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         The Late Middle Ages
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The Dark Ages witnessed widespread disruption throughout Europe and the
replacement of the previously predominant Roman culture with Germanic tribal
culture. For 500 years Europe had suffered repeatedly from invasion and war. The
life of the average peasant was rarely affected, however, and social stability
and culture gradually recovered, although in new formats. By roughly the year
1000, Europeans were creating a new medieval civilization that surpassed the
ancients in almost every way.


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| Economy |
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At the start of the Dark Ages, Northern Europe was deeply forested. By 1000 AD,
much of the forest was gone and most of the rest was going, replaced by farmland
and pasture. The soil was generally excellent, a loess of finely ground rock
deposited during the last receding Ice Age. Two key inventions accelerated the
deforestation of Europe and led to increasing food production. The first was the
horse collar that originated in China and gradually came west. The improved
collar fit across a horse's breast, rather than its windpipe, allowing it to
pull much heavier loads without choking. The second invention was the heavy
wheeled plow, which was needed to cut into the deep soils and extensive root
systems of the old forests. Dramatic increases in food production were the
foundation of population growth and economic revitalization in Europe.

Increasing population, no longer needed on the manors, migrated to the towns
that were already growing in response to the needs for larger markets. Food
surpluses and the products of new industries (cloth-making, shipbuilding, and
tool-making, for example) traded in the new markets and trade fairs. Kings
encouraged the growth of towns because residents were usually allied with the
central authority rather than local feudal lords. Citizens of towns paid taxes,
not feudal service. Within towns there appeared a new middle class that
supported itself by trade, industrial production, and lending money. Merchants
came to dominate the town governments, growing both rich and powerful.

Craftsmen and merchants organized themselves into associations that were called
guilds. These associations controlled prices and production, ensured a high
standard of service or manufacturing, and organized the training of crafts
through apprenticeships. These controls ensured both a high-quality product and
a high-quality of life for guild members. Guild members often concentrated in
one part of town, such as Threadneedle Street and Ironmongers Lane in London.
Guilds formed an important power block within the political structure of the
towns.

Increased trade led to a new boom in manufacturing. Both led to the rise of
banking, centered mostly in northern Italy in the thirteenth century. Fledgling
businesses needed money to get started and to function efficiently. Money acted
as a medium of exchange and standard of value and was necessary for moving
beyond an inefficient barter economy. Italy had cash surpluses from its
lucrative Mediterranean trade, especially with the Levant. The gold florin of
Florence became the most popular coin of the late Middle Ages.


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| Religion |
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Pilgrims

Christians proved their faith by going on pilgrimages to Rome, Santiago de
Compostela, and even Jerusalem. Pilgrims who had visited Santiago de Compostela
wore cloth cockleshells on their clothing as a badge of distinction.

Cathedrals

The prosperity of the twelfth century and later was increasingly expressed in
the arts, especially architecture. The enduring symbol of Middle Ages
architecture was the cathedral. Magnificent church buildings were erected in
thanks to God for the blessings bestowed on the people. Towns competed to build
the most glorious cathedral and the loftiest spire reaching toward heaven.
Cathedrals were the largest capital investments of the period, taking as much as
a century to build and costing a fortune.

The predominant building material for cathedrals was stone, which minimized the
hazard of fire. There was little steel at the time, and iron was too soft to
hold up the immense buildings of unprecedented height. Architects evolved new
solutions to old problems, devising the pointed arch and flying buttress to
spread the weight load from vaulted ceilings onto massive stone supports. The
new building technologies made possible great open cathedrals, large windows
(often of beautifully stained glass), and high spires. The French pioneered the
new cathedrals. Notre Dame of Paris was begun in 1163 and finished 72 years
later. The cathedral at Chartres was begun in 1120 and completed in 1224 after
burning twice during construction.

Cathedrals were a great source of civic pride and prestige. Pilgrims and new
churchgoers brought increased revenues to the cathedral town.


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| Technology |
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By the late Middle Ages, science in Europe had caught up with the ancients and
passed them by. The technology that interested the people was practical, not
theoretical. They sought better ways to do things, both to make life more
comfortable and to improve business. They were interested in understanding the
natural world because they had increasingly more leisure time for contemplation.

The rudiments of mathematics and science were acquired from the Muslims of the
Iberian Peninsula and Sicily when Christians retook those areas. The Muslims had
been actively studying the ancients and new ideas from Asia since the early
Middle Ages. The Muslims passed on the Arabic numerals used today and the
concept of the zero, invented in India.

Practical research began challenging logic in the quest to understand the laws
of nature. The value of observation, experimentation, and empirical (countable)
evidence as support and proof of theory was recognized. This led to the
scientific method of the later Renaissance, which is the basis for all modern
scientific research. Ancient Greeks had suggested the scientific method, but it
fell out of favor and had been forgotten.


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| Feudalism's Decline |
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Political Changes

By the beginning of the late Middle Ages, western Europe had been divided into
feudal holdings of various sizes. Kings atop feudal hierarchies did not exercise
a strong central authority and nations existed as cultural groups, not political
entities. By the end of the late Middle Ages, strong central authority
controlled England, Spain, Portugal, and France. Political power in those areas
had been wrested away from the local feudal lords.

William the Conqueror established the first of the strong European monarchies
after winning the throne of England in 1066. Following his victory at Hastings
and five more years of fighting to break remaining resistance, he began taking
steps to consolidate his power. He kept one-sixth of England as royal land. Half
of the rest was given as fiefs to Norman barons who were his direct vassals. He
gave one-quarter of the land to the Church and the remainder was divided among
the Anglo-Saxons. The entire feudal hierarchy was forced to swear fealty to him
as liege lord. He claimed ownership of all castles, prohibited wars between
lords, and made royal coinage the only legal money. These were important first
steps in the decline of feudalism, although they could not always be enforced,
especially by later kings of lesser ability than William.

In the twelfth century, England's King Henry II created the chancery and
exchequer, the beginnings of a civil service. The chancery kept records of laws
and royal transactions; the exchequer was the treasury. Both offices were not
hereditary, making it easy to remove unwanted officials. The staffs of the new
civil service were paid a salary rather than given a fief, making them dependent
only on the king.

In 1215 the unpopular King John of England was forced to sign the Magna Carta, a
feudal document that made the king subject to the laws of the land and required
that the barons have a voice in the king's decision through a Great Council.
Wording of the Magna Carta led to important interpretations in later centuries,
including the concept of "no taxation without representation." When a later
English king ignored the Magna Carta, the barons seized power in 1264 and ruled
temporarily through an expanded Great Council called the Parliament. The new
Parliament included not only the barons and high-ranking churchmen but also
representatives from the large towns.

Although this parliamentary government was short-lived (15 months), Parliament
itself could not be suppressed or ignored. From this period on, only Parliament
could repeal laws it had passed. No taxes could be imposed without its approval.
When kings needed money in the short term (during the Hundred Years War, for
example) they were often forced by Parliament to concede more power in exchange.
Parliament and the civil service continued to grow in importance, and they
proved capable of running the country, regardless of the current king's ability
or any temporary rebellion by the nobility.

While the king, civil service, and Parliament were pushing down on the power of
barons from above, pressure was also rising from the bottom of the feudal
hierarchy. Several factors worked toward freeing the serfs from their contracts
with the lords, including increasing town populations, cessation of barbarian
raids, and a fearful plague that struck Europe in the fourteenth century.

The Black Death

The plague that became known as the Black Death struck Europe suddenly and with
devastating effect in the middle fourteenth century. It moved west from Central
Asia, appearing in the Black Sea area in 1346. It spread southwest into the
Mediterranean and then up and around the North Atlantic Coast and into the
Baltic. By 1348 it was in Spain and Portugal, by 1349 in England and Ireland, by
1351 in Sweden, and by 1353 in the Baltic States and Russia. Only remote and
sparsely populated areas were spared. Between a third and a half of the
population of Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and India died, based on
modern estimates of the loss.

The Black Plague was probably a variety of the bubonic plague, a bacterial
infection still encountered today and still dangerous. The bacteria were carried
in the saliva of fleas that had sucked the blood of infected rats. The fleas
jumped to human hosts when infected rats died and the bacteria spread rapidly in
the human blood stream. The plague took its name from its most hideous symptom-
large black and painful swellings that oozed blood and pus. Victims developed a
high fever and became delirious. Most died within 48 hours, but a small minority
were able to fight off the infection and survive.

Entire towns were depopulated and the social relation between serf and lord fell
apart. People who could farm or make things were valuable. The move to cities
accelerated once the plague had passed.