Transcript The late middleages 2

The Late Middle Ages
The Church
Gregory VII and the Investiture
Struggle
 Claimed unprecedented
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power for the papacy.
Prohibited lay
investiture and
threatened to
excommunication
Clash with Henry IV
Freed the church from
lay interference and
increasing the power
and prestige of the
papacy.
Concordat of Worms
The Papacy’s Zenith: Innocent III
 A new type of
administrator-pope, papal
Power reached its zenith.
Unlike Gregory VII and
other earlier reform popes,
who were monks, Innocent
and other great popes of
the late twelfth and
thirteenth centuries were
lawyers, trained in the
newly revived and
enlarged church, or canon
law. Innocent was like
Gregory VII, however, in
holding an exalted view of
his office:
Church Administration
 The universality and power of the church
rested not only upon a systematized,
uniform creed but also upon the most
highly organized administrative system
in the West.
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Pope
Curia, the Papal council or court
Chancery
Penitentiary
Legates
Church Administration
 Excommunication
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People would become anathema “set apart” from the
church and all the faithful.
 Interdict
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An ecclesiastical lockout – suspended all public
worship and withheld all sacraments other than
Baptism and Extreme Unction in the realm of a
disobedient ruler.
 Growth of heresy
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Lack of religious zeal led to abuses of the church and
the churches reaction.
Monastic Reform
 Medieval Reformation
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Benedictine order of monks at Cluny
 Clerical celibacy
 Abolition of simony
Free the entire church from secular control and subject
it to papal authority
 The Cistercian movement
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Abbeys were situated in solitary places
Emphasized fasts and vigils, manual labor, and a
vegetarian diet.
Denounced the beautification of churches in general.
Heresy
 The deliberate belief in doctrines officially
condemned by the church.
 The Albigensian
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Saw the world as battleground between good and evil
Denounced many activities of the state and the individual
Denounced Marriage
Denounced the church as an institution
 The Waldensian
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Translated the New Testament into French
Held that laymen could preach the Gospel
Denied the effectiveness of the sacraments unless
administered by worthy priests.
The Inquisition
 1233 – a special papal court was established
to cope with the rising tide of heresy and to
bring about religious conformity.
 Tride without legal counsel
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Confess and be reconciled witht the church on
performance of penance
Deny – tortured and burned at the stake
The Franciscans and Dominicans
 Franciscans
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Founded by St. Francis of Assisi
Rejected riches
Spread the gospel of poverty
Love of one’s fellow human beings
 Dominicans
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St Dominic
Dedicated themselves to preaching as a means of maintaining the
doctrines of the church and of converting heretics.
 Friars that lived among the people,
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Administering to the peoples needs
Preaching the Gospel
Teaching in the schools
 Reading:
The Black Death “A Description of the
Plague”
The Culprits
 The parasite
The Fleas 
 The Rats
The Famine of 1315-1317
 By 1300 Europeans were farming almost
all the land they could cultivate.
 A population crisis developed.
 Climate changes in Europe produced
three years of crop failures between 131517 because of excessive rain.
 As many as 15% of the peasants in some
English villages died.
 One consequence of
starvation & poverty
was susceptibility to
disease.
What is the Black Death?
 An outbreak of bubonic plague that was
pandemic throughout Europe and much of
Asia in the 14th century.
 Coming out of the East, the Black Death
reached the shores of Italy in the spring of
1348 unleashing a rampage of death across
Europe unprecedented in recorded history.
By the time the epidemic played itself out
three years later, anywhere between 25%
and 50% of Europe's population had fallen
victim to the pestilence.
The Symptoms
Bulbous
Septicemic Form:
almost 100%
mortality rate.
The Disease Cycle
Flea drinks rat blood
that carries the
bacteria.
Bacteria
multiply in
flea’s gut.
Human is infected!
Flea bites human and
regurgitates blood
into human wound.
Flea’s gut clogged
with bacteria.
3 Forms of the Plague
 Bubonic variant
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– swellings of buboes on the neck, armpits, or groin.
 Pneumonic plague
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The respiratory system and was spread through the
air.
 Septicemic version
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Attacked the blood system.
Having no defense and no understanding of the cause of
the pestilence, the men, women and children caught in
its onslaught were bewildered, panicked, and finally
devastated.
Signs of Impending Death
 Swellings in the groin or armpit
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Spread to the rest of the body
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Swellings changed to black or purple spots
 No doctors – No Medicine
 Most died within 3 days of the appearance of
the tumours
Reactions to Disaster
 "Such fear and fanciful notions took
possession of the living that almost all of
them adopted the same cruel policy, which
was entirely to avoid the sick and everything
belonging to them. By so doing, each one
thought he would secure his own safety.”
Reactions to Disaster
 Moderate living and the avoidance of all
superfluity – Small communities formed
 Drink and be merry
 Moderate view
 Authority of human and divine laws almost
disappeared.
Break down of social order
 "One citizen avoided another, hardly any
neighbor troubled about others, relatives
never or hardly ever visited each other.
Moreover, such terror was struck into the
hearts of men and women by this calamity,
that brother abandoned brother, and the
uncle his nephew, and the sister her brother,
and very often the wife her husband. What is
even worse and nearly incredible is that
fathers and mothers refused to see and tend
their children, as if they had not been theirs.
Mass Burials
 Such was the multitude of corpses brought to
the churches every day and almost every
hour that there was not enough consecrated
ground to give them burial, especially since
they wanted to bury each person in the family
grave, according to the old custom. Although
the cemeteries were full they were forced to
dig huge trenches, where they buried the
bodies by hundreds. Here they stowed them
away like bales in the hold of a ship and
covered them with a little earth, until the
whole trench was full."
 Reading
“Petrarch on the Plague”
1347: Plague Reaches
Constantinople
 Reading
“Boccaccio: The Decameron - Introduction”
Boccaccio in The
Decameron
The victims ate lunch with
their friends and dinner with
their ancestors.
Attempts to Stop the Plague
A Doctor’s
Robe
“Leeching”
Lancing a Buboe
Attempts to Stop the Plague
Flagellanti:
Self-inflicted “penance” for our sins!
Attempts to Stop the Plague
Pograms against the Jews
“Jew” hat
“Golden Circle”
obligatory badge
The Mortality
Rate
25% - 50%
25,000,000 dead
!!!
Effects of the Plague
 Town Populations fell
 Trade declined – Prices rose
 The serfs left the manor in search of better
wags
 Nobles fiercely resisted peasant demands for
higher wages, causing peasant revolts in
England, France, Italy, and Belgium
 Jews were blamed for bringing on the plague.
The Battle for Flanders
 Flanders had grown into an
industrial center of northern
Europe.
 Beer and Wine a staple of the
Medieval diet.
 England's problem.
 France tries to regain control
of the region.
 Civil War breaks out.
The “Auld Alliance”
 An Alliance between the
French and the Scots.
Persisted into the 18th
Century.
 The English faced the
French from the South and
the Scots from the north.
The Battle for the Channel and North
Sea.
 England could only support their Flemish
allies if they could send aid across the
Channel.
 English trade was dependent upon the free
flow of naval traffic through the Channel.
 Both sides commissioned – pirates – if they
weren’t operating with royal permission.
The Dynastic Conflict
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King Philip IV
 Capetians male line had ended after 350
years.
 Daughter Isabelle, married King Edward II of
England  Son Endward III was heir to the
French thrown.
 French Lawyers - Salic Law – Stated that
property could not descend through a female.
 French thrown goes to Philip of Valois –
Nephew of Philip IV.
1. Controversy Over Succession
 The French nobility selected
Philip of Valois, a cousin of the
last king through the male line.
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He founded a new French dynasty
that ruled through the 16c.
He was chosen in preference to
King Edward III of England,
whose mother was the daughter of
the late king, Philip IV.
 In 1340, Edward claimed the title
“King of France.”
3. Conflict Over Flanders
The ‘dagger’ pointing
at the ‘heart’ of
England!
 Wool industry.
 Flanders wants its
independence from
French control.
 Asks England for
help.
4. A Struggle for National Identity
 France was NOT
a united country
before the war
began.
 The French king
only controlled
about half of the
country.
An Aggressive Spirit in England
 England had a strong central government.
 Many veterans of hard fighting on England’s
Welsh and Scottish borders.
 A thriving economy
 Popular King
 Subjects were ready to fight for their young
king.
Military Characteristics
 The War was a series of short raids
and expeditions punctuated by a
few major battles, marked off by
truces or ineffective treaties.
Why: The relative strengths of each
country dictated the sporadic nature
of the struggle.
French Advantages
 Population of about 16,000,000.
 Far richer and more populous than
England.
 At one point, the French fielded an
army of over 50,000  at most,
Britain mustered only 32,000.
British Advantages
 Weapons Technologies.
 In almost every engagement, the English
were outnumbered.
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Britain’s most successful strategies:
/ Avoid pitched battles.
/ Engage in quick, profitable raids
 Steal what you can.
 Destroy everything else.
 Capture enemy knights to hold for ransom.
The Longbow as a Weapon
 The use of the English
defensive position was the
use of the longbow.
 Its arrows had more
penetrating power than a bolt
from a crossbow.
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Could pierce an inch of
wood or the armor of a
knight at 200 yards!
 A longbow could be fired
more rapidly.
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6 arrows per minute.
The British Longbow:
The Battle of Poitiers, 1356
Early English Victories
The Effective Use of the
Cannon at Poitiers, 1356
French Confusion
 The English captured the French
king, John II [r.1350-1364].
 France
was now ruled by the
Estates General
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A representative council of
townspeople and nobles.
Created in 1355.
Purpose  to secure funds for the war.
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In theory, the French king
could not levy taxes on his
own!!
The Jacquerie, 1358
 In the confusion and
unrest following the French
disaster at Poitiers, this
rural movement began.
 It was a response to the
longstanding economic
and political grievances in
the countryside worsened
by warfare.
 The rebels were defeated
by aristocratic armies.
Trouble in England
 Peasant Revolt in 1381 was put
down by King Richard II
[r. 1377-1399].
 After charges of tyranny,
Richard II was forced to
abdicate in 1300.
 Parliament elected Henry IV
[r. 1399-1413], the first ruler
from the House of Lancaster.
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Henry avoided war taxes.
He was careful not to alienate the
nobility.
King Henry V (r. 1412-1422)
 Renewed his family’s claim
to the French throne.
 At Agincourt in 1415, the
English, led by Henry
himself, goaded a larger
French army into attacking
a fortified English position.
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With the aid of the dukes
of Burgundy, Henry
gained control over
Normandy, Paris, and
much of northern France!
A Burgundian Presence
Treaty of Troyes (1420)
 Charles VI’s son [the future Charles
VII], was declared illegitimate and
disinherited.
 Henry V married Catherine, the
daughter of Charles VI.
 Henry was declared the legitimate
heir to the French throne!
 A final English victory seemed
assured, but both Charles VI and
Henry V died in 1422.
 This left Henry’s infant son, Henry VI
[r. 1422-1461], to inherit BOTH
thrones.
Height of English Dominance
The French “Reconquest”
 The two kings’ deaths ushered in
the final stage of the 100 Years’
War [1422-1453].
 Even though in 1428 the
military and political power
seemed firmly in British
hands, the French reversed
the situation.
 In 1429, with the aid of the
mysterious Joan of Arc, the
French king, Charles VII, was
able to raise the English siege of
Orleans.
 This began the reconquest
of the north of France.
Joan of Arc (1412-1432)
 The daughter of prosperous
peasants from an area of
Burgundy that had suffered
under the English.
 Like many medieval mystics,
she reported regular visions of
divine revelation.
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Her “voices” told her to go to the king and
assist him in driving out the English.
 She dressed like a man and
was Charles’ most charismatic
and feared military leader!
Cannons Used at Orleons
Joan Announces the Capture of
Orleans to the King
Joan of Arc (1412-1432)
 She brought inspiration and a sense of
national identity and self-confidence.
 With her aid, the king was crowned at
Reims [ending the “disinheritance”].
 She was captured during an attack on
Paris and fell into English hands.
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Because of her “unnatural dress” and
claim to divine guidance, she was
condemned and burned as a heretic in
1432.
Joan as a “Feminist” Symbol Today?
The End of the War
 Despite Joan’s capture, the French
advance continued.
 By 1450 the English had lost all their
major centers except Calais.
 In 1453 the French armies captured an
English-held fortress.
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This was the last battle of the war.
 There was not treaty, only a cessation
of hostilities.
France Becomes Unified!
France in 1453
France in 1337