What Are the Late Medieval Ages?

faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond.

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Just visit historyhit.com/subscrib. Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to poops to the crusades. We cross centuries and continents to delve into

rebellions, plots, and murders to find the stories big and small that tell us how we got here. Find out who we really were with Gone Medieval. Eleanor and I have spent a couple of previous episodes talking about the periodisation of the medieval era. We've covered the early and high Middle Ages, so it's time to complete the set and consider the late medieval period.

What marks the transition from high to late? What are some of the defining events and themes of the late medieval period? What brings the medieval world to a close? And how useful

“are these terms when thinking about history beyond Europe?”

All of these questions and more have been on our minds, so now we're going to crash it

out. It's always a good day when I get to welcome Eleanor to an episode we're doing

together. This is the kind of stuff we talk about whenever we chat. Only it's not usually recorded. I love discussing these kinds of things with the queen of Gone Medieval and I never leave a conversation with Eleanor without feeling like I've learned something. So I'm looking forward to this and I hope that you all enjoy it too. Well, it's another fantastic day because it's another Matt and Eleanor day. It's the best

time of day, isn't it? It really is. What's not to love? And we're back, it's kind of round off this little series that we've been doing about the periods of the Middle Ages. So we've done the early medieval period. We've done the high medieval period. If you haven't listened to those, please go back and find those. You can have a listen to us waffling about what they were and what they meant. And that brings

us kind of to the late Middle Ages, which you know, spoiler. It's the end. And I guess the

first thing we ought to deal with is, and I don't even know if I have a good answer

to this, but what causes the transition from the the high medieval period to the late medieval period? What changes? I think for me, you know, part of it is sort of just historians attempting to periodise, you know, a periodisation, it's something that we do for ourselves. But I think that the 14th century is just a really different time purely because of the number of things that go wrong. And so as a result of that, it's not the same thing as

the high Middle Ages. I think I sort of relate to the high Middle Ages in Europe as one everything is going correctly. You know, everything is kind of ticking over nicely and society

“is behaving in the best way that it can for the people who construct it. There are many things”

that are out of people's control. And so the for me I suppose the basis of everything are rocked. And then as a result, nothing is the same. And I don't think we can class the 14th century with the high Middle Ages, even though socially things are really different. And then I think in the 15th century, we're really seeing what happens as a result of this knocking loose. Yeah, I think I really like the idea that the 14th century is so bad that we can't call this

the high Middle Ages. That implies it's good. You know, that implies it's the best of everything. And this century is so bad we're going to have to change it. You know, let's just call it late. I mean, that implies it's no longer around. It's done. It's so bad we're going to have to call it something else. It's simply too difficult. Yeah. Yeah. And so I guess, you know, your specialism really is the the 14th century. So, you know, roll your sleeves up and let's get into just how bad

“it really is. What's going on and how this changes the world? Because I think one of the early”

things that all of Europe is hit by that people don't tend to talk about too much. It's the great famine. Mm-hmm. And the great famine. So just to kick off the great famine starts in 1315. So yeah, we're really talking beginning of the 14th century here. And it's part of an outgrowth of another big thing that happens in the 14th century, which is we slip out of medieval warm period

because basically we have really bad weather for three years. That's essentially, that's essentially

“what it is. It's literally something that I bring up every time, someone is complaining about”

British summertime. I'll always say, oh, it's nothing. It's nothing compared to 1315. And essentially

what we have is two years, particularly 1315 and 1316, where weather conditions are incredibly rainy and very cold. And as a result, basically all of the crops fail. And because the crops have failed, all of the animals begin to die. We see incredible blights for sheep and cows as well, because they're walking around in these monkey fields. They're not eating enough. And they all begin to have diseases. And the knock-on effects are such that we have rumors of cannibalism, that people are starving

so badly. We know it even reaches as far as royal courts. There are complaints here in England that when the King is on procession, he is unable to get bread. And so that's when he know things are

really serious, because there is a difference between famines and just starvation more generally.

And yeah, we do see that the rich people tend to make it through a little bit better, but we see mass dying off and also just ruination of rather a lot of crop land. And you know, what a way to start a century. Great advice for everyone. We could say that. We could talk about the beginning of the 21st century, I guess, couldn't we? And what we want to worry about in the future, but

“and I think there's a couple of really important things that come out of the great famines. It's”

kind of effect central Europe and Western Europe really, really badly for several years. So even when the weather improves, you know, it doesn't instantly go away. You get a tail end of all of that problem. And there are two things that I think people really pick up on. And it's the reaction of states, of kingdoms, of governments, of rulers. And in particular, you mentioned in England

that the second is struggling to get bread, but his government is still hugely criticized for

failing to help people. You know, there is no mobilization of government's state support to help those who are literally starving to death at the side of the road. And your rule is attract a lot of criticism for that. And then the other side of it is the beginning of something that I think kind of becomes to define maybe the late medieval period. And that's the the beginning of the shaking of trust in the church is the way to fix everything because the church tells everyone

to do stuff. They will do it and it does not work. Yeah, exactly. Because, you know, there's the two places that you can go for an explanation of what's happening. You've got the on the ground people, which are the royals who in theory, in theory, part of the reason that they rule is because God wants them to. And so therefore they need to be doing things that are good. You know, like, let's not go so far as in the early modern period where you have this idea that, you know,

you have divine right. They don't have that. But they do have this idea that you're supposed to be there advancing the cause of God, right? And so this is why we see constant criticism of royals from the church and quite right too because everybody notices they have rather a lot of money and where people don't. And so they're constantly attempting to nudge royals into doing the right thing. The church on the other hand are supposed to in theory be intercessors with the divine

and intercessors with God and in a world where we certainly have this idea that things happen as a

“result of either God willing it or God allowing it, which that's two different things. You have to”

be able to explain why all of these terrible things are happening right now. And the church simply doesn't have a great answer for that. I mean, the church is answer for most things is you were sinful. You know, question work. And then every, I will, yeah, understood, but also I'm sort of starving to death right now. So what sins am I really getting up to currently? And the church doesn't have two years into a famine. It's like, I haven't got the energy to sin. I haven't been able to sin

for a good gain. So I can't even go down to havern, right? You know, I it's not even like I'm drinking too much because the the wheat crop failed and we're not we're not doing that now. So it's really just a situation where the church begins to find itself criticized and also we are at the point where ordinarily the church would do another reorganization. It tends to happen once a century, maybe every hundred and fifty years or so. In the 13th century, we saw them invent

mendicants about this, right? They invent Dominicans, they invent Franciscans. But now it's the 14th century and things are going badly again. So what is it that we need to do? And the church simply doesn't have an answer for that. But ordinary people really, really do. Which is going to be

heresies that begin to spring up, which is when I get really interested. And then I'll always choose

a heresy. I love it. And I guess I guess while things are pretty awful in the 14th century and everybody is dying, they managed to begin to recover from this famine. But you've got to imagine this is left a scar on the health of the population who have endured all of this. And, you know, not a million miles away from coming on the heels of this, we get the black death as well.

“Yeah. And I think that it's really difficult to not extrapolate as some connection between the two,”

not because they happened right after each other. But knowing what we know now about epigenetics, we do know that because people were starving for a couple of years, it does have a knock on effect for your progeny. Your own health means something for the next generation. And the next generation basically become adults and you are then hit by the black death, right? So we know that the black death now are our latest guests, is that it's coming to us from a curing stand. Sure, that a curing

stand. And we are basing this on some graves that we have found that give the date and say that the people were killed by pestilots. So this is about a 1326, I believe. And so this is also a major stop on the Silk Road. Well, one of them, anyway, obviously. And basically what is happening out there is there's local population of marmets who get this, your senior pestis off of their flees. Those flees then move from the marmets onto whatever animals are moving through, including humans. And that is how

you get your senior pestis. Now, to be fair, we've had your senior pestis before. Who remembers the Justinian plague? Like a guess your mind's back to the 6th century and the Justinian plague.

“But this is a new mutation that is much more virulent. And that's what we've sort of figured out”

now via DNA research. And it moves out a curing stand in both directions. You know, you can get black death and bag dead. You can get it on the Crimean Peninsula. You can have it in Spain. You can get it in Beijing. It doesn't matter where you go, basically from Saharan Africa, and then east to west, you can come into contact with the black death, which will result in 25% of the earth's population dying. And when we consider it only hits Afro-Uraja, and then not even Africa below the Sahara.

Presumably, just everyone who was on a boat going to Kenya on the Silk Road, which was like, a major port was just dead before the cut there. So the management, they managed to be spared

down there somehow. But it's just such an incredible dying off of people that it takes about two

centuries for the population of earth to recover. So we literally can't get our heads around it. You know, we've just lived through a pretty extensive pandemic ourselves, but none of us saw, you know, in London, the death rate was 50%. And certainly we didn't see that during COVID, which is good. And I appreciate that personally. Yeah. And it's an interesting combination of trade routes that have been flowing for centuries by this point, and have been opened up nice and

wide, in part, by the Mongols. And then also the continued warfare of the Mongols that begins to spread it, particularly to Europe. You know, it's their attacks in and around Crimea that caused the Venetians to sail away in a panic and take the plague with them. And we get these stories of the Mongols, you know, using effectively German warfare and catapulting dead plague victims over the wall to poison the city, and all the Venetians getting on their boats and going, "No, no, this

thank you." And just carrying it back to Europe with them. But again, similar to the great famine, you have this issue of what is the government's response and how is the church going to fix this

for us? And the answer is no and no, you know, like basically. And when we have such really

interesting relationships to it. So for example, you see the King Louis in France is demands that the university explained what is going on here, which it is effectively the church, but it's a highfalutin part of the church, right? And it's very cute. It's my favorite explanation of the plague. They say that there's a conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars in Scorpio, and that has brought

“out poisonous air onto the earth, and I'm like so true, besties. Like that's absolutely it, right?”

The companions. Oh, every time, right? Meanwhile, the church writ large. They're like, "This is you people." And again, you have been too sinful. And some of my favorite plague

too sexy with it. And he says that men are wearing ridiculously pointy shoes. Women are wearing

addresses that are too tight. You're all having affairs, and God is punishing us. So that's a really great one. And you know, again, like from the royals, there is no answer because what can you do until we invent antibiotics, which is going to take quite some time. You know, so we don't even know germs exist until the 19th century, right? There isn't anything that anybody can do really except quarantine, which they try, but it's just sort of a little bit too late. The cat's out of

“the bag. And so this, you know, I think both of us would argue contributes to the destabilizing”

of trust in the church writ large. That is going to have massive knock-on effects in the late

14th century and then into the 15th century. Because, well, if the church can't even explain

why we are enduring these situations that are essentially apocalyptic, then what could are they? Yeah. And I think once everyone has to endure this and those who've survived it, once they come to grips with that, they can look around and wonder at the fact that the great family was something of a leveler. We've talked about even royal struggling to find food. But here is the great leveler. The ability of dying every bit as much as the common people, you know,

princesses are dying. Edward III loses supposedly his favorite daughter, Joan, on a way to go and get married. So nobody is safe from this. And I can't help wondering how much this affects

“people's mindset. And as we move forward, I think it's something that will only increase. Does it”

affect their mindset that, you know, if kings and princes are dying of this and monks are dying of it, they're literally sitting there all day praying to God and they're still dying of it. What is special about either the ability or the church? What actually makes them different for me, they're not any different. They're no better than me. Absolutely. And why do we have these privileged parts of society where ordinary people are the ones who are paying for them

to live the life that they live, you know, and the churchmen live very nice lives, indeed, where they have a lot less manual labor that they have to do. Obviously, nobles and kings are are living very well. Yeah, they occasionally have to go to war. And there's rather a lot of that to indulge in the 14th century, to be fair. But the idea is that they are providing some sort of social lubricant in a way that is supposed to make the world keep ticking. And when that stops,

how do you explain what it is that they are doing? And that is incredibly powerful.

“I think that one of the major things that ends up coming out of this, and we see it in movements,”

for example, of the flagelints, who are the guys who originally come out of the German lands and spend a bunch of time traveling around Europe, stripping to the waste and beating themselves and praying to God. Not people who fall as long. No, unfortunately, although that might be involved.

They're medieval. I can't rule it out, Matt. I can never rule it out, okay? But, you know,

what we're seeing without is this response by ordinary people who are saying, well, I guess it's on me. The salvation of my soul is clearly going to be down to me because the church can't do anything. The royals are useless. So I'm going to have to change my relationship and my spirituality, and I'm going to have to go out and do something different. And in this case, corporeally, right? So, that's quite interesting because what it is doing is it's planting a seed of this idea of

individual religious responsibility as opposed to more of a collective way of relating to spirituality, and that is profound in terms of the medieval psyche. Yeah, and I think also that notion that the medieval, let's pretend feudalism exists for a moment and just use the word feudal, but the kind of medieval feudal social contract has been broken. And the ability of there, they get loads of money, they live a privileged life, but they're meant to protect you when it comes

to the crunch. The church is there, they get ties from you, they get money from you, you turn up at church every Sunday, and they, you know, they may not get involved in manual labor as much as you do, but they're there to protect your soul. And all of a sudden, by the middle of the 14th century, we're seeing a point where the ability can't save you and the church can't save you. So the people have to wonder what is the point of this deal now? And certainly we're also seeing

because now that we've got to the late Middle Ages, you know, one of the reasons historians like the Middle Ages, the late Middle Ages, is we have rather a lot of sources, don't we? Because it's closer in time. I don't tell you what, the things that I'm seeing in the 14th century coming out of Prague, they're like, yeah, our clergy are running a brothel, like my local

sex workers. It's like, it's crazy stuff. And so people are looking at it and just saying,

what do you mean? These men somehow are able to intervene with the salvation of my soul. I mean, I'm telling you, I have a record from 14th century Prague of some priests who have erected wooden huts in their churchyard that you can rent out in order to see sex workers in them.

“Like, that's what's going on in Prague. And then you're like, oh yeah, for sure, these guys are going”

to get my soul out of trouble. No. Like, it's a very, very complex situation. And I think we now have this tendency to relate to the clergy's, oh, well, all of these guys must have been incredibly holy. Not what we are seeing when we get to hear from ordinary people in the 14th century. And one of the great things about the 14th century is we get to hear from ordinary people suddenly. Yeah, the cracks are appearing in the hypocrisy's big. And I guess, you know, we've talked about

famine. We've talked about plague. I guess we ought to deal with some other horsemen of it. I mean, should we just deal with war strife? And there's no shortage of war in the 40th centuries. Let's let's do it. Yeah. There's some really, I mean, you've already mentioned one. I think we do kind of have to shout out what's going on with the Mongols. Because, you know, part of what really allows the Silk Road to proliferate, as we talked about in our high medieval

bit, is the packsmungolica. And the fact that everything's getting on quite well, you know, uh, shout out to your friend and mind-temogen. Jengis Khan really does a great job of making sure that you can move some caravans through Asia easily. But we have the appearance of another friend of the podcast, Tamarley. That's quite in time. And things have gotten a little bit or crunchy. You know, it turns out this is actually a huge amount of land for one guy to try to

rule. So we see varying groups of Mongols, sort of carve up territory. So Yanibeg, who rules the Golden Horde, as we call them, he's one who's responsible for bringing plague to the Crimea. But we've got Tamarley, for example, quite famously doing things like attacking, oh, Baghdad. There's some rumors of skull pyramids. There's some light war crimes that are happening around the shot. And that's a really big difference in terms of how trade works in Asia at the very least.

“And I think we're also getting to the point where we're seeing the end of that, or the creeping”

up at the end of that medieval myth of Presta John, aren't we, that the world is mysterious and it has beyond its bounds, particularly with Presta John, you know, there's this mythical Christian king who has dragons. He's going to come and save us. And as just as the Christian crusaders in the homeland think, the the arrival of the Mongol Horde might be Presta John coming, they get a bit of a wake-up. Yeah, it's real shame isn't it? They really wanted that one.

It's sort of been like a nice kind of like end of the movie. Here comes Presta John and saves you all. But we're also, I guess, knowing a little bit more about the world, knowing a little bit more about Ethiopia. And it's, oh, it turns out there's nobody down here. That's a dragon that's going to save me, you know. So that's happening. And Europe is not short of its own war. In particular,

I guess we have to talk about the 100 years war. And I still have to imagine it with the third

one day saying, let's start the 100 years war. And everyone's going to have the what now. Now let's not do that. But again, we're in a position where war is going to define, you know, England and France and their relationship with all of the nations around them. So it's kind of a

“huge impact on not just England and France, but Europe more widely too. And I think one of the”

things that we see out of this that comes to define this era is the increasing emergence of gunpowder weapons on the battlefield, which is going to completely change the way war is done in Europe. Absolutely, because we are going to be moving from the seizure warfare where you can in theory just sort of whole up in your castle and hope that the other side stars first. You know, when you have Cadden, and it turns out they can bring down the wall of a castle. That's a really

different ball game, you know. And you know, by the time we get to the 15th century, we will see we have to completely replan the way that we make castles. You know, you start to see star forts

and things like that come about. And eventually we'll just say, oh, never mind, we'll invent the

state for warfare instead of doing the castle thing, you know. But this makes a huge difference. Having said that, you know, 100 years war, we're still doing some pitched battles. I would argue that part of the reason that the French side does really poorly is that they are a little more

guy tag, aren't they? You know, the way that the French see the conflict is, well, it's a shame

“that there's a bunch of English people over here. But this does mean that I have an opportunity to”

kidnap the highest rank in ones and make rather a lot of money, which is the intern going to be invested in doing up my castle. You know, or I can get some more warhouses. This is the traditional medieval way of doing war. The English are a little bit more interested in killing people. I would argue on the battlefield and we certainly see that play out, for example, at the Battle of Chrissy, right? And this real confusion on the part of nobility were like, wait a minute, I'm

dying? No, no, no, no, no, no. The pikemen die. Not guys on horses. Yes, I look at the idea that all of

the French nobility are there, you know, as the arrows rain down on them, thinking, hang on, this

is not how we do this gentleman. I'm afraid this is most un-sportsman like this certainly is not cricket. Is that, please? In many ways, you know, the French are the British of the medieval period.

“And they'll expand on that. No, I won't. Thank you. Leave that one hanging. Please, please,”

at L.A. or social media platforms. And so, you know, 100 years war is going to hang around for longer than 100 years and we'll know that crop up in our conversation again. But I wanted to move on to one of the decide effects of probably the great famine, the black death, the 100 years war, everything else. Particularly in England, we have the peasants revolt in 1381. But that's

why no means that a singular event in England, that's happening in other places too. So,

France will have something very similar way before the peasants revolt action. And I'll be seeing here the change of the mindset of the peasants, the reaction to that perceived breach of the contract. Oh, absolutely. And, you know, one of the big things that we are seeing is peasants, you know, with the Jackery Rebellion in France, with the peasants' uprisings here, they're questioning the entire social order of things. You know, quite definitively, we certainly see a lot of

preachers as well who are very specifically stoking this way of thinking. And so, here, you know, it's a John Ball, right? And there's the possibly apocryphal quote, you know, when Adam Delft and Eve Span, who was then a gentleman, whether or not he actually came out with that banger of a quote to be fair. We all love it and he was so real for that. But somebody came up with that, right? And it does show us that there is a particular questioning of just the very concept of gentility, the

very concept of nobility at all. And we do see rather a lot of peasants attack the nobility. And, you know, quite rightly, too, to an extent. You know, these things kind of don't change in the medieval period otherwise. And, you know, the peasants uprising here, one of the reasons we talk about it a lot, incredibly successful for quite some time, you know, until

“Richard II, that's what I mean, one of our worst kings, it really has to be said. But, you know,”

Matt, like his eyes are letting him be like, yeah, it's interesting again, isn't it, to look at the reaction because you've got the people having spent most of the century questioning the point of the government and the church and getting no satisfactory answer, kind of really give voice to that protest. And what do they get? Well, in England with the peasants revolt, the government turns up and says, you're quite right. You can have everything you want if you just go home

peacefully, they go home peacefully and then find their under arrest and being prosecuted because they've whipped the carpet from underneath them and changed the law back again. And the church is response whenever you get a preacher like John Ball, who seems to be reflecting the complaints of the ordinary people, John Ball is cast out from the church. He's excommunicated, he's persecuted until he's caught and executed in front of Richard II. So there you've got, you know,

the state and the church coming together to say, we have absolutely no sympathy for your position and we are not willing to negotiate you changing it, even though we can't provide you with the things that are our our reasons for being here, we won't accept a renegotiation of that, that deal, that contract that exists between us. And I feel like I don't expect an inability in the late 14th century did this, but it's hard to think, believe that nobody looked at this and thought

something is going to have to change otherwise we're going to find ourselves in real trouble. We either give a little bit or we're going to have a lot taken away from us. Yeah, absolutely. And there is a real unwillingness. I suppose it's ahead in the sand sort of thing. And granted, I say that

we know that it is inevitable, but they are just kind of hoping to lean back on the thing that they

“have, which is, I'm an optimally on violence, right? You know, that is what the inability have,”

they are the ones who are allowed to be violent and to do violence. And the church is essentially saying, you know, when they are willing to see John Bull killed. Yeah, absolutely right, you are that's like, that's a gimmie. Go ahead and kill anyone who is fermenting unrest of this sort. And that doesn't make it go away. You know, we certainly see these sorts of things coming back to. For example, if you read Pierce Plowman,

the great 14th century poem, it expressly talks about ordinary people's disgust

with the situation that they find themselves in. And you can't actually put this genie back in the bottle. There is this understanding that something has gone wrong here. And indeed, soon we are also going to lose a more of the idea of the church as a moral arpeter because we get to the great Western schism. Oh, I love it. I simply, how many popes would you like? I say

“at least three. Give me, I want the piece in one. I hope for everyone. I think it's, it's so great.”

So I want to, I mean, I guess we have to talk a little bit about that. It's an interesting one because essentially, you know, in the 14th century, the papacy is in Avenue. The papacy are in Avenue because Rome, that's a, that's a direct quote about a 14th century Rome. There are rather a lot of civil wars. We have some attempts at creating a new triumvirent. The plague hits Rome really badly. Everything is on fire and the papacy says, you know, I'd really rather not. And I heard, I heard,

the South of France is lovely at this time of year. So often go to Avenue and they build a new papal city, much as made of this because people are saying, well, yeah, okay, though, I agree, Rome is on fire and not very good. But you're the clergy. You're not supposed to care about

having a nice time. Your comfort actually isn't the most important thing. The most important thing

is your connection to this history to God and Rome is the site of, you know, all these important

“martyrs. And indeed, you know, the pope is an addition of Rome, but that's what he is, right?”

So everyone is like, yeah, guys, I think that's kind of weird. And everyone spends a lot of the 14th century trying to convince Pops to go back to Rome. They eventually do this. The Romans then want a Roman Pope. Very badly. There was a succession of French Pops while the Pops were in Avenue. And they don't actually get one. They end up getting a Neapolitan Pope. But the election of this Neapolitan Pope, according to a great number of the cardinals, happened because there are

a bunch of Romans outside who were directly threatening their lives. And they elect this new pope. And by all accounts, really terrible guy, physically violent. Sometimes we'll beat a messenger within an inch of his life if this person rubs him the wrong way. So as a result of this, the French cardinals, high tailed backs adding y'all. And they say that election was moot. The reason that that happened was under duress. And we're going to get to elect a new pope who is low and behold,

once again French. And they install him in Avenue. And there you go. The Western Schism is bored. Just what the century needed. There's not enough chaos. There's chuck in a bit of a religious schism and put that into the mix as well. And I guess religion was something I wanted to talk about to bridge the 14th and the 15th century too. But just before we get to the end of the 14th century, it's striking as well because in England, we've had the deposition of two kings, you know,

Edward II and Richard II have lost their crowns and been removed from the line of succession. And it's been shifted and altered. We've had John II of France being an English prisoner for a period as well after the battle of Poitier. And I wonder whether we're seeing a slight weakening of the institution of kingship here. Or is that maybe stretching that point a bit too far?

of how it is that kings are made and who decides on what they are. And to be fair, England,

we're a weird case, right? We can just get rid of kings because we feel like it. Right? That's not normal. It almost pulled of that one. Yeah, I don't like that one. Getting a new one. But to have a particularly pitched war in France over this is crazy work. You know, like that is one of the load star kingdoms, you know, in the medieval period. You know, the French specialists would tell you it is the kingdom in the medieval period. You know, I'm a Holy Roman imperialist person,

so I'm like that's cute. They think they think they're big. But, you know, like those are the two major elements on the continent and certainly in Europe. It's French. It's the Holy Roman Empire. And the Holy Roman Empire things are different because you elect people. But nobody goes to battle over these things. And now that it is going to battle, that is really crazy. You know, it takes ordinarily a really weird succession crisis in order for there to be a battle. Like in Bohemia,

we have one in the 14th century because the Pchemies let's die out. So like our load bearing governments are sort of France and the Holy Roman Empire. And you know, I'm not saying that

there was never a war over King. And indeed, like in the 14th century Bohemia, we have a war over

this because the Pchemies let dynasty dies out. And so we've got to figure out who's going to be King.

“But that is because you have an extinct line. That's what you have wars over King ship. It's not just”

because, you know, the English are feeling kind of up a day today. Incidentally, I support the English claim to the French Stravani. I think that it was actually stronger. But, you know, that's either here nor there. And so I wanted to use, as I mentioned, I wanted to use religion to kind of bridge the two centuries because the increasing impetus for reform is something that kind of links the end of the 14th century with the beginning of the 15th. And so in the late 14th century in England,

we particularly have John Wickliffe emerging demanding the reform of the clergy pointing out

that they've all got far too much money and they're living far too comfortable a life. And that's not what Jesus had preached. That's not what they're supposed to be doing. And I think alongside that in England, we see the heresy that what will become known as his heresy, Lollardy, is kind of being harnessed as well for political benefits. So we see people at John of Gorn hopping

“on to the, the Lollard cause, not necessarily, I think, because he believes in religious reform,”

but because he can make some political capital out of it. Oh, absolutely. And I mean, he was so real for that. So he said, I mean, I mean, he would try out of that work. But you can make political capital out of it because we are seeing, you know, these new pushes for these ideas of reform. These, this idea that, you know, maybe individuals are kind of responsible for their own spiritual well-being because how can we rely on the church, I mean, which, which part of the church,

right? And this is a very intellectual movement, Lollardy, you know, it's inextricably bound up with with Oxford and the idea is there. And it's incredibly popular and because it is so academic, it takes quite some time for it to be condemned outright. You know, it does end up becoming a heresy, but for a while, everyone is just saying shut up, John, shut up, John, you know, and they don't actually do anything about it because it turns out my man was making some points,

you know, and it isn't, you know, the things that get him in real trouble in terms of the heresy, our ideas like a constant situation, which indicates that bread is both the body of Christ and bread at the same time instead of just being the body of Christ following, you know, the communion

“process, you know, it's intellectual things, like that. And that's what the church can get him on.”

They kind of have more trouble with everything else because, yeah, everyone's bad, everyone's bad at the church, you know? Yeah, yeah, and he's raising some points. And as we move over into the 15th century, you know, Whipliff will eventually be kind of hushed up silence to a little bit, but it's only what 15, 10, 15 years into the 15th century that this emerges again, kind of on the the other side of Europe, what in the far east with the the Hussite rebellions

led by Jan Huss, who is saying some very strikingly similar things to Whipliff. And this is the point, I think maybe at which we see the church start to panic, you know, someone saying it once in England is one thing, but this is starting to look a little bit more like a movement back. Yeah, and I mean, that is, again, the thing that gets Jan Huss and trouble is he really likes Whipliff, and the church says, Jan, shut up, Jan, you know, same thing again, and they say,

these are my emotional support Whipliff texts, and he's teaching these things at the Prague University,

and it's actually the Whipliff stuff that that gets him in trouble, because they can get they'd such a buy the book thing, and granted he has other and slightly more radical beliefs than

“John Whipliff does, but that's what gets him called before the Council of Constance. And”

you know, the Council of Constance, such a, what a great Council. They're trying to deal with the fact that there are too many poops. They're trying to deal with the fact that Jan Huss is converting an entire kingdom to a heresy. You know, they've got a lot of them, they're played, God bless them, but it really does go to show us how ideas travel in Europe and the late medieval period,

you know, because we have a Czech Empress Mary, the King of England, suddenly you get English texts

that come into Bohemia, and it turns out that it's really difficult to get ideas out once they get it. And again, one of the things I think we see in the late medieval period is the idea of what had worked previously in the high medieval period in particular, the idea of a crusade, kind of being misused or overused, you know, now anything that Rome doesn't like is the subject of a crusade. So Jan Huss says, I'm not sure I quite believe everything that you say and like crusade.

Oh, man, I'll tell you what, it kind of really brings the franchise down. You know, they're there zero for seven on crusades against Bohemia. It's like buddy, just stop calling them. You're not, you're not going to win this one. And it gets harder and harder to try to call people

“into it because I think there was one thing about using the concept of a crusade when, you know,”

we're going to the Holy Land, we are going to be doing this big, incredible, interesting deed,

and we're going to get hold of Jerusalem. It's another one when you're like Prague, why have been there on holiday? You know, right, you know, because people have been there. It's much more difficult to rally your neighbors to go attack their other neighbors, especially because you're, you're really drawing from a population in central Europe. And they've all been to Prague. They're like, I'm not going to go burn it down. What? That's strange, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. It's a bit like the police academy series of films isn't it? You know, starts off incredibly well. Seems like a great idea. A couple of sequels. So that's not too bad. And then it's just gone a little bit too far and nobody's buying it anymore. Everyone at Matt Lewis on social media, tell him, getting to explain why the crew's saying sort of like the police academy movie is in more detail. I want to want to one ranking. Yeah. That's really good. And I guess, you know,

as we move through the 15th century, we're going to get some more hundred years more. We're wearing it's head again. We get, you know, Henry the fifth in England versus Charles VI in France. Charles VI has all kinds of mental health issues. Henry has lots of internal political issues that he needs to deal with. And he falls back on that age-old tactic that I don't think has gone away in the world yet today. Of the way to solve trouble at home is to pick a fight abroad

and kind of get trying it everybody to unite behind you to go and bash somebody else instead. So this kind of re-ignition of the hundred years war around what becomes the Asian Corps campaign in 1415. It's actually less to do with Henry the fifth believing that he's the rightful king of France and more to do with the fact that he's dad has had what 13 years of endless trouble

“and Henry sees the best way to resolve that as picking a fight abroad. So although we'll call”

it the extension continuation of the hundred years war. Probably something a little bit different going on. Or be it that France is in a really bad position and Henry happens to be very good at this kind of thing. Yeah I think Henry is noticed the problems. Right you know the the French are just having a terrible time with it. We have the Burgundians and the Arminiacs that each other's throats. And you know it is a really smart time to make a plate for the French throne.

Although how do you feel about this? Because I sort of feel like I'm not even sure that Henry thought he was going to get the throne. I thought that he was just going I feel like he thinks that he's going to get more favorable trade positions. He's going to get out of some of his feudal duties to the crown. Again let's pretend feudalism exists. But it's more like it seems like he's attempting to renegotiate not necessarily make a play for the whole thing but then they kind of

accidentally do really well. And it changed its opinion. Yeah I'm at which which might not be

from a position of surprise strength? Did Henry the fifth think he would go in and take a few

“towns in Normandy and force the French to to renegotiate stuff about Gaskini in particular?”

Did he maybe think he might get his hands on Normandy and that he could re-unite the jukedom of Normandy with England and extend English presence into the north of France for a bit. But yeah I would probably agree that I'm not convinced he set off for asian core. Although he does it under the the guys of claiming that he's the rightful king of France. I'm not sure he ever really thought that he was going to make that stick. And when he gets to the the treaty of 12 a few years later

at which he is appointed heir to the crown of France I can almost imagine him thinking oh what have I done because if if this goes wrong it's a major problem. If this goes right it's a major problem. How does one king rule two kingdoms like that? And you see the English almost immediately having this existential crisis about France is kind of the premier kingdom is considered more important it's richer it's bigger than England. If the king of England becomes the king of France

does England then become subservient to France because he'll identify himself as the king of France. And you see the English beginning to navel gaze about all of this and thinking I'm not sure this was a really good idea Henry. Yeah and I mean I completely agree with them I think that if Henry had actually become the king of France I think that we would probably be speaking French right now.

You know like let's think about James the first here in England you know what happens is that

Scotland becomes more subservient to England right like he used the kingdom of England and

“Scotland not Scotland and England that that's how that ends up being and it's just kind of how”

cultural hergemony works who's got the money who's got the power and the French had it. So you know maybe it's best for you know the English nobility that it didn't go the way that they wanted it to but you know it not going the way that it wanted it to you know I wouldn't say that it calms things down in England. Oh no because again you get continuation of the problem that you had in the 14th century of bad kingship you know Charles

the sick is a bad king for reasons that were beyond his control really but nevertheless it causes problems and and people have to wonder whether this is a really good way of picking who is going to be in charge of your your kingdom by accidents of birth and then England ends up with Henry VI who is equally bad you know he's another terrible king who will end up getting deposed not once but twice and I mean imagine yeah and you know the failures the ultimate

failures of the 100 years walk is that you know the English are great at talking about the victories of the 100 years war we won at Chrissy and Poetia in Asian court and they forget to mention all of the times that they lost and the fact that they lost the whole thing altogether and it's the problems of that kind of import the wars of the roses back to England you know that's a kind of

“internal reaction to the external failures of the 100 years war. Yeah I mean I guess that's how I've”

always related to it is it's a sort of knock on effect it has a destabilizing process here as well

right and I think for the same reasons that we've been talking about in the 14th century it's like well who are these guys right and do they even understand how to run a kingdom and yeah also we're kind of looking at well I don't know when you have a king yeah like like the French did who isn't really able to rule because he's experiencing what you and I would consider a mental health crisis you know what does that mean and I mean well you know much more about this than I do

Matt obviously I mean like for you what is the real what's the match that lights the powder cake of the wars of the roses for you is there one chaos as bellie or what are we looking at here. I think it's it's a slow progression and I think I tend to think the wars of the roses started later than most people do I wouldn't put it to the about 1460 really and I think it's just that you see Henry the sixth his mental health is failing I think you see him becoming increasingly paranoid

worst nightmare you know he almost creates the crisis that he fears the most and then it leads to

you know him particularly singling out York as someone he's afraid of as an enemy and the more he

“pushes York the more York I think feels forced to push back and as soon as he pushes back he looks”

like everything Henry thought he was and you've got a huge crisis that becomes a a dynastic kind of battle and ends up again you know if we thought the 13th sorry the 14th century was bad because we had a couple of kings being deposed well here's a whole spate of depresitions and replacements and diverting of the line of succession that begins to demonstrate to everybody that crowns simply can't offer stability anymore absolutely I mean I often think of the ordinary people

in the hundred years war and the wars of the roses and you would just think that

royals and nobles were monsters you know all they do is run through your farm steal your pig burn things down and then tax you about it right you know it's really that people have a kind of very romanticized view of what royals and nobles do but in the 15th century and 14th century they're

“really difficult bunch to get on with let's just say that you know yeah yeah I think we can all agree”

on that and unconscious that time is pressing upon us and one other thing that I did want to talk about in the 15th century is the emergence of the Ottomans and the capture of Constantinople because we I think we have to see that as a fairly seismic moment in the medieval world as well don't absolutely you know this is one of the things that medieval historians will bring up if you ask us when does the medieval period end you know is very vibes based right like we we we like to have

the nice neat date of 476 for when it begins because we say well Western Rome falls I think that the fall of Constantinople is kind of I mean if we are going to say there's one thing that does it I feel like that's that's nice and neat isn't it it's like well if you no longer have Eastern Rome either then I'm sorry you're not in the medieval period anymore there's no Rome's at all other than the Holy Roman Empire obviously which counts shut up everyone but I think

that it makes a really huge difference and existentially you know to the idea of Christendom

“to the idea of what is controlled by whom and certainly that's what we're seeing people write about”

at the time they they really do feel like this is intensely meaningful yeah it's almost the inversion of previous crusading experiences for the for Christian Europe as well isn't it now you've got Muslims coming into Europe and taking what has long been Christian lands and you had the Ottoman Empire will endure for for centuries after that it's not a flash in the pan it's it's a very serious moment and and I think you're right that you know that is a moment

that we can see a serious change that perhaps brings to an end the medieval world although obviously Gomedy was going to hang on to it for a few more decades after this and also we will not stop

talking about things absolutely never listen okay so I think that we can do so for me like

as a Bohemianist I also kind of think that it's like I would say the end of the Hussite Wars for me I'm like okay well what we're done now that that's the end of it if you burn down host it's over that's it I will be so mad I will every day I'm thinking about my boy but um what do you think about the argument that uh the Reconquista is another one of these at this point? Yeah I mean at 1492 is kind of an interesting one isn't it in the you know we get third and

under Isabella kind of bringing to an end this centuries and centuries long effort to drive the Muslims out of the south of the Iberian peninsula and to kind of re-Christianize the whole peninsula and create what we would recognize today as Spain and Portugal on that peninsula so that's a real seismic shift you know only a few decades after Constantinople has fallen to the the Ottomans you've got Iberia being taken back by the Christians and the Muslims being driven out

and at the same time you've got them then finding they have the freedom to invest in things like the age of exploration they will literally hire some random Italian sailor called Columbus and send him off to go and find a passage to the trade routes in the east that doesn't involve having to go across land which isn't necessarily the the friendliest so you see the end of that the end of the Reconquista kind of coinciding with his freedom to do something else that leads to

a radical change in the world. Oh absolutely and I think that for me that's another one of the big ones but by the time you are reaching the Americas we're not medieval any longer that that's

presence on the Iberian peninsula and yeah okay you can go ahead and say anything you want about

the visigoths who control the Iberian peninsula before them but also maybe one visigothic thing you know everyone is like longing for this Christian period you know the Iberian Peninsula and I've like the visigothic kingdoms I mean like no shade against my boy is Eudora Seville I love his fake and a ball of cheese but like what are we pining for here guys like let's

“let's be so honest right but that it makes a really big difference I think also you know if we are”

looking further east you know outside of Europe I think that we're seeing in Japan another one of unised pet interests we're seeing pretty seismic shifts in in the way things are ruled wouldn't

you say yeah yeah I mean you lived in Japan for a a while which I'm incredibly jealous of

I got to do lots of Japan stuff for echoes of history for the the Assassin's Creed Chadows game and I found it absolutely fascinating so there there in a period loosely called kind of feudal Japan the San Goku era the war in state period call it what you will but this is a point at which Japan is is kind of looking to redefine itself and and I think if anything that the big change for Japan comes almost a century after what we're talking about it's the the very end of the 16th

century and the very beginning of the 17th century when Japan is unified and you can almost see medieval Japan enduring until then you know medieval Japan is a very western construct I guess it's not a way Japanese history identifies itself but the change in Japan comes kind of almost a century after the dates that we've been talking about for for Europe which I guess just speaks again to the thing we've spoken about before the difficulty of applying any of this periodisation across any kind of

large geographic area you know to the things happen in different places at different times and you might think in the medieval age ends with the fall of Constantinople you might think it ends with the end of the Reconquisty might think it ends I mean the very Anglo-centric view has long been it ends at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 which seems kind of crazy you can push it around as far

“as you like and I think if you head to places like Japan you can push it under the century if you”

wanted to I think by the time we're getting across to to the Americas if 1492 is seeing a big big change for civilizations there too because of the arrival of Europeans who aren't going to be very friendly to the people that they find there so there are there are things that are changing at the same time in the world but there are also things that are changing at very different rates and at very different times oh absolutely you know and and that is the trouble with periodisation

as in idea and and you know indeed both you and I struggled with this right because we both have research interests that drag into the early modern period you know because of my research interests you know I'm quite interested in the which persecutions but those are technically early modern right and I say oh yeah but you've got to look at what the circumstances are in the 15th century or you won't understand why everyone has just lost their minds in the 17th century right you

“have to you have to trace these things through and so for historians yeah we can kind of come up I”

guess with some rough and ready descriptions of what this all means but you know none of this is ever going to be perfect these are supposed to just be short hands that are going to make things more understandable and unfortunately if you look at them it makes them even less understandable I think yeah yeah and I mean I was trying to think of what it is that I would say brings to an end the medieval period and what flips the switch over to being early modern and I think as we just

been talking about you know it's really hard to pin it on one thing so I was just coming up with an ever increasing list and it included things like the age of exploration the emergence of the

printing press you know that will be a revolutionary change at the end of the medieval period

the the increased use of gunpowder weapons will change the face of warfare and the emergence of more recognizable nation states with kind of a machinery of government that is beginning to change the the corruption the crumbling of feudalism and the the desire to end surfdom also all of those really just tensions you know I quite often think about the medieval period being the the complete ascendancy of the Roman church and that is breaking and we're seeing those heresies that we've

talked about eventually lead to Martin Luther and Martin Luther is viewed as the completion of

I can't think of a date that's the perfect end to the medieval period everywhere and I can't even

“think of a thing that causes the end of the medieval period everywhere I've got a long list of things”

but I can't pin it down to one yeah I agree with you you know what I tend to say my flip and answer is if you see Protestants you've gone too far I know that that that tends to be the answer because by the time we have a group of people who are referred to as Protestants it's over right because we know that by this point in time Constantinople is fallen you know the whose sides have taken Bohemia we have a we have the age of exploration has kicked off you know all of these things happen

and I do think the kind of hegemony of one overarching form of Christianity you know which also downplays the importance of orthodoxy I'm not saying that but in Western Europe that does make a difference you know we have a now splintering of society and we're going to have to imagine new ways to run governments because listen if the pope isn't the police of the kings then what are we doing here you know and that is going to be one of the the huge questions that we come up against

“in the early modern period yeah well I think across these three episodes I think the thing I'm”

clinging to is the fact that the medieval period is just so completely fascinating because it's so different it's a millennium in which you can view in some ways not very much changes especially if you're an ordinary peasant working in your field and yet the early medieval period the high medieval period and the late medieval period are so different there's so distinct there is so many different things going on there that you can't just lump it all together and call it the medieval period

because that ceases to make sense then so I guess what I'm clinging to at the end of this episode in which we've been so uncertain about where the medieval period might end is it that's part of

its fascination all absolutely you know it's the the annoying historians answer that we always give

which is it's more complicated than that right and there is nothing that shows that more than really trying to break down the medieval period and and you know I do I do you think that someone who lives in 550 probably has more in common with someone who lives in 1312 you know than otherwise but someone who lives in 1312 has more in common with someone who lives in 1650 you know so it is very it's a very complex thing and we are just sort of using it in order to

explain a really difficult era of history and I think that's why all medieval historians love about medieval people they're really really different to us but still recognizable you know they've got these human interests and emotions and things that push them forward but they're living in a

“really different context and that's what makes it fun yeah and I think the key takeaway for me”

about periodisation is that you know it's an utterly imperfect system but we have to put things in a box and the box might be a bit battered and it might not quite be the right shape for the things we're trying to put in it all the time but it's somehow helpful to store those things on a box on a shelf it's easy eventually to have and it's scattered all around the floor everywhere so periodisation is kind of an imperfect answer to a problem but maybe the best one that we have at the

moment listen for now we're keeping the box until we can afford some better storage mechanism if anyone right in if you have ideas so what to replace the box with yeah that would be great and well thank you so much for joining me again Elina I I love doing these episodes with you

it's always a joy to talk to you into to trash out these ideas and to to chew the code with you

I absolutely adore it and thank you very very much for joining me for this episode and I look forward to the next time that I will get to speak to you absolutely you are welcome to try and hide out my tower anytime fabulous thank you so much Ella thank you you can find those episodes on the early and high medieval periods in our back catalogue along with episodes on the hundred years war the black death as ink or the wars of the roses and several of the other events that we've mentioned

during this chat there are new instalments of government evil every Tuesday and Friday so please come back to join Ella and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval you can also sign up to history hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week at historyhit.com

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