29.3 Europe: a.d. 1401 to 1500  (Page 4/16)

In addition to these military and political troubles, in 1498 the Portuguese rounded the Cape of Good Hope, establishing a waterway to the East, bypassing the Mediterranean and diverting world trade away from this ancient trade route. But there was one redeeming feature that saved Italy at that time. The rich of Europe forsake gold and silver fabrics for silk and since Italy was one of the few silk manufacturing centers of the continent, this brought a last wave of prosperity to the peninsula, to last about 100 years. Sicily was already growing sugar cane, but in spite of the intervention of Genoese capitalism, the sugar works were money losing ventures. (Ref. 292 )

Central europe

Gold and silver mines flourished again in central Europe from 1470 on for about 70 years. Mining camps were worked by free men in the Alps, the Carpathaians and the Erz Gebirge on the border between Czechoslovakia and Germany. (Ref. 292 )

Germany (see map in section on prussia, in 18th century)

15th century Germany will be described in some detail so that the reader may understand the political and social groundwork on which the Reformation was to burst in full bloom in the next century. The people were the healthiest, strongest, cleanest and most vital and exuberant in Europe. They were actually too vigorous and prosperous to tolerate any longer the manacle of feudalism or the exactions of Rome. The German Church was rich but much of its money continually drained into Rome and a revolutionary spirit of hatred for the Church and the clergy had taken hold of the masses in various parts of the country. In the last half of the century all classes in Germany prospered and with the exception of knights and the lower nobility, although there were sporadic agrarian revolts. The German financiers became prominent, particularly at Augsburg, Bavaria and in particular we must mention the Fuggers family. These and other south German bankers had gained greatly from the mining boom in Germany and Bohemia. (Ref. 279 ) This era of the Fuggers established a center of wealth that Europe had not seen since the millionaires of Imperial Rome. The Fuggers soon moved the center of their operations to Antwerp and this closeness to northern Germany allowed that portion of the country to become divorced from the Italian economy and thus strong enough to protect Luther in the next century. Southern Germany, tied to the Italian economy, remained Catholic. The relative abundance of gold in the last years of the century in Europe paradoxically "launched" the silver mines of Germany. As one of these precious metals becomes more commonplace, the other becomes more valuable. (Ref. 260 ) (See map on page 711)

By 1460 a hundred small cities had won charters of practical freedom from their lay or church superiors. Cologne, with 20,000 people, was the largest town in Germany, functioning as a trade center at the intersection of two Rhine waterways and important overland trade routes. There were still ten times more rural than urban dwellers in the country, although there were about 3,000 towns of all sizes, each acting as a relay point 5 to 8 hours apart on trade routes. (Ref. 260 ) In each principality the three estates - nobles, clergy and commons - met occasionally in a territorial diet that exercised some restraint on the purse strings. Then there was an over-all Reichstag and a Diet of Electors to choose a king, who was then made emperor by the pope. Early in the century, Sigismund of Bohemia (and then also king of Hungary) was the Holy Roman Emperor, but then the Habsburgs of Austria came to power with Albert II in 1438 and after that all the emperors were Habsburgs and thus from outside of Germany, itself . It was not great wonder, then, that Frederick III, in league with the popes, aggravated tension between the popes and the German people and further set the stage for the Reformation. During his reign, the areas of Schleswig-Holstein, Bohemia, Austria and Hungary detached themselves from the German dominion.