Fluent Essays

In 250 words or more, answer the following:What similarities or differences do you see in the four contemporary accounts of the Black Death and its effects on European society? Can you see any parallels with the pandemic were currently experiencing? _mck_03101_ch11_0321_0355.pdf Unformatted Attachment Preview 1300–1450  321 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 S 55 R 56 11_MCK_03101_ch11_0321_0355.indd 321 1st Pass Pages 20/07/16 5:25 PM 11 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 S 56 R The Later Middle Ages 1300 – 1450 During the later Middle Ages the last book of the New Testament, the book of Revelation, inspired thousands of sermons and hundreds of religious tracts. The book of Revelation deals with visions of the end of the world, with disease, war, famine, and death — often called the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” — triumphing everywhere. It is no wonder this part of the Bible was so popular in this period, for between 1300 and 1450 Europeans experienced a frightful series of shocks. The climate turned colder and wetter, leading to poor harvests and famine. People weakened by hunger were more susceptible to disease, and in the middle of the fourteenth century a new disease, probably the bubonic plague, spread throughout Europe. With no effective treatment, the plague killed millions of people. War devastated the countryside, especially in France, leading to widespread discontent and peasant revolts. Workers in cities also revolted against dismal working conditions, and violent crime and ethnic tensions increased as well. Massive deaths and preoccupation with death make the fourteenth century one of the most wrenching periods of Western civilization. Yet, in spite of the pessimism and crises, important institutions and cultural forms, including representative assemblies and national literatures, emerged. Even institutions that experienced severe crisis, such as the Christian Church, saw new types of vitality. ​ ​■ 322 1st Pass Pages 11_MCK_03101_ch11_0321_0355.indd 322 20/07/16 5:25 PM CHAPTER PREVIEW Prelude to Disaster How did climate change shape the late Middle Ages? The Black Death How did the plague reshape European society? The Hundred Years’ War What were the causes, course, and consequences of the Hundred Years’ War? Challenges to the Church Life and Death in the Late Middle Ages In this French manuscript illumination from 1465, armored knights kill peasants while they work in the fields or take refuge in a castle. Aristocratic violence was a common feature of late medieval life, although nobles would generally not have bothered to put on their armor to harass villagers. (From Cas de Nobles Hommes et Femmes, 1465/ Musée Condé, Chantilly, France/Bridgeman Images) Why did the church come under increasing criticism? Social Unrest in a Changing Society What explains the social unrest of the late Middle Ages? 11_MCK_03101_ch11_0321_0355.indd 323 1st Pass Pages 20/07/16 5:25 PM 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 S 55 R 56 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 S 56 R 324 1300–1450 CHAPTER 11 | The Later Middle Ages Prelude to Disaster FOCUS QUESTION How did climate change shape the late Middle Ages? Toward the end of the thirteenth century the expanding European economy began to slow down, and in the first half of the fourteenth century Europe experienced ongoing climate change that led to lower levels of food production, which had dramatic and disastrous ripple effects. Rulers attempted to find solutions but were unable to deal with the economic and social problems that resulted. Climate Change and Famine The period from about 1000 to about 1300 saw a ­warmer-​­than-​­usual climate in Europe, which underlay all the changes and vitality of the High Middle Ages. Around 1300, however, the climate changed for the worse, becoming colder and wetter. Historical geographers refer to the period from 1300 to 1450 as a “little ice age,” which they can trace through both natural and human records. Evidence from nature emerges through the study of Alpine and polar glaciers, tree rings, and pollen left in bogs. ­Human-​­produced sources include written reports of rivers freezing and crops never ripening, as well as archaeological evidence such as the collapsed houses and emptied villages of Greenland, where ice floes cut off contact with the rest of the world and the harshening climate meant that the few hardy crops grown in earlier times could no longer survive. The Viking colony on Greenland died out completely, though Inuit people who relied on hunting sea mammals continued to live in the far north, as they had before the arrival of Viking colonists. Across Europe, an unusual number of storms brought torrential rains, ruining the wheat, oat, and hay crops on which people and animals almost everywhere depended. Since ­long-​­distance transportation of food was expensive and difficult, most urban areas depended for grain, produce, and meat on areas no more than a day’s journey away. Poor harvests — and one in four was likely to be poor — led to scarcity and starvation. Almost all of northern Europe suffered a Great Famine in the years 1315 to 1322, which contemporaries interpreted as a recurrence of the biblical “seven lean years” that afflicted Egypt. Even in ­non-​­famine years, the cost of grain, livestock, and dairy products rose sharply, in part because diseases hit cattle and sheep. Increasing prices meant that fewer people could afford to buy food. Reduced Death from Famine ​ ​In this ­fi teenth-​­century painting, dead bodies lie in the middle of a path, while a funeral procession at the right includes a man with an adult’s coffin and a oman with the coffin of a infant under her arm. People did not simply allow the dead to lie in the street in medieval Europe, though during famines and epidemics it was sometimes difficult o maintain normal burial procedures. (From Chroniques d’Angleterre, ca. 1470–1480/British Library, London, UK/© British Library Board. All Rights Reserved/Bridgeman Images) 1st Pass Pages 11_MCK_03101_ch11_0321_0355.indd 324 20/07/16 5:25 PM Chronology 325 caloric intake meant increased susceptibility to disease, especially for infants, children, and the elderly. Workers on reduced diets had less energy, which meant lower productivity, lower output, and higher grain prices. 1300–1450 Little ice age 1309–137 6 Babylonian Captivity; papacy in Avignon 1310–1320 Dante writes Divine Comedy 1315–132 2 Great Famine in northern Europe 1320s First ­large-​­scale peasant rebellion in Flanders Social Consequences 1337–1 453 Hundred Years’ War 1347 Black Death arrives in Europe The changing climate and resulting agrarian crisis of the fourteenth century 1358 Jacquerie peasant uprising in France had grave social consequences. Poor 1366 Statute of Kilkenny harvests and famine led to the abandon1378–1 417 Great Schism ment of homesteads. In parts of the Low Countries and in the S­ cottish-​­English 1381 English Peasants’ Revolt borderlands, entire villages were de­ 1387–1400 Chaucer writes Canterbury Tales serted, and many people became vagabonds, wandering in search of food and work. In Flanders and eastern ­England, some peasants were forced to mortgage, sublease, or also condemned speculators after his attempts to set sell their holdings to richer farmers in order to buy price controls on livestock and ale proved futile. He food. Throughout the affected areas, young men and did try to buy grain abroad, but little was available, women sought work in the towns, delaying marriage. and such grain as reached southern English ports was Overall, the population declined because of the deaths stolen by looters and sold on the black market. The caused by famine and disease, though the postponeking’s efforts at famine relief failed. ment of marriages and resulting decline in offspring may have also played a part. As the subsistence crisis deepened, starving people focused their anger on the rich, speculators, and the Jews, who were often targeted as creditors fleecing the FOCUS QUESTION How did the plague reshape European poor through pawnbroking. (As explained in Chapsociety? ter 10, Jews often became moneylenders because Christian authorities restricted their ownership of land Colder weather, failed harvests, and resulting maland opportunities to engage in other trades.) Rumors nourishment left Europe’s population susceptible to spread of a plot by Jews and their agents, the lepers, to disease, and unfortunately for the continent, a virukill Christians by poisoning wells. Based on “evidence” lent one appeared in the ­ mid-​­ fourteenth century. collected by torture, many lepers and Jews were killed, Around 1300 improvements in ship design had beaten, or heavily fined. allowed ­year-​­round shipping for the first time. EuroMeanwhile, the international character of trade and pean merchants took advantage of these advances, and commerce meant that a disaster in one country had ships continually at sea carried all types of cargo. They serious implications elsewhere. For example, the infecalso carried vermin of all types, especially insects and tion that attacked English sheep in 1318 caused a rats, both of which often harbored pathogens. Rats, sharp decline in wool exports in the following years. fleas, and cockroaches could live for months on the Without wool, Flemish weavers could not work, and cargo carried along the coasts, disembarking at ports thousands were laid off. Without woolen cloth, the with the grain, cloth, or other merchandise. Just as businesses of Flemish, Hanseatic, and Italian mermodern air travel has allowed diseases such as AIDS chants suffered. Unemployment encouraged people to and the H1N1 virus to spread quickly over very long turn to crime. distances, medieval shipping allowed the diseases of Government responses to these crises were ineffecthe time to do the same. The most frightful of these tual. The three sons of Philip the Fair who sat on the diseases, carried on Genoese ships, first emerged in French throne between 1314 and 1328 condemned western Europe in 1347; the disease was later called speculators who held stocks of grain back until condithe Black Death. tions were desperate and prices high, and they forbade the sale of grain abroad. These measures had few actual results, however. In England, Edward II (r. 1307–1327) ■ Great Famine ​A terrible famine in 1315–1322 that hit much of Europe The Black Death after a period of climate change. ■ Black Death ​Plague that first struck Europe in 1347 and killed perhaps ­one-​­third of the population. 11_MCK_03101_ch11_0321_0355.indd 325 1st Pass Pages 20/07/16 5:25 PM 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 S 55 R 56 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 S 56 R 326 1300–1450 CHAPTER 11 | The Later Middle Ages Pathology Most historians and microbiologists identify the disease that spread in the fourteenth century as the bubonic plague, which is caused by the bacillus Yersinia pestis. The disease normally afflicts rats. Fleas living on the infected rats drink their blood and then pass the bacteria that cause the plague on to the next rat they bite. Usually the disease is limited to rats and other rodents, but at certain points in history — perhaps when most rats have been killed off — the fleas have jumped from their rodent hosts to humans and other animals. One of these instances appears to have occurred in the Eastern Roman Empire in the sixth century, when a plague killed millions of people. Another was in China and India in the 1890s, when millions again died. Doctors and epidemiologists closely studied this outbreak, identified the bacillus as bubonic plague, and learned about the exact cycle of infection for the first time. The ­fourteenth-​­century outbreak showed many similarities to the ­nineteenth-​­century one, but also some differences. There are no reports of massive rat ­die-​­offs in ­fourteenth-​­century records. The medieval plague was often transmitted directly from one person to another through coughing and sneezing (what epidemiologists term pneumonic transmission) as well as through fleabites. The ­ fourteenth-​­ century outbreak spread much faster than the n ­ ineteenth-​ ­century epidemic and was much more deadly, killing as much as ­one-​­third of the population when it first reached an area. These differences have led a few historians to speculate that the Black Death was actually not the bubonic plague but a different disease, perhaps something like the Ebola virus. Other scholars counter that the differences could be explained by variant strains of the disease or improvements in sanitation and public health that would have significantly limited the mortality rate of later outbreaks, even in poor countries such as India. These debates fuel continued study of medical aspects of the plague, with scientists using innovative techniques such as studying the tooth pulp of bodies in medieval cemeteries to see if it contains DNA from ­plague-​­causing agents. Though there is some disagreement about exactly what kind of disease the plague was, there is no dispute about its dreadful effects on the body. The classic symptom of the bubonic plague was a growth the size of a nut or an apple in the armpit, in the groin, or on the neck. This was the boil, or bubo, that gave the disease its name and caused agonizing pain. If the bubo was lanced and the pus thoroughly drained, the victim had a chance of recovery. If the boil was not lanced, however — and in the fourteenth century, it rarely 1st Pass Pages 11_MCK_03101_ch11_0321_0355.indd 326 was — the next stage was the appearance of black spots or blotches caused by bleeding under the skin. (This syndrome did not give the disease its common name; contemporaries did not call the plague the Black Death. Sometime in the fifteenth century the Latin phrase atra mors, meaning “dreadful death,” was translated as “black death,” and the phrase stuck.) Finally, the victim began to cough violently and spit blood. This stage, indicating the presence of millions of bacilli in the bloodstream, signaled the end, and death followed in two or three days. The coughing also released those pathogens into the air, infecting others when they were breathed in and beginning the deadly cycle again on new victims. Spread of the Disease Plague symptoms were first described in 1331 in southwestern China, then part of the Mongol Empire. Plague-​­ ­ infested rats accompanied Mongol armies and merchant caravans carrying silk, spices, and gold across Central Asia in the 1330s. The rats then stowed away on ships, carrying the disease to the ports of the Black Sea by the 1340s. One Italian chronicler told of more dramatic means of spreading the disease as well: Mongol armies besieging the city of Kaffa on the ­ ­lague-​­ infected shores of the Black Sea catapulted p corpses over the walls to infect those inside. The city’s residents dumped the corpses into the sea as fast as they could, but they were already infected. In October 1347 Genoese ships brought the plague from Kaffa to Messina, from which it spread across Sicily. Venice and Genoa were hit in January 1348, and from the port of Pisa the disease spread south to Rome and east to Florence and all of Tuscany. By late spring southern Germany was attacked. Frightened French authorities chased a galley bearing plague victims away from the port of Marseilles, but not before plague had infected the city, from which it spread to southern France and Spain. In June 1348 two ships entered the Bristol Channel and introduced it into England, and from there it traveled northeast into Scandinavia. The plague seems to have entered Poland through the Baltic seaports and spread eastward from there (Map 11.1). Medieval urban conditions were ideal for the spread of disease. Narrow streets were filled with refuse, human excrement, and dead animals. Houses whose upper stories projected over the lower ones blocked light and air. Houses were beginning to be constructed of brick, but many wood, clay, and mud houses remained. A determined rat had little trouble entering such a house. In addition, people were already weakened by famine, standards of personal hygiene remained frightfully low, and the urban 20/07/16 5:25 PM 20°W 327 N 60° Bergen W E S Durham Lancaster York Leicester Bristol Norwich London Sea No r t h Sea N Dublin Paris Bordeaux Hamburg ro Eb Toledo Avignon Seville Balearic Is. Milan Genoa Venice Pisa Bologna Florence Sardinia r R. Ca sp ia n S ea Kaffa . be R Danu Blac Dubrovnik k Sea Constantinople Tig ris Athens Aleppo Tunis Malta Appearance of the plague 1349 1350 After 1350 City or area partially or totally spared Major trade route N 40° Trebisond Rome Naples Messina Sicily Salé Dni epe R. Strait of Gibraltar °N 50 Sarai Zurich Marseilles Barcelona Corsica Valencia Warsaw 50°E R. Wroclaw Prague Kraków Nuremberg Vienna Strasbourg R. Lisbon Königsberg Danzig Lübeck Erfurt Würzburg Lyons Montpellier B Bruges Liège Cologne Calais Riga R. Don ATLANTIC OCEAN 1346 1347 1348 40°E 400 miles 400 kilometers tic 200 30°E Volga 200 0 20°E 10°E al 0 0° 10°W Candia Me d ite r r a ne a n Se a Euph rat Rhodes Crete Cyprus es R. Damascus 30°N MAPPING THE PAST MAP 11.1 ​The Course of the Black Death in ­Fourteenth-​­Century Europe The bubonic plague spread across Europe after beginning in the ­mid-​­1340s, with the first cases of disease reported in Black Sea ports. ​When did the plague reach Paris? How much time passed before it spread to the rest of northern France and southern Germany? Which cities and regions were spared? analyzing the map connections ​How did the expansion of trade contribute to the spread of the Black Death? ­ opulace was crowded together. Fleas and body lice p were universal afflictions: everyone from peasants to archbishops had them. One more bite did not cause much alarm, and the association between rats, fleas, and the plague was unknown. Mortality rates can be only educated guesses because population figures for the period before the arrival of the plague do not exist for most countries and cities. Of a total English population of perhaps 4.2 million, probably 1.4 million died of the Black Death. Densely populated Italian cities endured incredible losses. Florence lost between ­one-​­half and ­two-​­thirds of its population when the plague visited in 1348. Islamic parts of Europe were not spared, nor was the rest of the Muslim world. The most widely accepted estimate for western Europe and the Mediterranean is that the plague killed about ­one-​­third of the population in the first wave of infection. (Some areas, including such cities as Milan, Liège, and Nuremberg, were largely spared, primarily because city authorities closed the gates to all outsiders when plague was in the area and enough food had been stored to sustain the city until the danger had passed.) Nor did central and eastern Europe escape the ravages of the disease. One chronicler records that, in the summer and autumn of 1349, between five hundred and six hundred died every day in Vienna. As the Black Death took its toll on the Holy Roman Empire, waves of emigrants fled to Poland, Bohemia, and Hung ... Purchase answer to see full attachment