Timeline

Historical Dictionary

First posted on June 27th 2005

Narratives : Late Middle Ages http://www.zum.de/whkmla/sat/texts/narrlma.html

Agriculture : The introduction of the iron plow and three field rotation system, the development of dyke construction technique and the usage of windmills to pump water out of swamps and marshes permitted an expansion of farmland throughout western, central, eastern and northern Europe which began in the 10th and lasted into the 14th century. It was accompanied by a sustained population growth. By the early 13th century, in core regions the expansion of arable land met its limits, and a migration of settlers from these core regions to other, less densely populated regions set in. Rural population surplus also moved into the emerging cities. By the late thirteenth century, this development had resulted in marginal lands having been taken under the plow, lands the soil of which as too poor to provide sufficient nourishment for its inhabitants. When the Bubonic Plague struck Europe in 1347-1349, the malnourished were struck hard, entire villages being depopulated. On average an estimated third of Europe's population was killed off, the disease striking hardest in Norway, where an estimated two thirds of the population died, the least in Poland, which had a comparatively low population density and had room for settlement. There were other reasons; an ongoing global cooling (Little Ice Age) which only added to the misery in Norway, where a large number of villages were given up (desertion). The Bubonic Plague marks an end to centuries of expansion of Europe's agricultural society, except for extraordinary situations. Feudal Society : in reaction to the Viking/Magyar/Saracen threat in the 9th/10th centuries, within central and western European societies nobility had been redefined - nobles had to live in (and maintain) castles, i.e. in terms of location, separate themselves from the non-noble segments of society. Their task was to provide protection (defense) of society; nobles were banned from entering a craft, becoming merchants, taking up farming; doing so would result in the individual nobleman losing his noble status. The lifestyle of a nobleman had to be financed/supported from his revenues, i.e. mainly from his lands, both allodial (his outright property) and from fiefs he held from somebody else. The lifestyle of a nobleman depended on the land supporting him; growth of the number of noblemen caused a search for new, not yet feudalized lands. While the crusades were legitimized by the 'noble' task to liberate the Holy Land, most knights involved in the enterprise sought to gain new fiefs in a political environment where no fiefs existed yet. This explains why the crusades did not focus on Palestine; crusaders had a more realistic chance to establish new fiefs for themselves if they targetted areas not yet conquerede, albeit temporarily, by earlier crusades. Modern romanticized perception of knighthood emphasizes the Code of Chivalry and Courtly Love. While both show one facet of High Medieval nobility, their status in society was based on the fact that castles, if properly constructed and maintained, could be defended by a small number of men against a far superior force for months on end, while on the battlefield, knights in armour on horseback were far superior to (usually poorly armed) soldiers on foot. Cavalries of heavy horse for centuries dominated the battlefields of Europe. The thirteenth century saw a change - first, armies of which knights on horseback formed the core, where annihilated by Tatar armies in the Battles of Liegnitz and of Sajo, both 1241. Toward the turn of the 13th to 14th century, knightly armies occasionally were defeated by armies on foot (Switzerland, Flanders, Scotland), and pikemen playing crucial roles. When conquering Wales (1283), the English suffered such heavy losses at the hands of Welsh archers that, for future wars, they incorporated regiments of archers in their armies, which in turn were responsible for the English victories over the French at Crecy (1347), Poitiers (1356) and Azincourt (1415), to the disgust of the French, who regarded hand-to-hand combat the manly way of fighting, and who despised bow and arrow as a form of cheating. The 15th century then saw the emergence of firearms. On the battlefield, knightly cavalries lost their dominant position to well-disciplined regiments of foot soldiers (the Hussites; the Swiss, later the Spanish infantry). Cannon technology meant, castles were no longer tenable. Nobles, because of their hold on vast lands, for centuries to come remained an important social class, but had lost their raison d'etre. Urban Society and Economy : the High Middle Ages had seen the Urban Revolution, the center of economic activity moving from monastery land complexes to urban markets, guilds producing for a market. The crusades had resulted in an expansion of monetary economy at the expense of the traditional subsistence/barter trade economy. From c.1000 to the 14th century, cities had grown, in eastern and parts of northern Europe, new cities had emerged and expanded. The Black Death of 1347-1349 also marks an end to urban expansion. Europe's total population, for the following centuries, would, more or less, stagnate. The growth of some cities would often come at the expense of another, for example that of Antwerp in the 15th century at the expense of Bruges (Antwerp took over the function of Europe's leading seaport on the Atlantic from Bruges). A few new mining cities emerged after 1350, in/around Bohemia, in Slovakia, Serbia, Sweden. The Church : the period of the Crusades (1095-1291) and of the Investitute Conflict (ending with the fall of the Staufer Dynasty 1254) marked the climax of prestige and power of the papacy; toward the end ogf the 13th century it declined rapidly. In 1307 French knights abducted Pope Clement V. to Avignon; in 1309 he moved the papal residence there, beginning what Martin Luther later would phrase "The Babylonian Captivity of the Church". The Church Reform Movement of the 11th century, the new monastic orders of the late 12th and early 13th century (Cistercians, Premonstratensians, Franciscans, Dominicans) had spiritually reinvigored the church; the later 13th and early 14th centuries saw little of such. When the Bubonic Plague struck in 1347-1349, it was interpreted by many as Christianity being punished by God, as Egypt had been struck when Pharaoh chose to disregard God's orders communicated to him by Moses. A generation of laymen, some of them without formal education - the so-called mystics - appeared, criticizing the church and political leaders of Catholic Europe for having brought God's punishment of Christianity, for three main reasons : (a) the popes did no longer live in Rome, the Holy City; (b) the crusades had stopped (the last crusader fortress in Palestine had fallen in 1291) and (c) even worse, in the Hundred Years War, christians were fighting christians. Two famous mystics, St. Birgitta of Sweden and St. Catherine of Siena, both scolded the Avignonese popes for their part in bringing what they perceived as God's vengence on European Christianity. The latter succeeded, and in 1378 Pope Gregory XI., plagued by his conscience, travelled to Rome, where he died soon after. Groups of Cardinals assembled both in Rome and in Avignon, both electing popes; the years 1378 to 1431 saw a schism of the Catholic Church, with two (temporarily even four) popes competing with each other. The Councils of Constance 1414-1418 and of Basel 1431-1445 were held to solve the problem, and in 1431 succeeded in doing so. Meanwhile, in addition to mystics, another group of persons had emerged challenging the authority of the church - university scholars (John Wyclif, Jan Hus). The church often attempted to silence the messenger rather than to cure the problem; Wyclif was declared a heretic, Hus burnt at the stake (1415), as was mystic Jeanne d'Arc (1431). Pope Innocent VIII. believed that christianity was threatened by witches (1484); three years later two German 'scholars' published the Malleus Maleficarum (the witches' hammer), a manual used by the inquisition in case of witch trials, for centuries to come.

EXTERNAL FILES

REFERENCE

Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages, NY : Doubleday 1954 [G] Joseph Calmette, The Golden Age of Burgundy. The Magnificent Dukes and their Courts, London : Phoenix Press (1962) 2001 [G] Robin Neillands, The Hundred Years War, London : Routledge (1990) 1993 [G] Froissart, Chronicles, selected, translated and edited by Geoffrey Brereton, London : Penguins (1968) 1978 [G]

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