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Chapter 9
• population growth of Europeans was
checked by famine and the plague,
disasters which were then followed by
revolts of peasants and townspeople.
Hi
• At the beginning of the fourteenth century, declining agricultural
productivity and bad weather combined to bring famine to Europe,
checking population growth and driving people from their lands in
search of food. This tragedy was followed by a terrible plague, the
Black Death, which arrived in Europe via the trade that had
flourished in the Mediterranean in the preceding century. This
disease took the lives of over a third of the population. People
reacted to the disaster with fear and despair, and in the case of
peasants and urban workers, with revolt. The church was criticized
for not bringing comfort and order, but it was absorbed in an internal
crisis, as disputed papal elections led to controversy and the
simultaneous rule of several popes. England and France engaged in
a violent war, the Hundred Years' War, which devastated the lives of
civilians and transformed the feudal order. Finally, in the east, new
empires arose and threatened the borders of Europe. These
disasters undermined the feudal order, bringing fears of the world
ending, but instead the structures of social, political, economic, and
cultural life would be transformed once again.
Economic and Social Misery
• Famine
• The growth of European society stemmed mostly from
agricultural innovations that had generated the boom of the
11th century.
• By 1300, people were cultivating poorer lands, and crop
yields were dwindling.
• As the population grew, people tried to cultivate more land to
make up the slack, and they plowed common fields in which
cattle grazed.
• People were forced to kill their animals, which also reduced
the amount of fertilizer.
• By the beginning of the 14th century, farmers faced a difficulty
accumulating a surplus of food.
Economic and Social Misery
– Bad Weather
• Famine began in 1315, and lasted until 1322 in some parts of
Europe.
• Cold winters followed by cool wet summers brought
disastrous harvests.
• Many who did not starve suffered from malnutrition and were
susceptible to infection.
• The Black Death: Bubonic Plague
• Beginning in Asia a disease infected rodents and spread to
black rats. The disease passed through rodents by fleas, and
humans could also be bitten.
• The black death caused worldwide devastation, it spread
through the movement of trade ships.
Economic and Social Misery
• The Black Death: Bubonic Plague (cont.)
– The plague arrived in Europe in about 1348 on ships,
and it raced through Europe, killing 1/3 to ½ of the
population.
– Law and tradition broke down, and many survivors saw
no point in trying to preserve medieval customs.
– Flagellants
– As medicine failed, some people resorted to extreme
measures like the flagellants, who thought that by
inflicting pain on themselves they could ask God to
relieve the suffering of others.
– This movement showed the desperation of the people,
who thought God was angry with them.
Economic and Social Misery
– Anti-Semitism
• Jews were accused of bringing the plague by poisoning
wells.
• The persecutions in Germany were especially rough,
because the English and French kings had forced them
eastward.
• A pogrom in Strasbourg killed thousands of Jews accused of
causing the plague.
• Even though the Jews were suffering from the plague, they
were being persecuted. Over 60 Jewish communities in
Germany were exterminated by 1351.
• Many Jews went to eastern Europe and received protection.
Economic and Social Misery
• The Peasants and Townspeople Revolt
• The European countryside suffered a shortage of labor, and
lords tried to increase their number of laborers to farm the
lands.
• Free laborers began to demand higher wages.
• To revolt against statutes that froze earnings, peasants
burned manor houses and slaughtered the residents.
– John Ball
• Popular preachers arose as leaders who combined social
reform with religion.
• John Ball of England rallied listeners by calling for an
overthrow of the social order to eliminate serfs and lords.
Economic and Social Misery
– Urban Revolts
• The unrest was not limited to the countryside, as
population dropped, industry also suffered.
• Merchants and manufacturers tried to limit
competition and reduce freedoms of the lower
classes.
• Revolts broke out in many towns throughout
Europe.
Chapter 9
• The Church faced crisis again as secular
rulers denied the supremacy of papal
authority and factions within the church
vied for power.
C. 1305 GIOTTO
LAMENTATION OF CHRIST
Imperial Papacy Besieged
• Many medieval men and women looked to the
church to guide them. The pope’s troubles
undermined the people’s confidence.
• Early in the 14th century, the issue of the relative
sovereignty of kings and popes resurfaced once
more over the taxation of church lands and the
clergy’s claim to immunity from royal courts.
• The French king, Philip IV, was stronger than the
popes, he ordered his troops to arrest Pope
Boniface VIII, and was able to capitalize on the
violence against the church by getting Clement V
elected as pope .
Imperial Papacy Besieged
• Popes Move to Avignon
• Philip expected the pope to support French interests, the king
persuaded the pope to rule from Avignon.
• The pope’s absence from Rome raised issues, like who
would guide the faithful of Rome.
• The popes ruled from Avignon for 72 years in the shadow of
the French king, and many Christians objected to the
“Babylonian Captivity”.
– Return to Rome
• Catherine of Siena wrote a series of letters to Pope Gregory
XI urging him to return to Rome, and in 1376 she went to
Avignon to urge him in person.
• He was persuaded and returned to Rome, but the church’s
problems increased.
Imperial Papacy Besieged
• Things Get Worse: The Great Schism
• When Gregory XI died the citizens of Rome feared another
French pope would return to Avignon.
• The cardinals elected an Italian, Pope Urban VI, and urban
almost immediately indicated his hopes of reducing the
French influence.
• The French cardinals left Rome, and elected their own pope,
Clement VII, to rule in Avignon.
• Each pope denounced the other as the anti-Christ and
increase revenues, which were now split.
Imperial Papacy Besieged
• The Conciliar Movement
• Asserted its supremacy by deposing the two popes and
electing a new one, but the two popes would not step down,
so now there were three.
• The Council of Constance deposed all three popes and
elected Martin V.
• New Critics of the Church
• As people became disenchanted with the church, they
sought new ways to approach God and address the
challenges of the age.
Imperial Papacy Besieged
– John Wycliffe
• Argued that there was no scriptural basis for papal claims of
earthly power and that the Bible should be a Christian’s sole
authority.
• He said that the church should renounce earthly power,
leaving it to kings.
• He wanted a more simple church led by a clergy that rejected
all wealth, the church was the greatest land owner in Europe.
– Jan Hus
• One of Wycliffe’s most famous proponents, a popular
preacher and rector of the university in Prague.
• He demanded a reform of the church, and defended his
beliefs before the Council of Constance.
• He was found guilty of heresy and burned.
Chapter 9
• The prolonged conflict between France
and England broke down the feudal
system, aided the consolidation of the
French monarchy, and weakened the
English throne.
More Destruction: The Hundred
Years’ War, 1337-1453
• The issue that triggered the War was the succession to the
throne of France.
• England VS. France
• The two kings clashed for both economic and feudal reasons.
– New Weapons
• Although the French outnumbered the English, the English
skillfully used new tactics and new weapons to supplement
their mounted knights.
• The longbow, pike, and the development of gunpowder
helped the outnumbered English.
More Destruction: The Hundred
Years’ War, 1337-1453
– English Victories
• In the Battle of Crecy in 1346 the sky was blackened by
English arrows, and the English secured Flanders and
Calais.
• In Pointers in 1356 the French called for peace (the Peace of
Bretigny), by which Edward renounced the throne in
exchange for Calais and holdings in Aquitaine.
• The war was reopened in 1369 by Charles V, and soldiers
from both sides plundered villages, ruining crops and
vineyards.
– A Seesaw Battle
• Early in the 15th century France seemed to be waning, and
the Burgundians joined the English.
More Destruction: The Hundred
Years’ War, 1337-1453
– A Seesaw Battle (Cont.)
• Henry V reclaimed the French throne, and had a victory at
the Battle of Agincourt in 1415.
• In 1428, the English laid siege to Orleans.
• Joan of Arc
• A young peasant girl believed she saw visions in which
angels urged her to lead the French troops to victory, and
she persuaded the Dauphin to give her command of an army.
• The victories she’s credited with revitalized the new national
spirit of the French armies, they rallied and by 1453 only
Calais was left in English hands.
More Destruction: The Hundred
Years’ War, 1337-1453
– Joan Executed
• She was captured
In 1431 by the
Burgundians, and tried
For witchcraft and
Heresy and she was
Burned at the stake.
C. 1430-45 FRA ANGELICO
THE ANNUNCIATION
The Hundred Years’ War, 1337-1453
• Results of the War
• Although personal unimpressive, King Charles’s victory in the Hundred
Years War laid the foundations on which the power of early modern France
would be bulit.
• After 1453, the growing power of the French crown became quickly
apparent.
• In 1477, Charles’s son, King Louis XI (1461-1483), absorbed the duchy of
Burgundy after the last Burgundian duke fell in battle at the hands of the
Swiss.
• In 1485, King Louis XII helped topple King Richard III of England, whose
alliance with Brittany had threatened to renew the English war with France.
• When, a few years later, Louis XII acquired Brittany through marriage, the
French kings gained control over the last remaining independent principality
within the borders of their kingdom.
The Hundred Years War
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The Hundred Years War also had dramatic effects on the English monarchy.
When English armies in France were successful as they were under Edward III and Henry V, the
Crown rode a wave of popularity and the country prospered from the profits of booty and ransoms.
When the war turned against the English, however, as it did under Richard II and Henry VI,
defeats abroad undermined support for the monarch at home.
Of the nine English kings who ruled England between 1307 and 1485, no fewer than five were
deposed and murdered by their subjects.
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Edward II 1307-1327
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Edward III 1327-1377
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Richard II 1377-1399
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Henry IV 1399-1413(Lancaster)
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Henry V 1413-1422
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Henry VI 1422-1461
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Edward IV 1461-1483(York)
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Edward V 1483
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Richard III 1483-1485
Hundred Years War
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England was the most tightly governed kingdom in Europe, but the strength of its
political system depended on the king’s ability to mobilize popular support for his
policies through Parliament, while maintaining the support of his nobility through
successful wars in Wales, Scotland, and France.
This was a delicate task, at which incompetent or tyrannical kings could not succeed.
The result was an aristocratic rebellion against Henry VI’s government known as the
WAR OF THE ROSES.
In 1461, after a six-year struggle, Edward, Duke of York finally succeeded in ousting
Henry VI.
He then ruled successfully until his death in 1483.
But when Edward’s brother Richard seized the throne from Edward’s own sons,
political stability in England collapsed once again.
In 1485, Richard III was in turn defeated and killed in the battle of Bosworth Field by
the Lancastrian claimant, Henry Tudor, who then resolved the dynastic feud between
Lancaster and York by marrying Elizabeth of York, the only surviving child of King
Edward IV.
Hundred Years War
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Now known as King Henry VII, Henry Tudor systematically eliminated potential rivals
for the throne.
He avoided expensive foreign wars, asked for little by way of taxation, built up a
financial surplus by carefully managing Crown lands, and exercised a tight control
over the aristocracy.
When he died in 1509 the new Tudor Dynasty was securely established on the
throne, and England royal power was fully restored.
Chapter 9
•
Philosophers, writers, and artists
responded to the disasters of the
fourteenth century by reconsidering old
problems and offering new ideas and
insights.
Responses to Disaster and Despair
• William of Ockham Reconsiders Scholasticism
• Ockham argued that universals had no connection with
reality, this philosophy was called “New Nominalism”.
• New Nominalists believed that it was impossible to know God
or prove his existence.
• He founded the principle of “Ockham’s razor” which says,
that between alternative explanations for the same
phenomenon, the simpler is always to be preferred.
• New Literary Giants
• In the 14th centuries authors began to write in their national
languages instead of just Latin.
• In Italy, literature emerged that explored people’s place in the
world.
Responses to Disaster and Despair
– Dante
• Born in Florence in 1302, he was exiled due to political
turmoil, and composed his masterpiece, The Divine Comedy.
• The Divine Comedy is and allegory of a soul’s journey
through despair to salvation. He described the punishments
of the damned in gruesome detail
– Boccaccio
• He witnessed the plague as it swept through the city, and in
his work The Decameron, he describes the effects.
• In The Decameron, 10 young people are telling stories, and
speak about sex, lies, and ordinary people.
Responses to Disaster and Despair
– Chaucer
• His most famous work, The Canterbury Tales, tells of a group
of 29 pilgrims who journey from Southwark to Canterbury to
the shrine of Thomas Becket. Chaucer gives each pilgrim a
vivid personality.
Responses to Disaster and Despair
•
A New View: Jan Van Eyck
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Realism and Symbolism
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He was breaking ground in the
Arts, but also preserved some of the
Ideals of the Middle Ages.
•
His paintings were filled with
Symbolism.
Dog – fidelity; St. Margaret - childbirth
Single candle – God’s presence & blessing of the
wedding night
C. 1434 JAN VAN EYCK
THE MARRIAGE OF GIOVANNI ARNOLFINI
AND GIOVANNA CERAMI
The Mongols
• Trade between the Mediterranean world and the Far East dated
back to antiquity, but it was not until the late thirteenth century that
Europeans began to establish direct trading connections with India,
China, and the Spice Islands of the Indonesian archipelago. For
Europeans, these connections would prove profoundly important,
although less for their economic significance than their impact on the
European imagination. For the peoples of Asia, however, the
appearance of European traders on the Silk Road between Central
Asia and China was merely a curiosity. The really consequential
event was the rise of the Mongol Empire that made such
connections possible.
The Rise Of The Mongol Empire
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The Mongols were one of a number of nomadic peoples inhabiting the steppes of
Central Asia.
Although closely connected with various Turkish-speaking peoples with whom they
frequently intermarried, the Mongols spoke their own distinctive language and had
their own homeland to the north of the Gobi Desert.
Sheep provided them with shelter, in the form of wool tents, clothing, milk, and meat.
Like many nomadic peoples throughout history, the Mongols were highly
accomplished cavalry soldiers who supplemented their lives by raiding.
In the late twelfth century a Mongol chief named Temujin began to unit the various
Mongol tribes under his rule.
In 1206, his supremacy was formally acknowledged by all the Mongols, and he took
the title Chingiz (Genghis) Khan .
Genghis now turned his enormous army against his non-Mongol neighbors.
The Rise of The Mongol Empire
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China at this time was divided into three hostile states.
In 1209, Genghis launched an attack on northwestern China; in 1211 he
invaded the Chin Empire in north China.
By the 1230’s a full-scale Mongol conquest of northern and western China
was under way.
Between 1237 and 1240, the Mongol horde conquered southern Russia and
then launched a two-pronged assault farther west.
The smaller of the two Mongol armies swept through Poland toward eastern
Germany; the larger army went southwest toward Hungary.
How much farther west the Mongol armies might have pushed will forever
remain in doubt, for in 1241 the Great Khan died, and the Mongol forces
withdrew from eastern Europe.
Empires in the East
• The Ottoman Empire, ca. 1300-1566
• In the 13th century a group of Asiatic nomads migrated
westward, along the way they converted to Islam, and
brought vigor to Muslim expansion.
• By 1355 the Ottomans had surrounded the Byzantine Empire
that had stood as a powerful state and a buffer for the West.
– Conquest of Constantinople
• Mehmed II brought his cannons to the walls of
Constantinople and attacked by land and sea.
• Constantinople fell in 1453, and the emperor, Constantine XI
Palaeologus, died in battle.
• Mehmed made his capital Constantinople, and changed the
name to Istanbul.
Empires in the East
– Suleiman I
• Brought the Ottoman Empire to the height of its power, and made
the Ottomans into a major naval power.
• He secured the sea, and then moved north toward Vienna.
• Russia: The Third Rome
• The princes of Moscow expanded their territory, and Ivan I
recognized the need to curry favor with the Mongol Khanate of the
Golden Horde.
• In the 15th century, Duchy of Moscow overthrew the Mongol rule.
– Ivan III
• He pushed back the final Mongol advance on Moscow in 1480, and
established himself ruler of the new Russian state.
• He took the title of Caesar or “tsar.”
Critical Questions
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Economic and Social Misery
What factors contributed to the famine that began in
1315?
How did the Black Death arrive in Europe?
How did different sectors of medieval society react to
the spread of the plague?
How did peasants and townspeople react to the
pressures placed upon them by the labor shortage?
What gains were made by those who participated in
fourteenth-century revolts? What, if any, were the
long-term changes resulting from the revolts?
Critical Questions
• Imperial Papacy Besieged
6.
Why did the popes move to Avignon? What kinds of
changes did the Avignon popes make in papal
administration?
7.
What was the Great Schism? How was it resolved?
Who were the conciliarists?
8.
What kinds of suggestions for reform did critics of
the church make in the fourteenth century?
More Destruction: The Hundred Years' War, 1337 – 1453
9.
What were the causes of the Hundred Years' War?
10.
How did new technology in weaponry play a part in this
conflict?
11.
Describe the major battles. What gave the victors the
advantage in each case?
12.
Who was Joan of Arc? Why was she honored by
France?
13.
What was the war's impact on France? On England?
14.
What caused the Wars of the Roses?
Responses to Disaster and Despair
15.
What was the philosophy of the New Nominalists? How
did their beliefs constitute a refutation of Scholasticism?
16.
Why is Dante's Divine Comedy considered a perfect
medieval work by some and something entirely new by
others?
17.
What did Boccaccio's The Decameron reveal about new
attitudes in the wake of the plague?
18.
What does Chaucer's work tell us about social problems
in the fourteenth century?
19.
How did van Eyck combine realism and symbolism in his
paintings?
Empires in the East
20.
What were the accomplishments of Genghis Khan?
21.
What were some of the outstanding features of the
Mongol
Empire?
22.
Why was it significant that the Polos were Venetians?
What new ideas and inventions did Marco Polo's writings
introduce to Europeans?
23.
How did the Ottoman Empire expand?
24.
How did Ivan III establish Moscow as the "Third Rome"?
What was the significance of that phrase?