Disasters of the Fourteenth Century

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Disasters of the Fourteenth Century

• Day 3-4
• McKay Chapter 12

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Bring Out Your Dead
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Late Medieval Europe
1st Crusade
Hundred Years War Begins
Babylonian Captivity begins
Great Schism Begins
Secularism Grows
Church Power declines
1095 1200 1309 1315 1337 1348 1378
Black Death Begins
Great Famine Begins
Era of Gothic Cathedrals
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How would you describe life in Europe during the
14th Century?

• It wasnt swell!
• Little Ice Age
• Growing season shorter
• How do they know this?

Annual growth bands in a stalactite with reduced
growth in the Little Ice Age
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The Black Death

• one of the deadliest pandemics in human history,
  peaking in Europe between 1348 and 1350.

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Causes According to Medieval People

• alignment of the planets
• foul air
• Jewish conspiracy
• Gods punishment

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The Great Famine of 1315-1317

• By 1300 Europeans were over farming
• Too many people using too little land
• Excessive rain for three years caused massive
  crop failures between 1315-17
• 15 of the peasants in some English villages died
• Led to starvation povertywas susceptibility
  todisease

"When God saw that the world was so over
proud,He sent a dearth on earth, and made it
full hard.A bushel of wheat was at four
shillings or more,Of which men might have had a
quarter before....And then they turned pale who
had laughed so loud,And they became all docile
who before were so proud.A man's heart might
bleed for to hear the cryOf poor men who called
out, "Alas! For hunger I die ...!" Poem on the
Evil Times of Edward II, c. 1321.
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1347 Plague Reaches Constantinople!
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Why did it spread so rapidly?

• Sanitation/ hygiene
• Overcrowded cities/houses/ hospitals
• Malnourished population
• New trade routes

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Characteristics

• 2 Strains
• Bubonic
• Flea to person
• Pneumonic
• Person to person
• Flu-like symptoms
• Egg-sized lumps from lymph nodes
• Infection of lungs
• Victims died in 1 to 6 days
• A disease of revulsion

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From the Toggenburg Bible, 1411
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Boccaccio in The Decameron
The victims ate lunch with their friends and
dinner with their ancestors.
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Attempts to Stop the Plague
Leeching
Lancing the Bubal
A Doctors Robe
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Attempts to Stop the Plague
FlagellantiSelf-inflicted penance for our
sins!
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Scapegoats
Jews are burned alive during the Black Death.
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The Flagellants and the Medieval Epistemology
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Ring Around the RosieA Pocket Full of
PosiesAshes, AshesWe All Fall Down
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Results of the Black Death

• Economic
• Huge labor shortage
• Wages rise
• Production falls
• Prices rise
• Political
• Power vacuum as many lords perish
• Greatly diminishes feudalism power of the
  Church
• Allows New Monarchs to begin to centralize
  power
• Social
• Feudal distinctions erode
• 33 of population perish
• Anti-Semitism rose
• Secular thought begins
• Theme of death permeates weltanschauung

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Hundred Years War (1337-1453)

• A series of wars between England and France (116
  years)
• Causes
• Capetian line (Sons of Philip the Fair) died
  without direct male heir in 1320s
• English King Edward III (Philip the Fairs
  grandson) claimed French crown
• Denied on grounds that Sallic law forbade
  inheritance through female line

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Significance

• Coincides with outbreak of Black Death
• Took place in France Low Countries
• Devastated and weakened the nobles of France
• Last hurrah for chivalry
• Battle of Crécy (1346), the English disregarded
  the chivalric code and used new military tactics
  the longbow and the cannon
• Joan of Arc
• Lifted siege at Orleans (1429)
• Tried and executed as a witch in 1431
• Ignites French patriotism
• England ousted from France

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Social Tensions

• Jacquerie (1358)
• nickname for any peasant insurrection
• Nobility prestige had sunk after Poitiers
• Fled battlefield
• Nobles demanded more corvee
• Villages pillaged by marauders
• Thousands of peasants rose up
• Intense violence directed at lords
• Burned castles, murdered lords
• Watt Tylers rebellion (1381)
• English peasant rebellion against an oppressive
  poll tax
• Led by Walter Tyler
• Invaded London w/ 50 thousand
• Watt murdered by King Richard IIs vassal on
  London Bridge
• Significance
• Peasant ultimately better off

Death of Watt Tyler at London Bridge
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The Great Schism

• Babylonian Captivity (1309-1377)
• King Philip the Fair of France kidnapped the pope
  forced in to live in the French city of Avignon
• Papacy became a tool of French
• Papacy returned to Rome in 1377
• Urban VI
• A reformer who attempted to stop church
  corruption
• Cardinals fired Urban elected , Clement VII
• Now two popes claimed Saint Peters Keys
• Great Schism (1378-1417)
• England/Germany recognize Urban VI
• France recognize Clement VII
• Papal prestige sank even lower

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Conciliar Movement

• Conciliarists
• believed that church authority rested in councils
  representing the people--not the authority of the
  pope
• Council of Constance (1414)
• Ends schism
• Discourage heresy
• Jan Huss who had questioned the need for Church
  hierarchy executed
• Cardinals elect Pope Martin V
• Wanted to rule Church as a Constitutional
  Monarchy
• Martin dissolves Council
• Refuses reform
• Church ruled by Pope not council (Absolutism)
• Church remains entrenched in medievalism
  

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Results of the Disasters

• Church lost power
• Secularism rises
• Population declines
• Wages rise
• Revolts break out
• Favorable position for peasants
• Fixed rents
• Property owning class emerges
• Feudalism breaks down
• Kings begin to centralize power
• Trade reemerges
• Renaissance begins!!!

Before
After