrine.
  6. The English scholar John Wyclif (ca. 1330-1384) argued that there was no scriptural foundation for the pope’s temporal power.
  1. He argued that Scripture alone should determine church belief and practice.
  2. He also argued that all Christians should read the Bible for themselves.
  1. The cardinals of Avignon and Rom summoned a council at Pisa in 1409 that disposed of both popes and elected a third, but the old popes refused to step down, leading to a threefold schism.
  1. The German emperor Sigismund organized a council at Constance that met from 1414-1418 and implemented a series of important reforms including resolving the schism, electing a new pope and burning the heretic John Hus at the stake.
  1. John Hus has spread the ideas of John Wyclif into Bohemia.
  2. Hus endorsed the idea of Utraquism, which was the endorsement of laypersons receiving communion in both kinds (bread and wine)
  1. But the Great Schism resulted in all of the following consequences:
  2. A weakening of the faith of many Christians.
  3. A transformation in the governance of the Christian church.
  4. A decline in the prestige of and respect for church leaders.
  5. The emergence of Lollardism in England.
  1. The Life of the People
  2. Marriage
  1. There was a high frequency of premarital sex and conception.
  1. Most marriages were between partners from the same village, and arranged by parents.
  2. Who and when a person married were determined by economic considerations and parental directions.
  3. Public announcement that a couple planned to marry were known as “banns.”
  4. Letters between John and Margaret Paston of the gentry class show that Margaret managed family lands and business while John worked in London.
  1. This indicates that Margaret was an important partner in the marriage.
  1. Men in their midtwenties generally married women in their midteens.
  1. The age at which people married was based on their ability to provide for a family.
  1. Legalized prostitution, regulated by state authorities, was the sexual outlet for unmarried men.
  1. Divorce did not exist, but there were disputes because many couples were privately married (without a public religious ceremony)
  1. Life in the Parish
  1. Religious festivals corresponded to the agricultural calendar.
  1. Peasants hated their ancient service obligations to the lord. (feudalism)
  1. In the 14th century entrance into guilds became more difficult. Many guilds began to exclude women.
  1. For recreation, commoners enjoyed executions, bearbaiting, wrestling matches, and alcoholic consumption.
  1. In the course of the 14th and 15th centuries, the laity took over management of much local parish business.
  1. Fur-Collar Crime
  1. To maintain their standard of living as prices rose, some nobles and gentry of the upper classes turned to outright robbery, extortion,, and kidnapping.
  1. Peasant Revolts
  1. In 1358 French peasants, tormented by famine, plague, and high taxes to finance the Hundred Years’ War, rebelled in the so-called Jacquerie.
  1. In 1381 rising peasant expectations of well-being in England collided with reimposition of a head tax on peasants to start a peasant rebellion, probably the largest of the Middle Ages.
  2. In 1351, the English parliament had attempted, and failed, to freeze peasants salaries and wages at pre-1347 levels.
  1. Rebellions also occurred in the late 14th century in Florence, Spain, and the cities of Germany.
  1. Race and Ethnicity on the Frontiers
  1. In early periods of conquest and colonization in the Middle Ages, newly arrived populations tended to live under their own laws while the “native” populations retained their own laws and customs.
  1. Only in Ireland did England impose its legal system, and exclude the Irish from it.
  2. Ireland was one of the earliest examples where conquerors imposed sharp ethnic distinctions on to the population.
  3. English oppression in Ireland was exemplified by the Statute of Kilkenny that prevented intermarriage between the two groups.
  1. In the 14th century regulations, laws and customs discriminating among different ethnic groups on the basis of “blood descent” multiplied.
  1. These separated Germans from Czechs in Bohemia, Mudejars and Christian Spaniards in Spain, Irish from English in Ireland, German and Magyar in Hungary, etc.
  2. The Dalimil Chronicle, which traces the history of the Bohemian people, was pervaded with Czech hostility towards Germans.
  3. The history of the Mudejars, Muslim subjects to Christian rulers, in Spain is representative of the legal dualism between native and colonists prior to the 14th century.
  1. Vernacular Literature
  2. In the 14th century writers began working in their vernacular languages all over Europe.
  1. The most significant aspect of all vernacular literature was the it was written in the national languages instead of Latin.
  1. Dante Alighieri of Florence wroth the Divine Comedy in Italian.
  1. Geoffrey Chaucer of London wrote The Canterbury Tales in English.
  1. Francois Villon of Paris wrote ballads celebrating the life of the common people in French.
  2. Villon’s Grand Testament is distinguished from the works of Dante and Chaucer by it use of the language of the poor and criminal.
  1. Christine de Pisan of Bologna wrote in a wide varieties of genres in French.
  1. In Bohemia the arrival of German colonization triggered the development of vernacular Czech literature, beginning with translations of German knightly sages and religious writings.
  1. Beginning in the 14th century, literacy rates rose among men and women, reflecting the greater complexity of society, the growth of commerce, and expanding government bureaucracy.