Crisis of the Late Middle Ages

Citizens of Tournai (Belgium) bury plague victims.

The crisis of the Late Middle Ages refers to a series

Ruins of Beckov Castle in Slovakia.
of events in the fourteenth and fteenth centuries that
brought centuries of European prosperity and growth to
a halt.[1] Three major crises led to radical changes in all
1 Demography
areas of society: demographic collapse, political instabilities and religious upheavals.
Main article: Medieval demography
A series of famines and plagues, beginning with the Great
Famine of 131517 and especially the Black Death of
1348, reduced the population perhaps by half or more as Some scholars contend that at the beginning of the 14th
the Medieval Warm Period came to a close and the rst century, Europe had become overpopulated.[2][3] By the
century of the Little Ice Age began.
14th century frontiers had ceased to expand and internal
Popular revolts in late medieval Europe and civil wars colonization was coming to an end, but population levels
between nobles within countries such as the Wars of remained high.
the Roses were commonwith France ghting internally
nine timesand there were international conicts between kings such as France and England in the Hundred
Years War. The unity of the Roman Catholic Church
was shattered by the Western Schism. The Holy Roman
Empire was also in decline; in the aftermath of the Great
Interregnum (12471273), the Empire lost cohesion and
politically the separate dynasties of the various German
states became more important than their common empire.

The Medieval Warm Period ended sometime towards the

end of the 13th century, bringing the "Little Ice Age"[4]
and harsher winters with reduced harvests. In Northern Europe, new technological innovations such as the
heavy plough and the three-eld system were not as effective in clearing new elds for harvest as they were in
the Mediterranean because the north had poor, clay-like
soil.[5] Food shortages and rapidly inating prices were a
fact of life for as much as a century before the plague.
Wheat, oats, hay and consequently livestock, were all
1

3 POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS

in short supply. Their scarcity resulted in malnutrition,

which increases susceptibility to infections due to weakened immunity. In the autumn of 1314, heavy rains began to fall, which were the start of several years of cold
and wet winters.[5] The already weak harvests of the north
suered and the seven-year famine ensued. In the years
1315 to 1317 a catastrophic famine, known as the Great
Famine, struck much of North West Europe. It was arguably the worst in European history, perhaps reducing
the population by more than 10%.[5]

2 Popular revolt

Genoese (red) and Venetian (green) maritime trade routes in the

Mediterranean and Black Sea

Richard II of England meets the rebels of the Peasants Revolt

Most governments instituted measures that prohibited exports of foodstus, condemned black market speculators,
set price controls on grain and outlawed large-scale shing. 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 abroad: from France because of the prohibition, and from most of the rest of the grain producers because of crop failures from shortage of labour. Any grain
that could be shipped was eventually taken by pirates
or looters to be sold on the black market. Meanwhile,
many of the largest countries, most notably England and
Scotland, had been at war, using up much of their treasury
and exacerbating ination. In 1337, on the eve of the rst
wave of the Black Death, England and France went to war
in what became known as the Hundred Years War. This
situation was worsened when landowners and monarchs
such as Edward III of England (r. 13271377) and Philip
VI of France (r. 13281350), raised the nes and rents
of their tenants out of a fear that their comparatively high
standard of living would decline.[5]

Main article: Popular revolt in late medieval Europe

Before the 14th century, popular uprisings were not unknown, for example, uprisings at a manor house against
an unpleasant overlord, but they were local in scope. This
changed in the 14th and 15th centuries when new downward pressures on the poor 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.[6]

3 Political and religious

The European economy entered a vicious circle in which

hunger and chronic, low-level debilitating disease reduced the productivity of labourers, and so the grain output was reduced, causing grain prices to increase. Standards of living fell drastically, diets grew more limited,
and Europeans as a whole experienced more health probThe Battle of Aljubarrota
lems.
When a typhoid epidemic emerged, many thousands died
in populated urban centres, most signicantly Ypres (now
in Belgium). In 1318 a pestilence of unknown origin,
sometimes identied as anthrax, targeted the animals of
Europe, notably sheep and cattle, further reducing the
food supply and income of the peasantry.

The unity of the Roman Catholic Church was shattered

by the Western Schism. The Holy Roman Empire was
also in decline, in the aftermath of the Great Interregnum
(12471273), the Empire lost cohesion and politically the
separate dynasties of the various German states became
more important than their common empire.

3.1

Civil wars

Wars of the Roses

3.2

International wars

Hundred Years War

PolishTeutonic Wars
138385 Crisis

phenomenon should be referred to as more of a deadlock, rather than a crisis, to describe Europe before the
epidemics.[7]:34

5 See also
Crisis of the Third Century
Renaissance of the 12th century
Renaissance of the 15th century

Mongol raids against Russia

Late Middle Ages

Burgundian Wars

History of science in the Middle Ages

ByzantineOttoman Wars

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

Ottoman wars in Europe

The Waning of the Middle Ages

4
4.1

Explanations for crisis

Malthusian

Often known as the Malthusian limit, scholars use this

term to express and explain some tragedies as resulting
from overpopulation. In his 1798 Essay on the Principle
of Population, Thomas Malthus asserted that eventually
humans would reproduce so greatly that they would go
beyond the limits of necessary resources; once they reach
this point, catastrophe becomes inevitable. In his book,
The Black Death and the Transformation of the West, professor David Herlihy explores this idea of plague as an
inevitable crisis wrought on humanity in order to control
the population and human resources. In the book The
Black Death; A Turning Point in History? (ed. William
M. Bowsky) he implies that the Black 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.
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[7] due to the population growth of years
before the outbreak of 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 aecting 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.[7] 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

6 References
[1] James L. Goldsmith (1995), THE CRISIS OF THE
LATE MIDDLE AGES: THE CASE OF FRANCE,
French History, 9 (4): 417450, doi:10.1093/fh/9.4.417
[2] Perry Anderson (1974) [2006]. Passages from Antiquity
to Feudalism. Verso. pp. 186, 199. ISBN 1-85984-1074.
[3] Jonathan Maunder (2009-04-07). Feudalism and the
growth of the market. Socialist Worker Online. Retrieved 2009-12-22.
[4] World Regions in Global Context, Third Edition
[5] J. M. Bennett and C. W. Hollister, Medieval Europe: A
Short History (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006), p. 326.
[6] Peter Blickle, Unruhen in der stndischen Gesellschaft
13001800, 1988
[7] Herlihy, David (1997). The Black Death and the Transformation of the West. Harvard University Press. p. 33.
ISBN 978-0-674-07612-9. Retrieved 2 September 2009.

7 External links
The Waning of the Middle Ages": Crisis and Recovery, 1300-1450

8 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

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Crisis of the Late Middle Ages Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_of_the_Late_Middle_Ages?oldid=715811339 Contributors: Rmhermen, RodC, Gromlakh, Goethean, Mboverload, Stbalbach, Thryduulf, Qwertyus, David Levy, Ligulem, Sairen42, YurikBot,
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8.3

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