Chapter 13: Crisis and Rebirth: Europe in the 14th and 15th Centuries
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Mongols created a vast empire and secured trade routes, same trade routes also
spread disease: bubonic plague
14th century: famine, economic depression, war, social upheaval, rise in crime
and violence, decline in power of Catholic Church
15th century: humanism, Renaissance
The Black Death
 Yersinia pestis: spread by fleas carried by rats
 Spread along trade routes: (video)
 Europe: 1347-1350
 Many felt it was punishment from God
o Flagellants
o Anti-Semitism
Economy
 Price of labor increased
 Peasant revolts
o English Peasants Revolt 1381
o Jacquerie in France 1358
 Gender division of labor continued w/ new guilds
Economic Recovery
 Italy/ Venetians
 Hanseatic League: northern Europe (Flanders)
 Banking: House of Medici Family
Hundred Years War
 Began over duchy of Gascony: held by English King in France
 Philip VI of France vs. Edward III of England
 Foot soldiers important
 Battle of Crecy: English Won
 1415: English Henry V vs. French dauphin Charles
o Joan of Arc
 Battle of Orleans
 Accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake: (1920 made a
saint)
 Use of canon and gunpowder important
The “New Monarchies”
 Centralization of power of monarchical governments
 France, England, Spain
o France: Louis XI “Spider” taille system
o England: Henry VII: Tudors: diplomacy to avoid wars
o Spain: Isabella and Ferdinand: military strengthened, Catholicism as
unifier in Spain (Inquisition)
 Holy Roman Empire
o Germany: many independent principalities
o Hapsburg Family: rose to prominence in Austria
 Eastern Europe
o Poland/ Hungary Roman Catholic
o Russia: Orthodox
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Ivan III able to remove Mongols from power in Russia 1480
Ottoman Turks and the End of the Byzantine Empire
 1453: Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks and renamed Istanbul
 Ottoman Turks: Muslim
 Continued to expand into Eastern Europe
o Europeans wanted alternate routes to Asia not controlled by Ottomansleads to Exploration
The Italian States
 Independent city-states
 Venice
 Milan
 Florence
o Medici Family
 Isabella d’Este: “first lady of the world”
Machiavelli
 The Prince
o Acquisition, maintenance, and expansion of political power as a means to
restore and maintain order in his time
o The ends justify the means
The Decline of the Church
 Pope Boniface VIII vs. King Philip IV of France
o Fought over right to tax French clergy
o Boniface excommunicated Philip
o Philip kidnapped Boniface who died from shock
o New pope: Clement V was chosen and resided in Avignon (French
influence)
Papacy at Avignon
 most felt pope should reside in Rome
 Influence of French kings over popes
The Great Schism
 Two popes chosen: Urban VI (Italian) and Clement VII (French)
 Many became disenchanted w/ the Catholic Church b/c of its political struggles
 Council of Constance called: Pope Martin V instated (Roman)
Heresy and Reform
 Jan Hus
o Leader of Czech reformers in Prague
o Arrested and burned at the stake as a heretic
 Popes eventually regained position in Catholic Church but never regained
comparable power over the temporal governments again
Renaissance Papacy
 End of the Great Schism (1417) to beginning of Reformation
 Spiritual vs. temporal responsibilities
 Julius II – involved in War and politics (golden armor)
 Nepotism
 Ignoring vows of chastity: illegitimate children
 Patrons of Renaissance culture
 Pope Leo X of Medici Family
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Chapter 13 continued…
Characteristics of Italian Renaissance
 Urban Society
 Secular spirit
 Interest in Greco-Roman culture
 Humanism: individual potential
 Elitist movement
Renaissance Society
 Middle Ages: 1. Clergy 2. Nobility 3. Everyone else
 Aritstocrats:
o The Book of the Courtier Baldassare Castiglione
 Well-rounded and polished individuals
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Third Estate
o Decline of serfdom
o Merchants/Artisans in Towns/Cities
Marriage
o Often Arranged
o Large Dowry from woman’s family to groom
o Italy: children had to be emancipated to become adults
o Childbirth dangerous, but wanted many children due to high child
mortality rate
Intellectual Renaissance
 Humanism
o Study of the classics, liberal arts
o Petrarch: “father of humanism”
 Cicero and Virgil as standards
 Neoplatonism
o Synthesize Christianity and Platonism
o Hierarchy of substances: plants to God w/ humans in the middle
o Platonic love (all are bond by sympathetic love)
o Ex: Platonic friendship
 Hermeticism
o Believed humans were created as divine but chose to enter the material
world
o Could regain their divinity through purification of the soul
o Became Sages or Magi
 Education
o “Liberal arts”
o Educate an elite ruling class
o Religion and morals for women
 Vernacular
o Language spoken in own regions
 Dante: The Divine Comedy: souls progression to salvation: hell,
purgatory, and heaven
 Christine de Pizan: The Book of the City of Ladies
 Impact of Printing
o Movable metal type
o Johannes Gutenberg
Artistic Renaissance
 Perspective and outdoor space and light
 Movement and anatomical structure
 Leonardo da Vinci: Last Supper, Mona Lisa
 Raphael: Madonnas, School of Athens
 Michelangelo: Sistine Chapel
Northern Renaissance
 Exact portrayal of their world
 Jan van Eyck: oil paint Giovanni Arnolfini and His Bride
 Emotional intensity of religious feeling
 Albrect Durer: Adoration of the Magi