The demographic crisis
The European population increased from the year 1000 to the beginning of the fourteenth century, doubling from the figure of 40 million to about 80 million inhabitants. This meant the need to clear new land to increase production and feed the population even though decades of famine cyclically occurred during the century that caused thousands of victims.
The demographic crisis was exacerbated by two further factors:
- a plague epidemic,
- the numerous wars that caused many deaths
The plague
The first plague epidemic broke out in a Genoese colony located in the Crimea under siege by the Tartars.
The besiegers to conquer the city threw corpses infected with the disease, with catapults, beyond the city walls and in a very short time, precisely because of the spread of the disease, the Genoese surrendered.
Some citizens managed to escape and sailed to Italy, bringing the infection.
Around 1347 the plague reached Genoa, Venice and Sicily ; the following year it spread to Tuscany then spread to France, England, Spain and Germany.
In 1353 the plague had killed a total of about 1/3 of the entire European population .
Until the seventeenth century this terrible scourge reappeared every ten years becoming a real nightmare for every European citizen.
The plague was differentiated in bubonic plague which presented itself in the form of swellings called buboes and pneumonic plague or black plague that caused skin hemorrhages that congealed formed black patches.
The origin of the disease was found in a bacillus present in rats.
But it was the flea that, by sucking the blood of mice, could transmit this terrible disease to humans.
In fact, the hygienic conditions not adequate and the promiscuity in which human beings lived increased the contamination.
Many interpretations were given to the spread of this disease which, due to the violence and death it sowed, was attributed by some to divine anger.
It was recommended to wash hands and face with water and vinegar or to burn substances that purified the environment, but the golden rule was to keep away from the infected as much as possible. The need to find an explanation for this mysterious disease that decimated the populations led to the search for a scapegoat, a culprit identified, from time to time, in the marginalized, in the lepers and above all in the Jews.
These were accused not only of deicide, because they had killed the Son of God, of poisoning the water of the wells that fed the cities or of contaminating the air with poisons. thousands of Jews killed in France, Germany and Switzerland.
The crisis and the economy of the fourteenth century
The demographic decline led to a decrease in the demand for goods and therefore to a drop in prices.
In general, this resulted in a contraction in traffic and trade.
In the agricultural sector, specialized production of vines and olives in the Mediterranean , of silk in the territory of northern Italy where jasmine cultivation also spread. In England, large landowners laid fences ( enclosures ) to the common lands that previously belonged to the village community and in which anyone had the opportunity to collect wood or chestnuts or could graze their animals.
The factories underwent a restructuring phase because if some sectors, such as that of woolen cloths, went to run out, the silk industry instead greatly increased its turnover.
On the level of commercial techniques there was the accumulation of capital by some families of merchant-bankers such as the Bardi and the Peruzzi that subsidized European sovereigns, popes and large families and that, due to the insolvency of some of them, had to declare bankruptcy.
The company
During the 14th century witnessed a transformation of society; the power of the nobles was strengthened due to the increase in income due to the specialization of crops in the lands they owned and there was the rise of a new social class, the bourgeoisie, constituted:
- by merchants and bankers who, thanks to international trafficking, accumulated enormous wealth;
- from the owners of the wool industries who, after reaching a favorable economic position, bought noble titles and lands to acquire social prestige.
At the same time the crisis hit the peasants who often lost their jobs, helping to increase the number of new poor. The cities were populated by beggars, blind, crippled, lepers, stragglers who moved from one place to another to survive. In some cities, especially in France, England and Spain, laws were enacted in support of poverty while some sovereigns, on the contrary, ordered to expel from their territories, after very harsh penalties such as flogging, anyone caught begging.
Revolts of the excluded
Another constant of the century were the revolts of the excluded, popular manifestations that often turned into revolts in which one social category became antagonistic to the other, the fullers ( wool workers ) against the weavers and workers in the countryside against those in the cities.
In France they were called jacqueries the peasant revolts of the territories surrounding Paris ; they set the castles to fire and sword, massacring the owners and burning the documents that sanctioned the property rights. In England a revolt broke out in Kent where the peasants set fire to castles and, after looting Canterbury , headed for London . The crown decided to accept part of the requests but after the return of the protesters to their cities, it repressed the protest movement by force.
The tumult of the Ciompi
Florence was the protagonist of an imposing revolt because the ordinary people, mainly composed of waged labor, had not withstood the disastrous consequences of the economic crisis.
The requests addressed to the municipality were for greater participation in political choices and for the right to come together in associations. The very difficult condition of the wool scardassieri, who had the task of combing the wool with a tool called scardasso, nicknamed Ciompi , led them to an uprising with the aim of gaining greater power within the city government. When even the entrepreneurs of the art of wool revolted, the Ciompi they settled on radical positions that provoked the reaction of the great master craftsmen. They hired an army and easily suppressed the tumult of the Ciompi .