Late Middle Ages

Late Middle Ages

The Late Middle Ages is the epoch of European history spanning from the mid-12th to the late 15th or early 16th centuries. The European Middle Ages ended with the late Middle Ages and culminated in the Renaissance, the transitional epoch to the early modern period.

Around 1300, a series of famines and plagues such as the Black Death spread and reduced the population by about half.

With depopulation came social upheavals and civil wars. Substantial popular uprisings broke out in France and England, which led to the outbreak of the Hundred Years` War between the two states. At the end of the Crusades, the Byzantine Empire had sunk to an insignificant regional power, with Islam emerging stronger from the fighting. The 200-year feud had also changed the way warfare was waged in society. The feudal lords and the knights were primarily the losers of that time. But the papacy and the empire also lost authority. All events are traditionally also called the crisis of the late Middle Ages.

On the other hand, the 14th century was also an era of artistic and scientific discoveries. The rediscovery of the texts of ancient Greece and Rome leads to what contemporaries called the Renaissance.