Background to the Middle Ages

1
Background to the Middle Ages

• A brief refresher from World History. . .

2
The Course of the Black Death in
Fourteenth-Century Europe
3
A Time of Troubles Black Death and Social Crisis

• Famine and Population
• Change in weather patterns, 1315-1317
• Famine, 1315-1317, 1330s, and 1340s
• The Black Death
• Bubonic plague
• Mongol migrations
• 50-60 percent death rate
• Pneumonic plague
• Plague arrives in Europe October, 1347
• European population decline 25 to 50 percent,
  1347-1351 thus, 19 to 38 million of 75 million
  
• Outbreaks again in 1361-62 and 1369
• Recurrences every 5 or 6 to 10 or 12 years to 1500

4
Spread of the Black Death
5

• Life and Death Reactions to the Prague
• Flagellants
• Anti-Semitism
• Economic Dislocation and Social Upheaval
• Noble landlords and peasants
• Wages
• Statute of Laborers, 1351
• Mobility
• Peasant Revolts
• Jacquerie, 1358
• English Peasants Revolt, 1381

6

• Revolts in the Cities
• Revolt of the ciompi in Florence, 1378
• Workers and peasants denied gains

7
Fourteenth-Century Peasant Revolts
8

• War and Political Instability
• Causes of the Hundred Years War, 1337-1453
• English claims to France (Edward III)
• Wool trade in Flanders
• Dispute over the right of succession in France
• Seizure of Gascony by the French, 1337

9
English Holdings in France During the Hundred
Years' War
10
English Holdings in France During the Hundred
Years' War, 1453
11
The Hundred Years War
12

• Conduct and Course of the War
• Battle of Crécy, 1346
• Campaigns of the Black Prince (Edward, prince of
  Wales), 1355-1357
  
• Battle of Poitiers, 1356
• Charles V, 1364-1380
• Battle of Agincourt, 1415
• Joan of Arc, 1429-1431
• Orléans
• Political Instability
• Breakdown of traditional feudal institutions
• Land and military service replaced by contract
• Professional soldiers
• Lack of royal male heirs
• Financial problems of monarchs 

13

• The Growth of Englands Political Institutions
• Parliament
• House of Lords (Great Council of Barons)
• House of Commons
• Royal factionalism
• The Problems of French Kings
• Absence of national unity
• Estates-General, 1357 clergy, nobility, and the
  Third Estate (everyone else)
  
• Taxes
• Insanity of Charles VI, 1380-1422

14

• The German Monarchy
• Breakup of the German Empire
• Electoral system for monarchs
• Emperor Charles IV (1346-1378), Golden Bull
• The States of Italy
• Republicanism to despotism
• Growth of city-states
• Condottieri
• Milan
• Florence
• Venice

15
The Holy Roman Empire
16
The States of Italy
17
Decline of the Church

• Boniface VIII and the Conflict with the State
• Boniface VIII, 1294-1303
• King Philip IV of France, 1285-1314
• French pope, Clement V, 1305-1314
• The Papacy at Avignon (1305-1377)
• Church administration improved
• Use of excommunication
• Great Schism
• Papacy returned to Rome, 1378
• Pope Urban VI, 1378-1389
• Pope Clement VII, 1378-14

18
Avignon
19

• New Thoughts on Church and State and the Rise of
  Conciliarism
  
• Marsiglio of Padua (1270?-1342)
• Defender of the Peace
• Denied temporal authority is subject to spiritual
  authority
  
• Council of Pisa, 1409
• Pope Alexander V
• Three popes over the Roman church
• Council of Constance, 1414-1418
• Pope Martin V (1417-1431)

20

• The Cultural World of the Fourteenth Century
• Development of Vernacular Literature
• Dante (1265-1321), Divine Comedy
• Petrarchs Sonnets to Laura
• Boccaccio (1313-1375), The Decameron
• Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340-1400), The Canterbury
  Tales
  
• Christine de Pizan (c. 1364-1430), Book of the
  City of Ladies
  
•  

21

• Art and the Black Death
• Giotto (1266-1337)
• Renaissance style
• Society in an Age of Adversity
• Changes in Urban Life
• Sanitary ordinances
• Prostitution
• Family Life and Gender Roles
• Nuclear family
• Marriage
• Gender roles women 

22

• Medieval children
• Schools
• New Directions in Medicine
• Medical schools
• Four humors blood, phlegm, yellow bile, black
  bile
  
• Surgeons
• Public health and sanitation
• Inventions and New Patterns
• Mechanical clock
• Eyeglasses
• Gunpowder