PLAGUE, WAR, AND FAMINE: ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL

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 III repudiated debts in 1337; by 1346 every major bank in Florence had failed)

trade routes to East disrupted

 

3) Pestilence

        bubonic/pneumonic/septicemic plague; See https://www.insecta-inspecta.com/fleas/bdeath/Black.html

                danse macabre; flagellants

        consequences

                mortality ↑ 20-60%

                social mores ↓

                anti-Semitism ↑

 

4) Wars

100 Years War (1339 – 1453) between England and France; Conflicts in HRE, Italy, Spain, Byzantine Empire

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) Rome → Avignon

        -Great schism  (1378-1415)

         Council of Constance → Pope Martin V

        -Growth of mysticism and heresy

                Meister Eckhart (1260-1327)

                John Wyclif (1330-84)

                John Huss (1369-1415)