Crisis: Disease, War, and Schism

In the mid-fourteenth century, a series of crises shook the West. The Black Death swept through Europe and decimated the population, especially in the cities. Two major wars redrew the map of Europe between 1340 and 1492. The first was the Hundred Years’ War, fought from 1337 to 1453 (thus actually lasting 116 years). The second was the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453. As the wars raged and attacks of the plague came and went, a crisis in the church also weighed on Europeans. Attempts to return the papacy from Avignon to Rome resulted in the Great Schism (1378–1417), when first two and then three rival popes asserted universal authority. In the wake of these crises, many ordinary folk sought solace in new forms of piety, some of them condemned by the church as heretical.