The Crisis of the Later Middle Ages, 1300 1450

CHAPTER 12 The Crisis of the Later Middle Ages, 1300–1450

INSTRUCTIONAL OBJECTIVES After reading and studying this chapter, students should be able to explain the process that brought the Black Death to Europe and how this disease spread throughout Europe in the later Middle Ages. They should be able to summarize the consequences of the Black Death in Europe. They should be able to discuss the impact of the Hundred Years’ War on France and England, in particular on the English parliament. Students should be able to list the problems that led to disorder in the later medieval Catholic Church. Finally, students should be able to identify the most important consequences of the social and economic tensions that marked this period.

CHAPTER OUTLINE I. Prelude to Disaster A. Climate Change and Famine 1. Between 1300 and 1450, Europe experienced a “Little Ice Age.” 2. Harsh weather led to ruined harvests. 3. Poor nutrition increased susceptibility to disease and facilitated epidemics (for example, typhoid). 4. Social consequences of famines and epidemics included depopulation of some areas, a volatile land market, and unstable international trade. B. Government Ineptitude 1. Government measures, such as price controls, were ineffective. 2. The starving scapegoated and attacked Jews, lepers, and the wealthy. II. The Black Death A. Arrival in Europe and Spread 1. Genoese ships brought the plague to Italy in 1347. 2. From there it spread to southern Germany, France, and then England. B. Pathology 1. Fleas often living on black rats bore the plague bacillus. 2. Poor sanitary conditions and lack of bathing facilitated the spread of the disease. 3. The appearance of a single boil was followed by bleeding under the skin, vomiting of blood, and death. 4. Medieval doctors had no way of coping with the plague. C. Spread of the Disease 1. Black rats mostly stayed in cities, so the disease was concentrated there. 2. In England perhaps one-third of the population died—in some Italian cities more than one-half. 3. The plague reached Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and Russia. D. Care 1. Doctors could sometimes ease the pain of the disease, but they had no cure. 2. Many believed the plague was caused by poisoned or “corrupted” air. 3. Strong-smelling substances were used in an effort to stop the spread of the disease.

4. Wealthy people often fled to the countryside. 5. Many thousands of Jews were killed by people looking for a scapegoat. 6. Hospitals served as a refuge for some sick people. 7. Many people believed the plague was a sign of God’s anger. E. Social, Economic, and Cultural Consequences 1. Priests often took great risks to minister to the sick and had a high mortality rate. 2. Church officials sanctioned unorthodox measures in the emergency, such as laymen administering extreme unction. 3. New evidence suggests that the medieval agrarian economy showed remarkable resilience in the face of the plague. 4. Guilds accepted many new members, often unrelated to old guild members. 5. The Black Death resulted in a general European inflation. 6. The plague caused profound pessimism, religious fanaticism (flagellants), suspicion of travelers and pilgrims, and slighting of funeral rites. 7. New colleges were endowed to deal with the shortage of priests. 8. By traumatizing medieval society and the church, the plague ultimately contributed to the Reformation. III. The Hundred Years’ War A. Causes 1. In 1328 French barons denied the claim of English King Edward III to the French throne and chose Philip VI of Valois as king. 2. In 1337 Philip confiscated Edward III’s holding of Aquitaine. 3. 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 monarchy. 4. Economic factors involving the wool trade and control of Flemish towns created tension between the English and the French. B. The Popular Response 1. Both English and French kings used priests to stimulate patriotism among the people. 2. War provided poor knights and others (criminals who enlisted, for example) with opportunities for plunder and new estates. C. The Course of the War to 1419 1. The English scored successes early on. 2. At Crécy (1346), Poitiers (1356), and Agincourt (1415), the English longbowmen were instrumental in defeating the French. D. Joan of Arc and France’s Victory 1. In 1429, the French peasant girl Joan of Arc claimed divine inspiration and helped turn the tide in favor of the French. 2. She was captured by the English, tried, and executed on charges of witchcraft. 3. The war ended in 1453 with the English holding only the port of Calais in France. E. Costs and Consequences 1. The war was costly for both sides and local government in England fell into disarray as so many sheriffs were serving abroad as knights. 2. To pay for the war, Edward III had to negotiate almost constantly with the barons in Parliament, thus strengthening the institution. 3. The war promoted the growth of nationalism in both countries. IV. Challenges to the Church A. The Babylonian Captivity and the Great Schism 1. From 1309–1376 the popes resided in Avignon, France, under control of the French monarchy.

2. After returning to Rome in 1377, Urban VI succeeded to the papacy. 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. 3. Kings lined up behind one pope or the other based on political considerations. 4. The schism confused common people and discredited the Church among some. B. The Conciliar Movement 1. Before the schism, Marsiglio, rector of the University of Paris, argued that the Church should be led by a council superior to the pope. 2. The English scholar John Wyclif (ca 1330–1384) argued that there was no scriptural foundation for the pope’s temporal power. He also argued that all Christians should read the Bible for themselves. 3. The cardinals of Avignon and Rome summoned a council at Pisa in 1409 that deposed both popes and elected a third, but the old popes refused to step down, leading to a threefold schism. 4. The German emperor Sigismund organized a council at Constance that met from 1414–1418 and resolved the schism, electing a new pope (and burning the heretic John Hus at the stake). C. Lay Piety and Mysticism 1. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the laity began to exercise increasing control over parish affairs. 2. Laymen and women often formed confraternities. 3. In late fourteenth-century Holland, a group of laypeople formed the “Brethren and Sisters of the Common Life.” 4. For some people, lay piety found expression in mystical experiences. V. Economic and Social Change A. Peasant Revolts 1. Frequent revolts provide evidence of the suffering and exploitation of peasants. 2. Flanders was the most highly urbanized region in northern Europe. 3. Uprisings in Flanders (1323–1328) represent the first mass movements of the fourteenth century. 4. Following fighting along the French-Flemish border, heavy indemnities were placed on the peasants. 5. In response, revolts broke out in 1323, revolts that evolved into a larger movement. 6. A French army crushed the peasant forces in 1328. 7. In 1358 French peasants, tormented by famine, plague, and high taxes to finance the Hundred Years’ War, rebelled in the so-called Jacquerie. 8. 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. B. Urban Conflicts 1. Rebellions also occurred in the late fourteenth century in Florence, Spain, and the cities of Germany. 2. Revolts often occurred in cities where the conditions of work were changing for many people. 3. Urban uprisings were most often touched-off by economic issues, but they were also sparked by issues involving honor. 4. The sense of honor developed by craft and journeymen’s guilds was a gendered one. C. Sex in the City 1. The trend in this period was toward later marriage for women, especially peasant and poor urban women. 2. Men of all social groups were older when they married.

3. Letters between John and Margaret Paston of the gentry class show that Margaret managed family lands and business while John worked in London. 4. Men in their mid-twenties generally married women in their mid-teens. 5. Late age of marriage for most men and prohibitions on marriage for certain groups of men contributed to urban unrest. 6. Many cities established rules for brothels and their customers. 7. Unmarried women were often the victims of unwanted sexual contact. 8. Hostility to same-sex relations increased over the course of this period. 9. It is difficult to establish the prevalence of homosexuality in the Late Middle Ages. 10. Same-sex relations involving women almost never came to the attention of legal authorities. D. Fur-Collar Crime 1. To maintain their standard of living as prices rose, some nobles and gentry turned to outright robbery and extortion. 2. Fur-collar criminals often got away with their crimes. E. Ethnic Tensions and Restrictions 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. Only in Ireland did England impose its legal system, and exclude the Irish from it. 2. In the fourteenth century, regulations, laws, and customs discriminating among different ethnic groups on the basis of “blood descent” multiplied. These separated Germans from Slavs in Eastern Europe, Irish from English in Ireland, Spanish from Moors in Spain, and so on. F. Literacy and Vernacular Literature 1. In the fourteenth century, writers began writing in their vernacular languages all over Europe. 2. Dante Alighieri of Florence wrote the Divine Comedy in Italian. 3. Geoffrey Chaucer of London wrote The Canterbury Tales in English. 4. Beginning in the fourteenth century, literacy rates rose among men and women, reflecting the greater complexity of society, the growth of commerce, and expanding government bureaucracy.

LECTURE SUGGESTIONS 1. “The Black Death and Other Diseases and Their Impact on History.” What was the lasting importance of the Black Death? Has its significance been overrated? What other diseases have had the potential to change civilization? Can the AIDS epidemic turn the late twentieth century into a period like the later Middle Ages? Sources: D. Herlihy, The Black Death and the Transformation of the West (1997); G. Huppert, After the Black Death: A Social History of Early Modern Europe (1986); W. H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples (1976); R. S. Gottfried, The Black Death (1983). 2. “Common Folk in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries.” How did the common folk live in this time of transition? What was their view of what was going on at the top? Sources: C. Dyer, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages (1989); B. Gottlieb, The Family in the Western World from the Black Death to the Industrial Age (1993); J. Keegan, The Face of Battle (1977); D. W. Robertson, Chaucer’s London (1968).

3. “Living on the Legal Fringe of Society.” What was life like for the person living outside the law in later medieval society? Sources: M. Keen, The Outlaws of Medieval Legend (1961); P. Dale, trans., The Poems of Villon (1973); J. G. Bellamy, “The Coterel Gang: An Anatomy of a Band of Fourteenth-Century Criminals,” English Historical Review 79 (October 1964): 698–717.

USING PRIMARY SOURCES Read the selection from Christine de Pisan’s Book of the City of Ladies. Judging from Pisan’s advice to the princess regarding the behavior of her friends and attendants, in what kind of an atmosphere did courtly women live? Was the court a safe environment for women?

CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES I. Classroom Discussion Suggestions A. What were the consequences of the Black Death for European psychology, society, culture, and economy? B. How was the Conciliar Movement a threat to papal power? C. What were the causes of the Hundred Years’ War? D. Why did parliamentary development take different paths in France and England? II. Doing History A. If slides are available, show students the work of Hieronymous Bosch, especially the famous Garden of Earthly Delights. How does Bosch’s work reflect the flavor of the later Middle Ages? B. Make available to students selections from the letters of the Paston family. Allow students time to read and analyze them. Then, have students write short papers describing daily life in the late medieval period, based on the information they find in the letters. Sources: R. Barber, ed., The Pastons: Letters of a Family in the Wars of the Roses (1984). C. Why did so many laypeople get directly involved in their own religious life in the Late Middle Ages? What appealed to them about the vision of Christianity epitomized by groups like the Brethren and Sisters of the Common Life? Have students read selections from Thomas à Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ and write a short essay on the reasons for its popularity among fifteenth-century audiences. D. Scholars still debate who Robin Hood was, whether he really existed, and where and when he lived if he really did exist. Encourage students to read some of the debates in the following sources as the basis for a class discussion and/or the writing of a short paper. Sources: M. Keen, “Robin Hood—Peasant or Gentleman?” Past and Present 19 (April 1961): 17–18; J. C. Holt, Robin Hood (1982). III. Cooperative Learning Activities A. Organize the class into teams charged with reading and performing (in class) one of the tales in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Each team might include a director, a scriptwriter, a set designer, a costume designer, and actors. The plays of the tales might be set in fourteenth- century England or in more modern times. B. Images of Joan of Arc Have students reread the section in the text on Joan of Arc on page 390. Organize the class into teams of six each. Have each team write a team description of Joan. One team might write a short biographical sketch, another might draw a picture of her, another might write an editorial, and still another might create a movie poster. After completing the assignment, students should share their interpretations with the class.

MAP ACTIVITY 1. Consult the map in the text and label the following “plague cities” on an outline map of Europe. a. Durham b. London c. Calais d. Paris e. Montpellier f. Aragon g. Cologne h. Würzburg i. Milan j. Naples k. Seville l. Messina m. Erfurt n. Hamburg o. Strasbourg 2. Using Map 12.3 (Fourteenth-Century Peasant Revolts) as a reference, answer the following questions. a. Where were revolts most common? How would you explain the distribution of peasant uprisings? b. What did peasant and urban uprisings have in common? In what ways were they different? c. Is it accurate to describe the peasant revolts of the Late Middle Ages as “economic uprisings”? Why or why not?

AUDIOVISUAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Hundred Years’ War. Parts I and III. (60 min. Color. Icarus Films.) 2. Joan of Arc. (100 min. Color. Sierra Pictures-Video America.) 3. Chaucer. (28 min. Color. Films for the Humanities and Sciences.) 4. Christians, Jews, and Moslems in Medieval Spain. (33 min. Color. Films for the Humanities and Sciences.) 5. The Name of the Rose. (100 min. Color. Films, Ltd.) 6. Civilization: The Great Thaw. Parts I and II. (26 min. each. Color. Time-Life Films.) 7. Brother Felix and the Virgin Saint. (Videodisc. Color. 78 min. Films for the Humanities and Sciences.) 8. Europe Alive Guidisc. (CD-ROM. Learning Services.)

9. The Name of the Rose. (DVD, 1986) 10. The Spread of the Black Death through Europe (includes maps) (historymedren.about.com/library/weekly/aapmaps1.htm) 11. Historic Costume: From Ancient Times to the Renaissance (CD-ROM. Dover, 2003.)

INTERNET RESOURCES 1. Joan of Arc Online Archive (archive.joan-of-arc.org) 2. British Library: Images of the Hundred Years’ War (http://www.imagesonline.bl.uk/britishlibrary/controller/subjectidsearch?id=8769 ) 3. The Black Death 4. Plague and Public Health in Renaissance Europe (www.iath.virginia.edu/osheim/intro.html) 5. Dante Alighieri on the Web (www.greatdante.net) 6. Empire and Papacy: Primary Sources (www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook1l.html)

SUGGESTED READING Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century (1978) remains a vivid description of this tumultuous time. For information on the impact of climate change, see W. C. Jordan, The Great Famine: Northern Europe in the Early Fourteenth Century (1996). The best starting point for study of the great epidemic that swept the European continent is the brief book by D. Herlihy, The Black Death and the Transformation of the West (1997), a fine treatment of the causes and cultural consequences of the disease. For a longer introduction, see J.P. Byrne, The Black Death (2004). The strongest voice arguing that the Black Death was not the bubonic plague has been S. K. Cohn, The Black Death Transformed: Disease and Culture in Early Renaissance Europe (2003). Elizabeth Lehfeldt, The Black Death (2005), includes excerpts from debates about many aspects of the Black Death. P. Binski, Medieval Death: Ritual and Representation (1995), discusses the impact of the Black Death on medieval art and literature. For the social implications of the Black Death, see L. Poos, A Rural Society After the Black Death: Essex, 1350–1525 (1991), and G. Huppert, After the Black Death: A Social History of Early Modern Europe (1986). For the background and early part of the long military conflicts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, see the provocative M. M. Vale, The Origins of the Hundred Years War: The Angevin Legacy, 1250– 1340 (1996). See also C. Allmand, The Hundred Years War: England and France at War, ca 1300– 1450 (Revised ed. 2005). The broad survey of J. Keegan, A History of Warfare (1993), contains a useful summary of significant changes in military technology during the war. The main ruler of the age has found his biographer in W. M. Ormrod, The Reign of Edward III: Crown and Political Society in England, 1327–1377 (1990). J. Keegan, The Face of Battle (1977), chap. 2, “Agincourt,” describes what war meant to the ordinary soldier. For strategy, tactics, armaments, and costumes of war, see H. W. Koch, Medieval Warfare (1978), a beautifully illustrated book. For Joan of Arc, see M. Warner, Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism (1981). F. Oakley, The Western Church in the Later Middle Ages (1979), is an excellent broad survey, while R. N. Swanson, Religion and Devotion in Europe c. 1215-c. 1515 (2004) explores many aspects of spirituality. On conciliarism, see A. Black Council and Commune: The Conciliar Movement and the Fifteenth-century Heritage (1979). A. D. Brown, Popular Piety in Late Medieval England: The Diocese of Salisbury, 1250–1550 (1995), J. Henderson, Piety and Charity in Late Medieval Florence (1997) and. K.L. French, The People of the Parish: Community Life in a Late Medieval English Diocese (2000) all examine lay piety, the role of confraternities, and charitable activities. For the ideas

Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. 91 Chapter 12: The Crisis of the Later Middle Ages, 1300–1450 of the mystics, see R. Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls: Fourteenth-century Saints and their Religious Milieu (1984) and R.R. Ruether, Visionary Women: Three Medieval Mystics (2001). Peasant revolts have been analyzed in R. Hilton, Bond Men Made Free: Medieval Peasant Movements and the English Rising of 1381 (1973), A. Dunn, The Peasants’ Revolt: England’s Failed Revolution of 381 (2004) and W. H. TeBrake, A Plague of Insurrection: Popular Politics and Peasant Revolt in Flanders, 1323–1328 (1993). P. C. Maddern, Violence and Social Order: East Anglia, 1422–1442 (1991), deals with social disorder in eastern England. For social conditions more generally, see C. Dyer, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages (1989). S.A. Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris: Gender, Ideology and the Daily Lives of the Poor (2005) is an insightful look at how people viewed the poor, and how they survived. J. C. Holt, Robin Hood (1982), is a soundly researched and highly readable study of the famous outlaw. V. Bullough, Handbook of Medieval Sexaulity (1999) contains chapters on every aspect of sexuality, written by top scholars, while R.M. Karras, Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing onto Others (2005) is a brief overview. L. L. Otis, Prostitution in Medieval Society: The History of an Urban Institution in Languedoc (1987) and J. Rossiaud, Medieval Prostitution (1995) both examine prostitution’s social and cultural significance. G. Ruggiero, The Boundaries of Eros: Sex Crime and Sexuality in Renaissance Venice (1989) examines many types of illicit sexuality. On same-sex relations, besides the book by Rocke cited in the notes, see J. Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century (1981) and A. Bray, Homosexuality in Renaissance England (1995). For articles on the development of ethnic tensions, see J. Hutchinson and A.D. Smith, eds., Ethnicity (1996) The poetry of Dante and Chaucer may be read in the following editions: D. Sayers, trans., Dante: The Divine Comedy, 3 vols. (1963); N. Coghill, trans., Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1977). The social setting of Canterbury Tales is brilliantly evoked in D. W. Robertson, Jr., Chaucer’s London (1968). On literacy and schooling, see M. Keen, English Society in the Later Middle Ages, 1348–1500 (1990) and N. Orme, Medieval Schools: Roman Britain to Renaissance England (2005).