A Distant Mirror - The
14th Century
Period was a time of turmoil,
diminished expectation, feeling of
helplessness at forces beyond
human control.
Two Great Natural Disasters
• Little Ice Age
• Bubonic Plague
Little Ice Age
• Late 1200's to early 1800’s with break
1500-1600
• Baltic Sea froze over 1303, 1306-7.
• Alpine glaciers advanced.
• Norse settlements in Greenland cut off.
• Grain cultivation ceased in Iceland.
• Crops failed after heavy rains, 1315;
famine, reports of cannibalism, epidemics.
Bubonic Plague
•
•
•
•
•
First wave 1347-1350.
Killed 1/3 of population of Eurasia
Six more waves 1350-1400.
Population of Europe cut by 50% by 1400.
Probably closest approach to the effects of a
thermonuclear war in history.
Social Upheavals
• Closure of route to China, 1368.
• Hundred Years War 1337-1450
• Chaos in the Church
– Great Western Schism 1378.
– John Wycliff, first of the reformers
– Bogomil in the Balkans
• Advance of Turks in Balkans.
Effects of Disorder
•
•
•
•
•
Apathy.
Self-Indulgence.
Rise of graphic, often gruesome, realism in art.
Hysteria, religious fanaticism.
Search for scapegoat.
– Jews (linked to resentment over money-lending, desire
to erase debts)
– Witches (linked to suppression of Knights Templars via
sensational witchcraft and sorcery trials which fanned
popular hysteria)
Start of the Renaissance
• Term first used by late 14th century by
Italian scholars who saw themselves as the
vanguard of a period of improved
conditions.