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| Crisis of the late Middle Ages | |
|---|---|
| c. 1300 – c. 1500 | |
 Europe and the surrounding areas in the 14th century | |
| Key events | |
Thecrisis of the late Middle Ages was a series of events across Europe during thelate Middle Ages. These events involved extensivedemographic collapse,political instability, and religious upheaval. Collectively, they marked an end to a centuries-long period of relative stability in Europe, and reshaped regional societies. This crisis period coincides with a shift in the regional climate from theMedieval Warm Period to theLittle Ice Age.
The events of the Crisis include theGreat Famine of 1315–1317 and theBlack Death of 1347–1351, which caused very high mortality across the region. Population did not rise to pre-crisis levels until around 1500.[1]
Warfare andpopular revolts proliferated across the continent, including the EnglishWars of the Roses, the FrenchArmagnac–Burgundian Civil War, theHundred Years' War, theByzantine–Ottoman wars, and theBulgarian–Ottoman wars. TheCatholic Church underwent theWestern Schism, and theHoly Roman Empire lost much of its central authority following theGreat Interregnum (1247–1273), to the advantage of theGerman princes.
The expression "crisis of the late Middle Ages" is commonly used in western historiography,[2] especially in English and German, and somewhat less in other western European scholarship, to refer to the array of crises besetting Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries. The expression often carries a specification such as theurban[3] crisis of the late Middle Ages, or thecultural,[4]monastic,[5]religious,[6]social,[6]economic,[6]intellectual,[6] oragrarian [de][7] crisis, or a regional focus such as theCatalan[8] orFrench[9] crisis.
By 1929, the French historianMarc Bloch was already writing about the effects of the crisis,[10] and by mid-century there were academic debates being held about it.[9] In his 1981 article "Late Middle Age Agrarian Crisis or Crisis of Feudalism?", Peter Kriedte reprises some of the early works in the field from historians writing in the 1930s, including Marc Bloch,Henri Pirenne,Wilhelm Abel, andMichael Postan.[7] Referring to the crisis in Italy as the "Crisis of the 14th Century", Giovanni Cherubini alluded to the debate that already by 1974 had been going on "for several decades" in French, British, American, and German historiography.[11]
Arno Borst (1992) states that it "is a given that fourteenth century Latin Christianity was in a crisis", goes on to say that the intellectual aspects and how universities were affected by the crisis is underrepresented in the scholarship hitherto ("When we discuss the crisis of the late Middle Ages, we consider intellectual movements beside religious, social, and economic ones"), and gives some examples.[6]
Some question whether "crisis" is the right expression for the period at the end of the Middle Ages and the transition to Modernity. In his 1981 article "The End of the Middle Ages: Decline, Crisis or Transformation?" Donald Sullivan addresses this question, claiming that scholarship has neglected the period and viewed it largely as a precursor to subsequent climactic events such as theRenaissance and Reformation.[12]
In his "Introduction to the History of the Middle Ages in Europe", Mitre Fernández wrote in 2004: "To talk about a general crisis of the late Middle Ages is already a commonplace in the study of medieval history."[2]
Heribert Müller, in his 2012 book on the religious crisis of the late Middle Ages, discussed whether the term itself was in crisis:
No doubt the thesis of the crisis of the late Middle Ages has itself been in crisis for some time now, and hardly anyone considered an expert in the field would still profess it without some ifs and buts, and especially so in the case of German Medieval historians.[13]
In his 2014 historiographical article about the crisis in the Middle Ages, Peter Schuster quotes the historian Léopold Genicot's 1971 article "Crisis: From the Middle Ages to Modern Times": "Crisis is the word which comes immediately to the historian's mind when he thinks of the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries."[14]
TheMedieval Warm Period ended sometime towards the end of the 13th century. This marked the start of theLittle Ice Age,[15] which resulted in harsher winters with reduced harvests. In Northern Europe, new technological innovations such as the heavyplough and thethree-field system were not as effective in clearing new fields for harvest as they were in theMediterranean because the north had poor, clay-like soil.[16] Food shortages and rapidly inflating prices were a fact of life for as much as a century before the plague.Wheat,oats,hay and consequently livestock were all in short supply.[16]
Their scarcity resulted inmalnutrition, which increases susceptibility to infections due to weakened immune systems. In the autumn of 1314, heavy rains began to fall, which were the start of several years of cold and wet winters.[16] The already weak harvests of the north suffered, and a seven-year famine ensued. In the years 1315 to 1317, a catastrophicfamine, known as theGreat Famine, struck much ofNorth West Europe. It was arguably the worst in European history, perhaps reducing the population by more than 10%.[16]
Most governments instituted measures that prohibited exports of foodstuffs, condemnedblack marketspeculators, setprice controls on grain and outlawed large-scale fishing. At best, they proved mostly unenforceable and at worst they contributed to a continent-wide downward spiral. The hardest hit lands, like England, were unable to buy grain from France because of the prohibition, and from most of the rest of the grain producers because of crop failures from shortage of labor. Any grain that could be shipped was eventually taken bypirates orlooters to be sold on the black market.[16]
Meanwhile, many of the largest countries, most notably England andScotland, had been at war. This resulted in them using up much of theirtreasury and creatinginflation. In 1337, on the eve of the first wave of theBlack Death, England and France went to war in what became known as theHundred Years' War. This situation was worsened when landowners and monarchs such asEdward III of England (r. 1327–1377) andPhilip VI of France (r. 1328–1350), raised the fines and rents of their tenants out of a fear that their comparatively highstandard of living would decline.[16]
When atyphoid epidemic emerged, many thousands died in populated urban centres, most significantlyYpres (now in Belgium). In 1318, apestilence of unknown origin, which some contemporary scholars now identify asanthrax, targeted the animals of Europe. Sheep and cattle were particularly affected, further reducing the food supply and income of the peasantry.[17]
As Europe moved out of the Medieval Warm Period and into the Little Ice Age, a decrease in temperature and a great number of devastating floods disrupted harvests and caused mass famine. The cold and the rain proved to be particularly disastrous from 1315 to 1317 in which poor weather interrupted the maturation of many grains and beans, and flooding turned fields rocky and barren.[18][19][page needed] Scarcity of grain caused price inflation, as described in one account of grain prices in Europe in which the price of wheat doubled from twenty shillings perquarter in 1315 to forty shillings per quarter by June of the following year.[18] Grape harvests also suffered, which reducedwine production throughout Europe. The wine production from the vineyards surrounding theAbbey of Saint-Arnould in France decreased as much as eighty percent by 1317.[19] During this climatic change and subsequent famine, Europe's cattle were struck withThe Great Bovine Pestilence, a pathogen of unknown identity.[20]
The pathogen spread throughout Europe from Eastern Asia in 1315 and reached the British Isles by 1319.[20] Manorial accounts of cattle populations in the year 1319–20 place a 62 percent loss inEngland andWales alone.[20] In these countries, some correlation can be found between the places where poor weather reduced crop harvests and places where the bovine population was particularly negatively affected.[20] It is hypothesized that both low temperatures and lack of nutrition lowered the cattle populations' immune systems and made them vulnerable to disease.[20] The mass death and illness of cattle drastically affected dairy production, and the output did not return to its pre-pestilence amount until 1331.[20] Much of the medieval peasants' protein was obtained from dairy, and milk shortages likely caused nutritional deficiency in the European population. Famine and pestilence, exacerbated with the prevalence of war during this time, led to the death of an estimated ten to fifteen percent of Europe's population.[19][page needed][20]
The Black Death was a particularly devastating epidemic in Europe during this time, and is notable due to the number of people who succumbed to the disease within the few years the disease was active. It was fatal to an estimated thirty to sixty percent of the population where the disease was present.[21] While there is some question of whether it was a particularly deadly strain ofYersinia pestis that caused the Black Death, research indicates no significant difference in bacterial phenotype.[22] Thus, environmental stressors are considered when hypothesizing the deadliness of the Black Plague, such as crop failures due to changes in weather, the subsequent famine, and an influx of host rats into Europe from China.[21][23]
There were some popular uprisings in Europe before the 14th century, but these were local in scope, for example uprisings at a manor house against an unpleasant overlord. This changed in the 14th and 15th centuries when new downward pressures on the poor[clarification needed] resulted in mass movements and popular uprisings across Europe. To indicate how common and widespread these movements became, in Germany between 1336 and 1525 there were no less than sixty phases of militant peasant unrest.[24][page needed]
Scholars such asDavid Herlihy andMichael Postan use the termMalthusian limit to explain some calamities as results of overpopulation. In his 1798Essay on the Principle of Population,Thomas Malthus asserted thatexponential population growth will invariably exceed available resources, making mass death inevitable. In his bookThe Black Death and the Transformation of the West, David Herlihy explores whether the plague was an inevitable crisis of population and resources. InThe Black Death; A Turning Point in History? (ed. William M. Bowsky), he "implies that theBlack Death's pivotal role in late medieval society... was now being challenged. Arguing on the basis of a neo-Malthusian economics,revisionist historians recast the Black Death as a necessary and long overdue corrective to an overpopulated Europe."[citation needed]
Herlihy also examined the arguments against the Malthusian crisis, stating "if the Black Death was a response to excessive human numbers it should have arrived several decades earlier"[25] in consequence of the population growth before the Black Death. Herlihy also brings up other, biological factors that argue against the plague as a "reckoning" by arguing "the role of famines in affecting population movements is also problematic. The many famines preceding the Black Death, even the'great hunger' of 1315 to 1317, did not result in any appreciable reduction in population levels".[25] Herlihy concludes the matter stating, "the medieval experience shows us not a Malthusian crisis but a stalemate, in the sense that the community was maintaining at stable levels very large numbers over a lengthy period" and states that the phenomenon should be referred to as more of a deadlock, rather than a crisis, to describe Europe before the epidemics.[25]: 34
1. Crisi del Trecento e conseguenze sociali e spirituali
