The Crisis of the Later Middle Ages

This flashcard set covers the vocabulary and key historical concepts regarding the crises of the later Middle Ages, including the Black Death, the Hundred Years' War, ecclesiastical reform movements, and social uprisings.

Little Ice Age

A period of severe weather in the first decade of the fourteenth century characterized by an unusual number of storms and torrential rains that ruined crops and led to price inflation.

Great Famine

A demographic disaster occurring between $1315$ and $1322$ in northern Europe, which contemporaries interpreted as a recurrence of the Biblical 'seven lean years' from Genesis $42$.

Pasteurella pestis

The bacillus that causes the bubonic plague, which resides in the bloodstream of an animal or the stomach of a flea.

Black Death

The bubonic plague that emerged in mainland Europe in $1348$, carried by black rats and fleas, resulting in massive population decline and social upheaval.

Bubonic form

A type of plague where the flea acts as the vector, or transmitter, of the disease.

Pneumonic form

A type of plague communicated directly from one person to another.

Buba

The classic symptom of the bubonic plague, consisting of a painful boil the size of a nut or an apple located in the armpit, groin, or on the neck.

Atra mors

A Latin phrase meaning 'dreadful death,' which was translated in the fifteenth century to 'black death'.

Flagellants

Religious extremists who whipped and scourged themselves as penance for their and society's sins, believing the plague was God's punishment for wickedness.

Statute of Laborers ($1351$)

An attempt by the English Parliament to freeze worker wages at pre-$1347$ levels to combat the labor shortages caused by the Black Death.

Salic Law

A long-obsolete sixth-century Germanic law code used by French lawyers to argue that no woman or her descendant could rule the French monarchy.

Hundred Years' War

A conflict fought intermittently from $1337$ to $1453$ between the English and French monarchies over territorial rights to Aquitaine and the French throne.

Aquitaine

The duchy for which the English king was a vassal to the French crown, eventually confiscated by Philip VI in $1337$, sparking war.

Longbow

A weapon used by English archers that allowed for rapid reloading, permitting three arrows to be fired for every one from a French crossbowman.

Joan of Arc

A French peasant girl whose visions led to the relief of the besieged city of Orléans in $1429$ and the coronation of Charles VII before she was burned as a heretic.

Babylonian Captivity

The period from $1309$ to $1376$ when the popes lived in Avignon, France, rather than Rome, leading to a decline in papal prestige.

Great Schism

The division of Western Christendom from $1378$ to $1417$ characterized by the existence of two, and later three, competing popes.

Conciliarists

Theologians who believed that church reform could best be achieved via periodic assemblies, or general councils, representing all Christian people.

Defensor Pacis

A work by Marsiglio of Padua arguing that the state is the unifying power and that the church should be subordinate to it with no inherent jurisdiction.

Lollards

Followers of John Wyclif, meaning 'mumblers of prayers and psalms,' who believed the Scriptures alone should be the standard of Christian belief.

Jan Hus

A Czech reformer who denounced church abuses and was burned at the stake in $1415$ after his views were condemned by the Council of Constance.

Merchet

A fine paid to a lord by peasant parents for a woman's marriage because the lord was losing a worker.

Banns

Public announcements of a couple's intent to marry, published on three successive Sundays to allow for any objections to the union.

Fur-collar crime

A term for criminal activity committed by nobles, such as kidnapping and extortion, named for the miniver fur only the nobility were allowed to wear.

Robin Hood

A popular outlaw hero in English folk legends who symbolized the struggle against aristocratic corruption and tyranny.

Jacquerie

A massive uprising of French peasants in $1358$ against heavy taxation from the Hundred Years' War and the criminal brigandage of the countryside.

English Peasants' Revolt of $1381$

A serious social outburst provoked by rising expectations and the reimposition of a head tax on all adult males.

Legal dualism

An early pattern in frontier regions where native peoples remained subject to traditional laws while newcomers were subject to the laws of their home countries.

Statute of Kilkenny ($1366$)

Legislation in Ireland that forbade marriage between immigrant and native stock and mandated English language, names, and apparel.

Vernacular literature

Works of literature written in the national languages of local populations rather than Latin or French.

Divine Comedy

Dante Alighieri's allegorical trilogy describing Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, written in the Italian vernacular.

Canterbury Tales

Geoffrey Chaucer's collection of narrative stories that presents a rich panorama of English social life in the fourteenth century.

Grand Testament

The greatest work of François Villon, containing bequests and a celebration of human life on earth in the vernacular of the poor and criminal.

The City of Ladies

A work by Christine de Pisan that lists the great women of history and their contributions to society.

What where the main ethnic divisions in the European frontier?

English and Irish

Dalimil Chronicles

a survey of Bohemian history pervaded with Czech hostility towards Germans

Economically what was the cause of the Black Death?