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Chapter 11
The Late Middle Ages:
Crisis and Disintegration in the
Fourteenth Century
Time of Troubles: Black Death and Social Crisis
Famine and Population
Black Death
Economic / Social Upheaval
War and Political Instability
Hundred years War
Political Instability
Growth of England’s Political Institutions
The French Problem
Decline of the Church
Boniface VIII
Papacy at Avignon
The Schism
Cultural World of the 14th Century
Vernacular Language
Art and Black Death
Society in the Age of Adversity
Urban Life
Medicine
Inventions
A Time of Troubles: Black Death & Social Crisis
Famine and Population
Heavy rain (1315 – 1317)
“Little Ice Age”
Population growth
Famine
The Black Death
Types:
Bubonic
Pneumonic
Septicemic
Two ways to transmit: Rats and Fleas
devastating natural disaster
Spread of the Plague
Originated in Asia
Mongols
Arrived in Europe in 1347
Mortality reached 50 – 60 percent in some areas
Wiped out between 25 – 50 percent of European population (19 –
38 million dead in four years)
Cities: 50-60% wiped out
Plague returns in 1361 – 1362 and 1369
Life and Death: Reactions to the Plague
Plague as a punishment from God
The flagellants
Attacks against Jews
Italy was hardest hit by plague.
Results in life being treated as cheap and passing
Economic Dislocation and Social Upheaval
Population collapse
Labor Shortage
Cost of labor that remained – Went up
Agricultural product prices
Labor Shortage + Falling prices for agricultural products =
Drop in aristocratic incomes
Statute of Laborers (1351)
Social Mobility
Government increased taxes
Peasant Revolts
Jacquerie in France (1358)
English Peasants’ Revolt (1381)
Revolts in the Cities
Ciompi Revolt in Florence (1378)
Causes HUNDRED YEARS WAR
Entanglement of French and English royal
families
King Edward III (1327 – 1377)
French seize duchy of Gascony (1337)
Conduct and Course of the War
Differences in the armies
Battle of Crecy (1346)
Henry V (1413 – 1422)
• Battle of Agincourt (1415)
Charles the Dauphin (heir to the French
throne)
Joan of Arc (1412 – 1431)
Political Instability
Control over the bureaucracies led to internal conflicts
(continuation) Breakdown of Feudal Institutions
Scutage:
Factionalism – between Nobles. Looked for ways to supplant lost
income from rents and lands
New Royal Dynasties
One problem was male heirs
Financial Problems
Parliaments gain power – and rivaled the monarchs
The Growth of England’s Political Institutions
Edward III (1327 – 1377)
Parliament – power increased dramatically
Richard II (1377 – 1399)
Aristocratic factionalism
Henry IV (1399 – 1413)
Deposed Richard II
The Problems of the French, German and Italians
The French Kings
Weakness of the French Monarchy
Depopulated
No money
Desolate lands
Estates-General
1357 meeting
Charles VI (1380 – 1422) CRAZY KING
The Decline of the Church
• Papacy reached peak of power in 13th century
• Secular monarchies began to rival the religious and
came into conflict with church
• Claims of supremacy and led to conflict and eventual
papacy defeat
 This defeat, in turn, raised question of Pope’s temporal
authority over Christendom and over spiritual as well.
Boniface VIII and the Conflict with the State
Boniface VIII (1294 – 1303)
• Conflict with ‘Philip the Fair’ of France (Philip IV)
• Unam Sanctam (1302)
French pope  Clement V (1305 – 1314)
The Papacy at Avignon (1305 – 1378)
decline in papal prestige
Popes became captive of the French monarchy
for over 70 years
134 new cardinals and 113 were French
new taxes imposed with threats of
excommunication
wealth and lifestyles of the popes at Avignon.
Pope Gregory XI returned to Italy … and then died.
The Great Schism
Papacy returns to Rome in 1378 (Gregory XI)
TWO POPES
The Great Schism divides Europe
France, Spain, Scotland, Southern Italy supported
Clement.
England, Germany, Scandinavia, most of Italy supported
Urban
Conciliarism
Council of Pisa (1409)
Council of Constance (1414 – 1418)
End of the Schism
Cultural World of the 14th Century
Vernacular literature
– oral language to words
Latin was still official
Dante (1265 – 1321)
The Divine Comedy
Petrarch (1304 – 1374)
Sonnets
Boccaccio (1313 – 1375)
Decameron
Chaucer (c. 1340 – 1400)
The Canterbury Tales
Art and the Black Death
Giotto (1266 – 1337)
Morbidity of late fourteenth-century art
Society in the Age of Adversity
Changes in Urban Life
Greater Regulation –
Marriage –
Gender Roles –
• Male:
• Women:
Nuclear family ensconced
New Directions in Medicine
Hierarchy
Trends
Inventions and New Patterns
The mechanical clock
• New conception of time
Gunpowder and cannons