Western Civilization - History Of European Society

Plague, War, and Social Change in the “Long”Fourteenth Century 231

his life. Though respected for his piety, he was wholly

incapable of governing and suffered a complete mental

breakdown in 1453. His incapacity led to the War of

the Roses, a nine-year struggle between the Lancastrian

and Yorkist branches of the royal family that ended

with a Yorkist victory at Tewksbury in 1471 and the

murder of yet another English king (see chapter 13).

Whether the result of royal inbreeding or sheer

bad luck, these dynastic failures retarded the develop-

ment of western European states. The increasing cost of

and sophistication of war were a powerful impetus to

the growth of royal power, but these anarchic inter-

ludes tended to interfere with bureaucratic develop-

ment and to strengthen local privilege, at least

temporarily. Feudal nobles whose position was threat-

ened by economic and military change often saw them

as an opportunity to recover lost ground. Above all,

they added to the sense of dislocation created by

plague, war, and social change.

Art and Literature: The Measure

of Discontent

By the end of the fourteenth century, the accumulation
of disasters was having an impact on the art and litera-
ture of Europe. The bonds of society seemed to be un-
raveling. Lords abandoned their ostensible function as
the military protectors of society and compensated for
declining rents by preying upon their tenants. Peasants
responded when they could by abandoning their
tenures. The idea of mutual obligation that lay at the
heart of feudalism could no longer be sustained, and
many, including the fourteenth-century author of the
English poem Piers Plowman,came to believe that greed
and self-interest were everywhere triumphant. Moralists
complained that the simpler manners of an earlier day
had given way to extravagance and debauchery. War
was endemic and all the more intolerable because it did
not end for the common people when a truce was
signed. They still had to pay for it through taxes while
trying to defend themselves against unemployed sol-
diers who often did more damage than the war itself.
Plague, the conquests by the Turk, and the rule of im-
becile kings were seen by many as signs of God’s wrath.
The expression of these concerns varied. At one
extreme was the upper-class tendency to take refuge in
nostalgia for a largely fictional past. This took the form
not only of chivalric fantasies, but also of the idyllic vi-
sions offered in the Tres riches heures du Duc du Berry,a

magnificently illustrated prayer book in which happy

peasants toil near palaces that seem to float on air (see

illustration 12.5). At the other extreme was a fascina-

tion with the physical aspects of death (see document

12.5). The art of the period abounds with representa-

tions of skeletons and putrifying corpses. The Dance of

Death in which corpses lead the living in a frenzied

round that ends with the grave became a common mo-

tif in art and literature and was performed in costume

on festive occasions. Popular sermons emphasized the

brevity of life and the art of dying well, while series of

popular woodcuts illustrated in horrifying detail how

death would come to the knight, the scholar, the

Illustration 12.5

Nostalgia for a Past That Had Never Been.Happy peas-

ants toil beneath the walls of a fairy tale castle in this fifteenth-

century illumination, which is from the Très riches heures du Duc

du Berry.