May 2, 2023 • 27 mins
As the end of The Middle Ages nears, peasants revolt after being blamed for the Black Death, and the Catholic Church endures a wave of turmoil. But Chris points out moments of hope as the world opens up for exploration.
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Speaker 1 (00:11):
Lessons from the world's top professors anytime, anyplace, world history
examined and science explained. This is one day university Welcome.
(00:31):
Oh here, we are so sad. It's our final episode
of half hour History, Secrets of the Medieval World. I'm
your host and resident history nerd, Mike Coscarelli, and it's
been a lot of fun taking you on this journey.
I'm sure going to miss you.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Last week was a bit of a downer with the
Black Death. I know, I know, dramatic.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
But this week we wrap up with the end of
the Middle Ages. We're talking war, heasant revolts, and literal
violence in the Catholic Church, but there's also progress end,
something new on the horizon.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Chris, Chris, as we conclude our walk through the Early
High and Late Middle Ages, it's very hard to avoid
ending on a downer because, after all, we've had this flowering,
we've had a couple of renaissances, we've had a few
(01:31):
revolutions thrown in, and then kaboom, the whole thing crashes
down with the late Medieval period from thirteen hundred to
fifteen hundred, the never ending depression. But as I hope
we'll see at the end of this topic, the world
is opening up because on the horizon is Columbus.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
And so maybe a.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Way of looking at this period in a way that's
not positive for the sake of being positive, but looking
at it in a way of let's look at the
medieval period, and let's look at the achievements, and let's
look at some of the failures as well. I'll give
you the title of a famous book. There was a
Dutch medieval historian named Hoisinger, and Heisinger wrote a book
(02:15):
that about this period that was translated into English as
The Waning of the Middle Ages.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
And then about ten years.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Ago it was retranslated and there was a discussion among
the publisher as to whether it should be called the
Autumn of the Middle Ages or the Harvest of the
Middle Ages. They chose the word autumn for this new translation.
I prefer the word harvest, but it has a different sense, right,
because an autumn is a dying period, but you're pulling
(02:45):
on the fruits of everything that has grown during that period.
So let's look at our last topic as an autumn
or as a harvest of the Middle Ages, and not
just as a waning though we'll see it was a
difficult time.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
So we talked in the last topic.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
About the Black Death being not just a medical events
but an event with social and economic and as we'll
see in a moment, a political impact as well.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Let's look at.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
How the life of the everyday person who survived obviously
changed because of the Black Death. Because of the Black Death,
the everyday person, mostly the peasant in the field or
the guildsman, had some economic power, but wasn't in a
(03:33):
great position because the population had risen so much that
there was tension and competition for jobs and money. So
before the Black Death, land was scarce, scarce land, high rent,
abundant labor. Remember Europe's population had gone up two hundred
and fifty percent.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Abundant labor, low wages.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
If you don't want the job, there's somebody behind you
who will want the job at a certain price.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
But after the Black Death.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
When you lose twenty five to thirty five percent of
the population, now you have over abundant land and therefore
low rent that's good for you, and scarce labor.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
So now you can demand a higher wage.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
So ironically, if you survived the Black Death, your economic
position was not just better but far better. Although no
one was not touched by the Black death everyone lost
friends and family. Some villages actually disappear, they're wiped out.
(04:42):
We call this the deserted or the lost villages. They're
centered in the countryside, and the countryside we say contracts.
This is especially true in Germany, and so the few
people who are left, well, it doesn't make any sense
to stay there anymore if you don't have a critical
massive people. If you have a critical massive people, then
(05:03):
you can stay there. There's overabundant land, the rents are
very low, you'll do pretty well. But by and large
that didn't happen as a norm. You've had small groups
of people. So they continue this move to the countryside
that began after the agricultural revolution and fueled the commercial revolution.
Though remember that it's not until the seventeen hundreds in
(05:24):
Europe that more people will live in cities than in
the countryside. What's in the cities more choices, more opportunities,
higher wages, wage labor, more capitalism. If feudalism wasn't dead
by now, the Black Deaths certainly killed it.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
What about social conditions?
Speaker 3 (05:46):
What was the social impact along with economics for those
who survived. Women end up being paid the same as men.
There are so few people, so many fewer people after
the Black Death than before that people can demand a
(06:06):
higher wage. And remember I told you for some reason
that no one can figure out more men died in
the Black Death than women. So women are being paid
the same as men as a result. You know, it's
not unlike what happens right before and after World War
One around the world.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
After World War One, women get the vote.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
Why the men went off to fight, the women went
into the jobs that the men left behind. And when
the men came back, the women said, hey, we ran
this economy while you were gone. We want to have
political power. And so women around the world get the
vote in nineteen twenty in the United States, the first
(06:49):
year that women can vote for president, though they voted
in local elections before that. This makes women to a
certain degree more financially independent and allows them some greater mobility,
though always for women there's going to be the issue
of social conditions and social mores that are going to
(07:09):
limit their mobility. But they have some mobility.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Who gets blamed for the Black Death the poor?
Speaker 3 (07:17):
After all, the poor died in higher numbers so therefore
it must be their fault, a political explanation of a
social and economic situation that has never left.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Jews are blamed.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
As we saw as a result of the religious fanatics, prostitutes, criminals, outsiders,
and this leads to class conflicts. A rising economic class
which is excluded from political power, is a formula for
revolution and one of the interesting things to give you
(07:50):
an example of how social ideas came into play. If
a poor person traveled from a known plague area to
a town or a village, that poor person was not
let in. But if a rich person traveled from a
known plague area to a town or village, that person
(08:12):
was brought in, even though the flea could just as
equally be on the poor as on the rich person.
So you see the poor getting blamed for a lot
of this, and so this economic class excluded from political
power and rising economic expectations. Revolutions actually don't occur historically
when things are at that they're worse. They occur when
(08:35):
things have hit their worst, have hit bottom, and are
bouncing back, but the comeback of the economy is not
happening fast enough. And that's exactly what happens around the
time of the Black Death, and I want to look
at three places, France, Florence.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
And England.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
In France, you have a revolt that is called the
Jacquarie and the Jacquerie are peasants and poorer artisans, poorer
guild members in rural settings and in urban settings in France.
And in thirteen fifty eight, what's happening is that not
(09:17):
only do you have the Black Death, but you have
the beginning of the One Hundred Years War, and the
French Knights are doing very poorly against the English Knights.
They're frustrated, and these fellows who are called the Routiers
are starting to go back to the kind of the original,
the original thug night, and they're starting to raid the countryside.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
And the peasants, you know, are kind of saying, well,
you know.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
What's next, right, we had the Black Death hit us
and now this is hitting us enough already, and they
rise up. Now, the Jacquarie Revolt doesn't really change the
condition of peasants or lower artisans in France, but it
does indicate that there's this disaffection from below, and the
disaffection is so strong that these people are basically mad
(10:00):
as hell and not going to take it anymore, and
they're going to rise up against the people above.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Them even if they lose.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Well, that tells us something about disaffection, Right, what have
we got to lose? A more successful example of a
peasant revolt after the Black Death occurs in Florence among
a group of people called the Chompy, and these are
artisans guildsmen who have been cut out of city government.
(10:27):
Remember that that in the Gothic city landscape, guilds control
the town government. The bigger guilds tended to control the
town government more, the workmen a little bit less. And
so the merchants are kind of running the show in Florence,
and the artisans say this isn't fair, and so we
want more control. And so they rise up and there's
(10:48):
a revolt, and they in fact get some concessions.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Let's take a look at them.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
The lowest of the workers, the people who did piece work,
if you will, got their own guild, and they got
a voice in government.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
So they get a little bit of political power.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
The town government agreed to lower interest rates on business loans,
which meant the little guy and the little guild could
now get money to be entrepreneurial and get involved in
the economic benefits and therefore, over time work his way
up to town government production quotas were raised in the
(11:29):
wool industry to reduce unemployment. So the government and the
unions are working together to get the disaffected happy to
fuel the economy.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
And it's because these people rose up.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
So some concessions among the Chompi in Florence, this urban
guild revolt in thirteen seventy eight, and then the English
Peasants Revolt in thirteen eighty one, a rural revolt against
poll taxes led by two characters, a leader called Wat
Tyler and a preacher by the name of John Bull,
(12:06):
and they were rising up against unfair taxation. Again they
got a few concessions. They didn't improve their situation too much,
but it was clear from these three peasant revolts that
people were not going to stand for their position any
longer as a result of the Black Death, and they
wanted to get more political power.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
The peasants are revolting pu but one institution that could
keep them in check is having a few struggles of
its own. After the break chaos in the Catholic Church.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
Right at this social and economic disastrous time, you have
a collapse of the one institution that is supposed to
be the glue of medieval Christian.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Society, the Catholic Church.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Now the papacy, if you're remember from an earlier topic,
After Boniface the eighth, the pope had gone up against
King Philip the fourth, Philippe Lebelle or Philip the Fair,
and basically got his nose punched in the papacy had
moved to Avignon. Now, the avenuon papacy is its own topic,
(13:24):
and the avenuon papacy was not the cesspool that Petrarch portrayed.
But the avenuon papacy did have some greed. It also
had some reforming popes. But the point is that Rome,
which had been the center, you know, look to Rome.
Rome will give leadership. There's no pope in Rome. The
Bishop of Rome is not in Rome. The Bishop of
Rome is over in Avignon. And there was a sense
(13:46):
that things were out of kilter in the Catholic Church. Now,
when a particular pope gets the papacy back to Rome
in thirteen seventy seven, he dies the next year in
thirteen seventy eight, and there's a disputed election. The Italians,
who are out numbered by the French, want an Italian
because the papacy he hasn't been in Rome, and Rome's
(14:06):
economy has suffered.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
What would happen to Washington, d c.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
If the federal government left, I think, you know, there
would be a collapse of the local economy. And the
French couldn't quite decide amongst themselves who they wanted, so
they chose a compromise candidate, a fellow who was Neapolitan
by birth but had spent his.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Career in Avignon.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
This guy was named or took the name Urban the sixth,
and Urban the six was probably mentally unstable. He punched
one cardinal in the face when he disagreed with him.
He called another one a dim wit. I'd love to
find the Latin for that, And the French cardinal said, well,
you know what, maybe our election of that pope was
(14:46):
not really an election, because after all, we elected, and
the Romans were chanting outside, threatening to come into the
conclave to break the walls down. Maybe our conscience wasn't clear,
and so it's not a real election. They withdraw their
obedience from Urban the sixth. They elect their own man,
a Frenchman named Cleventh the seventh. Now we have two popes,
not just two popes, but colleges of cardinals excommunicate each other.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Two papacies.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
So there's one papacy in Rome and another papacy in Avignon.
And what happens then is, after fourteen o nine there's
even a third one, a papacy in Avenel, a papacy
in Rome, and a papacy that's called the peasan or
the concilier papacy, because there was a council in the
city of Pisa that elected another pope. Three popes, three papacies.
(15:32):
Nobody knows what's going on. And this lasts until fourteen seventeen,
thirty nine years to give you a sense of thirty
nine years, roughly the time between the assassination of John F.
Kennedy and the attacks on nine to eleven. That's thirty
eight years. Thirty nine years is the great Western system,
(15:53):
to give you a sense of time. Amazing that the
glue of medieval society had just come apart. And so
the Council of Constant solves the problem. There's a unifying
pope by the name of Martin the Fifth but nevertheles less.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
There is tremendous damage to the church.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Chances for reform had been lost because everyone was trying
to figure out who the real pope was. Papal prestige
has been lost and has to be recovered severely damaged.
You also have political and social instability, the one Hundred Years' War,
which has fought roughly from thirteen thirty seven to fourteen
fifty three. Historians obviously can't count too well. It's not
(16:30):
one hundred years, but that's close enough. Between the two superpowers. Now,
the two superpowers are England and France. Remember a blood
feud because they had intermarried and the kings of England
had French blood in them dating back to ten sixty
six and the Norman invasion. They had had this uneasy
relationship for almost four hundred years, and they're going to
finally fight a death match, a grudge match.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
To the end.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
So the superpowers of England and France are involved in
this huge battle, and right in the middle of that,
within France, you have a civil war that lasts during
the very long reign of a king named Charles who
reigns from thirteen eighty to fourteen twenty two.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
So look at that, right in.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
The middle of this hundred years war, Charles is mentally unstable,
and he's basically controlled by either one set of uncles
or another set of uncles who kind of act as
regent's And there's tremendous confusion because Charles has a number
of sons who are heirs, called the Dauphins, and they
keep dying in turn. So this all of this intrigue,
(17:33):
and it's only when that intrigue begins to settle out
that Joan of Arc shows up on the scene and
actually puts her arms around, if you will, Charles the
sixth son Charles the seventh, and Joan of Arc saves
Charles the seventh and the famous maid of Orleon in
that battle, and that is the impetus for France to
(17:55):
finally push the English out. And all during that time
you have the peasants revolting from underneath, asking for more
power in the church, just being utterly confused. So where
do we stand here at Europe at the end of
the Middle Ages. Well, let's maybe reach back to the
(18:17):
beginning of our course together. When I teach any course,
either in class or in this kind of context, I
ask my students, As I said earlier, what are your preconceptions,
what are the nouns and verbs and images that come
to minds when you think of fill in the blank
medieval Europe? And I think, I hope that we've come
(18:41):
to the conclusion that the Middle Ages was not a
dark age. I am willing to say that they were
dimmer years, but it was not a dark age of
a thousand years between the fall of Rome, and remember,
I don't even think Rome fell and the rescue of
the light of the Renaissance. I would argue which Renaissance,
(19:05):
because we had a big one called the Carolingian Renaissance
around eight hundred, and a big one called the twelfth
century Renaissance in the eleven hundreds, and other people think
that there was a thirteenth century Renaissance as well. I'm
willing to admit that the very end of the Medieval period,
(19:27):
the last two hundred years of the thousand years twenty
percent were certainly rougher than the prior two hundred years.
From about eleven hundred to thirteen hundred, the great flowering
of the Medieval period. What everybody thinks of when they
think of the Middle Ages Gothic cathedrals, gargoyles, knights in
(19:53):
shining armor, and damsels in distress, the high point of
a papal monarchy that had within it the seeds of
its own destruction, in the cozy relationship with the state,
the state which, while building and going towards this thing
called Nations, is wrapping itself up in a certain religiosity
(20:15):
of sacred kingship, the iconography of political theology that reached
all the way to Charlemagne and back still to Constantine,
and I argued, back still to a pre Christian era
in Egypt and Greece and ancient Mesopotamia and many other
cultures as well. So we want to fight against simplistic
(20:41):
then versus now categories caricatures. We tend to think of
anybody who lived before us as somehow not as good
as us, because they didn't have cell phones, and they
didn't have Facebook, and they didn't have indoor plumbing. But
that is a very narrow notion of progress. You could
(21:05):
certainly look at the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome,
and then look at some of the dimmer years of
medieval Europe, say about the year six hundred or about
the year nine hundred and Just because six hundred and
nine hundred CE are after ancient Greece and Rome is
not necessarily better. There is no way those cultures were
(21:26):
much much better. The Islamic culture was in a much
better position than Western Europe in certain of those centuries.
We're trying to get away from these caricatures and those
cartoon characters and those simplistic notions. Nevertheless, it is true
that certain cultures, and certain times and certain moments are
(21:48):
marked by dominant values. And it is true that medieval
society was more communal in its thinking. Don't think communism,
don't think socialism, but there was a more of a
sense that people are in it together. Somebody said that
the medieval society was a group of joiners. That people
(22:10):
got together, They got together in guilds, they got together
in confraternities in the countryside.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
When the hue and cry was raised.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
Everyone and I mean everyone had and I mean had
to follow that human cry. To be left out, to
be outside, to be individualistic was not viewed highly by
medieval society.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
It's one of the problems of heresy.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Heretics, according to the dominant Christianity, are not going along,
they're not on board, and so medieval society was more
communal than a certain rugged individualism, which followed in what
I'm calling the Renaissance, the Italian Renaissance, though there's a
Renaissance in Germany and Spain and England as well, the
(22:57):
Renaissance of da Vinci and Michelangelo and Raphael and people
like that. Because those people went that the people we
identify as renaissance men are Renaissance men. What does that
phrase mean? Because they're not bound by one thing. They're
not just architects or just we might call them engineers,
or just artists, or just sculptors, or just craftsmen.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
They're all of those things.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
They refuse to be bound by one category, and that
is something that separates the Renaissance from the Medieval Age.
Though we also have to say that the Renaissance was
highly religious. There are some people who say, oh, the
Renaissance is very secular, and the medieval period was very
faith filled. The Renaissance was very rational, and so the
(23:46):
medieval period has to be very superstitious.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
That is not true at all.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
We've seen a change in the economy that feudalism has
yielded to capitalism bit by bitt and certainly after the
Black Death, and we certainly see at the end of
the Middle Ages a crisis of authority. In England, for instance,
we have the rise of parliament. Parliament over time, bit
by bit has been eroding the king's power. Magna Carta
(24:14):
was one stage in that, even though it didn't occur
in parliament. But bit by bit parliament has gotten stronger power.
Now we're getting towards a House of Lords and a
House of Commons, We're getting towards a speaker, if you will,
of the House, and there are these checks on royal authority.
So there's definitely a crisis of royal authority in England.
(24:37):
Certainly in France there's a crisis of royal authority with
Charles the sixth instability. And yet at the end of
the medieval period France has a stronger monarchy than England.
But France and England monarchy or parliaments on the rise
by the end of our period are passed by Spain.
(24:58):
Spain is the dominance power coming out of the medieval period,
and right on the lip of our here come the
Protestant reformations which challenge that weakened papacy. So the breakup
of medieval Christianity's singular dominance is coming up, so that
(25:22):
we don't think it's all a downer, and using again
that notion of an autumn or a harvest instead of
the waning of the Middle Ages. For Hoisinger, let's ask
when do the Middle Ages end? Well, I'm not happy
with when Rome ends, so I don't think we can
look at one particular date, but certainly at the end
of the Middle Ages, the world gets bigger, people start
(25:44):
looking outwards, and I'm going to look at three particular
events to talk about that. One is, finally, the Muslims
take over Constantinople in fourteen fifty three. If the Roman
Empire had such an impact on medieval Europe and in
the Byzantine Greek East, they say that the Roman Empire
never feil well, then the collapse of Constantinople by the
(26:07):
Muslims in fourteen fifty three, maybe we can look upon
that as an end. Columbus sales in fourteen ninety two,
a date that we have several times seen connected to
the reconquest in Spain. Columbus breaks the four minute mile.
If you will, nobody can sail far away he does it,
and then within twenty or thirty years, Magellan's fleet is
(26:29):
circumnavigating the world. And then off on the horizon is
Luther's ninety five THESS in fifteen seventeen, ushering in a
new period of the Reformation.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
And with that we say goodbye to the Middle Ages.
We hope you've found it exciting, educational, end enlightening. Thank
you so much for listening. Half hour history Secrets of
the Medieval World from One Day University is a production
of iHeart Podcasts at Cooul of Humans. If you've enjoyed
(27:07):
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app and check out the Curiosity Audio Network for podcasts
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Speaker 2 (27:27):
School of Humans
Lessons from the world's top professors anytime, anyplace, world history
examined and science explained. This is one day university Welcome.
(00:31):
Oh here, we are so sad. It's our final episode
of half hour History, Secrets of the Medieval World. I'm
your host and resident history nerd, Mike Coscarelli, and it's
been a lot of fun taking you on this journey.
I'm sure going to miss you.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Last week was a bit of a downer with the
Black Death. I know, I know, dramatic.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
But this week we wrap up with the end of
the Middle Ages. We're talking war, heasant revolts, and literal
violence in the Catholic Church, but there's also progress end,
something new on the horizon.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Chris, Chris, as we conclude our walk through the Early
High and Late Middle Ages, it's very hard to avoid
ending on a downer because, after all, we've had this flowering,
we've had a couple of renaissances, we've had a few
(01:31):
revolutions thrown in, and then kaboom, the whole thing crashes
down with the late Medieval period from thirteen hundred to
fifteen hundred, the never ending depression. But as I hope
we'll see at the end of this topic, the world
is opening up because on the horizon is Columbus.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
And so maybe a.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Way of looking at this period in a way that's
not positive for the sake of being positive, but looking
at it in a way of let's look at the
medieval period, and let's look at the achievements, and let's
look at some of the failures as well. I'll give
you the title of a famous book. There was a
Dutch medieval historian named Hoisinger, and Heisinger wrote a book
(02:15):
that about this period that was translated into English as
The Waning of the Middle Ages.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
And then about ten years.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Ago it was retranslated and there was a discussion among
the publisher as to whether it should be called the
Autumn of the Middle Ages or the Harvest of the
Middle Ages. They chose the word autumn for this new translation.
I prefer the word harvest, but it has a different sense, right,
because an autumn is a dying period, but you're pulling
(02:45):
on the fruits of everything that has grown during that period.
So let's look at our last topic as an autumn
or as a harvest of the Middle Ages, and not
just as a waning though we'll see it was a
difficult time.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
So we talked in the last topic.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
About the Black Death being not just a medical events
but an event with social and economic and as we'll
see in a moment, a political impact as well.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Let's look at.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
How the life of the everyday person who survived obviously
changed because of the Black Death. Because of the Black Death,
the everyday person, mostly the peasant in the field or
the guildsman, had some economic power, but wasn't in a
(03:33):
great position because the population had risen so much that
there was tension and competition for jobs and money. So
before the Black Death, land was scarce, scarce land, high rent,
abundant labor. Remember Europe's population had gone up two hundred
and fifty percent.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Abundant labor, low wages.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
If you don't want the job, there's somebody behind you
who will want the job at a certain price.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
But after the Black Death.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
When you lose twenty five to thirty five percent of
the population, now you have over abundant land and therefore
low rent that's good for you, and scarce labor.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
So now you can demand a higher wage.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
So ironically, if you survived the Black Death, your economic
position was not just better but far better. Although no
one was not touched by the Black death everyone lost
friends and family. Some villages actually disappear, they're wiped out.
(04:42):
We call this the deserted or the lost villages. They're
centered in the countryside, and the countryside we say contracts.
This is especially true in Germany, and so the few
people who are left, well, it doesn't make any sense
to stay there anymore if you don't have a critical
massive people. If you have a critical massive people, then
(05:03):
you can stay there. There's overabundant land, the rents are
very low, you'll do pretty well. But by and large
that didn't happen as a norm. You've had small groups
of people. So they continue this move to the countryside
that began after the agricultural revolution and fueled the commercial revolution.
Though remember that it's not until the seventeen hundreds in
(05:24):
Europe that more people will live in cities than in
the countryside. What's in the cities more choices, more opportunities,
higher wages, wage labor, more capitalism. If feudalism wasn't dead
by now, the Black Deaths certainly killed it.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
What about social conditions?
Speaker 3 (05:46):
What was the social impact along with economics for those
who survived. Women end up being paid the same as men.
There are so few people, so many fewer people after
the Black Death than before that people can demand a
(06:06):
higher wage. And remember I told you for some reason
that no one can figure out more men died in
the Black Death than women. So women are being paid
the same as men as a result. You know, it's
not unlike what happens right before and after World War
One around the world.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
After World War One, women get the vote.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
Why the men went off to fight, the women went
into the jobs that the men left behind. And when
the men came back, the women said, hey, we ran
this economy while you were gone. We want to have
political power. And so women around the world get the
vote in nineteen twenty in the United States, the first
(06:49):
year that women can vote for president, though they voted
in local elections before that. This makes women to a
certain degree more financially independent and allows them some greater mobility,
though always for women there's going to be the issue
of social conditions and social mores that are going to
(07:09):
limit their mobility. But they have some mobility.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Who gets blamed for the Black Death the poor?
Speaker 3 (07:17):
After all, the poor died in higher numbers so therefore
it must be their fault, a political explanation of a
social and economic situation that has never left.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Jews are blamed.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
As we saw as a result of the religious fanatics, prostitutes, criminals, outsiders,
and this leads to class conflicts. A rising economic class
which is excluded from political power, is a formula for
revolution and one of the interesting things to give you
(07:50):
an example of how social ideas came into play. If
a poor person traveled from a known plague area to
a town or a village, that poor person was not
let in. But if a rich person traveled from a
known plague area to a town or village, that person
(08:12):
was brought in, even though the flea could just as
equally be on the poor as on the rich person.
So you see the poor getting blamed for a lot
of this, and so this economic class excluded from political
power and rising economic expectations. Revolutions actually don't occur historically
when things are at that they're worse. They occur when
(08:35):
things have hit their worst, have hit bottom, and are
bouncing back, but the comeback of the economy is not
happening fast enough. And that's exactly what happens around the
time of the Black Death, and I want to look
at three places, France, Florence.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
And England.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
In France, you have a revolt that is called the
Jacquarie and the Jacquerie are peasants and poorer artisans, poorer
guild members in rural settings and in urban settings in France.
And in thirteen fifty eight, what's happening is that not
(09:17):
only do you have the Black Death, but you have
the beginning of the One Hundred Years War, and the
French Knights are doing very poorly against the English Knights.
They're frustrated, and these fellows who are called the Routiers
are starting to go back to the kind of the original,
the original thug night, and they're starting to raid the countryside.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
And the peasants, you know, are kind of saying, well,
you know.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
What's next, right, we had the Black Death hit us
and now this is hitting us enough already, and they
rise up. Now, the Jacquarie Revolt doesn't really change the
condition of peasants or lower artisans in France, but it
does indicate that there's this disaffection from below, and the
disaffection is so strong that these people are basically mad
(10:00):
as hell and not going to take it anymore, and
they're going to rise up against the people above.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Them even if they lose.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Well, that tells us something about disaffection, Right, what have
we got to lose? A more successful example of a
peasant revolt after the Black Death occurs in Florence among
a group of people called the Chompy, and these are
artisans guildsmen who have been cut out of city government.
(10:27):
Remember that that in the Gothic city landscape, guilds control
the town government. The bigger guilds tended to control the
town government more, the workmen a little bit less. And
so the merchants are kind of running the show in Florence,
and the artisans say this isn't fair, and so we
want more control. And so they rise up and there's
(10:48):
a revolt, and they in fact get some concessions.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Let's take a look at them.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
The lowest of the workers, the people who did piece work,
if you will, got their own guild, and they got
a voice in government.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
So they get a little bit of political power.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
The town government agreed to lower interest rates on business loans,
which meant the little guy and the little guild could
now get money to be entrepreneurial and get involved in
the economic benefits and therefore, over time work his way
up to town government production quotas were raised in the
(11:29):
wool industry to reduce unemployment. So the government and the
unions are working together to get the disaffected happy to
fuel the economy.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
And it's because these people rose up.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
So some concessions among the Chompi in Florence, this urban
guild revolt in thirteen seventy eight, and then the English
Peasants Revolt in thirteen eighty one, a rural revolt against
poll taxes led by two characters, a leader called Wat
Tyler and a preacher by the name of John Bull,
(12:06):
and they were rising up against unfair taxation. Again they
got a few concessions. They didn't improve their situation too much,
but it was clear from these three peasant revolts that
people were not going to stand for their position any
longer as a result of the Black Death, and they
wanted to get more political power.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
The peasants are revolting pu but one institution that could
keep them in check is having a few struggles of
its own. After the break chaos in the Catholic Church.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
Right at this social and economic disastrous time, you have
a collapse of the one institution that is supposed to
be the glue of medieval Christian.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Society, the Catholic Church.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Now the papacy, if you're remember from an earlier topic,
After Boniface the eighth, the pope had gone up against
King Philip the fourth, Philippe Lebelle or Philip the Fair,
and basically got his nose punched in the papacy had
moved to Avignon. Now, the avenuon papacy is its own topic,
(13:24):
and the avenuon papacy was not the cesspool that Petrarch portrayed.
But the avenuon papacy did have some greed. It also
had some reforming popes. But the point is that Rome,
which had been the center, you know, look to Rome.
Rome will give leadership. There's no pope in Rome. The
Bishop of Rome is not in Rome. The Bishop of
Rome is over in Avignon. And there was a sense
(13:46):
that things were out of kilter in the Catholic Church. Now,
when a particular pope gets the papacy back to Rome
in thirteen seventy seven, he dies the next year in
thirteen seventy eight, and there's a disputed election. The Italians,
who are out numbered by the French, want an Italian
because the papacy he hasn't been in Rome, and Rome's
(14:06):
economy has suffered.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
What would happen to Washington, d c.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
If the federal government left, I think, you know, there
would be a collapse of the local economy. And the
French couldn't quite decide amongst themselves who they wanted, so
they chose a compromise candidate, a fellow who was Neapolitan
by birth but had spent his.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Career in Avignon.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
This guy was named or took the name Urban the sixth,
and Urban the six was probably mentally unstable. He punched
one cardinal in the face when he disagreed with him.
He called another one a dim wit. I'd love to
find the Latin for that, And the French cardinal said, well,
you know what, maybe our election of that pope was
(14:46):
not really an election, because after all, we elected, and
the Romans were chanting outside, threatening to come into the
conclave to break the walls down. Maybe our conscience wasn't clear,
and so it's not a real election. They withdraw their
obedience from Urban the sixth. They elect their own man,
a Frenchman named Cleventh the seventh. Now we have two popes,
not just two popes, but colleges of cardinals excommunicate each other.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Two papacies.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
So there's one papacy in Rome and another papacy in Avignon.
And what happens then is, after fourteen o nine there's
even a third one, a papacy in Avenel, a papacy
in Rome, and a papacy that's called the peasan or
the concilier papacy, because there was a council in the
city of Pisa that elected another pope. Three popes, three papacies.
(15:32):
Nobody knows what's going on. And this lasts until fourteen seventeen,
thirty nine years to give you a sense of thirty
nine years, roughly the time between the assassination of John F.
Kennedy and the attacks on nine to eleven. That's thirty
eight years. Thirty nine years is the great Western system,
(15:53):
to give you a sense of time. Amazing that the
glue of medieval society had just come apart. And so
the Council of Constant solves the problem. There's a unifying
pope by the name of Martin the Fifth but nevertheles less.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
There is tremendous damage to the church.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Chances for reform had been lost because everyone was trying
to figure out who the real pope was. Papal prestige
has been lost and has to be recovered severely damaged.
You also have political and social instability, the one Hundred Years' War,
which has fought roughly from thirteen thirty seven to fourteen
fifty three. Historians obviously can't count too well. It's not
(16:30):
one hundred years, but that's close enough. Between the two superpowers. Now,
the two superpowers are England and France. Remember a blood
feud because they had intermarried and the kings of England
had French blood in them dating back to ten sixty
six and the Norman invasion. They had had this uneasy
relationship for almost four hundred years, and they're going to
finally fight a death match, a grudge match.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
To the end.
Speaker 3 (16:54):
So the superpowers of England and France are involved in
this huge battle, and right in the middle of that,
within France, you have a civil war that lasts during
the very long reign of a king named Charles who
reigns from thirteen eighty to fourteen twenty two.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
So look at that, right in.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
The middle of this hundred years war, Charles is mentally unstable,
and he's basically controlled by either one set of uncles
or another set of uncles who kind of act as
regent's And there's tremendous confusion because Charles has a number
of sons who are heirs, called the Dauphins, and they
keep dying in turn. So this all of this intrigue,
(17:33):
and it's only when that intrigue begins to settle out
that Joan of Arc shows up on the scene and
actually puts her arms around, if you will, Charles the
sixth son Charles the seventh, and Joan of Arc saves
Charles the seventh and the famous maid of Orleon in
that battle, and that is the impetus for France to
(17:55):
finally push the English out. And all during that time
you have the peasants revolting from underneath, asking for more
power in the church, just being utterly confused. So where
do we stand here at Europe at the end of
the Middle Ages. Well, let's maybe reach back to the
(18:17):
beginning of our course together. When I teach any course,
either in class or in this kind of context, I
ask my students, As I said earlier, what are your preconceptions,
what are the nouns and verbs and images that come
to minds when you think of fill in the blank
medieval Europe? And I think, I hope that we've come
(18:41):
to the conclusion that the Middle Ages was not a
dark age. I am willing to say that they were
dimmer years, but it was not a dark age of
a thousand years between the fall of Rome, and remember,
I don't even think Rome fell and the rescue of
the light of the Renaissance. I would argue which Renaissance,
(19:05):
because we had a big one called the Carolingian Renaissance
around eight hundred, and a big one called the twelfth
century Renaissance in the eleven hundreds, and other people think
that there was a thirteenth century Renaissance as well. I'm
willing to admit that the very end of the Medieval period,
(19:27):
the last two hundred years of the thousand years twenty
percent were certainly rougher than the prior two hundred years.
From about eleven hundred to thirteen hundred, the great flowering
of the Medieval period. What everybody thinks of when they
think of the Middle Ages Gothic cathedrals, gargoyles, knights in
(19:53):
shining armor, and damsels in distress, the high point of
a papal monarchy that had within it the seeds of
its own destruction, in the cozy relationship with the state,
the state which, while building and going towards this thing
called Nations, is wrapping itself up in a certain religiosity
(20:15):
of sacred kingship, the iconography of political theology that reached
all the way to Charlemagne and back still to Constantine,
and I argued, back still to a pre Christian era
in Egypt and Greece and ancient Mesopotamia and many other
cultures as well. So we want to fight against simplistic
(20:41):
then versus now categories caricatures. We tend to think of
anybody who lived before us as somehow not as good
as us, because they didn't have cell phones, and they
didn't have Facebook, and they didn't have indoor plumbing. But
that is a very narrow notion of progress. You could
(21:05):
certainly look at the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome,
and then look at some of the dimmer years of
medieval Europe, say about the year six hundred or about
the year nine hundred and Just because six hundred and
nine hundred CE are after ancient Greece and Rome is
not necessarily better. There is no way those cultures were
(21:26):
much much better. The Islamic culture was in a much
better position than Western Europe in certain of those centuries.
We're trying to get away from these caricatures and those
cartoon characters and those simplistic notions. Nevertheless, it is true
that certain cultures, and certain times and certain moments are
(21:48):
marked by dominant values. And it is true that medieval
society was more communal in its thinking. Don't think communism,
don't think socialism, but there was a more of a
sense that people are in it together. Somebody said that
the medieval society was a group of joiners. That people
(22:10):
got together, They got together in guilds, they got together
in confraternities in the countryside.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
When the hue and cry was raised.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
Everyone and I mean everyone had and I mean had
to follow that human cry. To be left out, to
be outside, to be individualistic was not viewed highly by
medieval society.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
It's one of the problems of heresy.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Heretics, according to the dominant Christianity, are not going along,
they're not on board, and so medieval society was more
communal than a certain rugged individualism, which followed in what
I'm calling the Renaissance, the Italian Renaissance, though there's a
Renaissance in Germany and Spain and England as well, the
(22:57):
Renaissance of da Vinci and Michelangelo and Raphael and people
like that. Because those people went that the people we
identify as renaissance men are Renaissance men. What does that
phrase mean? Because they're not bound by one thing. They're
not just architects or just we might call them engineers,
or just artists, or just sculptors, or just craftsmen.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
They're all of those things.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
They refuse to be bound by one category, and that
is something that separates the Renaissance from the Medieval Age.
Though we also have to say that the Renaissance was
highly religious. There are some people who say, oh, the
Renaissance is very secular, and the medieval period was very
faith filled. The Renaissance was very rational, and so the
(23:46):
medieval period has to be very superstitious.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
That is not true at all.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
We've seen a change in the economy that feudalism has
yielded to capitalism bit by bitt and certainly after the
Black Death, and we certainly see at the end of
the Middle Ages a crisis of authority. In England, for instance,
we have the rise of parliament. Parliament over time, bit
by bit has been eroding the king's power. Magna Carta
(24:14):
was one stage in that, even though it didn't occur
in parliament. But bit by bit parliament has gotten stronger power.
Now we're getting towards a House of Lords and a
House of Commons, We're getting towards a speaker, if you will,
of the House, and there are these checks on royal authority.
So there's definitely a crisis of royal authority in England.
(24:37):
Certainly in France there's a crisis of royal authority with
Charles the sixth instability. And yet at the end of
the medieval period France has a stronger monarchy than England.
But France and England monarchy or parliaments on the rise
by the end of our period are passed by Spain.
(24:58):
Spain is the dominance power coming out of the medieval period,
and right on the lip of our here come the
Protestant reformations which challenge that weakened papacy. So the breakup
of medieval Christianity's singular dominance is coming up, so that
(25:22):
we don't think it's all a downer, and using again
that notion of an autumn or a harvest instead of
the waning of the Middle Ages. For Hoisinger, let's ask
when do the Middle Ages end? Well, I'm not happy
with when Rome ends, so I don't think we can
look at one particular date, but certainly at the end
of the Middle Ages, the world gets bigger, people start
(25:44):
looking outwards, and I'm going to look at three particular
events to talk about that. One is, finally, the Muslims
take over Constantinople in fourteen fifty three. If the Roman
Empire had such an impact on medieval Europe and in
the Byzantine Greek East, they say that the Roman Empire
never feil well, then the collapse of Constantinople by the
(26:07):
Muslims in fourteen fifty three, maybe we can look upon
that as an end. Columbus sales in fourteen ninety two,
a date that we have several times seen connected to
the reconquest in Spain. Columbus breaks the four minute mile.
If you will, nobody can sail far away he does it,
and then within twenty or thirty years, Magellan's fleet is
(26:29):
circumnavigating the world. And then off on the horizon is
Luther's ninety five THESS in fifteen seventeen, ushering in a
new period of the Reformation.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
And with that we say goodbye to the Middle Ages.
We hope you've found it exciting, educational, end enlightening. Thank
you so much for listening. Half hour history Secrets of
the Medieval World from One Day University is a production
of iHeart Podcasts at Cooul of Humans. If you've enjoyed
(27:07):
the show, please leave a review in your favorite podcast
app and check out the Curiosity Audio Network for podcasts
covering history, pop culture, true crime, and more.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
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