Chapter 14

The Latin West,1200 - 1500

AP World History

I. Rural Growth and Crisis

A. Peasants and Population• Most people of the Latin West were peasants bound by

serfdom that used inefficient agricultural practices.• Women labored in fields and were subordinate to men.• Europe’s population doubled between 1000 and 1445.• Population growth was spurred by new agricultural

technologies in northern Europe, including the three-field system and the cultivation of oats for horses.

• As new land was opened up for cultivation much of it had poor soil and poor growing conditions.

Hierarchy of responsibilities in the Latin West.

Peasant cultivators labored long hours and more than half of the fruits of their labor went to the landowners, which led to a lack of

motivation to improve farming techniques.

Rural poverty was not simple the product of inefficient farming methods and social inequality. It also resulted from the rapid

growth population – it doubled from 1100 to 1345.

B. The Black Death and Social Change• The Black Death was brought from Kaffa to Italy

and southern France in 1346.• Ravaged Europe for two years and returned

periodically in the late 1300s and 1400s.• As a result of plague, labor became more

expensive in Western Europe and led to peasant uprisings and the end of serfdom.

• After the plague, rural living standards improved, the period of apprenticeship for artisans was reduced, and per capita income rose.

The Black Death resolved the problem of overpopulation by killing off a third of western Europeans.

The Black Death was a combination of two diseases: Anthrax (from cattle and sheep)

Bubonic plague (from the fleas of rats)

Black Death victims developed boils the size of eggs in their groins and armpits, black blotches on their skin,

foul body odors, and severe pain.

The south to north dispersion of the Black Death in the Latin West. By 1400 Europe’s population

regained the size it had had in 1200.

C. Mines and Mills• Between 1200 - 1500 Europeans invented and

used a variety of mechanical devices including water wheels and windmills.

• Industrial enterprises, including mining, ironworking, stone quarrying, and tanning, grew during this time.

– The results included both greater productivity and environmental damage including water pollution and deforestation.

Wind mills were powered by water or wind and were used to grind grain into flour, saw logs into lumber, crush olives, tan leather, make paper, mold iron into tools, horseshoes, etc.

II. Urban Revival

A. Trading Cities• Cities grew due to the increase in trade and

manufacturing.• The rise of Venice was the result of the capture of

Constantinople, the opening of the Central Asian caravan trade under the Mongol Empire, and the post Mongol development of the Mediterranean galley trade with Constantinople, Beirut, and Alexandria.

• This increase in sea trade also brought profits to Genoa and to the cities of the Hanseatic League in the Baltic and the North Sea.

• Flanders prospered from its woolen textile industries, while the towns of Champagne benefited from their position on the major land route through France.

• Trade industries also began to develop in England and Florence and the use of windmills and water wheels helped develop the textile, paper, and other industries.

Routes and systems of trade in medieval Europe. Illustrates the major overland and port trading cities.

Venice was the major trading power in the Mediterranean. It was the first European city to open up trading

relationships with the Islamic world.

Marco Polo was the first European to open up trade with China and spent years as an ambassador and governor of a Chinese

province for Khubilai Khan. He was gone from Venice for 24 years and few believed his stories about Asia’s wealth.

Flanders specialized in the European cloth and wool trade which was smoother than the coarse

homemade textiles from village looms.

B. Civic Life• European cities that were city-states were better

able to respond to the changing market conditions than Chinese or Islamic cities and European cities offered their citizens more freedom and social mobility.

• Europe's Jews lived in the cities and they were the subject of persecution and they were blamed for disasters like the Black Death and were expelled from Spain due to the Inquisition.

• Guilds regulated the practice of and access to trades, but women were rarely allowed to join.

• The growth of commerce gave rise to bankers like the Medicis of Florence and the Fuggers of Augsburg who handled financial transactions for merchants, the church, and the kings and princes of Europe.

• Many bankers were Jews because the Church prohibited usury.

Cosimo the Elder was the head of the Medici family in Florence. They were largest banking family in Italy

and were important patrons of the arts.

Jacob “the Rich” Fugger started out as a cloth merchant but turned his family’s wealth into the largest banking family in

Europe. (x10 greater lending capital than the Medicis)

Jewish persecution peaked in times of crisis such as the Black Death and the Spanish inquisition when they were blamed for

others misfortune.

C. Gothic Cathedrals• Gothic Cathedrals are the masterpieces of late

medieval architecture and craftsmanship.• Features include the pointed Gothic arch, flying

buttresses, high towers and spires, and large interiors lit by huge windows.

• The men who designed and built the Gothic cathedrals had no formal training in design and engineering; they learned through their mistakes.

The men who designed and built the Gothic cathedrals had no formal training in design and engineering;

they learned through their mistakes.

The hallmark of Gothic architecture is the Gothic arch which replaced the older round Roman arch.

Gothic Cathedrals had large interiors lit by huge windows supported by the exterior (flying) buttresses.

III. Learning, Literature, and the Renaissance

A. Universities and Learning• After 1100, Western Europeans got access to

Greek and Arabic works on science, philosophy, and medicine.

• These manuscripts were translated and explicated by Jewish scholars and studied at Christian monasteries, which remained the primary centers of learning.

• After 1200 colleges and universities emerged as new centers of learning.

• Universities generally specialized in a particular branch of learning.

– University of Prague is the oldest university in Europe.

– Bologna was famous for its law faculty, others for medicine or theology.

• Theology was the most prominent discipline at the time because theologians sought to synthesize the rational philosophy of the time with the Christian faith of the Latin West in an intellectual movement known as scholasticism.

University of Prague (1347) is the oldest university, a degree granting corporation which specialized in multi-disciplinary

research, in central Europe in continuous operation.

University of Bologna (1088) is the oldest continually operating university in the world. The word “universitas” was first used by this institution. It is historically notable

for its teaching of canon and civil law.

A medieval Italian classroom.

B. Humanists and Printers• Dante Alighieri (Divine Comedy) tells the story of

the author’s journey through the nine circles of Hell and seven terraces of Purgatory, followed by his entry into Paradise.

• Geoffrey Chaucer (Canterbury Tales) is a rich portrayal of the lives of everyday people in late medieval England.

• Dante influenced the intellectual movement of the humanists such as Petrarch and Boccaccio who were interested in the humanities and the classical literature of Greece and Rome.

• Humanists wrote in the vernacular and Latin and worked to restore the original texts and Bible through exhaustive comparative analysis of the many various versions that had been produced over the centuries.

• Pope Nicholas V established the Vatican Library and the Dutch humanist Erasmus produced a critical edition of the New Testament.

• In 1454 Johann Gutenberg perfected printing with his Gutenberg Bible which was the first book in the West printed from movable type.

– By 1500 more than 10 million works had been printed.

Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy was the first to combine Christian and Greco-Roman themes together, which foreshadowed the

literary fashions of the later Italian Renaissance.

Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is a rich portrayal of the actions and attitudes of everyday people

in late medieval England.

Francesco Petrarch and Giovanni Boccaccio were two of the early humanist writers who led the rebirth of Greco-Roman

traditions that had been lost during the Middle Ages.

Johannes Gutenberg invented mechanical movable type printing and started the printing revolution that played a key

role in the development of the Renaissance. It laid the material basis for the modern knowledge-based

economy and the spread of learning to the masses.

The printing press was a mechanical device that pressed inked type onto sheets of paper.

The Gutenberg Bible was the first to be printed from movable type.

C. Renaissance Artists• Style of art built on the more natural paintings of

Giotto and concentrated on the depiction of Greek and Roman gods and of scenes from daily life.

• Jan van Eyck developed oil paints.• Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were two of

the famous artists.• Wealthy merchant and clerical patrons liked the

Medici's of Florence and the church contributed to the development of Renaissance art.

Giotto painted natural paintings of religious scenes in which the characters displayed emotions of either grief or love that the

viewer could identify. (not the stiff emotionless Byzantine style)

Jan van Eyck was the first painter to use oil to create very life-like scenes. The portrait of the left is a self-portrait.

Leonardo da Vinci was a master of many media – designer, artist, and sculptor.

Two of Leonardo da Vinci’s works of art – Mona Lisa and the Vitruvian Man.

Michalangelo’s David is a masterpiece completed in 1504 and the painting of the Sistine Chapel ceiling is considered his

crowing achievement completed in 1512.

IV. Political and Military TransformationsA. Monarchs, Nobles, and the Clergy

• 13th century European states were ruled by weak monarchs whose power was limited.

• The armor piercing crossbow and firearms led to the demise of knights.

• Philip the Fair of France reduced the power of the church when he arrested the pope and had a new French one installed in Avignon.

• The Magna Carta limited the power of the English King.

• Monarchs and nobles often entered into marriage alliances and these led to wars and the establishment of territorial boundaries.

Philip the Fair of France reduced the power of the church when he arrested the pope and had a new French pope

installed in Avignon, France.

With an iron tipped arrow, the crossbow could pierce armor. In 1139 it was outlawed because it was considered too

deadly to be used against Christians.

Magna Carta (Great Charter) affirmed that monarchs were subject to established law. It is one of the foundations of

modern-day democracy.

Depiction of King John signing the Magna Carta under duress.

B. Hundred Years War, 1337-1453• Pitted England against France when Edward III

claimed the French throne in 1337.• War was fought with new military technology.

(pikes, cannon, crossbows, longbows, and firearms)

• The French superior cannon destroyed the castles of the English and their allies and left the French monarchy in a stronger position than before.

Land that was disputed during the Hundred Years War. It grew out of the marriage alliance of Edward II of England and Isabella

of France.

King Henry V at the battle of Agincourt. The longbow allowed the outnumbered English to crush the French knights.

Joan of Arc, the heroine of France, rallied the French to defeat the English to end the Hundred Years War in 1429. Burned at

the stake in 1431 for being a “witch”.

English longbow could outshoot the crossbow. Changed armor technology which made knights unable to maneuver once they

had been un-horsed.

C. New Monarchies in France and England• New monarchies that emerged out of the hundreds

years war had stronger central governments, more stable national boundaries, and stronger representative institutions.

• The castle and knight had become outdated.• Monarchs began to tax land, merchants, and the

church.• By the end of 15th century power had shifted from the

church and nobility toward the monarchs, but monarchs in England were still hemmed in by Parliament and in France the Estates General.

Parliament was a permanent fixture in the English government by 1500.

The French Estates General which was less effective than the English Parliament.

D. Iberian Unification• The reconquest of Spain by Christians over

Muslims took several centuries.• Portugal was established in 1249, but by 1415 they

had captured the Moroccan port of Ceuta, which gave them access to the trans-Saharan trade.

• Castile and Aragon were united in 1469 and by 1492 they drove the Muslims out of their last Iberian stronghold (Granada).

• Spain and Portugal then expelled all Jews and Muslims from their territory.

Reconquest of the Iberian peninsula from the Moors.

Depiction of el Cid, one of the famous Spanish knight that led the reconquest.

King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella completed the conquest of Spain in 1492. They also sponsored the voyages of Columbus.

Muslim palace in Granada which was the last Muslim stronghold to fall into Spanish hands during the reconquest.

V. Comparative Perspectives

A. Growth Comparisons• The empires of Islamic Africa and Asia developed

through distant trade networks in the Indian Ocean.

• The city-states and nations of Europe arose from trade throughout the Mediterranean and North Seas.

B. Cultural and Technological Comparisons• From 1200-1500, long distance trade fostered

learning and cultural exchanges as well as trade in goods.

• The medieval Latin West had depended upon the East for its commercial well-being, then made use of the technology borrowed form the East to expand its own influences into new frontiers.