After the economic boom of the 13th century, at the beginning of the 14th century Europe entered into crisis (Crisis of the 14th century):a series of calamities hit it. Then, many values that had been valid until then began to be questioned, such as, for example, the role of the Church and the role of monarchs.
The famine caused by a succession of bad harvests, wars and the pests they shook the population and gave a very gloomy picture to the last period of the Middle Ages. As a result of these catastrophes, the population fell alarmingly.
This difficult situation in turn caused numerous conflicts in the countryside and the cities:in the countryside, peasants clashed against lords; in the cities, on the other hand, artisans opposed rich merchants.
All this brought with it the idea that the end of the world announced by the Apocalypse was approaching. For this reason, the population of that time had an insistent and sick obsession with death. This pessimism was reflected in art and literature.
The Black Death
Epidemics of diseases such as tuberculosis or malaria were the most frequent and fearsome scourge of Medieval Europe:they decimated entire populations. The most devastating of all was the black or bubonic plague. This disease was introduced to Europe by Genoese sailors returning from Constantinople. For medieval doctors, evil spread due to the corrupt air .
Today, we know that the Black Death was transmitted to humans through fleas that lived on rats. As a result of the Black Death, some 25 million people died in Europe between 1348 and 1490, almost a third of the population.
Fourteenth-century crises and economic transformations
The excess population in Europe produced a series of disadjustments in the economy of the time . The great mortality of the fourteenth century caused new problems:as the population decreased, there were fewer workers and the demand for products was drastically reduced.
In the field , large tracts of land were left uncultivated. The decline in the population meant that the planting of panllevar products was no longer profitable. That is why they promoted other export-oriented crops, such as vines and flax .
In the textile industry manpower was also lost. Since workers were scarce, wages tended to rise.
So some manufacturers moved their operations to the countryside, hoping to find cheaper labor. They competed with the urban guilds, which opposed these industrialists who worked on their own, breaking the monopoly.
Socialunrest
Between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, various regions of Europe were shaken by popular uprisings both in the countryside and in the cities.
In the last centuries of the Middle Ages, the peasants had to face several difficulties:the failure of the harvests , the plague and the growing tax requirements of the Churches, the state and the lords. All these factors contributed to creating a climate of unrest among the peasant population that led, over time, to the outbreak of different rebellions.
In the cities, the most common problems were of a social nature, since the separation between rich and poor, and between citizens and those who did not have access to citizenship, unions or the city government had deepened.
The urban and rural uprisings of this period, however, did not present an organized program of reforms. In general, they proclaimed the equality of men and respect for human dignity but only proposed a return to a better past time.
The leaders of the uprising, who generally did not belong to the social group they led, took advantage of the situation for their personal benefit, and after the failure of the outbreak, they abandoned the men they had led to their fate.
Most of the riots were extremely violent and very short . Chroniclers of the time often described these outbursts as fury :They used to go out as fast as they had burst. They only occasionally achieved improvements.
Among these revolts, the best known were the Jacquerie in France, the uprising of Wat Tyler in England, the Remança in Catalonia and that of the irmandiños, in Galicia. All of them were brutally crushed by kings and nobles.
La Jacquerie, a peasant revolt
J. Froissar, Chronicles
Abandoned villages
One of the most impressive aspects of the economic and demographic crisis of the fourteenth century was the abandonment of the villages in the countryside. The peasants left their land and possessions and became vagrants or took refuge in the cities. Fields that had previously been cultivated were overgrown and roads were cleared. In the villages, houses and churches fell apart. At that time, most of the villages were left without men and therefore without any type of activity.
The strengthening of the monarchy
At the beginning of the fourteenth century, new conceptions of political power and the role of the monarchy were emerging. These ideas, which originated in the 12th century, helped define the role of monarchs in their kingdoms and eliminate the political fragmentation that existed in medieval times.
The english monarchy
From the twelfth century the English monarchs began to expand their territories, which the feudal lords had cut down.
This process began when King Henry II Plantagenet He annexed much of France to the kingdom. However, his son Juan Sin Tierra he lost almost all the French fiefdoms at the Battle of Bouvines (1214).
This defeat irritated the nobility, who forced him to sign the Magna Carta (1215), the first English constitution, prohibiting him from starting wars and levying taxes without the approval of the English Parliament, an assembly made up of nobles and burgesses. Thus was born the parliamentary monarchy English.
The French monarchy
France also began its unification process in the 12th century, under the Capetian dynasty. . For a long time, feudal lords were more powerful than kings, but Philip II Augustus (1180-1223) reinforced royal power by defeating the English at the Battle of Bouvines.
Time after. Philip IV the Handsome (1283-1314) weakened the power of the nobles by summoning them to a council together with the clergy and representatives of the cities:the Estates General .
Two major conflicts
France and England fought in the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453), which was the prolongation of the conflict started in the twelfth century by the English possessions in France.
At first, the English dominated the situation, but eventually the French, led by Joan of Arc , they beat them. With this victory the power of the French king Carlos VII was reinforced .
England, on the other hand, was destroyed. The nobility split into two factions, each supporting a candidate for the throne:one from the York family, the other from the Lancasters.
This conflict led to a civil war known as the War of the Two Roses (1455-1485). This war altered the activities of the government. Meanwhile, confiscation of property, assassinations, and persecution were common occurrences.
After 30 years, a relative of the Lancastrians Henry VII , of the Tudor family, seized the throne. Ironically, the nobility was weakened as a result of the war, which helped strengthen the monarchy.
The Hundred Years War
Of the wars that ravaged Europe during this period, the Hundred Years' War left the deepest mark. At the beginning, it was a dispute over the succession to the crown of France:when the last of the Capetian kings died in France and when his cousin, Felipe VI took over the throne, , from the Valois family , the English king Edward III he claimed the French throne claiming to be, on his mother's side, a direct descendant of the Capetians. Later, this war led to the struggle of the French crown to recover lost territories in England. However, this war was not continuous:in the course of the hundred years, long periods of truce alternated with others of warlike activity.
War of the Two Roses
In England, the unity of the realm, or at least its internal peace, was severely compromised by Henry VI's long minority and by the military failures suffered by his armies on the Continent. While banditry, disorders and peasant uprisings spread throughout the country and royal power weakened due to the madness suffered by the sovereign, two opposing princely factions clashed to claim the crown for themselves. Thus began the War of the Roses between the parties of York (white rose) and Lancaster (red rose). This war kept England divided into two clans violently hostile to each other and ravaged the countryside, spreading corruption everywhere.
The crisis of cristiandad
During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Christianity suffered a profound crisis. The papacy fell into corruption and his position was questioned by believers. On the other hand, from the thirteenth century, the Papacy faced the French monarchy that tried to dominate the Church. This situation led to a conflict between both powers:the captivity of Avignon.
The captivity of Avignon
The captivity of Avignon was a conflict that originated between the King of France Philip IV and Pope Boniface VIII . This conflict began when Felipe IV tried to cut the ecclesiastical income. The Supreme Pontiff excommunicated him.
However, the French monarch managed to imprison the Pope by accusing him of witchcraft. The Pope managed to free himself from his prison, but he died a short time later.
Felipe IV took advantage of the situation to appoint a French Pope, Clement V , and move the papal seat to the French city of Avignon. Between the years 1308 and 1377, a series of French Popes were appointed who were forced to live in that city.
The Western Schism
When the papacy tried to reestablish its seat in Rome, the Western schism occurred:the Church was divided and there were two Popes, one in Rome and the other in Avignon. This situation lasted from 1377 to 1417.
In Avignon, the Popes maintained a lavish court and administration, at the expense of the town's taxes. The Church also introduced the sale of indulgences, equivalent to the sale of the forgiveness of sins.
Finally, the conflict was resolved at the Council of Constance (1418), in which the Church was reunited, with the election of Martin V as the only Pope and the definitive establishment of the residence of the Pontiff in Rome.
The spiritual restlessness
The calamities and the crisis of the Church produced great confusion among the population at the end of the Middle Ages. The idea of death and pessimism they obsessed the survivors and inspired the literature and art of the time.
The feeling of insecurity and the transience of life stimulated religious restlessness:processions of flagellants they toured the towns; traveling preachers announced the end of the world, mystics proposed that each individual could feel God in an intimate and personal way.
This type of ideas led people to consolidate different heresies who, by their hostile attitude to the Catholic Church, threatened the spiritual unity of the Christian world in the West.
The Dance of Death
One of the strangest manifestations of the obsession with death in the late Middle Ages was a recurring theme in art:the Dance of Death, which illustrated a dance between skeletons and the living. This theme first appeared at the end of the 13th century, sculpted on the façade of the Church of the Innocents in Paris. It quickly spread across Europe and over time, was depicted with many additional details. The dance of death itself was sometimes performed as a masquerade:men dressed in skeleton figures danced with figures representing the different strata of society.
The new heresies
At the end of the 14th century and in the first years of the 15th, radical characters appeared who advocated profound reforms in the Church. The English theologian John Wycliffe (1320-1384) was one of them. Wycliffe advocated the disappearance of the Pope, the cardinals and other Church authorities. He further argued that the salvation of the individual was achieved by the power of God and not by the interventions of the clergy. Wicliffe's ideas spread rapidly throughout Europe. The Czech priest Jan Huss enthusiastically preached the ideas of the English theologian, and for this he was burned as a heretic in 1415.