Periodization, and Change and Continuity Over Time

We're nineteen days away from the beginning of the school year! Sorry if that depresses you. It seems as if summer is never long enough. It certainly never seems like time enough to get all of my summer work done. Yes, I work over the summer. I have to make sure that everything is ready to go for the next school year. This blog is a small part of that work. I had intended to write more, but time got away from me. It's funny how time does that.

Actually, time is exactly the subject I wanted to address in this blog post. Time is going to be very important to your success in AP Euro. More precisely, developing a sense of time is very important. Have a sense of when things happened helps us to develop and understand the context in which they happened. For example, looking at a fourteen-foot tall marble statue of naked man who is standing confidently in his lack of clothing may seem a bit strange. But if we understand that this particular statue was created during the High Renaissance, we gain an entirely new perspective on what would otherwise be a very awkward encounter for our modern eyes. During the Renaissance, philosophers and artists known as humanists developed a new confidence in the ability and potential of human beings. For the artists, the idealized human body became an expression of that ability and potential. If we understand that, this statue (If you already haven't guessed, I'm referring to Michelangelo's David) becomes a very powerful affirmation of the power and confidence of humanity.

Notice that in the example I was able to refer to an era, a range of dates, by a common name, "The Renaissance." This is one of the tools that historians use in order to develop a sense of chronology and to analyze the bigger trends in history. In order to classify a range of dates as an era, there has to be some commonality in the events, culture, or ideology that belong to that period of time. The renewed confidence in human potential is one of the characteristics that define the Renaissance. The Renaissance is just one of the era that we will be studying, our starting point. It overlaps with the next era we will study, the Protestant Reformation.

That leads us to one of the unique features of periodization in history; eras don't necessarily have firm beginning and ending dates, and they don't easily fit next to each other like bricks in a wall. Eras can be messy. They can even be the subject of much debate. The Renaissance is a good example of the messiness of eras. When did it begin? When did it end? Well, that all depends upon you point of view. The early stirrings intellectual Renaissance may have begun as early as 1313, with Dante's Divine Comedy, or maybe in the middle part of the 1300's with the work of Petrarch. The artistic Renaissance may have its beginnings as early as the late 1200's and Giotto's more naturalistic frescoes. Many art historians prefer to place the beginning of the artistic Renaissance over one hundred years later, when all of the qualities that define Renaissance art finally came together in the works of Masaccio. Did the Renaissance end in 1564 with the death of Michelangelo, or in 1642 with the death of Galileo? That depends upon whether you are answering a question of art or a question of intellect and science. Our course, AP Euro, begins around (c. - circa) 1450, right in the middle of the range of dates that defines the Renaissance.

Periodization helps us to make comparisons between the different eras. We can more effectively develop and answer questions about what has changed over time and what has remained the same. For example, we can analyze the differences in ideas about religious toleration during the Reformation with ideas about religious toleration during the Enlightenment. What were the differences in ideology between the two periods and what may have caused those differences? Of course, we may not always refer to the eras. We may refer to a century, or a range of dates. For example, we may want to examine the relationship between the arts and state power from 1550 to 1700. If we are aware that this is the era of the Baroque in art, the Counter-Reformation in religion, and the era of divine right absolutism in politics, then we might have a better shot at answering this question more effectively. Don't worry if you don't know any of this stuff yet. You will know it later.

So, is chronology important? Yes, yes it is.

History & Its Sources

In the last post I tried to establish a more precise definition of the word "history." It's important to go into AP Euro, from the very beginning, understanding that this course is very different from the "history" classes that you have taken in the past. For most of you, that would be middle school social studies classes. The very definition of history as an ongoing inquiry and a living discussion, as opposed to an authoritative narrative of events (wars and dead guys!) sets any of the AP history courses apart from standard social studies classes. This is very important to remember come August. In order to make sense of and do the work of history (you know, that whole "discussion and argument" thing), you must have a basic understanding of the past. That doesn't mean that you are expected to come class understanding every last detail. That's what the discussions are all about; developing and understanding. However, it does mean that you should come to class having read the assigned reading while trying your best to make some sort of sense out of it all. If you have a question, write it down. Questions only add to the discussion. If you don't at least keep up with the reading then we can't really get down to the business of history. We just get bogged down in the "what happened" part of history and can't get to any of the real questions.

Okay, I'll go ahead and step down off of my soapbox and get to the real purpose behind this post. If history is a dialogue about the past, how do historians know what happened in the past? In order to answer this question, it is important to remember that history is a written discipline. It is primarily based upon written sources, and it is presented in a written format. Historians base their primary arguments upon an analysis of the written record of events. Yes, that means primary sources. Primary sources can be written documents, archeological artifacts, stories passed down orally, or (my favorite) works of art. As a student of European history, you will be expected to read and analyze historical evidence, and to come to your own conclusions about that evidence. Don't be afraid to "be wrong." Your teachers are there to guide you. They will help you learn how to interpret evidence in a way that makes sense. As an AP Euro student, you will also be expected to present your own historical arguments in writing. That's right, you will be doing a little bit of your own work as historians. Again, don't go running away. Your teachers are there to help you learn how to become better historical thinkers and writers. You just have to be willing to work and struggle through the process with them.

Historians don't reinvent the wheel every time they sit down to write. They do read the works of their fellow historians, and the works of those who came before them. They may read the works of a different type of historian (Yes, there are different kinds of historians) in order to gain a better understanding of a particular subject or era. For example, an art historian working on an essay about fifteenth-century Italian Renaissance art, might read the work of a social historian about Renaissance Italy to better understand the social context in which these works were created. If we only depended upon our textbook as our only source of historical knowledge, we would get a very broad view of history, but it would be lacking in depth. For that reason, we will also be reading selected passages from the works of other historians (Short passages!).

Okay, I've babbled on long enough for now. I'm not sure what the next post will be about. For now, I suggest that you go back through my blog to the posts I wrote last summer about the disasters of the fourteenth century. This will give you a better understanding of the century before 1450, our starting point in AP Euro. This will provide you with a little bit of context to help you better understand the Renaissance, our first unit of study.

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What is History?

Okay, I've finally knocked the summer cobwebs loose from my head. Time to start up the summer blog again. I had originally intended to keep this blog going throughout the school year, but the sheer volume of work that teaching an AP Euro class places upon my shoulders ended that idea. Who knows; maybe I will come back to that original plan at some point in the future. In any case, welcome (or welcome back) to my summer AP Euro blog. Hopefully, if you're reading this then you are enrolled in, and are excited to being AP European History at Westview High School. Fair warning; it does require quite a bit of time and energy to do this course the right way (that is, successfully). That applies equally to the students and to the teachers of this course. I know that my mind is always spinning about AP Euro and European history in general. In fact, as a begin writing this blog, I am sitting in a cafe in Seattle, the final destination of my summer road trip up the West Coast. I've been thinking about the subject of this first post of the summer since I left San Diego 1,064 miles ago.

I think the best place to begin thinking about the study of European history (or really the history of any civilization) it to first think about what is meant by the word "history." I know it seems a little stupid, right? After all, you can just look up the word history in the dictionary.com app on your iPhone to find out what history is. If you do that, by the way, the dictionary.com app delivers eight different definitions of the word history. Curiously, none of these definitions describes the word history as it is used by the historian. So, what's the deal here? What does a historian, or even a student of history, mean when they refer to "history"? Let's take a closer look at that.

To most people history is simply the events and people of the past; things that happened; people who have lived and died. This is only a part of the picture. Most of the "history" textbooks that you are familiar with treat history in this way. They are simply chronological narratives of the past. They are intended to familiarize the reader with the events of the past in the most efficient way possible. Are they histories? Not really. They are chronologies; a simple accounting of the past. Our own textbook, "Western Civilization" by Jackson J. Spielvogel, is closer to a chronological narrative than it is to a work of history. (I will touch on the importance of this text to our work later on.)

Okay, so if history isn't just the past, what is it? Well, history, like a chronological narrative, takes as its subject the past. However, it doesn't just stop at the question of what happened. History asks why it happened, how it happened, the causes and consequences of events and ideas. History is based upon a constant inquiry into past events. In fact, the word "history" comes from an ancient Greek word meaning something that is learned or known through inquiry. History is first a constant questioning about the past. I'll give you a quick example. Currently, I'm reading a book about the beginning of the First World War called The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 by Christopher Clark that has opened up a fresh perspective on the beginning of "The Great War". I know what you're thinking. How in the world can there be anything "fresh" about a war that started one hundred years ago? Don't we already know everything there is to know about it? The answer is NO! As we get further away from the events surrounding the outbreak of war in August of 1914 we are able to ask new questions, many of them based upon our own experiences living in the huge wake left by that war in the 20th century. Remember, history is about asking questions. In his book, Clark points out that most post-WWI historians found themselves caught up with the question of why the war started, which inevitably lead to the question of who was to blame for the start of the war. It is not necessarily the job of the modern historian to point the finger of blame. Clark decided to approach the book with the question of HOW the war started. He discovered that this is a much more difficult question to answer because most of the major players in the war spent a great deal of effort after the war pointing the finger at other nations and away from themselves. His approach paints a picture of the events that led to the outbreak of war that is much more complex than the popularly accepted narrative, and makes it much more difficult to point the finger at any one country as "responsible" for the war.

Clarks inquiry into the origins of the first great conflict of the twentieth century isn't the first of its kind, and it certainly won't be the last. That's the nature of history. It's an ongoing inquiry. Will other historians agree with the conclusions that Clark has reached in his book? They may agree with some of them, but certainly not with all of them. History is an ongoing discussion; a debate about the meaning and significance of past events and ideas. Historians read and respond to the works of other historians in an ongoing conversation. They question the conclusions of other historians. They take a critical look at the sources used by other historians to reach those conclusions. Sometimes, reading works of history will lead to new questions and a new perspective on events about which we thought we knew everything.

Okay, I'll go ahead and leave it here for this post. I don't want it to get too long. The main idea to take with you here is that history is an ongoing inquiry, discussion, and debate about the past.

In the next post, we'll take a closer look at the sources that historians use to answer their inquiry into the past. Welcome to AP Euro!

14th-Century Crises in the Church: Part II

Gregory XI is anointed as pope while the Hundred Years' War rages outside

When we left off, the papacy had been moved to the town of Avignon, near French territory, resulting in the perception that the popes were under the control of the French crown and a disastrous loss of prestige for the Church. The corruption caused by the need to raise funds for the establishment of the papal curia in Avignon and to offset the loss of income from the Papal States only lowered the opinions Europeans held of the organization responsible for the salvation of their souls. The cries for the papacy to return to Rome only grew louder as the 14th century ground on. The most direct call came from a young nun from Tuscany, Catherine of Siena (c. 1347-1380). Instead of locking herself away in the convent, Catherine very adeptly involved herself in the political world of 14th century Italy, claiming to have been inspired to do this by a vision of Christ. In 1346 the city of Florence decided to utilize her talents to persuade Pope Gregory XI (1370-1378) to move the papacy back to Rome. In 1377, Pope Gregory, in order to avoid a further decline in prestige, returned to Rome. Unfortunately, the city had experienced further decline during the decades that the popes had been absent. The loss of commerce associated with pilgrimages and the business generated by the presence of the great households of the cardinals had a disastrous effect upon the economy of the city. Now that the papacy was back in Rome, the citizens of Rome were determined to keep it there.

Catherine of Siena persuades Gregory XI to return the papacy to Rome

Gregory XI died in 1378, less than a year after returning to Rome. The cardinals met, as usual, in conclave to elect a new pope. However, this was the first time they had met in Rome since 1305. This time they were at the mercy of the citizens of Rome. The Romans were afraid that the cardinals, most of whom were French, would elect another Frenchman, as they had done in 1305, and the papacy would move back to Avignon. They made it very clear to the cardinals that they would not leave the city alive if the next pope was not either a Roman or an Italian (no pressure). The cardinals took the threat very seriously (a very wise decision), and elected the archbishop of Bari, who took the name Urban VI (1378-1389). In order to secure a future Italian succession to the papacy, Urban VI immediately began the process of packing the college of cardinals with enough new Italian cardinals to negate the French majority. The French cardinals, fearing the Roman population, left Rome as soon as they possibly could. Once they were clear of Rome, they declared that the election of Urban VI was illegitimate because they had been forced to elect an Italian under a threat of death. They wasted no time in holding a second conclave, where they elected one of their own as pope. This Frenchman took the name Clement VII (1378-1394) and returned to Avignon. There were now two popes; Urban VI in Rome and Clement VII in Avignon. This situation is called the Great Schism of the Western Church, and would last until 1417 (almost 40 years!).

This split in the Church only served to accelerate the decline of papal prestige. Both popes found that they were in desperate need of money and had only half of the revenues of the church available. Each pope increased the practice of simony, the selling of benefices and offices to the highest bidder. The popes added to the already heavy tax burden of many European commoners by increasing taxation. The ongoing war between the French and English at this time ensured that this religious rift would also become part of a growing political rift as well. France and its allies, Spain, Scotland, and the Kingdom of Naples (southern Italy), naturally supported Clement VII and the Avignon popes. England and its allies, Germany, Scandinavia, and most of the northern Italian states, supported Urban VI and the Roman popes. Each pope condemned the other as Antichrist. The king of France, whose protection of the Avignon popes guaranteed the continuation of the schism, even sent the duke of Anjou and his army to Italy in an attempt to drive the Roman pope out. Christianity, which had served as a unifying force in European civilization, had now become a source of further discord.

The Council of Constance (1414-1418) works to repair the Great Schism

The Great Schism was not easily created and it was not easily repaired. The question of authority within the Church, which had caused the problems at the beginning of the 14th century, now became more important than ever. The question now revolved around the question of who had the authority to depose both popes and fix the Church. The answer came from the theologians at the University of Paris. Earlier in the century, Marsiglio da Padova, rector of the university, wrote Defensor Pacis (Defender of the Peace), a neat little treatise that was intended as a logical argument that would deny the authority of the popes over temporal rulers. Not only did Marsiglio claim that temporal authority was independent of spiritual authority, he argued that the church should only be concerned with spiritual matters. This was a major theological victory for the secular authorities in Europe that would speed the separation of church and state in the modern era. Marsiglio's argument turned the clergy (priests) into the administrators of the Church, and, indeed, he argued that final authority rested on their shoulders, not on the popes. Based upon this interpretation of spiritual authority, large numbers of the clergy began to call for the formation of general church council to repair the schism.

This conciliar movement hoped that either the church hierarchy (cardinals, archbishops, bishops...) or the Holy Roman Emperor would call for a council. When the Emperor failed to do this, cardinals from both sides decided to meet in council at Pisa in 1409. The Council of Pisa, unfortunately, made the schism much worse. They elected a new pope, Alexander V (1409-1410), and deposed the other two popes. While they officially deposed the popes in Avignon and Rome, they failed to back this decision up with force. Both popes remained. Now there were three popes! Alexander V died shortly thereafter and was succeeded by Cardinal Baldassare Cossa, a former pirate and soldier of questionable morals who used money from the Medici Bank in Florence to win election as Pope John XXIII. The prestige of the Church had hit rock bottom. The Holy Roman Emperor called for another council at Constance to do what the Council of Pisa had failed to do. The Council of Constance (1414-1418), backed by the authority and the army of the Holy Roman Emperor, finally succeeded in deposing all three popes and securing the election of a Roman pope, Martin V. The Great Schism and the Avignon papacy had finally come to an end. All of the popes who ruled from Avignon between 1378 and 1417 are now known as Antipopes in the Catholic Church.

Jan Hus burns at the stake in Constance

The damage done to the Church was much more than political and financial. The prestige of the Church and the confidence of the faithful had been severely damaged by the century of crises and controversy. Europe experience a crisis of faith that would continue into the early modern period European history. In an attempt to take their salvation into their own hands and to have a personal experience of God, many European turned to mysticism. Groups like the Brothers and Sisters of the Common life attempted to live simple lives in imitation of Christ in their own semi-monastic communities. The important thing to remember is that they did this outside of the structure of institutional church. Other theologians directly attacked the authority and necessity of the Church and its clergy. John Wyclif (c. 1328-1384), an English theologian, argued that Bible should be the sole authority in the spiritual life of Christians. He encouraged the translation of the Bible from Latin into vernacular languages so that it could be read by all Christians, not just the clergy. He also argued that there was absolutely no basis in Scripture for the papal claim of temporal authority, that the popes should be stripped of all authority and have all of their property confiscated. This made him very popular with the English kings, who kept him from being burned at the stake. Jan Hus (1374-1415), a Bohemian (Czech) who had been influenced by the doctrine of Wyclif, was not so lucky. The movement he inspired, known as Hussites, combined dissatisfaction with the Church with a resentment of German domination into a strong political and religious movement. Hus did not have the advantage of royal protection or distance from Rome like Wyclif. He was summoned to the Council of Constance in 1415 by Emperor Sigismund in order do "defend" his ideas. When he reached Constance, Hus was arrested, condemned as a heretic, and burned at the stake. Wyclif and Hus planted the ideological seeds that would bloom in the Protestant Reformation a century later.

Sources

Merriman, John, A History of Modern Europe: From the Renaissance to the Present, 2nd ed., New York: W. W. Norton, 2004

Palmer, R. R., Colton, Joel, A History of the Modern World, 8th ed., New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995

Spielvogel, Jackson, Western Civilization, 6th ed., Belmont, CA: Thompson Wadsworth, 2006

14th-Century Crises in the Church: Part I

Pope Boniface VIII and the College of Cardinals

The third major disaster of the 14th century in Europe was comprised of a series of crises within the Western, or Roman Church (We call it the Roman Catholic Church these days.). The Catholic church had its origins in the final centuries of the western Roman Empire, and, through the course of the middle ages, became one of the most powerful entities in western Europe. As it christianized the various barbarian nations that settled in Europe, the Catholic Church provided a source of unity in the Western world that was key to the emergence of a distinctly Western and European civilization. The bishop of Rome, eventually referring to himself as Pope (from the Latin word for father), claimed primacy in the church as both the spiritual and temporal leader of Europe. Technically, kings were granted their power by God through his representative on Earth, the Pope. The Church was represented as the instrument through which God granted salvation. It dominated the daily lives of medieval Europeans.

The failure of harvests, the tragic scale of the Black Death, and the death and destruction wrought by the pillaging and raping mercenary companies during the Hundred Years' War, served to weaken the faith of Europeans in a church that was already reeling from a series of crises that began at the turn of the 14th century. The problems of the Church had their origins in the struggle of kings to centralize power in the monarchies of their realms. In order to accomplish this kings needed to eliminate real and potential challenges to their authority. This meant the eventual rounding up and controlling of the rowdy nobility. But first, it meant asserting royal control over the affairs of the Church within their territories. This was not a new struggle, by any stretch of the imagination. However, it did come to a head at this time.

Philip IV and family

The quarrel, this time, began with Philip IV of France (r. 1285-1314), also known as Philip the Fair (Apparently, he was a good-looking dude.). Like many of the monarchs we will study, Philip had a cash-flow problem. In his quest to increase his royal revenues at the least possible expense to royal power, Philip made the claim that, as king of France, he had the right to tax the clergy of France as royal subjects. This clashed with the pope's claim of authority over both the church and the secular state. Pope Boniface VIII (r. 1294-1303) responded by issuing the Papal Bull (Not that kind of bull! It's an official letter of policy from the pope) called Claricis Laicos which expressly forbid the French monarchy from collecting taxes from the French clergy or seizing church property. Unmoved by this Bull, Philip continued to collect taxes (one half of their annual incomes) from the clergy of France.

His Holiness brought out the theological big guns in response to this upstart king's refusal to submit to papal authority. In the Bull Unam Sanctam (1302), Boniface made the strongest theological case for the supremacy of the spiritual authority (the pope) over the temporal authority (kings, princes, dukes, etc.);

"We are told by the word of the gospel that in this His fold there are two swords - a spiritual, namely, and a temporal... Both swords, the spiritual and the material, therefore, are in the power of the church; the one, indeed, to be wielded for the church, the other by the church; the one by the hand of the priest, the other by the hand of kings and knights, but at the will and sufferance of the priest. One sword, moreover, ought to be under the other, and the temporal authority to be subjected to the spiritual....

Indeed, we declare, announce and define, that it is altogether necessary to salvation for every human creature to be subject to the Roman pontiff." 

Since the king of France refused to be "subject to the Roman pontiff" in all affairs, Boniface VIII excommunicated him, denying him access to salvation. Philip sent troops into Italy to arrest Boniface. The plan was to bring him back to France to face trial. Boniface was rescued by Italian nobles, but soon died from the shock of this ordeal. Philip won; popes would never make these kind of outrageous claims at absolute authority over church and state. The power and prestige of the Church had taken a big hit. It was about to get much worse.

Pope Clement V, the first Avignon pope

In order to avoid the kind of challenge to royal authority he had under Boniface VIII, Philip IV arranged for the election of Frenchman to the office of pope. This new pope, Clement V, was much more cooperative with Philip's ambitions. He essential got rid of the most restrictive elements of Clericis Laicos and did away with Unam Sanctam. His biggest decision, however, involved the holy city of Rome. By 1300, Rome had become less than a shadow of its ancient glory. The former capital of the Roman Empire, which had housed over a million citizens within its walls, now contained only 40,000 people. Only one third of the space within the walls was occupied, and forests grew over the ruins of the ancient city. Wolves hunted and killed the cattle that grazed in the old forum at night. The city, and the Church, were at the mercy of the warring Colonna and Orsini families. Boniface used this turmoil in the city of Rome as an excuse to move the papacy to the city of Avignon, a territory of the Holy Roman Empire. Although it was not a subject of France, Avignon was across the Rhône River from French territory. This, paired with the apparently pro-French position of Clement V, led to the impression that the papacy was essentially a captive of the French monarchy. The papacy remained in Avignon for seventy-two years, a period of time known as the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1305-1377).

So what? What's the big deal? People and organizations move all the time.

The first major with this problem with this move was rooted in the theological and biblical basis for the primacy of the bishop of Rome in the Catholic Church. The very first bishop of Rome was St. Peter, the apostle of Christ, who was martyred in Rome and buried on the nearby Vatican Hill. The popes claim their authority as the heirs of St. Peter. This authority was derived from a passage in the Bible that was interpreted as giving primacy to Peter, and hence to the popes.

“And I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter (Greek, Petros, rock, a nick name given to Simon Peter), and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

These words now adorn the inside of the dome of the Basilica of St. Peter at the Vatican. For many Europeans, the Pope derived his authority from the residence of the papacy in Rome. Since the pope no longer resided in the holy city, the office lost much of the prestige it had once enjoyed. The perception of the pope as being the captive of the French monarchy didn't do much to improve this loss of prestige, nor did the creation of several new French cardinals at Avignon.

The Papal Palace in Avignon

The second problem with this move had to do with the finances of the papacy. Running the Catholic Church was expensive; in fact it was becoming more expensive every day. Once the papacy had resided in Avignon for over 25 years, the pope decided that it was time to construct a palace worthy of the head of the Church. Unfortunately, when the Clement V moved away from Rome, he also gave up direct control of the Papal States, a collection of small states in northern Italy. This meant that he also gave up the revenues associated with control of those states. The pope needed money to pay for his palace and the day-to-day operation of the church. One answer to this financial problem came in the form of the increasing size of the papal bureaucracy. In order to compete with the increasing size and complexity of the monarchical states (especially France and England) and exert more control over the church, the papacy developed one of the most complex bureaucracies in the world. The sale of offices within this administrative system became a way for the popes of Avignon to raise the cash they desperately needed. The imposition of new church taxes also helped to increase papal revenues. The popes and the cardinals who took up residence in Avignon turned the stinky little backwater village into a thriving metropolis of grand palaces. The common people of Europe began to feel disconnected from the clergy and the institution of the Church. The inability of the Church to explain or to deal with the Black Death only increased this sense of alienation. The pope and the cardinals lived in splendor while most of Europe lived in squalor. As the 14th century progressed, Avignon became a symbol of everything that was wrong in the Catholic Church.

As the criticism of the papacy grew louder, many people began to call for the popes to return to Rome. Ironically, it was the attempt to effect that return that led to an even greater crisis for the Catholic Church, the Great Schism. This is where we will pick up in the next blog post.

Sources

Merriman, John, A History of Modern Europe: From the Renaissance to the Present, 2nd ed., New York: W. W. Norton, 2004

Palmer, R. R., Colton, Joel, A History of the Modern World, 8th ed., New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995

Spielvogel, Jackson, Western Civilization, 6th ed., Belmont, CA: Thompson Wadsworth, 2006

The Hundred Years' War

The English (in Red) vs. The French (in Blue) at Crecy

The Causes
The plague that struck Europe from 1347-1351 returned to kill again every five to ten years for the next 150 years. The plague's return in western Europe was probably facilitated by the second disaster of the 14th century, the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453). This multi-generational war that divided Europe and dominated the political scene for the next century had its roots in the major problem with hereditary monarchy; the last Capetian monarch of France, Charles IV, died without a male heir. This led to a major dispute over the crown that was complicated by the fact that the closest male relative of Charles IV was his nephew, the young Edward III of England, the son of Charles' sister Isabella. Edward had a very clear claim to the crown, however was overruled by the nobility of France, who decided that the succession could not be passed through the female line. They opted for Charles' cousin, Philip of Valois, who became Philip VI of France in 1328. 

This little tiff over the succession to the French crown was bad enough. But it was made even worse by the feudal system of vassalage that governed politics in the middle ages. The king of England, Edward III, was also the duke of Gascony, a territory in southwestern France near the modern border with Spain. As the duke of Gascony, Edward was supposed to pledge his loyalty as a vassal to the king of France, his cousin Philip. This arrangement had always irritated the kings of England. They viewed themselves to be peers of the kings of France, and therefore on an equal footing. This was particularly annoying to Edward because he believed he had a claim as the rightful king of France, and refused to swear loyalty to Philip as a mere subject. He refused to swear loyalty as a vassal of France. Philip responded by seizing the duchy of Gascony. Edward then declared war on Philip, calling him the "so-called king of France." (Oh snap!)

The War

I will try my best to break this century-long conflict into more manageable chunks for you. It won't be easy. The war and it's course became increasingly complicated. The fighting wasn't constant. In fact, there was a twenty-year truce declared in 1396. The devastation was, however, made worse by the changes in the attitudes brought about by the plague, and by the changes in warfare that this kind of conflict necessitated. Take a deep breath. Here we go!

Phase I: 1337-1396
The first phase of the war did not go well for the French. French noblemen were true believers in the idea of chivalry. As trained warriors they saw themselves as true fighting heroes, capable of miraculous deeds on the battlefield, almost invincible. They looked down on the common foot soldier of peasant stock. They, like all nobles of the time, believed in their superiority over the commoners. After all, God had divided society between "those who pray, those who fight, and those who work" for a reason. The mounted knight, draped in heavy armor and weapons formed the core of the French army throughout most of the conflict. The English, on the other hand, was composed of many more paid foot soldiers. They were well armed with pikes, big can openers on a pole, perfect for dealing with mounted knights and the horses they rode in on. They were also armed with the Welsh longbow, a deadly weapon with a relatively rapid rate of fire.

English Longbows rule at Crecy

After his initial efforts in France fizzled out, Edward III tried to get things going with a big invasion of Normandy, directly across the Channel from England, in 1346. This set up the first major blunder for the French. Philip's forces, sensing the opportunity for glory, attempted to crush the English army camped out on high ground outside of the town of Crécy. Instead of giving his forces time to rest and to come up with some sort of plan after the long march to Crécy, Philip sent his knights charging immediately into battle. Edward and the English were ready and waiting for them. English archers negated the numerical superiority of the French under a hail of arrows. The English knights, having learned the value of dismounting and fighting along side the foot soldiers, combined with their forces to slaughter French knights who had been knocked off of their mounts in heavy armor. The French, slow to learn and still convinced of the superiority of the mounted knight, repeated this performance 10 years later at the Battle of Poitiers in western France. This time, the English managed to capture the king of France, John II. The English forces were led at Poitiers by Edward, the prince of Wales. His policy of living off of the land, stealing anything of value, and leaving behind nothing but burned cropland and villages earned him the nickname The Black Prince. The Peace of Brétigny, signed in 1359, forced the French to pay a huge ransom for their king, and enlarged English holdings in France. It was never enforced. Companies of mercenaries, no longer in the employ of the English, roamed the French countryside burning villages, killing, raping and stealing to support themselves. The image of the noble knight as the flower of chivalry and the protector of the innocent seemed as distant a memory as that of the Caesars.

The next king of France, Charles V, spent most of his reign (1364-1380) reclaiming the territory lost by his father in the Peace of Brétigny. The English preferred to stay locked up in their fortresses while the companies plundered the countryside. Edward III simply did not have the resources to claim all of France or to enforce his claim upon the French crown. By 1377 he was dead, and the conflict passed into the hands of a new generation, the ill-fated Richard II, son of The Black Prince. Charles V died in 1380, leaving the fate of the French monarchy to his son Charles VI, also called Charles the Mad. Feeling the need to address the political and economic chaos caused by the war, and to mount a response to the threat of the Ottoman Turks, who had now made an appearance on the continent, Charles and Richard agreed to a twenty-year truce in 1396. Richard would be arrested and assassinated by a faction of nobles led by Henry of Lancaster in 1399; a victim of the aristocratic factionalism that arose as a result of the war and would continue throughout the 15th century. Henry of Lancaster became the new king of England, Henry IV. Charles VI, plagued by bouts of madness, was an increasingly weak king ruled by the competing interests and influence of the dukes of Orléans and Burgundy. The truce was broken after 19 years.

Phase II: 1415-1453
The first phase of this war had nearly ruined France and seriously damaged the power of its monarchy. The second phase, after nearly destroying the French monarchy, would severely damage the English monarchy and lead to the War of the Roses in England. When will they ever learn!?

By 1415, the political situation in France had become a complete mess. Charles VI became increasingly unable to rule, as a result of his more frequent bouts of insanity. This resulted in a civil war between the duke of Burgundy and the duke of Orléans who were fighting for influence over the king. England's new king, Henry V (Get used to the names and learn how to read the Roman numerals), used this as an opportunity to renew the war and the claim on the French crown. Henry invaded France, and once again the English crushed an army of French knights (this time wearing heavier plate armor and having to cross a muddy battlefield) at the Battle of Agincourt. Henry quickly conquered Normandy and allied himself with the duke of Burgundy to control most of northern France. Charles VI had no choice but to sign the humiliating Treaty of Troyes (1420), marrying off his daughter Catherine to the English king and recognizing Henry V as the heir to the French throne. It looked as if the English had finally won the war.

Saint Joan of Arc

After the death of Charles VI in 1322, the fate of the French now fell to Charles the Dauphin (heir to the French throne). Charles considered himself, not Henry V, the legitimate king of France. However, having been driven out of Paris and Orléans by the English and Burgundians, he was unable to back up that claim through coronation. The French caught a break in 1329 in the form of a 17-year-old girl from the Champagne region. Joan of Arc was able to convince the Dauphin, who had nothing to lose at this point, that she had been given a mission by the saints to escort him to Reims to be crowned as king of France. Joan rallied the French troops, liberated the city of Orléans, and saw the Dauphin crowned as Charles VII of France. Joan was captured by the Burgundians less than a year later, and burned at the stake by the English in 1431. The victories of the French armies under this teenaged peasant girl proved to be the turning point in the war. Aided by the introduction of cannons, which allowed them to smash through the walls of the English fortifications, and the increasing political chaos of England under Henry VI, the French finally drove the English out of France. By 1453, one-hundred sixteen years after it started, the conflict was mostly over. The French monarchy still had to take care of the Burgundians, and the troubles with the English flared up briefly in 1475 when they finally gave up all claims to lands in France.

Results & Legacy (The So What)
Okay, I just hit you with a bunch of information. So what? Why is all of this important? What impact did it really have on the greater scope of history?

The Hundred Years' War had an enormous impact on the political development of European states. In England, the war accelerated the development of Parliament as a modern political institution. Wars are expensive. Edward III had a constant need of money during his reign to pay for the mercenary companies that he employed in France. Edward needed to levy new taxes upon his subjects. In England, thanks to the Magna Carta, this meant that he had to rely upon Parliament. Parliament granted these taxes in return for a guarantee that the king would only be allowed to levy direct taxes with the consent of Parliament. They also demanded that Parliament be allowed to take a peek at the king's books to make sure that their tax money was being properly spent. The lower house of Parliament, now called the House of Commons, was able to draft petitions to the king that, if accepted, could become law.

While the English Parliament was becoming more important to English system of government, the French equivalent, the Estates General, was not. The Estates General, composed of representatives of the three feudal estates (clergy, nobles, and commons), only represented the north of the country and is representative of the decentralized nature of the French state in the medieval and early modern periods. That decentralization of political power almost destroyed the monarchy during the course of the Hundred Years' War (I'm looking at you, dukes of Orléans and Burgundy). Just like the English king, the king of France needed obscene amounts of money to pay for the soldiers (and ransom) necessary to conduct the war. This required new taxes, a hearth tax (the taille) and a tax on salt (the gabelle). In the French case, however, the Estates General was viewed not as an integral part of the government with whom the king must cooperate, but as an another obstacle to establishing royal authority. When an uprising of the Estates General led by the middle classes (3rd Estate) demanded a role in the French government similar to that of Parliament's role in the English government, King John II crushed the revolt. From that point on, French kings simply side stepped the authority of the Estates General, which was no longer a threat to their authority.

But the Estates General was not the only obstacle to the development of a centralized state in France. The noble factionalism that developed as a result of the war threatened Both of the monarchies of France and England. As the nobility lost its importance as the feudal warrior class of Europe, they found opportunities to continue as the political elite in the new bureaucracies that became necessary to manage the new taxes and armies. Many nobles chose to give the king cash in place of military service. That money was then used to hire a more dependable professional army. In order to assert their role as political leaders, nobles in France and Europe often formed political factions that fought for influence (often violently). This caused the monarchs of England and France to begin the process of centralizing power in the monarchy that would lead to the creation of the first modern nation-states in Europe. All of this was accelerated by the Hundred Years' War.

Sources

Merriman, John, A History of Modern Europe: From the Renaissance to the Present, 2nd ed., New York: W. W. Norton, 2004

Palmer, R. R., Colton, Joel, A History of the Modern World, 8th ed., New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995

Spielvogel, Jackson, Western Civilization, 6th ed., Belmont, CA: Thompson Wadsworth, 2006

The Black Death and the Later Middle Ages

Death and the maiden

Okay, future AP Euro students. I'm going to go ahead and jump into the Pre-AP Euro arena in this post. I know it's still early in the summer, but it never hurts to get a good start on the year. I just want to make sure that you understand a few things before you continue reading this post. The AP exam will only hold you responsible for knowledge of history after the year 1450. Anything that occurred before 1450 will not appear on the exam. It would be very convenient if history conformed itself to these nice little bookended dates. It doesn't. 1450, depending upon how you define it, falls in the middle of the first half of the Renaissance. Many AP Euro teachers (certainly the four on this campus) do expect their students to develop an understanding of the events leading up to 1450. This post will begin this process of filling in some of the details of these Pre-AP Euro years.

In an earlier post I talked about trying to find the big ideas in the historical narrative and trying to find the connections between the major events and ideas. One of the major trends of the middle ages (ca. 450 - 1400) was the recovery of Western Europe from the collapse of the Roman Empire and its development as a distinct civilization. This included the development of western Christianity and the Catholic Church, the development of a feudal economy and society, and relatively unbroken population growth as more land came under agricultural cultivation. This final century of the middle ages (the 14th century) saw a series of crises that "primed the pump" for the Renaissance (rebirth) of the 15th and 16th centuries. The population growth of the middle ages was spectacularly halted and reversed by famine and plague Black Death (1347-1351). The decline in the feudal economy and society, which was beginning to break up in the 13th century, was further accelerated in much of Europe by the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453). Even the church lost some of its shine in a series of crises throughout the century, the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1309-1377) and the Great Schism in the Catholic Church (1377-1415). We can get to the crises of feudalism and the church in a later post. I really want to start with the first set of disasters in the 14th century, famine and the Black Death.

The medieval iron plow known as the carruca

The closer historians look at European society at the beginning of the 14th century, the more they see a society on the edge of disaster. By 1300, Europe had seen a tremendous increase in population as more land was brought under cultivation during the High Middle Ages (1100-1300). They did this by clearing the great forests of Europe (gasp!) and draining the swamps. In the Low Countries (the Netherlands) they "reclaimed" land from the sea by creating earthen dikes and pumping out the water behind it to create arable land. The use of a new heavy iron plow, the carruca, pulled by team of horses allowed peasant farmers to cultivate the heavier soils of northern Europe. These innovations are often credited with making this population growth possible. So, what happened? Well, the first thing that happened is that, by 1300, Europe's had reached the limit of what its agricultural system could support. The Three-Field System of agriculture that much of Europe adopted during the High Middle Ages still left a third of Europe's arable land uncultivated each year. As the countryside became overpopulated (I know it sounds crazy) many peasants and rural laborers migrated to urban areas to find better opportunities. Did they find these opportunities? Not really. In fact, the historical record is cluttered with reports of the increasing population of urban poor from cities all over Europe during this time. To make matters worse, as the population expanded to the limit of agriculture to support it the cost of food increased. It wouldn't take much to push the system beyond its limits.

The first disaster struck between the years 1315 and 1317. The middle ages had been a relatively warm period in Earth's history. The summers were regular and balmy (Not quite as warm as they are now, but still nice.). This kind of predictable weather is great for an agricultural society like that of medieval Europe. Right around 1300 those warm summers began to get a little less warm, and a little less predictable. This slight drop in overall temperature shortened growing seasons. It also caused very unpredictable weather. Between 1315 and 1317 torrential rains destroyed most of the harvests in northern Europe. This resulted in a severe shortage of food, hunger, and severe starvation. Chroniclers of the 14th century record the long processions of starving people, many looking like walking skeletons, wandering from town to town in search of food. In some instances, they even reported incidents of cannibalism. The shortage drove prices of food even higher, increasing the death toll of the famine. This Great Famine of 1315-1317 may have killed 10% of the population of Europe. Approximately one quarter of the harvests of the early 14th century may have been destroyed by the continuation of what has come to be called the Little Ice Age, ensuring the continuation of chronic malnutrition through the first half of the century. This first disaster was a perfect setup for the even bigger disaster to follow, the Black Death.

A doctor attempts to treat plague victims

The Black Death is the name given to the outbreak of Bubonic plague that swept like wildfire across Europe between 1347 and 1351. This plague was made possible by the revival of trade routes to the east during the High Middle Ages. A ship full of Genoese merchants brought the plague with them to Sicily from the port of Caffa in the Black Sea in October of 1347. Instead of the silks and spices they were expecting, the Sicilians were treated to high fever, swollen lymph nodes (called buboes), aching joints, bleeding under the skin that caused dark blotches, and, eventually, death. The pneumonic form of the plague killed even faster, and was spread from person to person as the victim coughed up the blood that rapidly filled his lungs. The overcrowded conditions in Italian cities, combined with generally poor sanitation, caused the plague to travel swiftly up the Italian boot. In the preface to the Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio (We'll talk about him later) described the terrifying speed with which this plague travelled.

"It spread without stop from one place to another, until, unfortunately, it swept over the West. Neither knowledge nor human foresight availed against it..."

 Modern science tells us that the plague was caused by a nasty little bacterium called Yersinia pestis, that was brought to Europe by hitchhiking fleas on the backs of hitchhiking black rats on that Genoese ship (So the moral of the story is don't pick up hitchhikers). 14th century medicine had no idea what caused it, and only a vague idea of how it was spread. 

"Neither the advice of physicians nor the virtue of any medicine seemed to help or avail in the cure of these diseases...The virulence of the plague was all the greater in that it was communicated by the sick to the well by contact, not unlike fire when dry or fatty things are brought near it."

A mass burial of plague victims

 The effects of this outbreak of the plague, the first major disease in Europe since the 7th century, were devastating. Europe may have lost one quarter to one half of its population (I lean a little closer to that second figure). In pure numbers, that means that in the space of three years the Black Death claimed the lives of up to 38 million people. The death toll was much higher in the urban areas of Europe. Cities like Florence, Paris, & Rome report numbers as high as 50% killed. It's a little hard for us to imagine this kind of devastation. It's should not be that difficult to imagine the impact of that kind of death on a civilization (The Second World War isn't that far in the past).

Economically, The Black Death was a big game changer. Economic activity cannot carry on as if nothing happened when up to half of the workforce has been killed. Towns and cities struggled to reorganize their workforce. Old systems of work and economy had to be transformed. The shortage of labor created by the plague may have accelerated the mechanization of labor (increased use of windmills and watermills) and increased the incentive for innovative solutions. The rural economy also took a big hit. Because labor was scarce, rural farm workers could ask for higher wages. Serfdom, which was already in decline, ended in much of western Europe. The remaining workforce needed the ability to move to where the work was (and the wages were higher, cha-ching!). Initially, food prices dropped as a result of the lower population (fewer people to eat the food). This was a disaster for the landed nobility. Their income from rents and agricultural produce fell as the cost of their labor increased. In many instances, they were forced to convert the old feudal labor obligations to rents. As they realized that their quality and way of life were threatened by this new social arrangement, feudal lords of Europe imposed wage restrictions and attempted to bring back the old labor obligations. The class tension that this created was one of the factors responsible for the outbreak of peasant revolts in France (the Jacquerie, 1358) and England (The English Peasants' Revolt of 1381) later in the century.

Recently excavated plague burial

The psychological effects of the plague were incredibly disturbing. Death became a regular feature in European life and art. In the face of what seemed to be certain death, many Europeans simply threw any sort of rules of civil society and morality out of the window. In an attempt to enjoy their increasingly limited time on earth, they went on drinking, spending, and sexual binges, described here by Boccaccio.

"Day and night they went from one tavern to another drinking and carousing unrestrainedly. At the least inkling of something that suited them, they ran wild in other people's houses, and there was no one to prevent them, for everyone had abandoned all responsibility for his belongings as well as for himself, considering his days numbered."

Others, fueled by a extreme sense of piety, and believing that the plague was sent to punish mankind for its sinful ways, turned to a form of extremist asceticism. Groups of people known as flagellants roamed from town to town, flogging themselves with metal-tipped whips and begging for God's forgiveness. Wherever they went they caused quite a stir amongst the population. Initially, these flagellants had the support of the Catholic church. This changed when the flagellants began to denounce Pope Clement VI, claiming that the end of the world was at hand, and attacking clergy who spoke out against them. To make matters worse, the flagellants began to incite violence against the Jewish population, blaming them for the plague and claiming that they had poisoned the wells. This violence was worst in Germany, where much of the Jewish population fled east to the protection offered to them by the king of Poland. Clement VI was forced to condemn the flagellants, and by 1350 the movement was crushed. 

Death comes for us all.

The art world also saw a morbid fascination with death. Images of skeletons and decaying corpses dancing amongst the living became a common theme in post-plague art. In countless works of art skeletons tugged at the beards of kings and dragged priests and bishops along by their robes. They carried away old men, beautiful young maidens, and little babies. This Danse Macabre was to serve as reminder that death come to us all, even bishops and kings.

It would take at least 250 years for the population to return to pre-plague levels. Don't worry, it's not as bad as it sounds. As is often the case in history, periods of great devastation and decay are the catalysts for periods of incredible recovery and sweeping change. That was the case with the disastrous 14th century in Europe.

Next Time: The Hundred Years' War! 

Sources

Merriman, John, A History of Modern Europe: From the Renaissance to the Present, 2nd ed., New York: W. W. Norton, 2004

Palmer, R. R., Colton, Joel, A History of the Modern World, 8th ed., New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995

Spielvogel, Jackson, Western Civilization, 6th ed., Belmont, CA: Thompson Wadsworth, 2006