3 Late Midle Ages

The Late Middle Ages or late medieval period was the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodization" title="Periodization">period</a> of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_history" class="mw-redirect" title="European history">European history</a> generally comprising the 14th and 15th centuries (c. 1301–1500). The Late Middle Ages followed the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Middle_Ages" title="High Middle Ages">High Middle Ages</a> and preceded the onset of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_modern_era" class="mw-redirect" title="Early modern era">early modern era</a> (and, in much of Europe, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance" title="Renaissance">Renaissance</a>).

Around 1300, centuries of prosperity and growth in Europe came to a halt. A series of famines and plagues, including the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1315%E2%80%931317" class="mw-redirect" title="Great Famine of 1315–1317">Great Famine of 1315–1317</a> and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death" title="Black Death">Black Death</a>, reduced the population to around half of what it was before the calamities.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Middle_Ages#cite_note-1">[1]</a> Along with depopulation came social unrest and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endemic_warfare" title="Endemic warfare">endemic warfare</a>. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France" title="France">France</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/England" title="England">England</a> experienced serious peasant uprisings, such as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquerie" title="Jacquerie">Jacquerie</a> and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peasants%27_Revolt" title="Peasants' Revolt">Peasants' Revolt</a>, as well as over a century of intermittent conflict in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Years%27_War" title="Hundred Years' War">Hundred Years' War</a>. To add to the many problems of the period, the unity of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church" title="Catholic Church">Catholic Church</a> was shattered by the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Schism" title="Western Schism">Western Schism</a>. Collectively these events are sometimes called the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_of_the_Late_Middle_Ages" title="Crisis of the Late Middle Ages">Crisis of the Late Middle Ages</a>.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Middle_Ages#cite_note-2">[2]</a>

Despite these crises, the 14th century was also a time of great progress in the arts and sciences. Following a renewed interest in ancient <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greece" title="Ancient Greece">Greek</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Rome" title="Ancient Rome">Roman</a> texts that took root in the High Middle Ages, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Renaissance" title="Italian Renaissance">Italian Renaissance</a> began. The absorption of Latin texts had started before the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_of_the_12th_century" title="Renaissance of the 12th century">Renaissance of the 12th century</a> through contact with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab" class="mw-redirect" title="Arab">Arabs</a> during the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades" title="Crusades">Crusades</a>, but the availability of important Greek texts accelerated with the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capture_of_Constantinople" class="mw-redirect" title="Capture of Constantinople">capture of Constantinople</a> by the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire" title="Ottoman Empire">Ottoman Turks</a>, when many <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_Empire" title="Byzantine Empire">Byzantine</a> scholars had to seek refuge in the West, particularly <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italy" title="Italy">Italy</a>.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Middle_Ages#cite_note-3">[3]</a>

Combined with this influx of classical ideas was the invention of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing" title="Printing">printing</a> which facilitated dissemination of the printed word and democratized learning. These two things would later lead to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_Reformation" title="Protestant Reformation">Protestant Reformation</a>. Toward the end of the period, an era of discovery began (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Discovery" title="Age of Discovery">Age of Discovery</a>). The rise of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire" title="Ottoman Empire">Ottoman Empire</a>, culminating in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Constantinople" title="Fall of Constantinople">Fall of Constantinople</a> in 1453, eroded the last remnants of the Byzantine Empire and cut off trading possibilities with the east. Europeans were forced to seek new trading routes, leading to the expedition of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus" title="Christopher Columbus">Columbus</a> to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americas" title="Americas">Americas</a> in 1492, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasco_da_Gama" title="Vasco da Gama">Vasco da Gama</a>’s circumnavigation of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_subcontinent" title="Indian subcontinent">India</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africa" title="Africa">Africa</a> in 1498. Their discoveries strengthened the economy and power of European nations.

The changes brought about by these developments have led many scholars to view this period as the end of the Middle Ages and beginning of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_history" title="Modern history">modern history</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_modern_Europe" title="Early modern Europe">early modern Europe</a>. However, the division is somewhat artificial, since ancient learning was never entirely absent from European society. As a result there was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuity_thesis" title="Continuity thesis">developmental continuity</a> between the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_history" title="Ancient history">ancient age</a> (via <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_antiquity" title="Classical antiquity">classical antiquity</a>) and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_age" class="mw-redirect" title="Modern age">modern age</a>. Some historians, particularly in Italy, prefer not to speak of the Late Middle Ages at all, but rather see the high period of the Middle Ages transitioning to the Renaissance and the modern era.

3 Late Midle Ages

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