Chapter Summary
The Late Middle Ages in Europe has been called the "time of famine." It can also be called the "time of trouble"; it was in that period that Europe faced one of its most devastating challenges, the Black Death. In a four year period during the mid-fourteenth century, Europe lost approximately 35 percent of its population resulting from a plague that medieval science could not explain. The source of the plague would not begin to become clear until the nineteenth century. As a result, European men and women became fascinated with death. This should not come as a surprise since these men and women were surrounded by death on a daily basis. Further complicating matters, the Hundred Years' War occupied the armies of France and England until 1453, when the English were defeated and expelled from continental Europe. Such events produced the "calamitous fourteenth century." All was not lost; Europe did not revert into some dark age. Instead, European men and women recovered their lives and adjusted themselves to what was a markedly changed Europe.
Fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Europe was also a period of significant challenges for the papacy. During this period, the papacy, once centered in Rome, was moved to Avignon; this resulted in the Avignon Papacy. It was also a time when the conciliar movement challenged papal sovereignty. Heresy, the primary problem of the twelfth century, was still challenging the Church and its authority. The Lollards in England and Hussites in Bohemia both made appeals to the Church's ancient past-the true Church consisted of individuals who lived an apostolic life. Contemporary popes were living like princes, rife with immorality and corruption; these heretical groups could not imagine how this Church could possibly be responsible for man's salvation. At this time, literacy rates were increasing and books were becoming more available; this meant that more people were becoming aware of the shortcomings of the medieval Church. With the growing size and influence of towns and cities, the wealth, opulence, and indifference of the papacy in particular and the clergy in general became more visible.
Late medieval Europe was also the period of the great vernacular literature of Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Christine de Pisan; Flemish painters began using oils in their portraits; further, by the middle of the fifteenth century, Gutenberg had perfected movable type. Perhaps the greatest realization of the age was this: the natural world operated according to its own laws-natural laws. This observation is a critical first step towards the Scientific Revolution led by Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton.