14th Century Crisis

Lecture Summary. 14th Century Crisis.

Today lection was about crisis that affected Western Europe in 14th Century. It was an awful era for Europe, which was developing extremely fast. Three major crises led to radical changes in all areas of society. The first crisis is Great Famine and it had started in the Northern Europe. The climate changed dramatically and weather began colder and wetter. There were heavy rains and floods causing the loss of crops, sometimes for various years running, the results were drastic and many died from hunger or lack of nutrition. This famine resulted reduce in population on 10-15%.

The second and most important crisis is the Black Death. The Black Death is a terrible a bubonic plague pandemic that devastated Europe between 1347 and 1349. It was brought from Asia on ship. Bacteria carried by fleas, who lived on black rats and merchant ships brought rats to Europe. Hunger and poor hygiene conditions also stimulated its spreading. In two years the Black Death expanded and devastated the entire continent. The cities suffered the worst consequences as the population was more concentrated there. For explain this disaster people decided to take a religious explanation of everything. People were blaming God's anger, Jews and lepers. People also tried ineffective cures such as pomanders, flagellation, and repentance of sins, for example, Dance of Death. The Black Death killed a quarter of the population in Europe. Together with famine and Black Death the Western Europe lost 50% of population. It also changed life in Europe. Such events have occurred: the plague forced farmers diversify their crops, peasant revolted and the working class moved to cities to get a better life by earning better wages.

The last crisis that occurred in 14th century is the Hundred Years Was. This war happened between 1337 and 1453. Basically, it was war between England and France. This happened because the last