4678. Between 1347 and 1350, a mysterious disease known as the " Black Death " (the bubonic plague) killed some 20 million people in Europe30 percent of the continents population. [86] Twenty-two other cities were larger than 40,000; most of these were in Italy and the Iberian peninsula, but there were also some in France, the Empire, the Low Countries, plus London in England. Villeins were peasants who were legally tied to land owned by a local lord. They also exposed Crusaders to Islamic literature, science and technologyexposure that would have a lasting effect on European intellectual life. Did You Know? [2] Popular revolts in late-medieval Europe and civil wars between nobles such as the Wars of the Roses were commonwith France fighting internally nine timesand there were international conflicts between kingdoms such as France and England in the Hundred Years' War. [2], The Great Famine of 13151317 and Black Death of 13471351 reduced the population perhaps by half or more as the Medieval Warm Period came to a close and the first century of the Little Ice Age began. After the death of the young king Vladislaus I of Hungary during the Battle of Varna in 1444 against the Ottomans, the Kingdom was placed in the hands of count John Hunyadi, who became Hungary's regent-governor (14461453). The Hungarian nobility did not accept his claim, and the result was an internal war. To indicate how common and widespread these movements became, in Germany between 1336 and 1525 there were no less than sixty phases of militant peasant unrest. 37881. Craftsmen in monasteries (and later in universities) created illuminated manuscripts: handmade sacred and secular books with colored illustrations, gold and silver lettering and other adornments. The use of the national or feudal levy was gradually replaced by paid troops of domestic retinues or foreign mercenaries. [23], The death of Alexander III of Scotland in 1286 threw the country into a succession crisis, and the English king, Edward I, was brought in to arbitrate. [64] Portugal had during the 15th century particularly under Henry the Navigator gradually explored the coast of Africa, and in 1498, Vasco da Gama found the sea route to India. Allmand (1998), pp. "[citation needed], Herlihy also examined the arguments against the Malthusian crisis, stating "if the Black Death was a response to excessive human numbers it should have arrived several decades earlier"[26] in consequence of the population growth before the Black Death. [162] Together the three poets established the Tuscan dialect as the norm for the modern Italian language. Morality plays emerged as a distinct dramatic form around 1400 and flourished until 1550, an example being The Castle of Perseverance, which depicts mankind's progress from birth to death. Edward claimed overlordship over Scotland, leading to the Wars of Scottish Independence. [77] In Eastern Europe, on the other hand, landowners were able to exploit the situation to force the peasantry into even more repressive bondage. The expansion of the Ottoman Empire cut off trading possibilities with the East. 5001. [21] In these countries, some correlation can be found between the places where poor weather reduced crop harvests and places where the bovine population was particularly negatively affected. [51] By the 14th century, however, it had almost entirely collapsed into a tributary state of the Ottoman Empire, centered on the city of Constantinople and a few enclaves in Greece. 2367. The Crisis of the Late Middle Ages was a series of events in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that ended centuries of European stability during the Late Middle Ages. [17], When a typhoid epidemic emerged, many thousands died in populated urban centres, most significantly Ypres (now in Belgium). [145], A precursor to Renaissance art can be seen already in the early 14th-century works of Giotto. [22] While there is some question of whether it was a particularly deadly strain of Yersinia pestis that caused the Black Death, research indicates no significant difference in bacterial phenotype. The Church was a powerful force in medieval England. Within the arts, humanism took the form of the Renaissance. Instead, the Catholic Church became the most powerful institution of the medieval period. The 14th and 15th centuries (the "autumn of the Middle Ages", according to Huizinga) are the period of the superannuation of some of the physical and mental structures configured in prior centuries and the bridge toward Modernity. [7] This proposition was later challenged, and it was argued that the 12th century was a period of greater cultural achievement. However the premature death of the Hungarian Lord left Pannonia defenseless and in chaos. During the Stone read more, The Knights Templar was a large organization of devout Christians during the medieval era who carried out an important mission: to protect European travelers visiting sites in the Holy Land while also carrying out military operations. [59] Other city states in northern Italy also expanded their territories and consolidated their power, primarily Milan, Venice and Genoa. The many famines preceding the Black Death, even the 'great hunger' of 1315 to 1317, did not result in any appreciable reduction in population levels". Allmand (1998), pp. Anti-Jewish pogroms were carried out all over Europe; in February 1349, 2,000 Jews were murdered in Strasbourg. [24] The English were eventually defeated, and the Scots were able to develop a stronger state under the Stewarts. [2] Along with depopulation came social unrest and endemic warfare. [111] The teachings of the Czech priest Jan Hus were based on those of John Wycliffe, yet his followers, the Hussites, were to have a much greater political impact than the Lollards. It was fatal to an estimated thirty to sixty percent of the population where the disease was present. Herlihy also brings up other, biological factors that argue against the plague as a "reckoning" by arguing "the role of famines in affecting population movements is also problematic. [46] The Grand Duchy of Moscow rose in power thereafter, winning a great victory against the Golden Horde at the Battle of Kulikovo in 1380. Soon after the end of the war in 1453, the dynastic struggles of the Wars of the Roses (c. 14551485) began, involving the rival dynasties of the House of Lancaster and House of York. By 1300, there were some 15 cities in Europe with a population of more than 50,000. 166, 232; Koenigsberger, p. 251. Many of them, however, were robbed and killed as they crossed through Muslim-controlled territories during their journey. [10] To Huizinga, whose research focused on France and the Low Countries rather than Italy, despair and decline were the main themes, not rebirth. [8] Referring to the crisis in Italian as the "Crisis of the 14th Century", Giovanni Cherubini alluded to the debate that already by 1974 had been going on "for several decades" in French, British, American, and German historiography. Hollister, p. 339; Holmes, p. 260; Koenigsberger, pp. Among these were the upheaval created by the Black Death and Hundred Years' War, and the decline of the two institutions that had long dominated European life: feudalism and the papacy. At the end of the Late Middle Ages, professional actors began to appear in England and Europe. Essentially saying the theory of absolutes, or metaphysical realism, was unnecessary to make sense of the world. [a] Meanwhile, the remaining nations of the continent were locked in almost constant international or internal conflict. It was in Valois France, under the heavy demands of the Hundred Years' War, that the armed forces gradually assumed a permanent nature. Cathedrals were the largest buildings in medieval Europe, and they could be found at the center of towns and cities across the continent. They eventually took on the imperial title of Tsar, and Moscow was described as the Third Rome. The people of the Middle Ages had squandered the advancements of their predecessors, this argument went, and mired themselves instead in what 18th-century English historian Edward Gibbon called barbarism and religion.. [112] Hus gained a great following in Bohemia, and in 1414, he was requested to appear at the Council of Constance to defend his cause. [20] Norway, on the other hand, became an inferior party of the union and remained united with Denmark until 1814. Arguing on the basis of a neo-Malthusian economics, revisionist historians recast the Black Death as a necessary and long overdue corrective to an overpopulated Europe. The Crusades began in 1095, when Pope Urban summoned a Christian army to fight its way to Jerusalem, and continued on and off until the end of the 15th century. 1604; Holmes, p. 235; Jones, pp. And religious scholars and mystics translated, interpreted and taught the Quran and other scriptural texts to people across the Middle East. A late 12th-century English account describes the presence of seven midwives at the labour of Eliza of Middleton. [86], Through battles such as Courtrai (1302), Bannockburn (1314), and Morgarten (1315), it became clear to the great territorial princes of Europe that the military advantage of the feudal cavalry was lost, and that a well equipped infantry was preferable. This way of thinking about the era in the middle of the fall of Rome and the rise of the Renaissance prevailed until relatively recently. Allmand (1998), pp. Richard III and Henry VII both maintained small companies of professional actors. If they wanted to move, or . [35], Bohemia prospered in the 14th century, and the Golden Bull of 1356 made the king of Bohemia first among the imperial electors, but the Hussite revolution threw the country into crisis. [17] The already weak harvests of the north suffered and the seven-year famine ensued. Allmand (1998), p. 169; Contamine, pp. The Kingdom of Hungary experienced a golden age during the 14th century. Combined with the influx of classical ideas was the invention of printing which facilitated dissemination of the printed word and democratized learning. Along the way, he is deserted by Kindred, Goods, and Fellowship only Good Deeds goes with him to the grave. 356; Ozment, p. 165. This includes political and military events, as well as the dates of inventions, new writings and religious matters in Africa, Asia and Europe. [15], The situation gradually led to the consolidation of central authority and the emergence of the nation state. [167] From the early 13th century, the dominant sacred musical form had been the motet; a composition with text in several parts. Some of medieval literatures most famous stories include The Song of Roland and The Song of Hildebrand.. Introduction: Crisis of the late Middle Ages? [135], In the 14th century, the predominant academic trend of scholasticism was challenged by the humanist movement.