In that time of plagues, art and books called Danses Macabre reflected the realization that death could strike at any time, with poems and artwork describing how people of any walk of life could be snatched from life. Some of this even was placed on the tombs and walls of cemeteries.141
Let’s go forward, gentle Merchant
And don’t bother to weigh
The merchandise they are asking for.
It’s madness to think about that anymore.
You must think about your soul.
Time goes by, hour after hour,
And all we can do is to use it well.
Merit and good conduct last. 142
Throughout the fourteenth century wars continually devastated the populations of Europe. Men and women no longer were safe even in castles due to the introduction of gunpowder and cannons from China. Horses began to be used in warfare.143 The long-term enmity between France and England had begun, and much of the territory that we now call France was periodically under the control of England. Roving bands of warriors raided villages, inflicting rape and murder, decimating the population.144
In Russia, the town that later became Moscow was settled in 1146. Novgorod, an independent municipality in the far north that was ruled by an assembly of free citizens, lasted for centuries. It extended its influence in many directions and repulsed a number of invasions, including one by Sweden in 1240, under the leadership of the legendary Alexander Nevsky.145 It eventually lost its wars – and independence – to Moscow in 1478, when Ivan III slaughtered its population.
The Ottoman Empire – a Muslim state named after its early leader Osman in 1302 – became more advanced than any European state due to its extensive ability to organize its vast expanse. The Ottoman Turks conquered much of the former Greek world starting in 1353, and then massacred the “flower of European chivalry” – members of the last Crusade – in 1396.146
The Ottomans captured Constantinople (now Istanbul), the center of Eastern Christendom, in 1453 – which had resisted onslaughts from Barbarians and others for a thousand years – by adopting the use of the new technology of gunpowder and cannons. This sent fear throughout the Christian world.147 By the 1500s the Ottoman Empire ranged from Western Asia to Europe, including North Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Western Russia.
Nationalism – identification with a country rather than a region – slowly increased. Leaders inspired their troops by oratorical, as well as military, skills. A major victory for the English was the Battle of Agincourt (in Northern France) under Henry V in 1415, later immortalized by Shakespeare who created a speech summarizing Henry’s inspiring words:
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered –
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here.
— Henry V, Act 4, Scene 3
Joan of Arc, who has become a symbol of insurrection in the face of oppression, was nineteen when, inspired by a vision, she managed to rally French troops against the English toward the end of the Hundred Years War. Although caught and burned at the stake in 1431, she was the inspiration for the eventual expulsion of the English from French soil. By the end of the fifteenth century, France began to emerge as a more centralized monarchy, with roughly the borders of the modern state.148
In Western Europe wealthy merchants financed the construction of churches with elaborate religious artwork and hospices for the poor. This was encouraged by the Church in such places as Siena and Beaune for those wishing to guarantee their soul’s salvation.
The invention of movable type by Johannes Gutenberg in 1450 eventually allowed the diffusion of information and ideas to the common people. The printing of books developed slowly as they still were costly to produce. Mainly religious works were printed at first.149 In the 1500s, 40,000 books were printed in France alone.150
The period between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries in Western Europe was that of the greatest state building, gradually moving from rule by localized kings to larger administrative and tax systems that encouraged residents to think of themselves as members of nations rather than of their region. Wars needed to be financed almost continuously throughout this period, but wars that took place between nations also were instruments of state building.151
The Renaissance bloomed in Florence under the influence of the Medici family, who controlled the city from 1434 and who were great patrons of the arts. They restored churches, as well as building a hospital in Jerusalem, while advocating for the use of popular language to replace Latin. Though they ruled as despots, the Medici supported the creative potential of talented artists and craftsmen and spread education to the masses through the creation of libraries. The Renaissance then slowly spread to most of the rest of Western Europe.152
Because of its emphasis on fine art and churches, Italy was one of the world’s first tourist destinations. Nevertheless, the Italian states engaged in interminable wars up until unification in the 1800s.153 Within states there were ongoing feuds between families, including much treachery and even poisoning, as so poignantly portrayed by Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet.154
In 1492 Spain expelled the Moors from their last stronghold in Granada, and compelled the Jews to convert to Catholicism or leave the country. The Sultan sent ships from Constantinople to collect Jews who wanted to continue living under tolerant Muslim rule.155 As every Western school child knows, this also was the year of the first sailing of Christopher Columbus in an attempt to circumnavigate the globe; he landed in what he thought were the islands off India.
By the end of the fifteenth century gold and other precious metals were in great demand to meet expanding monetary needs. Early expeditions to Africa failed, but eventually gold was discovered in Sudan, south of Egypt. In 1444, an expedition of six Portuguese ships under Henry the Navigator sailed to islands off the coast of western Africa and seized 235 men, women and children, separating families and causing great distress among those captured. A court chronicler described the scene:
Some held their heads low, their faces bathed in tears . . . some groaned very piteously, looking toward the heavens fixedly and crying aloud, as if they were calling on the father of the universe to help them; others struck their faces with their hands and threw themselves on the ground.156
Thus began the slave trade that would be an economic boon for some and ruin the lives of many others for the next four hundred years.
After many attempts by the Portuguese to sail from Europe to the Orient by working their way around Africa, Vasco de Gama navigated his way to India beginning in 1497.157 Another Portuguese sailor, Fernando Magellan sailed to the Spice Islands in 1521 after going around South America, and his crew returned via the Indian Ocean after he was killed during the voyage. This proved that the world was round after all.158 The Middle Ages came to an end in Europe with an expanding horizon of the world.