Crisis of the late Middle Ages
The crisis of the Middle Ages was a series of events in the 14th and 15th centuries that ended centuries of European stability during the late Middle Ages.[1] Three major crises led to radical changes in all areas of society: demographic collapse, political instability, and religious upheavals.[2]
The Great Famine of 1315–1317 and the Black Death of 1347–1351 potentially reduced the European population by half or more as the Medieval Warm Period came to a close and the first century of the Little Ice Age began. It took until 1500 for the European population to regain the levels of 1300.[2] Popular revolts in late medieval Europe and civil wars between nobles such as the English Wars of the Roses were common, with France fighting internally nine times. There were also international conflicts between kingdoms such as France and England in the Hundred Years' War.
The unity of the Catholic Church was shattered by the Western Schism. The Holy Roman Empire was also in decline. In the aftermath of the Great Interregnum (1247–1273), the empire lost cohesion and the separate dynasties of the various German states became more politically important than their union under the emperor.
Climate change and plague pandemic correlation[edit]
The Black Death was a particularly devastating epidemic in Europe during this time, and is notable due to the number of people who succumbed to the disease within the few years the disease was active. It was fatal to an estimated thirty to sixty percent of the population where the disease was present.[21] While there is some question of whether it was a particularly deadly strain of Yersinia pestis that caused the Black Death, research indicates no significant difference in bacterial phenotype.[22] Thus, environmental stressors are considered when hypothesizing the deadliness of the Black Plague, such as crop failures due to changes in weather, the subsequent famine, and an influx of host rats into Europe from China.[21][23]
Malthusian hypothesis[edit]
Scholars such as David Herlihy and Michael Postan use the term Malthusian limit to explain some calamities as results of overpopulation. In his 1798 Essay on the Principle of Population, Thomas Malthus asserted that exponential population growth will invariably exceed available resources, making mass death inevitable. In his book The Black Death and the Transformation of the West, David Herlihy explores whether the plague was an inevitable crisis of population and resources. In The Black Death; A Turning Point in History? (ed. William M. Bowsky), he "implies that the Black Death's pivotal role in late medieval society... was now being challenged. Arguing on the basis of a neo-Malthusian economics, revisionist historians recast the Black Death as a necessary and long overdue corrective to an overpopulated Europe."
Herlihy also examined the arguments against the Malthusian crisis, stating "if the Black Death was a response to excessive human numbers it should have arrived several decades earlier"[25] in consequence of the population growth before the Black Death. Herlihy also brings up other, biological factors that argue against the plague as a "reckoning" by arguing "the role of famines in affecting population movements is also problematic. The many famines preceding the Black Death, even the 'great hunger' of 1315 to 1317, did not result in any appreciable reduction in population levels".[25] Herlihy concludes the matter stating, "the medieval experience shows us not a Malthusian crisis but a stalemate, in the sense that the community was maintaining at stable levels very large numbers over a lengthy period" and states that the phenomenon should be referred to as more of a deadlock, rather than a crisis, to describe Europe before the epidemics.[25]: 34