Chapter Summary

Fragmented and regionally diffuse landholdings typified the aristocratic families of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Aristocratic power threatened the centralized political authorities of the later Middle Ages.

Five aristocratic families struggled for control of the Germanic empire—the houses of Luxembourg, Wittelsbach, Habsburg, Premysl, and Anjou. Each family shifted its seat of power from western Europe to the eastern frontiers of the Germanic empire. Joining the great families in the subjection of eastern Europe were the Teutonic Knights, a crusading order that transferred its activities to the Slavic regions along the Baltic Sea. The economy of the new eastern Europe was varied. Peasants were transported from Germany into the formerly Slavic regions to support the development of an agricultural system dedicated to the commercial export of grain. In the southern regions of the frontier, discoveries of metals led to the creation of a flourishing mining industry. Dynasties established in the eastern kingdoms of Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, and the duchy of Austria existed as a result of alliances with the regional aristocracy. Typical of the eastern dynasts was Charles IV, king of Bohemia and emperor. Charles assiduously added to his power base as king of Bohemia, but decreed his disinterest in centralizing his authority as emperor. In the Golden Bull of 1356, Charles recognized the autonomy of the major princes and kings within the Germanic empire. While major states continued to develop on the eastern frontier of the empire, the western portions fragmented into literally thousands of tiny jurisdictions under bishops, imperial towns, and imperial knights. The Holy Roman Empire was not united as a state until the nineteenth century.

Competing aristocratic families also disturbed the political equanimity of western Europe. In Spain, the process of recovering the peninsula for Christianity left three squabbling kingdoms. Unity was only achieved after the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile in 1469. In northern Europe, the centralized monarchies of France and England engaged in the Hundred Years’ War. Causes of the conflict were the English king’s status as vassal of the French king for his territories in Gascony, English support for the urban rebellions in Flanders against the king of France, and the English king’s claim to the throne of France after the end of the Capetian dynasty in 1314. While dynastic disputes were the stated reason for the onset of war, the code of chivalry required the elites of England and France to engage in violent conduct. The greater size and wealth of France gave that nation a competitive advantage in warfare, but England’s greater administrative efficiency offset the natural French advantages. Armies were no longer feudal levies, but paid mercenaries and military specialists. The English army had more recent experience in newer forms of warfare and was better commanded. Not surprisingly, English armies, even when outnumbered, won the major engagements of the war. Raiding and pillaging between campaigns also destroyed much of the French countryside. Because the French kings could neither defeat the English armies nor protect the countryside from pillage, aristocratic families began to carve out independent principalities. The most important withdrawal was the duchy of Burgundy, which actually allied itself with England against the French king. Just as it appeared a total English victory might occur, a mystical peasant girl, Joan of Arc, galvanized the French army to victory before her capture and execution in 1431. Exhausted by the years of warfare, the English were pressed back to the coasts of France. The conflict ended in 1453 with the English in command of the solitary French port of Calais. As in France, continuous warfare benefited the growing power and autonomy of the aristocracy in England. Increasing aristocratic factionalism resulted in civil war from 1455 to 1485. The Wars of the Roses, the dynastic struggle between cadet branches of the English royal family and their allies, culminated in the arrival of a new royal family. The Tudor dynasty came to the throne of England in 1485.

The military violence typical of the later Middle Ages was mirrored in the social upheaval of the times. Population growth had stretched the agricultural system beyond its ability to produce. Shortly after 1300, famine and plague struck the European population. The greatest disaster to ever strike Europe, the effects of the Black Death were felt more strongly in western Europe.

Shortly after the beginning of the fourteenth century, the supply of food failed to meet the needs of the European population. Famine was followed by epidemic disease. In 1347 the plague reached Europe from central Asia. In five years the plague killed between one-half and one-third of the population. Medical knowledge was rudimentary; and people attributed the onset of the disease to divine wrath, Jewish plots, or astrological conjunctions. Nothing, of course, halted the progress of the epidemic. After the first five-year outbreak of the plague, the disease revisited Europe continually until the eighteenth century. The Black Death imposed many changes on European society. Psychologically, the artistic outlook turned toward a fascination with the imagery of death. The European economy drifted into depression. The traditional social structures that had bound lord and laborer were shattered.

The plague dramatically reduced the supply of labor and, thus, increased its market value. Peasants anticipated more favorable contractual terms for land and labor. Lords responded by demanding legislation to fix prices and wages. Similarly, craft masters attempted to gain greater restrictions on the wages of urban laborers. When kings seeking new sources of revenue for warfare increased taxation, the result was revolution in both towns and countryside. In France the peasants’ revolt against the authority of both the aristocracy and the Church was called the Jacquerie. At the same time, Parisian merchants also demanded reforms of the royal government. After a brief time, the military aristocracy made short work of both the peasant revolutionaries and the Parisian merchants. Similar peasant rebellions broke out in England in 1381, in Spain in 1395, and in Germany throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Urban revolts of guildsmen and laborers were also commonplace. Popular revolts became a permanent feature of European political relationships.

The Black Death drastically affected the urban economy of the medieval West. Demand for Italian manufactured goods and commercial activity fell. As English and French kings under wartime pressure repeatedly reneged on loans, the great banking houses of Italy experienced bankruptcy. As Italians lost their commercial dominance, German towns moved to fill the void. The Hanseatic League, a coalition of northern German towns, cooperated in the establishment of markets throughout Europe. English towns based on a native woolen cloth industry also revived as the Flemish towns waned.

Conditions after the plague widened the gap between urban poor and wealthy merchants. Fear of potential revolution created two seemingly contradictory responses: development of public assistance and repression. Towns began to take over hospitals and poorhouses formerly run by charitable and ecclesiastical organizations. Some towns created centralized relief services charged with all public assistance. At the same time, limits were placed on begging and legal punishments became more draconian. Public executions for all sorts of offenses became commonplace.

Political disarray was reflected in divisions within the Church during the later Middle Ages.

The first crisis within the Church was the so-called Babylonian captivity. In 1305, Clement V, a Frenchmen, established the papal court at Avignon rather than in Rome. Although in the Germanic empire, Avignon placed the pope under the tutelage of the king of France. For seventy years, Frenchmen dominated the Church. While the political influence of the papacy declined, the popes at Avignon distinguished themselves by the creation of an enormously efficient system of ecclesiastical taxation. One of the most important sources of income was the sale of indulgences, payment of money to assist departed souls in their penance. The other important source of revenue was the sale of Church offices. The second crisis of the Church was the Schism, created when more than one pope held office at the same time. In 1377 Pope Gregory XI returned to Rome, but died immediately. The Roman mobs demanded the election of an Italian pope and threatened violence. Cowed by the overt threat, the cardinals present in Rome chose Urban VI, an Italian bishop. Once the French Cardinals returned to France they claimed the election was invalid and held a second election that resulted in the election of a French candidate, Clement VII. The Schism divided the obedience of the Church into two warring camps. France and Scotland recognized Clement in Avignon. Germany and England chose Urban in Rome. University of Paris scholars and Church lawyers suggested that only a general council of all Christendom could end the dispute. The first attempt, the Council of Pisa of 1408, was unsuccessful. Neither pope recognized the council’s authority, and the result was the addition of a third pope to the Schism. A second council, the Council of Constance, finally resolved the split. The period of the Schism (1377-1415) badly damaged the prestige and universal authority of the papacy.

The decline of the institutional Church gave greater emphasis to less orthodox religious views. Witchcraft was not a social fixation of the Middle Ages, but became a major concern of ecclesiastical authorities after the fifteenth century. As respect for the established Church diminished, Christians sought more direct relationships with the divine through mysticism and charismatic societies. Male groups tended to focus on the doctrine of apostolic poverty still emphasized by the radical branch of the Franciscans. Female mystics concentrated on Eucharistic theology and on mystical visions of spiritual union with God.

Mysticism always bordered on heresy, particularly in the eyes of the established Church. John Wycliffe and Jan Hus were the most prominent heretics of the later Middle Ages. Wycliffe was an Englishman who attacked the wealth and property of the Church—a view supported by the English crown—as well as the authority of priests, the efficacy of indulgences, and the sanctity of the clergy. His teachings were carried to the kingdom of Bohemia where priests at the University of Prague picked them up. The leader of the Bohemian movement was Jan Hus. Adopted by the Czech nationalist movement, Hus became not only a voice for religious reform but also a rallying point against the German elite. At the Council of Constance, Hus was convicted of heresy, condemned, and burned at the stake. His death set off a Czech rebellion in Bohemia. Although the revolt fragmented and finally failed, Bohemia remained a Hussite stronghold until the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation.

The Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula were the home to Christians, Muslims and Jews. The Jewish community was a vital part of the economic life of the Peninsula and thus enjoyed special privileges which caused great resentment among the Christian peoples. The Muslims were viewed with much suspicious because of they shared the same religion with the independent Muslim state of Granada. Both groups were resented, discriminated against and periodically victims of violence. Conversion to Christianity did not bring an end to discrimination as the Iberian Christians remained suspicious that the converts were secretly practicing their old religion and used “purity of blood” statutes to bar them from advancement.

In the later Middle Ages, the union of philosophy and theology was split asunder. The creator of the new age of philosophical doubt was William of Ockham, an English Franciscan. William was a member of the radical branch of the Franciscans, who became a pamphleteer for the emperor in opposition to the authority of the popes. Philosophically, Ockham argued that no general conclusions concerning theology could be demonstrated by rational argument. His school of thought was called radical nominalism—he believed that general conclusions, or universals, could not be deduced from specific cases. Therefore, nothing could be known as a result of philosophical or theological speculation. Ockham’s radical nominalism dominated the universities after his death during the Black Death. Students began to pay greater attention to investigation of specific observations rather than engage in philosophical generalizations.

As regionalism became more pronounced in the later Middle Ages, varieties of vernacular literature rivaled the dominance of Latin prose and poetry. Most notable among the vernacular authors were the Italians, Dante Alighieri, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. Dante’s Divine Comedy, an account of the author’s heroic quest through hell, purgatory, and paradise, remains a timeless classic. The work was a personalized evaluation of medieval society in 1300. England also enjoyed a literary revitalization. William Langland and Geoffrey Chaucer, like Dante, used literary means to critique their contemporary societies. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales covered the gamut of English society from the very poor to the elite. In many ways French literature provided the models for vernacular works in all languages. Unique among later medieval authors was a French woman, Christine de Pisan, who supported herself and her family as a writer. She is virtually the sole voice presenting a feminist view of the Middle Ages. French realist poetry also marked a departure from previous medieval literary genres.