~ Topics in This Chapter \1.~1/'r_~ \~~~l~) Challenges from Nature ' Turmoil in the Middle East .• : n ~Yl~;' r~(~rl~~~;"k .u , \VuDt ml\' )tl~l; (an,c£; it'V.lm 6 : Spiritual Crises ' Political Responses: The Burdens of War 1 t ll ~ " tttM~~fftp'lf.ff41.r(t :·F" "ntfl (c 'p(I16;1X.!r· mou (tliiU'(all6 wtmUC6'Snw(aart,fal.(f(6 ~l-fam :'ta, "1\-, -"p1Cf(J~"''''''''' ,,",,afa,'w~t'l'In6Ml-qll" qf 'Ctu(t,,1ft ((: ,t-m-.u.-ttia» .r. 'trc1W!t·!j1ttca..!#nt" i,( lrc~ afHlJt'C anm:-a; q U.;'1'h'U(t ~r(a'~t ' ~~'Faafcm(nt alfttuiflWtid.alUfa~a It , ~t '~ " & (attn'ttc;&~ftri"(016 talft Can:,,,,maratI-t!. a"'(t i pn~f~§(J'6& m,,£~uJitll iiitttlttt'lUrarrqp".c'tlKt1(c. ~tlt ., " Mfumratu-t alMf#:'.J1tl1ff6 &mJ'tranf-t,q1u ... Challenges to the :0; .' ". • Ct1m...,~qul/(,~f(I(atl~ t"u'-WlU'G~C~ . C '~""" " ~- Jlettl6:Ui,~t:C~l((,("a," v6lt, llctrtUl("C'.~l'J' Cc. & ftl ~" ,,... .• . • {h:fai{(dta'CcVCJftw,C(T"';~ M_e_die\l.al_.O.[d.er. ~ . ... :. J&£am; &'''JtU1f,(t:4/''1~fI 1 ft'UIC~ d'/r~/tuy ~lturc(f'(rl'( 1 . ..... ~ ~ ' tl akf «6! cC ("(;i q.~l lC', &fl l f(. j~cD&ta>tnm(U1Y ~Jl ... ~. ; J ... ~'( i - . '1" cc • . • _. J ~li-)~ ,- &I:S Age of sorrow and temptation, of tears, jealousy and torment, Time of exhaustion and damnation, declining to extinction, Era filled with horror and deception, lying, pride and envy, Time without honor and meaning, full of life-shortening sadness. - Eustache Deschamps KEY I Question What did the crises of the late medieval era reveal about the strengths and weaknesses of Europe's civilization? The verses quoted above are from a poem by Eustache Deschamps (c. 1346- 1406) in w hich he lame nts the dismal prospects of his generation. His disillusion ment is under­ standable. He trained for the law at a university, wo n royal patronage, traveled in the ser­ vice of his king, and held a series of important politi cal offices. But his career unfolded against a backgro und of disasters that w ould have undercut the confidence of the most determined optim ist . Deschamps w as born about the time that a great plague carried off a third of the population of Europe, and those who survived we re never free of the threat of its return. A devastating w ar betw een England and France also disrupted his life. He en­ dured sieges, his home w as burned, and he lost his job. From his perspective, the w orld w as drifting towar d anarchy, and he had no confidence in the leaders w hose duty it w as to maintain order and provide justice. During the tw elfth and thirteenth centuries, Europe had expanded on all fronts. Pop­ ulation grew. Comm erce, cities, arts, and intellect ual life flourished. Then, early in the fo urteenth century, things began to go w rong- some suddenly and dramatic ally, others 294 .~(. \ ;c ~;,;~~ .. {~~ :.; ..~ ~.:;:~'~ . :.:~) :..'; 296 Chapter 11 Challenges tothe Medieval Order 297 slowly and insidiously. Food sho rtage s became common. Epidemics spread. Europe was wide famine, the first in 250 years. Crops failed throughout northern Europe in 1315, threatened with invasion. The leade rship of the church broke down. and the efforts of government leaders to cope with these crises often made them worse. 1316, and 1317, and there was another widespread famine in the 1330s. Death by star ­ People of Deschamps' genera tion had reas on to believe that theirworl d was in decline. vation was not unusual. People ate dogs, cats, and rats, and there were even rumors of but it would be inaccurate and unfair to accuse their civil ization of having failed them . The cannibalism. Medieval governments could do little to respond to such crises. Even if stresses of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries certainly forced Europeans to make they found supplies of food, they lacked the distribution systems to get emergency re­ painfuladaptations. but many of their problems were signs of evolving circumstan ces more lief to afflicted regions. than cultural failure. Some were the dark side of the achievements of the twe lfth and thir­ Food supplies were critical, for increasing political stability and economic growth teenth centuri es. and othe rs were the result of natural and historical processes that were beyond human control. had allowed Europe's population to triple between the eleventh and the fourteenth Historians have rightly des cribed the late medieval period as the Age of Anxiety. a time centuries. Although population density was not great by modern standards, it characterized by pessimism. skepticism. and se lf-doubt. But the fourteenth century also reached previously unprecedented heights. There were perhaps 80 million Europeans witnessed the floweringof Italy's Renaissance. a movement associated with a su rge of op­ in 1300 compared with 732 million today. But given the available agricultural tech­ timistic humanism (see Chapter 12). Some of Deschamps's contemporaries shared his be­ nologies, Europe began, by the fourteenth century, to exceed the carrying capacity of lief that they were sorely afflicted, but they also anticipated the dawn of a glorious new era. its land. During the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, Europeans had It was the irdestiny to be born at a time of testing for the institutions that the dynamic High Middle Ages had created. The crises they weathered revealed weaknesses inWestern civ­ brought more and more land into production. They drained 'swamps, reclaimed ilization but also signs of future strengths. fields from the sea, and cleared so much forest that Europe may have more trees to­ day than it did then. Europeans eventually reached the limit of their arable land. And when the climate began to cool, the poorer land stopped producing, and society's agricultural base started to shrink. The demand for food outstripped supply, and Challenges from Nature people went hungry. Wealth was unevenly distributed in medieval societies, and there was no social Because most modern people live in artificial environments, they forget how dependent safety net. In any age, economic depressions can trigger migrations from the starving even an advanced civilization is on the pro cesses of nature. Such forgetfulness is dan­ countryside into cities by people who are desperate for food and work. But as large gerous, for scientists have discovered that the natural environment that sustains all life numbers of destitute, chronically malnourished people crowded into Europe's me­ is not fixed and stable. Earth has experienced such drastic shifts in climate that tropical dieval towns, they increased their vulnerability to the second blow that nature struck plants have flouri shed in what is today the arctic, and glaciers once reached the Mediter­ the West in the fourteenth century: plague. ranean. The whole history of civilization has unfolded during an unusually warm and stabl e period in Earth's cycle of climates. This is a sobering fact, for even minor shifts in Plague Between 1347 and 1350 a great epidemic spread across the world and car­ climate can threaten the viability of human institutions. And consensus is building ried off between 30% and 50% of Europe's population. Medieval people called it sim ­ among scientists that the energy consumption associated with twenty-first-century civ­ ply "the pestilence." The name Black Death appeared in the sixteenth century, and the ilization is accelerating the rate of climate change. term Bubonic Plague only describes one symptom of the disease. A bubo is a swollen, infected lymph node, usually in the groin or armpit. Plague can rupture blood vessels, Climate Change From 1000 to 1300 Europe enjoyed a benign climate, but then causing bleeding from bodily orifices and subcutaneous bleeding that turns the skin the Little Ice Age, an era of slowly diminishing average temperatures, set in and con ­ black with bruised blotches. It can also infect the lungs and assume a form spread by tinued into the nineteenth century. This had a serious impact on medieval Europe's coughs and sneezes. largely agrarian economy. Weather patterns changed. Precipitation increased. Grow­ The diseases that afflicted the ancient and medieval world are hard to identify, for ing seasons shortened, and in some places, crops that had once thrived would no the records describing symptoms are often inadequate. Diseases also mutate over time , longer grow. and modern diseases may differ from their earlier versions. For a long time, historians Much of Europe lies at the latitude of Canada. (Paris is farther north than Nova have assumed that the pestilence that afflicted Europe in the fourteenth century was Scotia.) Western Europe's climate is moderated by the Gulf Stream and warm seasonal caused by a bacterium called Yersin iapestis. It is indigenous to parts of China and Africa winds from Africa. Any change in these phenomena can have serious repercussions for and lives in the digestive tracts of fleas that infest certain species of rats. When the bac­ all forms of life in Europe. teria multiply excessively, they block their host flea's digestive track. The starving insect Sporadic famines had always been a part of medieval life, but in.the fourteenth cen­ then begins indiscriminately to bite other warm-blooded creatures, and its bite injects tury they came more frequently and affected larger areas. In 1309 there was a continent- them with infected material from its blocked gut. Recent research has raised doubts 298 Chapter 11 Challenges tothe Medieval Order 299 about the cause of the great medieval pandemic, for it did not conform in many ways The Last Judgment In the early fourteenth century, GiollO di Bondone.