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CHAPTER OUTLINE AND FOCUS QUESTIONS

A Time of Troubles: Black Death and Social Crisis

What impact did the Black Death have on the society and economy of Europe?

War and Political Instability

What major problems did European states face in the fourteenth century?

The Decline of the Church

How and why did the authority and prestige of the papacy decline in the fourteenth century?

The Cultural World of the Fourteenth Century

What were the major developments in art and literature in the fourteenth century?

Society in an Age of Adversity

How did the adversities of the fourteenth century affect urban life and medical practices?

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CRITICAL THINKING

Make an argument either for or against the idea that climate and disease played a major role in producing social, economic, and political changes in the fourteenth century.

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AS A RESULT OF THEIR CONQUESTS in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the Mongols created a vast empire stretching from Russia in the west to China in the east. Mongol rule brought stability to the Eurasian trade routes; increased trade brought prosperity but also avenues for the spread of flea-infested rats that carried bubonic plague to both East Asia and Europe. The mid-fourteenth century witnessed one of the most destructive natural disasters in history—the Black Death. One contemporary observer named Henry Knighton, a canon of Saint Mary of the Meadow Abbey in Leicester, England, was simply overwhelmed by the magnitude of the catastrophe. Knighton began his account of the great plague with these words: “In this year [1348] and in the following one there was a general mortality of people throughout the whole world.” Few were left untouched; the plague struck even isolated monasteries: “At Montpellier, there remained out of a hundred and forty friars only seven.” Animals, too, were devastated: “During this same year, there was a great mortality of sheep everywhere in the kingdom; in one place and in one pasture, more than five thousand sheep died and became so putrefied that neither beast nor bird wanted to touch them.” Knighton was also stunned by the economic and social consequences of the Black Death. Prices dropped: “And the price of everything was cheap, because of the fear of death; there were very few who took any care for their wealth, or for anything else.” Meanwhile laborers were scarce, so their wages increased: “In the following autumn, one could not hire a reaper at a lower wage than eight pence with food, or a mower at less than twelve pence with food. Because of this, much grain rotted in the fields for lack of harvesting.” So many people died that some towns were deserted and some villages disappeared altogether: “Many small villages and hamlets were completely deserted; there was not one house left in them, but all those who had lived in them were dead.” Some people thought the end of the world was at hand.

Plague was not the only disaster in the fourteenth century. Signs of disintegration were everywhere: famine, economic depression, war, social upheaval, a rise in crime and violence, and a decline in the power of the universal Catholic Church. Periods of disintegration, however, are often fertile ground for change and new developments. Out of the dissolution of medieval civilization came a rebirth of culture that many historians have labeled the Renaissance.

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A Time of Troubles: Black Death and Social Crisis

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FOCUS QUESTION: What impact did the Black Death have on the society and economy of Europe?

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Well into the thirteenth century, Europe had experienced good harvests and an expanding population. By the end of the century, however, a period of disastrous changes had begun.

Famine and Population

Toward the end of the thirteenth century, noticeable changes in weather patterns were occurring as Europe entered a period that has been called a “little ice age.” A small drop in overall temperatures resulted in shortened