CHAPTER 11
THE LATE MIDDLE AGES:
CRISIS AND DISINTEGRATION IN
THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY
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CHAPTER OUTLINE

I. A Time of Troubles: Black Death and Social Crisis A. Famine and Population B. The Black Death 1. Spread of the Plague 2. Life and Death: Reactions to the Plague C. Economic Dislocation and Social Upheaval 1. Noble Landlords and Peasants 2. Peasant Revolt in France 3. An English Peasant Revolt 4. Revolts in the Cities
II. War and Political Instability A. Causes of the Hundred Years’ War B. Conduct and Course of the War 1. Early Phases of the War 2. Renewal of War 3. Joan of Arc 4. End of the War
C. Political Instability D. The Growth of England’s
Her leadership inspired the French, who also began to rely on cannon, and by 1453 France had won. During Edward III’s reign, the English Parliament gained control over taxes, increasing its power. In France, however, the Estates-General failed to achieve the same influence. Competing aristocratic factions also divided both kingdoms. In Germany, dukedoms and city-states went their own way, independent of the Holy Roman Emperor, itself an elective office. Italy was divided into small kingdoms in the south, the Papal States in central Italy, and several city-states in the north, notably Milan and the oligarchic republics of Florence and Venice. Warfare was endemic. The papacy declined. Confrontation between France’s Philip IV (d.1314) and Pope Boniface VIII led to the removal of the papacy to Avignon on France’s border in 1305. From 1377 there were two competing popes. Some argued that a general council, not the pope, should rule the church, and Conciliarism did end the Great Schism. There was a preoccupation with salvation. Some turned to good works, others to mysticism and devotional movements. The scholastics’ confidence in reason was attacked: God’s existence could only be “proved” by faith. Vernacular literature was exemplified in Italy by Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch, Chaucer in England, and Christine de Pizan in France. In art, Giotto explored