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A Distant Mirror - The 14th Century . Period was a time of turmoil, diminished expectation, feeling of helplessness at forces beyond human control. Two Great Natural Disasters. Little Ice Age Bubonic Plague. Little Ice Age. Late 1200's to early 1800’s with break 1500-1600
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A Distant Mirror - The 14th Century Period was a time of turmoil, diminished expectation, feeling of helplessness at forces beyond human control.
Two Great Natural Disasters • Little Ice Age • Bubonic Plague
Little Ice Age • Late 1200's to early 1800’s with break 1500-1600 • Baltic Sea froze over 1303, 1306-7. • Alpine glaciers advanced. • Norse settlements in Greenland cut off. • Grain cultivation ceased in Iceland. • Crops failed after heavy rains, 1315; famine, reports of cannibalism, epidemics.
Bubonic Plague • First wave 1347-1350. • Killed 1/3 of population of Eurasia • Six more waves 1350-1400. • Population of Europe cut by 50% by 1400. • Probably closest approach to the effects of a thermonuclear war in history.
Social Upheavals • Closure of route to China, 1368. • Hundred Years War 1337-1450 • Chaos in the Church • Great Western Schism 1378. • John Wycliff, first of the reformers • Bogomil in the Balkans • Advance of Turks in Balkans.
Effects of Disorder • Apathy. • Self-Indulgence. • Rise of graphic, often gruesome, realism in art. • Hysteria, religious fanaticism. • Search for scapegoat. • Jews (linked to resentment over money-lending, desire to erase debts) • Witches (linked to suppression of Knights Templars via sensational witchcraft and sorcery trials which fanned popular hysteria)
Start of the Renaissance • Term first used by late 14th century by Italian scholars who saw themselves as the vanguard of a period of improved conditions.