Troubles of the 14th Century

Crusades and Renaissance—Troubles of the 14th century—Notes #2

The Big Idea

In the 1300s, Europe was torn apart by religious strife, famine, the bubonic plague, and the Hundred Years’ war

Key Terms and People

Avignon-city in France

Great Schism-split of the church

John Wycliffe-english religious scholar

Jan Hus-Bohemian professor

Great Famine-famine in Europe from 1315-1317

Black Death-epidemic in the 1300s

bubonic plague-type of the black death

Hundred Years’ War-The war that Edward III launched for that throne continued on and off from 1337 to 1453

Joan of Arc-teenage French peasant girl

BACKGROUND:The 1300s were filled with disasters, both natural and human made. The Church seemed to be thriving but soon would face a huge division. Europe’s booming population experienced a devastating famine. Then a deadly epidemic claimed millions of lives. So many people died in the epidemic that the structure of the economy changed. Claims to thrones in France and England led to wars in those lands. The wars would result in changes in the governments of both France and England. By the end of the century, the medieval way of life was beginning to dissapear. At the beginning of the 1300s, the Age of Faith still seemed strong.

• Soon, however, both the pope and the Church were in desperate trouble

• In 1300, Pope Boniface VIII attempted to enforce papal authority on kings as previous popes had

• When King Philip IV of France asserted his authority over French bishops, Boniface responded with an official document

• It stated that kings must always obey popes

• Philip merely sneered at this statement. In fact, one of Philip’s ministers is said to have remarked that “my master’s sword is made of steel, the pope’s is made of [words].”

• Instead of obeying the pope, Philip had him held prisoner in September 1303

• The king planned to bring him to France for trial

• The pope was rescued, but the elderly Boniface died a month later

• -Never again would a pope be able to force monarchs to obey him

• In 1305, Philip IV persuaded the College of Cardinals to choose a French archbishop as the new pope

• Clement V, the newly selected pope, moved from Rome to the city of Avignon in France

• Popes would live there for the next 69 years

• The move to Avignon badly weakened the Church

• When reformers finally tried to move the papacy back to Rome, however, the result was even worse

• In 1378, Pope Gregory XI died while visiting Rome

• The College of Cardinals then met in Rome to choose a successor

• As they deliberated, they could hear a mob outside screaming, “A Roman, a Roman, we want a Roman for pope, or at least an Italian!”

• Finally, the cardinals announced to the crowd that an Italian had been chosen: Pope Urban VI.

• Many cardinals regretted their choice almost immediately

  Urban VI’s passion for reform and his arrogant personality caused the cardinals to elect a second pope a few months later

• They chose Robert of Geneva who spoke French

• He took the name Clement VII

• Now there were two popes

• Each declared the other to be a false pope, excommunicating his rival

• The French pope lived in Avignon, while the Italian pope lived in Rome

• This began the split in the Church known as the Great Schism, or division

• In 1414, the Council of Constance attempted to end the Great Schism by choosing a single pope

• By now, there were a total of three popes: the Avignon pope, the Roman pope, and a third pope elected by an earlier council at Pisa

• With the help of the Holy Roman Emperor, the council forced all three popes to resign

• In 1417, the Council chose a new pope, Martin V

• The Great Schism finally had ended, but it left the papacy greatly weakened

• The papacy was further challenged by an Englishman named John Wycliffe

• He preached that Jesus Christ, not the pope, was the true head of the Church

• He was much offended by the worldliness and wealth many clergy displayed

• Wycliffe believed that the clergy should own no land or wealth

• Wycliffe also taught that the Bible alone—not the pope—was the final authority for Christian life

• He helped spread this idea by inspiring an English translation of the New Testament of the Bible

• Influenced by Wycliffe’s writings, Jan Hus, a professor in Bohemia taught that the authority of the Bible was higher than that of the pope

• Hus was excommunicated in 1412

• In

• 1414 he was seized by Church leaders, tried as a heretic, and then burned at the stake in 1415

• By 1300, Europe’s population was booming

• Then a series of disasters struck, beginning with the Great Famine

• From 1315 to 1317, abnormally severe winters and torrential rains throughout the spring and summer growing seasons ruined crop yields across northern Europe

• Grains were the main staple of the European diet, but soggy fields became difficult,

  if not impossible, to plow

• In addition, the inclement weather limited the ability to dry or cure hay to feed livestock

• In desperation, starving people ate the grain seeds they needed to plant more crops and killed the animals they used to plow the fields

• The famine devastated the population and damaged the social network

• Its lingering effects were felt until the early 1320s

• However, the longer-term impact on this population whose immune systems were weakened by famine would prove costly

• During the 1300s an epidemic struck parts of Asia, North Africa, and Europe

• Approximately one-third of the population of Europe, and millions more in Asia and Africa, died of the deadly disease known as the Black Death

• It got this name because of the purplish or black spots it produced on the skin

• This devastating plague swept across Europe between 1347 and 1351

• Historians are still not sure what disease the Black Death was, or even if it was a single disease

• One theory is that the disease took two different forms. One, called bubonic plague, was spread by fleas that lived on rats and other animals. The other, pneumonic plague,

• could be spread through the air from person to person through coughs and sneezes. Pneumonic plague spread more quickly

• Unlike catastrophes that pull communities together, this epidemic was so terrifying that it ripped apart the very fabric of society

• In 1346, plague struck Mongol armies laying siege to Kaffa, a port on the Black Sea

• From there rats infested with fleas carrying the disease made their way onto ships

• Infected fleas bit humans transferring the disease to them

• As merchants traveled, so did the plague

• It spread quickly throughout Europe, first striking coastal regions of Italy

• From there it moved inland along trade routes to Spain, France, Germany, England, and beyond

• By 1351, almost no part of Europe remained untouched by the Black Death

• Remarkably, some communities escaped the plague relatively unharmed

• In others, two-thirds to three-quarters of those who caught the disease died

• The plague returned every few years, though it never struck as severely as in the first outbreak

• However, the periodic attacks further reduced the population

• The economic and social effects of the plague were enormous

• The old manorial system began to crumble

• Some of the effects included:

  • Town populations fell.

  • Trade declined. Prices rose.

  • Serfs left manors in search of better wages

  • Nobles fiercely resisted peasant demands for higher wages, causing peasant revolts in England, France, Italy, and Belgium

  • Jews were falsely blamed for bringing on the plague. All over Europe, Jew were driven from their homes or, worse, massacred

  • The Church suffered a loss of prestige when its prayers failed to stop the onslaught of the bubonic plague and priests abandoned their duties.

• The plague and its aftermath disrupted medieval society, hastening changes that were already in the making

• The society of the Middle Ages was collapsing

• The century of war between England and France was that society’s final death struggle

• Not only did the people in Europe during the 1300s have to deal with epidemic disease, but they also had to deal with war

• England and France battled with each other on French soil for just over a century

• The century of war between England and France marked the end of medieval Europe’s society

• When the last Capetian king died without a successor, England’s Edward III, as grandson of Philip IV, claimed the right to the French throne

• The war that Edward III launched for that throne continued on and off from 1337 to 1453. It became known as the Hundred Years’ War

• Victory passed back and forth between the two countries

• Finally, between 1421 and 1453, the French rallied and drove the English out of France entirely, except for the port city of Calais

• The Hundred Years’ War brought a change in the style of warfare in Europe

• At this time some combatants were still operating under medieval ideals of chivalry

• They looked with contempt on the common foot soldiers and archers who fought alongside them

• This contempt would change as the longbow changed warfare

• The English introduced the longbow and demonstrated its power in three significant battles: Crécy, Poitiers, and Agincourt

• The first and most spectacular battle was the Battle of Crécy on August 26, 1346

• The English army, longbowmen, was outnumbered by a French army three times its size

• The French army included knights and archers with crossbows

• French knights believed themselves invincible and attacked

• English longbowmen let fly thousands of arrows at the oncoming French

• The crossbowmen, peppered with English arrows, retreated in panic

• The knights trampled their own archers in an effort to cut a path through them

• English longbowmen sent volley after volley of deadly arrows

• They unhorsed knights who then lay helplessly on the ground in their heavy armor

• Then, using long knives, the English foot soldiers attacked, slaughtering the French

• At the end of the day, more than a third of the French force lay dead

• Among them were some of the most honored in chivalry

• The longbow, not chivalry, had won the day

• The mounted, heavily armored medieval knight was soon to become extinct

• The English repeated their victory ten years later at the Battle of Poitiers

• The third English victory, the Battle of Agincourt, took place in 1415

• The success of the longbow in these battles spelled doom for chivalric warfare

• Joan of Arc In 1420, the French and English signed a treaty stating that Henry V would inherit the French crown upon the death of the French king Charles VI

• Then, in 1429, a teenage French peasant girl named Joan of Arc felt moved by God to rescue France from its English conquerors

• When Joan was just 13 she began to have visions and hear what she believed were voices of the saints

• They urged her to drive the English from France and give the French crown to France’s true king, Charles VII, son of Charles VI

• On May 7, 1429, Joan led the French army into battle at a fort city near Orléans

• The fort blocked the road to Orléans

• It was a hard-fought battle for both sides

• The French finally retreated in despair

• Suddenly, Joan and a few soldiers charged back toward the fort

• The entire French army stormed after her

• The siege of Orléans was broken

• Joan of Arc guided the French onto the path of victory

• After that victory, Joan persuaded Charles to go with her to Reims

• There he was crowned king on July 17, 1429

• In 1430, the Burgundians, England’s allies, captured Joan in battle

• They turned her over to the English

• The English, in turn, handed her over to Church authorities to stand trial

• Although the French king Charles VII owed his crown to Joan, he did nothing to rescue her

• Condemned as a witch and a heretic because of her claim to hear voices, Joan was burned at the stake on May 30, 1431

• The Impact of the Hundred Years’ War The long, exhausting war finally ended in 1453

• Each side experienced major changes.

  • A feeling of nationalism emerged in England and France. Now people thought of the king as a national leader, fighting for the glory of the country, not simply a feudal lord.

  • The power and prestige of the French monarch increased.

  • The English suffered a period of internal turmoil known as the War of the Roses, in which two noble houses fought for the throne

• Some historians consider the end of the Hundred Years’ War in 1453 as the end of the Middle Ages

• The twin pillars of the medieval world, religious devotion and the code of chivalry, both crumbled

• The Age of Faith died a slow death

• This death was caused by the Great Schism, the scandalous display of wealth by the Church, and the discrediting of the Church during the bubonic plague

• The Age of Chivalry died on the battlefields of Crécy, Poitiers, and Agincourt