PLAGUE, WAR,
CRISES OF THE LATE MIDDLE
AGES (ca. 1300-1500)
Late Middle Ages was “time of
troubles” for Europeans:
1)
Agricultural problems
marginal
lands too poor to farm
weather colder and wetter (floods,
famine)
2) Commercial
crises
bank
failures (Edward
trade
routes to East disrupted
3) Pestilence
bubonic/pneumonic/septicemic
plague
danse
macabre; flagellants
consequences
mortality ↑ 20-60%
social mores ↓
anti-Semitism ↑
4)
Wars
100
Years War (1339 – 1453) between
Economic and Social Consequences of Depression,
War, and Plague
1) Population ↓ Wages ↑ Rents ↓
2) Social unrest
1358 Jacquerie
1381 English Peasants’ Revolt
1378 Ciompi Uprising
3) Failure of feudalism and church to solve problems
a) change in military
technology and rise of nation-states
↓
importance of feudal knight
b) crises in church
Church affected by:
-growth of national monarchies
1296 Clericis
Laicos
1302 Unam
Sanctum
*Pope Boniface vs. King Philip
IV
-Babylonian captivity of Papacy
(1305-78)
-Great schism (1378-1415)
Council of
-Growth of mysticism and heresy
Meister Eckhart
(1260-1327)
John Wyclif
(1330-84)
John Huss
(1369-1415)