7. THE HIGH MIDDLE AGES

THE CLOSE OF THE MIDDLE AGES Mid-1300s

Edward II of England (r.  1307-1327) proved inept (and corrupt) … losing the Battle of Bannockburn (1314) to Scottish leader Robert the Bruce – and thus securing Scotland's independence from England, with Robert now serving as Scottish king … confirmed in 1324 by Pope John XXII's decree and further secured with a new Scottish alliance with France in 1327.  By this time the English were so tired of Edward that they (aided by Edward's wife Isabella … who was also French King Philip IV's daughter) forced him to abdicate that same year in favor of his son Edward III.  He was subsequently murdered … probably under the orders of Isabella.

The "Hundred Years' War" – actually a series of three wars, interspersed with times of truce – was basically an ongoing battle between the Plantagenet and Valois families over the question of the right to govern France.  It is often identified as a battle between the English and the French, which is what it eventually became as Plantagenet troops and support took on an increasingly English nationalist character, with the Valois increasingly appearing to be the more "French" of the two contenders. The Plantagenet family held the peculiar position of being both vassals or barons under the kings of France, yet – since the Norman victory over the Saxons in England in 1066 – at the same time kings by their own right in England.  The two families were also connected by lineage or mutual descent from the Capetian royal family ruling France – starting up a bitter contest between the two families when the last king of the Capetian line ruling France died without any direct heirs.   At first the Plantagenets (led by English King Edward III) Edward III attempted to assert his right to the French throne … he being the nearest male in line to that throne through his mother Isabella, the only sister of the just deceased French King Charles IV.  But ultimately he acknowledged the Valois claim to the French throne by way of his cousin, Philip VI.  But in 1337, Edward decided to press his own claim to the French throne when Philip moved to support the Scottish in their long-standing war with the English.  Thus began the first phase of a contest that would span five generations of these two families. Edward III (1327-1377) offered England another long period of rule … though he was deeply challenged during much of that time by that "Hundred Years' War.  Initially, during the "First Phase" (1337-1360) of the war, it appeared that Edward would succeed in his bid for the French throne – as the fortunes of war favored his forces greatly in battle after battle.  His son, Prince Edward "The Black Prince," was given command of his Plantagenet or "English" forces … and defeated the Valois or "French" forces soundly at Crécy (1346) and Poitiers (1356).  And the younger Edward's path to securing his position as Prince of Aquitaine and Gascony in the South of France involved him in many other successful (and highly destructive) battles with the Valois forces. But the intervention of the Great Plague (or "Black Death") hit England – as all of Europe – very hard … killing much of the English momentum.   But the war then resumed as England recovered … resulting ultimately in the capture by Prince Edward in 1356 of French King John II … who, however, was merely held for ransom.  But it was a most humiliating defeat for the French.   Then in 1360 a strange hail storm killed over 1,000 of the English troops as they were undertaking the siege of Chartres … on their way to then seizing Paris.  But the storm so devastated the English army (the largest loss of life in the war so far) that King Edward was forced to accept terms of peace with France.  This would bring this first phase of the Hundred Years' War to a close.

In the mid-1300s the Black Death struck Europe – wiping out 25 million people.  It originated in Central Asia and made its way along the silk route to Constantinople in early 1347.  From there it was brought to Sicily and Italy, spreading over Italy early the following year, and from there quickly into France and southern England by the summer of 1348.  In Florence alone, it killed three-fourths of the city's inhabitants.  In England, in a 3-year period it wiped out half of the population of 4 million people.  After this a wave of other epidemics swept a much-weakened Europe.1   Overall, the Black Death left Christian Europe shattered, economically, socially, culturally … not to mention spiritually.  Where was God in all of this?  Was he actually not the powerful God they had been led to have full faith in?  Or was he an angry God, angry at the moral-political dissolution that had hit the Christian community … especially at the level of its "Christian" leaders?  What exactly was one to make of this disastrous event? The Church did not rebound well from the Black Death, having been able to give neither explanation for nor relief from this mysterious devastation.  A lot of faith in the Christian cosmos was deeply undercut by this tragedy.  Worse, not able to account for the cause of the tragedy, the Europeans’ frustration and wrath turned on defenseless targets such as Jews, Gypsies, lepers and foreigners, Europeans blaming them for having brought the disease.  Whole communities of European Jews were completely wiped out in the reaction. Nonetheless Europe rebounded fairly quickly, though with a greatly depleted population. 1Waves of attack by the plague would hit Europe again and again over the years ... though not with the severity of the 1350 Black Death ... though very devastating and frustrating nonetheless.  It would not be until the 1600s that Europe would reach the populations size it had before the Black Death. The spread of the Bubonic Plague in Europe Illustration of bubonic plague in the Taggenburg Bible Monks, disfigured by the plague, being blessed by a priest From James Le Palmer, Omne Bonum (London, 1360-1375) THE RISING SECULAR SPIRIT IN URBAN EUROPE ... AND RURAL SERFDOM Urban optimism.  Indeed a secular spirit rising among the people – particularly those living in the rapidly growing cities – was too strong to be long intimidated by the calamities of the Black Death and the Babylonian Captivity ... or the diminishing of sacred tradition caused by the Papal Schism.  As things actually turned out, many urban laborers benefitted financially from the labor shortage caused by the Black Death.   Indeed urban life tended to bounce back quickly in spirit ... and keep moving forward, lured onward by a sense of better things lying ahead. But rural serfdom (virtual slavery).  However, it must also be noted that in the feudal coountryside this same labor shortage caused many feudal lords in fact to tighten up on the ability of their peasants to shift around in the quest for better conditions elsewhere. In England, efforts by landowners (including the church) to hold scarce labor captive through a tightening of the laws permitting the peasants to move on to new economic opportunities – instead gradually turning the English free peasants into serfs – eventually produced a massive uprising in East Central England known as the Peasants' Revolt (1381).  Although it was brutally suppressed, it left among the commoners a legacy of discontent with the wealth of the landowners ... and the church.   In Central and Eastern Europe the lords of the land now tended to lock their vassals in place as rightless serfs ... whose social-political status was now hardly different from that of a slave. THE RISING THREAT IN THE EAST OF THE OTTOMAN TURKS Osman I (1281-1326) founds the Ottoman Empire.  In 1281 a local Oghuz Turk took up his father’s position as bey (governor) of a small beylic (Turkish state) in northwestern Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) … very near the border of a weakening Byzantine Empire.  Choosing to take his aggressions out on the failing Byzantine Empire rather than on his Turkish neighbors (the more usual direction of Turkish military politics) he drew a large number of other Turks to his cause – notably Ghazi warriors (volunteer militia) abandoning what was by then a collapsing Seljuk empire – Osman building up a very strong military in in the process.  Thus he proceeded to expand the boundaries of his own beylik … but also through diplomacy and strategic marriages as well as by the engines of war.  By 1299 he was ready to accept the title "Sultan of the Ghazis."  Thus the Ottoman Sultanate, the forerunner of the Ottoman Empire, was born (and soon named after him).   Orhan and Murad I.  Osman’s son Orhan (1326-1362) and Orhan’s son Murad I (1362-1389) continued the Ottoman expansion, Orhan taking Bursa with his Ghazi troops, making it his new capital … very close to the Byzantine capital at Constantinople.  At this point the Byzantine power in Anatolia was almost completely eradicated. In taking power in 1362 Murad immediately conquered the city of Adrianople, to the north of Constantinople, beginning the encirclement of the Byzantine capital ... and the permanent move of the Ottoman Sultanate onto the European continent.  Murad turned this Balkan city into his new capital in 1363 and renamed the city "Edirne."  He then began his expansion into neighboring Bulgarian and Serbian lands, aided greatly by the internal divisions and infighting going on within those two Christian societies … and by the pressures on the Bulgarians coming from the Hungarians to the north and the Greeks rising up in rebellion against the Serbs to the southwest.  In 1387 his troops were able to seize from the Italian Venetian Empire the strategic city of Thessaloniki sitting at the vital juncture of the land of the Bulgarians, Serbs and Greeks.   Finally in 1389 at the battle of Kosovo, Murad’s new army, now including Janissary troops,2 was able to crush the Serbian army (though the Ottoman forces themselves were greatly devastated by the battle), weakening the Serbs so much that they soon accepted vassalage within the growing Ottoman domain ... though Murad himself lost his life in the battle. Bayezid I (1389-1403).  Bayezid gathered a massive army – interestingly made up of a large number of Serbian and Byzantine soldiers – to consolidate his hold on the remaining independent Turkish beyliks to the south of the Anatolian peninsula.  Meanwhile (1389-1395) his troops were active to the north in Bulgaria and Wallachia (today’s southern Romania) … although the Wallachians were able to hold him in check.  And in 1395 he laid siege to the Byzantine capital of Constantinople … but was unable to breach its thick walls or cut off its supplies by sea – although a Christian relief force – another "crusade" … led by the King of Hungary – was defeated at Nicopolis (1396).   Tamerlane - A Step backward for the Ottomans.  The Ottoman assault on Constantinople continued until 1402 … when the Ottoman troops were called back to Anatolia to hold off the ever-expanding central-Asian realm of Timur (or "Tamerlane") … who had allied with the local Turkish beys that had proven resentful of Bayezid’s domination of Anatolia.  At the Battle of Ankara (1402) Bayezid was captured … and died the following year in captivity. For a brief period (ten years) it looked as if the Ottoman threat to Europe had been dismissed.  But that was not to be.  In the next century (and after) the Ottoman Turks would play a major role in European affairs. 2The Janissaries constituted something of a new personal guard, in effect slave soldiers who had been taken from Christian homes at an early age and trained as Muslim warriors totally dedicated in life and death to the Ottoman sultan. They proved to be very fierce warriors … even in taking on the Christian world they had originally been born to. THE PAPAL SCHISM CLOSES OUT THE MIDDLE AGES (1377 to 1418) When in 1377 Pope Gregory returned the papal court to Rome, he soon died ... and the College of Cardinals elected a new pope, whom they quickly grew to dislike, and thus elected another pope.  But the first pope refused to step down ... and now there were two popes.   European princes and kings soon lined themselves behind one or another candidate, making the papal schism even more catastrophic to the status of the Church.  Eventually there would be even other candidates (and their political supporters) to step forward to claim the papal position ... before a compromise was finally achieved at the Council of Constance (1414-1418).   But Christianity, as the spiritual underpinning of the old Christian community, by that time had lost ground badly.    Go on to the next section:  The European Renaissance   Miles H. Hodges