Chapter 11 - The Later Middle Ages: Crisis and Disintegration in the Late Fourteenth Century

Chapter 11.1 - A Time of Troubles: Black Death and Social Crisis

• Europe seemed to have reached an upper limit to population growth, and the number of poor appeared to have increased noticeably.

• This, they argue, helps explain the high mortality of the great plague known as the Black Death. In the mid-fourteenth century, the disaster known as the Black Death struck Asia, North Africa, and Europe.

• Although there were several types of plague, the most common and most important form in the diffusion of the Black Death was bubonic plague, which was spread by black rats infested with fleas who were host to the deadly bacterium Yersinia pestis.

  Economic Dislocation and Social Upheaval

• The population collapse of the fourteenth century had dire economic and social consequences. In the fourteenth century, a series of urban and rural revolts rocked European society.

• Both peasants and noble landlords were affected by the demographic crisis of the fourteenth century.

• Most noticeably, Europe experienced a serious labor shortage that caused a dramatic rise in the price of labor.

• At Cuxham manor in England, for example, a farm laborer who had received two shillings a week in 1347 was paid seven in 1349 and almost eleven by 1350.

• At the same time, the decline in population depressed or held stable the demand for agricultural produce, resulting in stable or falling prices for output .

• The English Parliament passed the Statute of Laborers , which attempted to limit wages to preplague levels and forbid the mobility of peasants as well.

• Overall, the position of landlords continued to deteriorate during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.

• At the same time, conditions for peasants improved, though not uniformly throughout Europe.

• The decline in the number of peasants after the Black Death accelerated the process of converting labor services to rents, freeing peasants from the obligations of servile tenure and weakening the system of manorialism.

• But there were limits to how much the peasants could advance. Peasant complaints became widespread and soon gave rise to rural revolts.

• The English Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 was the most prominent of all.

• After the Black Death, the condition of the English peasants had improved as they enjoyed greater freedom and higher wages or lower rents.

• Aristocratic landlords had fought back with legislation to depress wages and attempted to reimpose old feudal dues.

• The most immediate cause of the revolt, how-ever, was the monarchy’s attempt to raise revenues by imposing a poll tax or a flat charge on each adult member of the population.

• Peasants in eastern England, the wealthiest part of the country, refused to pay the tax and expelled the collectors forcibly from their villages.

• This action sparked a widespread rebellion of both peasants and townspeople led by a well-to-do peasant called Wat Tyler and a preacher named John Ball.

• In urban areas, where capitalist industrialists paid low wages and managed to prevent workers from forming organizations to help themselves, industrial revolts broke out throughout Europe.

• The ciompi were wool workers in Florence’s most prominent industry.

• In the 1370s, not only was the woolen industry depressed, but the wool workers saw their real wages decline when the coinage in which they were paid was debased.

Chapter 11.2 - War and Political Instability

• In 1259, the English king, Henry III, had relinquished his claims to all the French territories previously held by the English monarchy except for one relatively small possession known as the duchy of Gascony.

• As duke of Gascony, the English king pledged loyalty as a vassal to the French king. But this territory gave rise to numerous disputes between the kings of England and France.

• Although this policy irritated all the vassals, it especially annoyed the king of England, who considered himself the peer of the French king.

• A dispute over the right of succession to the French throne also complicated relations between the French and the English.

• In 1328, the last son of King Philip IV died with-out a male heir.

• The closest male relative in line to the throne was King Edward III of England , whose mother was Isabella, the daughter of Philip IV .

• Known for her strong personality , Isabella, with the assistance of her lover, led a revolt against her husband, King Edward II, overthrew him, and ruled England until her teenage son, Edward III, took sole control of the throne in 1330.

• As the son of the daughter of King Philip IV, King Edward III of England had a claim to the French throne, but the French nobles argued that the inheritance of the monarchy could not pass through the female line and chose a cousin of the Capetians, Philip, duke of Valois , as King Philip VI .

• In 1337, when Edward III, the king of England and duke of Gascony, refused to do homage to Philip VI for Gascony, the French king seized the duchy.

• Edward responded by declaring war on Phi-lip, the ‘‘so-called king of France.

• The French army of 1337, with its heavily armed noble cavalry, resembled its twelfth- and thirteenth-century forebears.

  The States of Italy

• Italy, too, had failed to develop a centralized monarchical state by the fourteenth century.

• Papal opposition to the rule of the Hohenstaufen emperors in northern Italy had virtually guaranteed that.

• Moreover, southern Italy was divided into the kingdom of Naples, ruled by the French house of Anjou, and Sicily, whose kings came from the Spanish house of Ara-gon.

• In this fashion, the Visconti became the dukes of Milan and the d’Este, the dukes of Ferrara.

• To fight their battles, city-states came to rely on mercenary soldiers, whose leaders, called condottieri , sold the services of their bands to the highest bidder.

• Located in the fertile Po valley, at the intersection of the chief trade routes from Italian coastal cities to the Alpine passes, Milan was one of the richest city-states in Italy.

• Politically, it was also one of the most agitated until the Visconti family established them-selves as the hereditary des-pots of Milan in 1322.

• Under Giangaleazzo’s direction, the duchy of Milan extended its power over all of Lombardy and even threatened to conquer much of northern Italy until the duke's untimely death before the gates of Florence in 1402.

• Florence, like the other Italian towns, was initially a free commune dominated by a patrician class of nobles known as the grandi . ’’

• In 1293, the popolo grasso assumed a dominant role in government by establishing a new constitution known as the Ordinances of Justice.

• It provided for a republican government controlled by the seven major guilds of the city, which represented the interests of the wealthier classes.

• Around the mid-fourteenth century, revolutionary activity by the popolo minuto, the small shopkeepers and artisans, won them a share in the government.

• Even greater expansion occurred briefly when the ciompi, or industrial wool workers, were allowed to be represented in the government after their revolt in 1378.

• Only four years later, however, a counterrevolution brought the ‘‘fat people’’ back into virtual control of the government.

• After 1382, the Florentine government was controlled by a small merchant oligarchy that manipulated the supposedly re-publican government.

• By that time, Florence had also been successful in a series of wars against its neighbors.

• It had conquered most of Tuscany and established itself as a major territorial state in northern Italy

Chapter 11.3 - The Decline of the Church

• The struggle between the papacy and the monarchies began during the pontificate of Pope Boniface VIII .
• One major issue appeared to be at stake between the pope and King Philip IV of France. In his desire to acquire new revenues, Philip claimed the right to tax the French clergy.
• Boniface VIII responded that the clergy of any state could not pay taxes to their secular ruler without the pope’s consent.
• Underlying this issue, however, was a basic conflict between the claims of the papacy to universal authority over both church and state, which necessitated complete control over the clergy, and the claims of the king that all subjects, including the clergy, were under the jurisdiction of the crown and subject to the king’s authority on matters of taxation and justice.
• In short, the fundamental issue was the universal sovereignty of the papacy versus the royal sovereignty of the monarch. Boniface VIII asserted his position in a series of papal bulls or letters, the most important of which was Unam Sanctam , issued in 1302.
• It was the strongest statement ever made by a pope on the supremacy of spiritual authority over temporal authority .
• When it became apparent that the pope had decided to act on his principles by excommunicating Philip IV, the latter sent a small contingent of French forces to capture Boniface and bring him back to France for trial.
• The pope was captured in Anagni, although Italian nobles from the sur-rounding countryside soon rescued him.
• The shock of this experience, however, soon led to the pope’s death.
• Philip’s strong-arm tactics had produced a clear victory for the national monarchy over the papacy, and no later pope has dared renew the extravagant claims of Boniface VIII.
• The seeming preoccupation of the popes and leading clerics with finances and power during the struggles of Boniface VIII, the Avignonese papacy, and the Great Schism could not help but lead to a decline in prestige and respect for the institutional church, especially the papacy.
• At the same time, in the fourteenth century, the Black Death and its recurrences made an important impact on the religious life of ordinary Christians by heightening their preoccupation with death and salvation. Christians responded in different ways to the adversities of the fourteenth century.
• This is particularly evident in the popularity of mysticism and lay piety in the fourteenth century.
• The fourteenth century presented challenges not only to the institutional church but also to its theological framework, especially evident in the questioning of the grand synthesis attempted by Thomas Aquinas.
• In the thirteenth century, Aquinas’s grand synthesis of faith and reason was not widely accepted outside his own Dominican order. In the fourteenth century, however, the philosopher William of Occam posed a severe challenge to the scholastic achievements of the High Middle Ages.
• Occam posited a radical interpretation of nominalism.
• The acceptance of Occam’s nominalism philosophy at the University of Paris brought an element of uncertainty to late medieval theology by seriously weakening the synthesis of faith and reason that had characterized the theological thought of the High Middle Ages.
• Nevertheless, Occam’s emphasis on using reason to analyze the observable phenomena of the world had an important impact on the development of physical science by creating support for rational and scientific analysis.

Chapter 11.4 - The Cultural World of the Fourteenth Century

• The cultural life of the fourteenth century was also characterized by ferment.
• In art, in addition to the morbid themes inspired by the Black Death and other problems of the century, the period also produced Giotto, whose paintings expressed a new realism that would be developed further by the artists of the next century.
• Although Latin remained the language of the church liturgy and the official documents of both church and state through-out Europe, the fourteenth century witnessed the rapid growth of vernacular literature, especially in Italy.
• Until the end of his life, Dante hoped to return to his beloved Florence, but his wish remained unfulfilled.
• Dante’s masterpiece in the Italian vernacular was the Divine Comedy, written between 1313 and 1321.
• In the ‘‘Inferno’’ , Dante is led by his guide, the Classical author Virgil, who is a symbol of human reason. ’’ Here Beatrice presents Dante to Saint Bernard, a symbol of mystical contemplation.
• The saint turns Dante over to the Virgin Mary, since grace is necessary to achieve the final step of entering the presence of God, where one beholds ‘‘the love that moves the sun and the other stars.
• The fourteenth century produced an artistic outburst in new directions as well as a large body of morbid work influenced by the Black Death and the recurrences of the plague.
• The city of Florence witnessed the first dramatic break with medieval tradition in the work of Giotto , often considered a forerunner of Italian Renaissance painting.
• Born into a peasant family, Giotto acquired his painting skills in a workshop in Florence.
• Coming out of the formal Byzantine school, Giotto transcended it with a new kind of realism, a desire to imitate nature that Renaissance artists later identified as the basic component of Classical art.
• Although Giotto had no direct successors, Florentine painting in the early fifteenth century pursued even more dramatically the new direction his work represents

Chapter 11.5 - Society in an Age of Adversity

• One immediate by-product of the Black Death was greater regulation of urban activities by town governments.

• Since many males in medieval towns married late, the demand for prostitutes was high and was met by a regular supply, derived no doubt from the need of many poor girls and women to survive.

• It was assumed that the regulation of prostitution made it easier to supervise and hence maintained public order.

  Inventions and New Patterns

• Despite its problems, the fourteenth century witnessed a continuation of the technological innovations that had characterized the High Middle Ages.

• The mechanical clock was invented at the end of the thirteenth century but not perfected until the fourteenth.

• The best-designed one was constructed by Giovanni di Dondi in the mid-fourteenth century. Dondi’s clock contained the signs of the zodiac but also struck on the hour.

• Throughout most of the Middle Ages, time was deter-mined by natural rhythms or church bells that were rung at more or less regular three-hour intervals, corresponding to the ecclesiastical offices of the church.

• At the same time, a significant change in writing materials occurred in the fourteenth century when parchment was supplemented by much cheaper paper made from cotton rags.

• Although it was more subject to insect and water damage than parchment, medieval paper was actually superior to modern papers made of high-acid wood pulp.

• Invented earlier by the Chinese, gunpowder also made its appearance in the West in the fourteenth century.

• The use of gunpowder eventually brought drastic changes to European warfare. Gunpowder made castles, city walls, and armored knights obsolete.

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