The Late Middle Ages

1
The Late Middle Ages
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Culture of the High Middle Ages

• Universities
• Latin word universitas corporation or guild
• Basis for modern universities
• Lecture to read
• Liberal arts education, took 4 to 6 years
• Scholasticism
• Attempt to show that religious teachings were the
  same as reason and science
• Show that Christian teachings would fit works of
  the classical Greeks
• Saint Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica)

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Culture of the High Middle Ages

• Vernacular
• Latin language of church and schools
• Vernacular is the language of the local area
• Shift to more works in an areas vernacular
• Architecture
• Focus on building churches and castles
• Romanesque in the style of Roman Empire
• Gothic

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Changes in Europe

• Reached peak in the 13th Century
• 13th-14th century saw changes
• little Ice Age cooler weather, more rain
• little Ice Age ends warmer weather
• Plague
• Warfare
• Decline of the church
• Decline and collapse of feudalism

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The Black Death (Plague)

• Bubonic plague most common (Yersinia pestis)
• Carried by fleas on black rats
• Brought by traders from the middle east
• Italian cities 50 60 death rate
• 1347 1351 19 38 million people die
• People felt it was sent by God or work of the
  devil
• Flagellants
• Anti-Semitism accused Jews of causing,
  persecuted (Medieval Holocaust)
• Destroyed trade and the feudal system

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Decline of the Church

• King Philip IV of France and Pope Bonafice
• Resulted in papacy moving to Avignon, France
• Papacy became controlled by the French kings from
  1305 1378
• The Great Schism (1378 1417)
• Two popes, one elected in Rome one in Avignon
  (each claimed the other was the Antichrist)

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The Hundred Years War

• 1337 King Philip VI of France seized Gascony
  from King Edward III of England
• French army relied mostly on heavily armed
  knights
• English army had knights, but also had peasant
  foot soldiers trained with longbows
• 1346 Battle of Crecy
• English victory because of longbows
• 1415 Battle of Agincourt
• French lose 1,500 nobles
• English controlled northern France

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The Hundred Years War

• Joan of Arc (1412 1431)
• Peasant who said that visions of saints had told
  her to free France
• 1429 convinced King Charles to allow her to
  travel with the army to Orleans
• French victories followed
• Captured by the English, tried and burned at the
  stake for being a witch
• French finally claim victory in 1453
• Cannon and gunpowder helped

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Political Instability

• Feudal system dissolves
• New Monarchies in Western Europe
• King Louis XI in France (use of taille)
• England War of the Roses (civil war)
• Tudor Dynasty (Henry VII)
• Spain Ferdinand and Isabella
• Drove out Muslims in 1492
• Forced Jews and Muslims to convert to Catholicism
• Eastern and Central Europe
• Holy Roman Empire Hapsburgs rule area known as
  Austria
• Russia Ivan III
• Ottoman Empire takes over Byzantine Empire (1453)