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11

The Later Middle

Ages: Crisis and

Disintegration in the

Fourteenth Century

CHAPTER OUTLINE

AND FOCUS QUESTIONS

A Time of Troubles: Black Death and

Social Crisis

Q What impact did the Black Death have on the

society and economy of Europe?

War and Political Instability

Q What major problems did European states face in

the fourteenth century?

The Decline of the Church

Q How and why did the authority and prestige of the

papacy decline in the fourteenth century?

Culture and Society in an Age of Adversity

Q What were the major developments in art and

literature in the fourteenth century? How did the

adversities of the fourteenth century affect urban

life?

CRITICAL THINKING

QMake an argument either for or against the

idea that climate and disease played a major

role in producing social, economic, and

political changes in the fourteenth century.

CONNECTIONS TO TODAY

QWhat similarities and differences do you see in

the responses to natural disasters in the

fourteenth and twenty-first centuries?

A medieval illustration of Death as a reaper during the Black Death

ª

AAAC/TopFoto/The Image Works

AS A RESULTof their conquests in the thirteenth

and fourteenth centuries, the Mongols created a

vast empire stretching from Russia in the west to

China in the east. As Mongol rule brought stability

to the Eurasian trade routes, the increased trade

brought prosperity but also created avenues for

the spread of flea-infested rats that carried

bubonic plague to both East Asia and Europe. The

mid-fourteenth century witnessed one of the most

destructive natural disasters in history—the Black

Death. One contemporary observer named Henry

Knighton, a canon of Saint Mary-of-the-Meadow

249

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