The Late Medieval Age of Crisis and Renewal, 1300-1500
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The Late Medieval Age of Crisis and Renewal, 1300–1500: A Biographical Dictionary Clayton J. Drees Editor GREENWOOD PRESS The Late Medieval Age of Crisis and Renewal, 1300–1500 Recent Titles in The Great Cultural Eras of the Western World Renaissance and Reformation, 1500–1620: A Biographical Dictionary Jo Eldridge Carney, editor The Late Medieval Age of Crisis and Renewal, 1300–1500 A Biographical Dictionary Edited by CLAYTON J. DREES The Great Cultural Eras of the Western World Ronald H. Fritze, Series Adviser GREENWOOD PRESS Westport, Connecticut • London Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The late medieval age of crisis and renewal, 1300–1500 : a biographical dictionary / edited by Clayton J. Drees. p. cm.—(The great cultural eras of the Western world) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–313–30588–9 (alk. paper) 1. Civilization, Medieval—Dictionaries. 2. Europe—History—476–1492—Biography— Dictionaries. 3. Europe—History—1492–1517—Biography—Dictionaries. 4. Europe— Social conditions—To 1492—Dictionaries. I. Drees, Clayton J. II. Series. CB353.L38 2001 940.1—dc21 00–022335 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright ᭧ 2001 by Clayton J. Drees All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 00–022335 ISBN: 0–313–30588–9 First published in 2001 Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.greenwood.com Printed in the United States of America TM The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984). 10987654321 Contents Introduction vii The Dictionary 1 Appendix I: Figures by Geographical Region 513 Appendix II: Figures by Occupation 519 Selected Bibliography 527 Index 533 Contributors 545 Introduction This volume features biographical vignettes of important figures who lived in Europe during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. As such, it encompasses a period that witnessed a great deal of both crisis and renewal. As Europe emerged from the late Middle Ages, social, demographic, and economic calamities— some of them devastating in their scope and consequences—changed the way Europeans viewed their universe and their place in it. Old notions of community, spirituality, prosperity, and creativity were swept away in the successive crises of war, religious contention, and plague that seemed to dominate the fourteenth- century experience. Yet these disruptive changes allowed a fresh breeze of cul- tural renewal to blow over Europe to build upon, and in some ways to replace, the exhausted intellectual energies of the passing medieval age. Germinating at the very climax of crisis in the fourteenth century, this seed of renewal sprouted first in Italy and then, over time, spread through the Continent and was carried forth to the world in the vessels and minds of bold explorers. Thus in apparent disaster was born cultural refreshment. In loss Europeans discovered opportu- nity, and in crisis they found renewal, a rebirth of interest in ancient wisdom and human achievement that we have come to call the Renaissance. The medieval world that was visited by crisis in the fourteenth century had evolved only very slowly from the time of the collapse of the Roman Empire in the fifth century A.D. Late medieval Europe was still an overwhelmingly agrarian society, based upon the feudal relationship between protective landlord and serving or rent-paying peasant, and was still defined by the agricultural season cycle and by a “great chain of being” social order that assigned each individual his or her position in a collective Christian universe. Some medieval men and women, however, also lived in towns by the fourteenth century. There master craftsmen plied their trades as members of powerful guilds, while others traveled to regional fairs and even across Europe to more distant markets to sell goods for profit as merchants. One unifying element in this social and economic viii Introduction milieu was the Roman church, to which the vast majority of western Europeans belonged and in whose teachings they unequivocally believed. The church, di- rected from Rome by the pope through regional bishops and local parish priests, provided Christians with a rich ceremonial culture, a strict moral code, and the means (sacraments, pilgrimages, and good works) by which they might attain everlasting life in heaven after death. The influence of the church in the daily lives of late medieval believers was all-pervasive and extended not only to the organization of time (liturgical calendar) and the economy (landownership), but also to the intellectual enterprises of the age. Great universities had appeared all over western Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. These institu- tions were largely staffed by Franciscan and Dominican professors who, though they spent some time teaching the seven liberal arts to their students, otherwise considered and debated the truths of universals and theology through the Scho- lastic reconciliation of faith and reason achieved by the thirteenth-century thinker Thomas Aquinas. The church also played an active role in the ordering and management of kingdoms. By the fourteenth century rulers of emerging feudal states such as France, England, Scotland, the Holy Roman Empire, Castile, Aragon, Burgundy and others sought to fulfill their God-given “priestly” duty to protect Christian society from the threats of religious heresy and Muslim encroachment. Such rulers often employed educated prelates as royal advisors, in this way allowing some of Christendom’s most able and ambitious intellects to rise to positions of great power in the service of both the Crown and the church. Late medieval Europe was, therefore, a largely agrarian, commercially and intellectually active, Christian and hierarchical world that had remained relatively insulated and had changed only very gradually during the preceding millennium. Yet, unknown to these people who lived out their lives in the cyclical certainty of an invariable Christian universe, cataclysmic changes were at hand. Unexpected as crisis may have been, when it came, it struck with vehemence at the very heart of the European experience. One of the most difficult ordeals of the late medieval age began innocently enough in 1305 when the newly elected French pope, *Clement V, decided to remain in southern France rather than return to the traditional seat of papal authority in Rome. (In this volume, an asterisk indicates a cross-reference to another entry.) This was not unusual at a time when pontiffs were often away from the Eternal City for long periods of time, but Pope Clement’s decision soon became a precedent as successive popes at first remained and then established their permanent residence in the Provenc¸al town of Avignon. So began what critics called the Babylonian Cap- tivity of the papacy, a seventy-three-year span during which the bishops of Rome, and with them directive power over the entire church, remained absent from the See of St. Peter. This crisis of papal residence and dominion violently shook the foundations of Christendom as educated and simple believers alike questioned pontifical authority and the very truth of church doctrines themselves. Then between 1376 and 1378, when Pope Gregory XI finally did restore the Introduction ix papacy to Rome, a group of French cardinals elected their own pope in Avignon, and so began the great Papal Schism. This proved to be a second and far more serious crisis for the church as two and sometimes three rival popes excom- municated one another in attempts to attract papal tax revenues and the support of European monarchs. The schism took several church councils and nearly forty years to heal, but doubts sown among the Christian faithful during this divisive time never really faded and were exacerbated later in the fifteenth century when a series of particularly corrupt popes in Rome further alienated an already-wary populace. Another crisis of the late Middle Ages primarily involved France, and to a lesser extent England, when these two kingdoms clashed in the so-called Hun- dred Years’ War. Actually a series of battles and skirmishes during the period 1337–1453, this struggle sorely tested the French people since most of the fight- ing occurred on their soil. It was also a particularly destructive war in that both armies were largely composed of mercenary troops who plundered freely and lived off the land rather than carry their own supplies. The war also saw the first use in Europe of firearms, which, although they were primitive and often more dangerous to the gunners than to the target, nevertheless opened the door to the use of more sophisticated and accurate guns as the conflict dragged on. The Hundred Years’ War was in some respects the first “modern” war in its ravaging effects on civilians and the countryside, in the sheer size of the war effort on the part of the combatants, and in the more “national” character of a conflict that loomed larger than the dynastic and feudal clashes of old. Easily the most catastrophic event of the fourteenth century, and perhaps in the entire history of Europe, was the epidemic known as the Black Death, which initially swept through the Continent between 1347 and 1351 and returned in- termittently during the next few centuries. We now know that the Black Death was a combination of bubonic plague, carried by fleas that jumped from rats to human hosts, and pneumonia, which struck Europeans already weakened by a shortage of food due to overpopulation and a series of poor harvests. After flea- infested rats arrived in Italy late in 1347 aboard trading vessels from the Levant, the lethal disease spread quickly until, in a few years’ time, it had claimed the lives of some 40 percent of Europe’s total population.