The Crises of the Late Middle Ages

This is Unit Twelve of Western Civilization One, part two of two: the Church's fall from Anagni to the failure of the councils, the men who said scripture outranked popes, the four procedures the exam tests on the crises, and the capstone. Part one ended with two stronger crowns and a halved France. Carry the same idea through this part: what each crisis did to the order the High Middle Ages built. The fourth blow fell on the Church. It had made kings its vassals under Innocent the Third; now it lost to a king at Anagni, lived at Avignon for seventy years, split into two and then three popes for forty more, and was reunited by a council whose claim to authority the popes then crushed. Wycliffe and Hus said scripture outranked them all, and Hus burned for it. The anchor's conclusion is that the Church came to seem one more political institution, and that the crises' winners were the states and the Italian cities. By the end you will be able to tell the papacy's fall from thirteen oh two to fourteen thirty-nine. To say what Wycliffe and Hus held and who won the century. To sequence, map, read a chronicle and classify a response. And to state the four blows.

Five entries on the papacy's fall: a bull and a seizure, seventy years at Avignon, two and three popes, the council that ended it, and the popes' revenge on the councils.

The claim at its peak, then a king's soldiers.

WC1 1115 Boniface VIII, Unam Sanctam, and Anagni

In thirteen oh two Boniface the Eighth's bull Unam Sanctam, on the primary layer, claimed authority over kings, answering their taxation of church property, the papal claim at its peak. In thirteen oh three Philip the Fourth had him seized at Anagni, a witness name, and he soon died. Where the anchor dates the bull thirteen oh three, it is thirteen oh two.

Seventy years away from Rome.

WC1 1116 Avignon, 1309 to 1377: The Babylonian Captivity

Clement the Fifth, a Frenchman elected in thirteen oh five, moved the papacy to Avignon in thirteen oh nine, the witness's date, away from Rome's street-fighting families. Popes stayed until thirteen seventy-seven, influenced by French politics, the anchor's one hundred thirteen of one hundred thirty-four cardinals being French; the name comes from the Jews' Babylonian exile. Influenced, not controlled, the anchor says.

Two popes, then three.

WC1 1117 The Great Western Schism, 1378 to 1417

Urban the Sixth returned to Rome in thirteen seventy-eight; French cardinals elected Clement the Seventh, and the two excommunicated each other, antipope being each side's word for the other. The Great Western Schism ran to fourteen seventeen with up to three popes at once, while monarchs and laypeople carried on unbothered. Unit nine's Schism of ten fifty-four is a different split.

A council ends the Schism and claims the top.

WC1 1118 Constance, Martin V, and the Conciliar Claim

The Council of Constance, fourteen fourteen to eighteen on the witness, ended the Schism by electing Martin the Fifth in fourteen seventeen and claimed that councils hold ultimate authority, the via consilii, against the Doctrine of the Keys, the conciliar movement at its height. The anchor never names Constance; the witness does.

Reform fails, and the stage is set.

WC1 1119 Why Conciliarism Failed and What That Set Up

Eugene the Fourth reconfirmed papal absolutism against the Council of Basel about fourteen thirty-one, the anchor's date, and the contest ran to fourteen thirty-nine. Reform failed, and the anchor says the Church came to seem one more political institution, its authority undermined, inadvertently setting the stage for radical criticism, in the anchor's phrase. No one yet rejected the Church; that is unit fifteen.

Two entries on scripture over hierarchy and the century's winners: Wycliffe and Hus a century before Luther, and the anchor's conclusion on who came out ahead.

Scripture over pope and council, a century early.

WC1 1120 Wycliffe and Hus

John Wycliffe at Oxford held that scripture outranked pope and council and sponsored an English Bible; his Lollard followers were suppressed. Jan Hus preached the same in Bohemia, was promised safe conduct to Constance, and was burned there in fourteen fifteen. Scripture over hierarchy, a century before Luther. This entry rests on the witness texts; the anchor omits both men.

States and Italian cities, the winners.

WC1 1121 Stronger States and Northern Italy Rising

The anchor's conclusion: France and England emerged stronger and more centralized, England's centralization coming after a civil war that unit fourteen covers; the labor shortage gave modest growth; culture turned pessimistic and xenophobic; and northern Italy rose on long-distance trade, where the Renaissance began. The crises' winners were states and Italian cities, and the exam wants both.

Four procedures: the crises hung on a spine of Church dates, the khanates by compass and the plague by clock, Boccaccio read for what he saw against what he could explain, and responses sorted by target.

A Church spine, and everything else hung on it.

WC1 1122 Sequencing the Crises, 1206 to 1453

Three crises overlap, so build one spine of Church dates: Unam Sanctam thirteen oh two, Avignon thirteen oh nine, the Schism thirteen seventy-eight, Constance fourteen seventeen. Before it lie the Mongols, Chinggis in twelve oh six and Hungary in twelve forty-one. Through it run the war and the plague: the famine of thirteen fifteen after Avignon's start, the war in thirteen thirty-seven and Crecy in thirteen forty-six before the plague of thirteen forty-eight, the Jacquerie of thirteen fifty-eight before the Schism, Agincourt and Hus's burning in fourteen fifteen during Constance, Joan in fourteen twenty-nine after it, fourteen fifty-three last. The trap is two Schisms and two Poitiers: ten fifty-four split East from West and thirteen seventy-eight pope from pope; seven thirty-two stopped the Arabs and thirteen fifty-six lost a French king. Check the century.

Four blocks by compass, a clock by trade route.

WC1 1123 Reading a Map of the Plague's Spread and the Mongol Khanates

For the khanates, read four blocks by compass: the Golden Horde over Russia in the northwest, the Il-Khanate over Persia in the southwest, the Chagatai in the center, Kublai's China in the east. For the plague, read a clock: south in thirteen forty-eight, central Europe and England in forty-nine, the north and east in fifty. The khanate that took Russian tribute is the Golden Horde. The khanate the Mamluks stopped is the Il-Khanate. Italy and southern France shaded without England is thirteen forty-eight; Scandinavia shaded is thirteen fifty. The plague's arrow runs from the Black Sea ports to Italy, the Genoese route, which is why the south fell first. The khanates were never one state after twelve sixty, and the clock runs by trade routes, not distance, so a port fell before an inland town nearer the source.

What he saw, what he explained, what he could.

WC1 1124 Reading a Primary Source: A Plague Chronicle's Claims

For a plague account, ask what the author observed, what he explained, and what explanation was available to him. Boccaccio's preface to the Decameron, read in translation, describes Florence in thirteen forty-eight. He observed swellings and death in days, the sick abandoned by kin, bodies in pits, law and custom collapsed. He explained the disease's arrival from the East and its spread by contact, seen in animals touching a victim's clothes. Available to him were miasma, divine wrath and the heavens, which he names without choosing. What the passage assumes is that the plague is contagious by contact, which he observed, and that its ultimate cause is beyond him, which he admits. He could not blame rats or fleas; that theory is modern. Neither credit him with modern knowledge nor mock him for lacking it.

Who acts, and against what.

WC1 1125 Classifying a Late-Medieval Response: Quarantine, Prayer, Scapegoat, Revolt

For a reaction to the crises, ask who acts and against what. Quarantine: towns against contagion, partly effective. Prayer and penance: individuals and the Church against sin, the Flagellants the extreme. Scapegoating: mobs against a minority, the massacres of Jews. Revolt: peasants against lords who froze wages. A port refusing ships for forty days is quarantine. Men whipping themselves to appease God is penance. A town accusing its Jews of poisoning wells and killing them is scapegoating. Peasants marching on London to end serfdom is revolt. A lord's statute fixing wages at pre-plague levels is not a response of the kind listed but the cause of the revolts. Responses overlapped in one town in one year, so classify by target: contagion, sin, a minority, or a lord.

One capstone entry: three crises in one century, told as four blows to the order the High Middle Ages built, and what each left behind.

Tribute, wages, taxes, doubt.

WC1 1126 Three Crises, One Century: Plague, War, and a Divided Church

The exam's late-medieval questions come from three crises the anchor sets in one century, and the way to hold them is to see what each did to the order unit eleven built. The Mongols came first and stopped short: Russia destroyed by twelve forty, Hungary beaten in twelve forty-one, Europe spared by Ogodei's death, Russia under tribute for two centuries, and the Silk Road quiet under Mongol peace, which is how the plague traveled. The plague struck a Europe already hungry. From thirteen forty-eight to fifty-one a third or more died, and the survivors found the manor's bargain reversed: labor scarce, wages rising, lords resisting with statutes, peasants rising in thirteen fifty-eight and thirteen eighty-one and losing, and wages rising anyway. Women gained rights for a century, and art learned to dance with skeletons. The war ran through all of it. A dispute over Aquitaine and a throne became a hundred years of raids, and the longbow at Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt showed that a peasant could kill a knight, which feudalism had never allowed. Joan turned it, France won by fourteen fifty-three, and both crowns came out stronger, France with the gabelle and the taille, England with its own language. And the Church, which had made kings its vassals under Innocent, lost to a king at Anagni, lived at Avignon for seventy years, split into two and three popes for forty more, and was reunited by a council whose claim the popes then crushed. Wycliffe and Hus, whom the anchor omits, said scripture outranked them all, and Hus burned for it in fourteen fifteen. The anchor's conclusion: stronger states, a pessimistic culture, a Church that looked like a political institution, and northern Italy rising on trade. The exam does not ask which crisis mattered most, and the course does not say; it asks what the Yasa was, what the Black Death probably was, why wages rose, what the longbow did, why Joan burned, what Unam Sanctam claimed, where Avignon was, what Constance decided, who Hus was. The anchor's figures and judgments are attributed, and Wycliffe, Hus, Constance, Crecy and Poitiers come from the witnesses.

Look at what you can now do. You can tell Unam Sanctam in thirteen oh two and Anagni the next year, seventy years at Avignon influenced but not controlled, two and three popes from thirteen seventy-eight, Constance electing Martin the Fifth and claiming the top, and the popes crushing the councils by fourteen thirty-nine. You can say that Wycliffe and Hus put scripture over pope and council a century before Luther, and that the century's winners were the states and the Italian cities. You can hang the crises on a Church spine and check the century, read the khanates by compass and the plague by clock, read Boccaccio for what he saw against what he could explain, and classify a response by its target. And you can state the four blows, Mongols, plague, war, Schism, and what each left, tribute, wages, taxes, doubt, which is this unit's one idea. Unit thirteen opens where the anchor's conclusion pointed, in northern Italy, on the Renaissance.