China and the West to 1600 by Steven Wallech

Author:Steven Wallech
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781118880067
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2016-03-21T00:00:00+00:00

The Late Middle Ages (1300–1500)

The fragility of medieval agriculture struck home, however, when seven weeks after Easter in 1315, sheets of rain transformed the fields of Europe into giant quagmires. The late spring deluge continued through mid-summer and into the fall. Entire stands of wheat and barley drowned where they stood, leaving the would-be harvest rotting. In the wake of this catastrophic event, food shortages swept Europe, leaving thousands starving, though not dead. As it turned out, this horrible year signaled a change in the climate that continued into 1316 and lasted to 1321. During this short period more than a million and a half people perished from starvation, while all across Europe those who survived did so in a weakened state, susceptible to disease. This was the beginning of the mini-ice age that marked the second era of medieval agriculture (1300–1500). Famine set in motion a period of death, one that the spread of the bubonic plague would shortly accelerate. Rats carrying the fleas infected with the strain of bacteria responsible for the plague spread what soon came to be called the Black Death, from China to Europe via the Silk Road from 1300 to 1347. After 1347, and continuing until 1352, the Black Death continued its rampage throughout Europe, killing an estimated one-third of the total population and causing a major demographic crisis.47

Demographic crises have the potential to undermine a culture’s internal organization, setting it up for collapse, the fall of Rome and Han China being cases in point. But such a crisis might also spur a major social, political, and technological realignment within a civilization’s institutions. Such was the case in Europe during the Late Middle Ages (1300–1500). During these two centuries, the most significant political development among many was the aforementioned shift in the relative power of the church as compared to that of the state. This shift in power resulted in part from medieval Europeans looking to the pope for guidance during what were especially bad and frightening times. Ultimately, however, when it appeared to the people that the pope failed to deliver what was needed, power began to shift back toward the kings.

During the Late Middle Ages, the demographic crisis that linked famine to the bubonic plague signaled to many people that God was angry with Christendom. Naturally, this directed their attention to the papacy for answers. The papacy, however, had just suffered a major series of setbacks that undermined the authority of the pope. These setbacks included the Babylonian Captivity and the Western Schism, which nearly destroyed the pope’s credibility and redirected the people’s attention from the papacy to kings.

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