4.27 Europe: a.d. 1301 to 1400

Europe

Back to Europe: A.D. 1201 to 1300

Early in this century Europe, as a whole, experienced some extremely heavy rains and hard, severe winters in an otherwise warm period. Gunpowder was in use in Flanders, Germany, Italy and Moslem Spain early in the century and then in France and England in the second half. (Ref. 224 , 213 ) Near the end of the century blast furnaces were developed, first in Germany and/or the Netherlands, but soon used also in France. Water powered bellows promoted these furnaces which then produced cast iron and "steeled" iron for the first time in Europe. Larger, stouter ships were now available which could sail as safely in winter as summer, making possible a still greater commercial web all around the continent. Bills of exchange and credit facilitated this commerce. From this time on European allowance for the private accumulation of relatively large amounts of capital made the fundamental superiority of this region over the rest of the civilized world. (Ref. 260 , 279 )

The aggressiveness of Christian Knighthood which had sent Germans to the Gulf of Finland, Crusaders to Jerusalem and attackers against the Moslems in southern Spain and Italy, came to a slow-down, as the basic foodstuffs for their support could no longer keep up the pace. The mold-board plow was not efficient in arid parts of Spain and in the cold of northern and eastern Europe. (Ref. 279 )

The Black Death (plague) killed perhaps 1/3 of the population of Europe. Pope Clement VI gave a score of 42,866,486 dead, but this may be a mild exaggeration. (Ref. 122 ) Crop failures and the severe winters had already hit northern Europe and depopulation had begun. Then in 1346 a Mongol prince laid siege to Caffe in the Crimea. His army came down with plague and he withdrew, but the disease had entered the city and from there it spread by ship throughout the Mediterranean and ere long to northern and western Europe. The initial shock of A.D. 1346 was so severe that it spread not only by flea bite, but also from person to person by inhalation of droplets from coughing patients. Such lung infections were 100% fatal and the overall mortality rate probably was 60 to 70% of those infected. (Ref. 140 ) In this same period, western Europe and Germany had economic depression, prolonged and devastating wars (England and France) and political fragmentation (Germany). After recurrent plague epidemics of the 1360s and 1370s there were widespread manpower shortages in central and western Europe. In contrast, there was a rise and consolidation of powerful states in eastern Europe and there were far flung results from the mass production of paper. (Ref. 8 )

Cookery for the average European remained, as in the past, prosaic at best. Alleged feasts at courts consisted chiefly of gorging on meats and wine and were rare events not available to the common man. There was a great change in costumes. Men's clothes were shortened and their tunics became form-fitting, never to return to robes, while women's bodices became more close-fitting and cut with large décolleté. (Ref. 260 )