Why have the later Middle Ages been seen as a time of calamity and crisis?
BBETWEEN 1300 AND 1450 Europeans experienced a series of shocks: climate change, economic decline, plague, war, social upheaval, and increased crime and violence. Death and preoccupation with death made the fourteenth century one of the most wrenching periods of history in Europe.
Procession of FlagellantsIn this manuscript illumination from 1349, shirtless flagellants, men and women who whipped and scourged themselves as penance for their and society’s sins, walk through the Flemish city of Tournai, which had just been struck by the plague. Many people believed that the Black Death was God’s punishment for humanity’s wickedness. (The Flagellants at Doornik in 1349, copy of a miniature from the Chronicle of Aegidius Li Muisis/Private Collection/The Bridgeman Art Library)