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Jan Hus, Czech scholar
burned at the stake
Birthplace of Joan of Arc
The Englishman who had created an English language Bible, John Wycliffe, died in 1384. In 1407 English language Bibles were banned. Followers of Wycliffe, called Lollards, were arrested and imprisoned, especially those followers who had been associated with Oxford University.
France still had its pope, at Avignon, and another pope was in Rome. In 1409, prelates meet at Pisa, Italy, to name a pope to replace the two rival popes. They chose Alexander V. Neither of the two rival pope's accepted Alexander and both refused to step aside, and now there were three, each with his following, Sacred College of Cardinals and administrative office. But much of Europe accepted the authority of Pope Alexander V, and Alexander issued a Papal Bull that moved the Church against the threat to Church authority by scripture not in Latin - the language special to the priesthood. And all of the books valuable manuscripts of Wycliffe were burned.
Pope Alexander's move against the followers of Wycliffe extended to Jan Hus, a Czech scholar and rector at the University of Prague. He had been attracted by the writings of Wycliffe and was also opposed to Church indulgences. Czechs had been complaining about what they saw as the immorality of the clergy.They disliked clergy privileges and had been demanding that scripture be translated into Czech - in part nationalist resentment against Germans, most priests in Bohemia being German. An ecumenical council, the Council of Constance, which convened to end the schism that had resulted from more than one pope, also addressed the issue of heresy. Jan Hus was called before the Council of Constance to defend his views, and soon after, on July 6, 1415, he was burned at the stake. The late John Wycliffe was tried a second time and this time condemned. The Council of Constance ordered his body disinterred and burned. The deed was carried out in 1428 - forty-four years after Wycliffe's death.
The burning of Hus, meanwhile, had provoked rebellion among the Czechs, producing the Hussite War of 1420-34. The King of Hungary and Holy Roman Emperor, Sigismund, on the side of the Church, sent his army against the rebellion. The Hussite leader, Jan Zizka, developed a disciplined army of peasants. He was an unorthodox and able military tactician. In a series of battles between 1420 and 1422, at Vysehrad, Saaz and Deutschbrod, using the kind of wagon protection to be used by the Boers in Africa and by whites in the American West, he frustrated Sigismund's well armed knights. The Hussites used pikes, swords and also hand held gunpowder weapons. After Zizka died from plague in 1424, another capable leader, Andreas Prokop, was successful against Sigismund for ten years. In 1436, Sigismund chose to accept Czech independence. The Hussites secured a treaty that confirmed their expropriations of Church property and their new Hussite church - which was to last into the 1600s.
England's king, Henry V (r. 1413-22) resumed the war, partly as a distraction from social tensions in England. In 1415 the French blocked him as he led his force on the road from Flanders to the port city of Calais. The French challenged him and the Battle of Agincourt followed. French knights charged against the British and were compressed by the terrain, with England's archers dropping the leading wave and fallen horses preventing other knights from advancing. In a half hour of battle thousands of French knights were taken prisoner. The fear of a second attack prompted the English to kill them on the spot, and the French nobility was horribly decimated in a single day. For France the use of knights in warfare was at an end. The French king from 1422, Charles VII, would create France's first standing, professional, rather than feudal, army. No longer needed in battle, the knights would take refuge in the tournaments that were merely staged pageantry.
After Agincourt, French morale was low, with some believing that only a miracle could save them from the English. Among the French appeared the illiterate daughter of a modest but locally prominent farming family - devout Catholics. Joan heard voices, and in 1428, at the age of sixteen, a voice told her that the English had to be expelled from France. Society was not as densely populated as it would be in the 21st century, and Joan was noticed. Her story was accepted by several leaders of the French army, and the following year, 1429, Joan persuaded Charles VII to support her effort at relieving the city of Orléans, then being besieged by the English. She knew little of warfare, but she believed that if the French soldiers with her would not swear or visit prostitutes they would win.
The English had been weakened by disease and their supplies were low. They pulled back from Orléans, and the French defeated them in a number of battles. The English were allied with the Burgundy (it being common to have as an ally a power that was a neighbor of one's enemy), and in 1430 Joan and four or five hundred men attacked the Burgundians at Campiègne. Joan and her army were driven back. Most escaped, but Joan was captured, and the Burgundians turned Joan over to the English. The English, suffering from attacks by forces under Joan's command had come to see her truly as a witch and as an agent of the devil - a common view of adversity in this age. Wishing to have her discredited before she was executed, the English turned her over to ecclesiastic authorities - the Inquisition - at the French town of Rouen, then under English rule.
The Inquisition pondered the question whether Joan's visions were genuine or delusions of the devil. The British wanted her executed and were displeased when it appeared that she would be allowed to recant. In her cell Joan was given a dress as a part of her recantation. But Joan was found back in her usual men's garb. Her recantation a failure, Joan was charged with sorcery (witchcraft) and burned to death in the marketplace at Rouen.
After Joan's death, the war continued in desultory fashion as before. The English had been superior on the battlefield, their longbow archers having a greater range than the French crossbow and faster rate of shooting. Cannon and handguns were used with more regularity, although the hand guns were less accurate and had less range than archery and often as threatening to its user as to the target. The war had stimulated changes in military organization. National armies were replacing armies of individual noblemen. Infantry had been growing and cavalry diminishing. For awhile the French had been hurting because of their slowness in making these changes. But France was a larger and more prosperous nation and eventually developed superiority in weaponry, especially in mobile field artillery. The English longbow could not match France's new artillery - which had a devastating effect on the ranks of an advancing English army.
England lost its alliance with Burgundy, both countries were exhausted by the war, and the insistence on total victory had dissipated. Both countries welcomed peace. The vanity of the English kings had come to nothing. Except for the Calais, on the channel coast, the English withdrew from the continent, the end of the Hundred Years' War, in October 1453, marking the end of England's attempts to hold territory on the continent. And with the end of the Hundred Years' War came a revival of trade and an end to economic depression.
The ruler of Walachia (Wallachia), in eastern Europe, had as his emblem a dragon, displayed on his shield and coins. The word for dragon in Romanian was dracul, and the ruler used it as his official name. His son attached to the end of this name the letter a, signifying the son of Dracul - Dracula. Dracula is also known as Vladislav II of Walachia. He inherited rule in Walachia from in 1435 and ruled to 1446, taking part in Christendom's crusade and wars against the Ottomans.
Dracula hated evil, and he is said to have resorted to severe measures against people who had overstepped what he thought were the boundaries of moral behavior. According to Romanian legend, as punishment for adultery a woman was skinned and left to die tied to a stake in the public square. Legend describes him as hating thieves and as having looked upon beggars and the homeless as immoral and on the verge of thievery. Legend also describes Dracula as having invited beggars and the homeless to a banquet, locking the doors and setting the hall afire, killing them all and ending the local homeless problem. His reputation for being tough on crime gave rise to the story of his placing a gold cup for passers by to drink from at a fountain and that no one dared steal it. Dracula was known for executing people by impalement, and he became known as the Impaler. Into the 1700s tales about Dracula grew in exaggeration, which in the 20th century were adopted for entertainment by Hollywood film makers.
Since the end of the eleventh century, emperors at Constantinople had been losing territory to the Turks, and with this loss they lost revenues from taxing agricultural production. In the twelfth century they lost eastern markets to Venetian and Genoese seaborne traders, and revenues from customs duties. Constantinople had come to see the upkeep of their merchant fleet as a drain on their meager money supply, and the city's neglected fleet rotted away while foreign ships came and went from its port.
The government lost revenues too with the growth of big estates and the diminished number of independent farmers. The great estates were worked by a growing army of people forced to remain there. These estates were less efficient in production than had been land worked by free peasants, and less in taxes was collected from them. And estates owned by the Church and worked by monks were often tax exempt.
The royal government continued spending money for extravagant displays necessary to keep up the appearance of grandeur, and Constantinople became impoverished. Some of the poor of Constantinople took to the hills. Some people emigrated. The once proud Christian people, enthusiastic for their racing team at the sports arena, was no more. By the 1400s Constantinople had a diminished population and seemed to be in mourning. And Constantinople was diminished militarily.
When the Turks overran Constantinople in May 1453, Constantinople's thousand year reign as the center of the Roman Empire had come to an end. The flow of refugees from Constantinople to Italy included intellectuals with their manuscripts. In Italy, these refugees stimulated a new interest in the ancient past, an interest that was humanistic rather than concerned with sin and salvation. Wealthy businessmen in Italy began to support education and the arts. It was the beginning of what would be called the Renaissance.
The Hundred Years' War had stimulated greater national identity among the English and the French, with people looking more toward their king as a father figure and away from the Holy Father in Rome. France's king had gained too with the losses and death of nobles during the war. In France the war left fewer local lords between a king and his people and fewer layers of authority - barons, earls, counts and knights. The expansion of the money economy had contributed to the breakdown of the old agricultural feudalism. Fiefdoms had been disappearing. Warring nobles were of the past. A new kind of state was developing. The king of France won the right to tax, judge and legislate for all inhabitants in their realm. Power there was becoming more centralized.
After the Hundred Years' War many English believed that they had lost the war against the French, causing some unrest. Between 1455 and 1471 there was civil war between royal families: the Lancasters and the Yorks: The "War of the Roses." These two families fought for influence over King Henry VI, who was enfeebled by insanity. Henry was captured by one family and then the other, the family having him in their possession claiming rule in his name. Henry was deposed in 1461 by Edward of York, who became King Edward IV of England. Edward IV was followed by his brother, Richard III, who was defeated in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth Field by a Lancastrian, Henry Tudor, the only surviving male representing the House of Lancaster. Henry Tudor became King Henry VII of England, the first of the Tudor kings. He married Elizabeth of York, the leading Yorkist claimant to the throne, realigning the Yorks and the Lancasters, merging the red rose symbol of the Lancasters with the white rose symbol of the Yorks into a new red and white rose emblem of the Tudors. He strengthened his position by executing some who might be rivals claiming the throne (a policy that would be continued by his son, Henry VIII). Henry VII further strengthened his position by weakening the nobles through taxation. The English people wanted order and an end to the disruptions and costs of warfare, and they supported strong central authority. Feudalism in England had come to an end.
In France, Charles VII strengthened the rule of his family, the Valois - a branch of the Capetian family. Charles was not a strong monarch, but he managed to reform the military, he pursued sound fiscal policies and encouraged trade. He was succeeded by his son, Louis XI, who had been in revolt against his father since 1446. In 1477, Louis extended Valois authority to Burgundy, and in 1480 he gained the territories of Anjou, Bar Mine and Provence. His successor, Louis XII married Ann of Brittany, adding Brittany to territory belonging to the French king.
In Italy, meanwhile, much wealth had been accumulated from commerce and trade, and city-states were controlled by wealthy merchants and bankers, while patriotism had remained local. Five powers dominated Italy: Venice, Milan, Florence, the Papal states (in central Italy, including Rome) and Naples (which ruled the southern half of the peninsula). Competition for territory was intense. All the states were worried that one state might become so powerful as to rule the rest, and to prevent this, alliances had been formed. Warring in Italy was continuous, including a war in 1450 between Venice and Milan, with an alliance between Florence, Naples and Milan on one side and Venice and the papacy on the other.
After the Muslims broke down the triple walls of Constantinople in 1453, word spread that walls and castles were no longer much of a defense. Castles were on their way to becoming relics. Rulers saw that security would have to provided by standing armies.
Security could also be provided by a balance of power, which required diplomacy. Addressing the art of diplomacy at the end of the century was Niccolò Machiavelli. Countering the claim that good government ought to follow God's will, Machiavelli saw events as human in origin and largely that of human weaknesses. He believed that a ruler should be concerned not with how things ought to be but with how things are and that politics should be scientific, in other words about empirical realities rather than religious faith. He advised his prince to realize that there were bad people in the world and that their evils had to be met with something other than prayer and Christian love.
Machiavelli's better known work, The Prince, was written in 1505 and published in 1515. Machiavelli was trying to win back his standing as a diplomat. It is believed that he wanted a new appointment from the Medici family, which ruled Florence. He urged a development similar to what had been taking place to the north, in France. A princely state, claimed Machiavelli, needed a professional military rather than seasonal mobilizations by knights. He saw rulers as needing the support of their subjects gaining in strength by political and other improvements. He wrote that a prince should act in the interest not just of himself but in the interest of his subjects, that a prince should create institutions that serve and evoke loyalty. Societies, he held, should be governed by laws rather than whim. And he claimed that a good ruler maintained permanent embassies in other lands and based his diplomacy on good information.
The prince of Moscow, Ivan I, was frugal. He saved his money, became known as Ivan the moneybag and bought property, enhancing himself economically. A nearby rival town, Tver, rebelled against Mongol rule, and Ivan sided with the Mongols. The Mongols elevated Ivan to chief tax collector in all Slavic lands to which they were overlord. Ivan and the Mongols destroyed Tver. Ivan enhanced Moscow's prestige by creating a headquarters in Moscow for Eastern Orthodox Christianity- while the world center of Eastern Orthodox Christianity remained at Constantinople. The Eastern Orthodox Christianity in Russia was called the Russian Eastern Orthodox Church.
Ivan I died in 1348. Ivan III, whose rule began in 1462, bought the town of Rostov. He warred against Pskov - a republican merchant town. And in the 1470s Ivan III extended his rule through warfare to Novgorod and its territories, Ivan exiling 1,000 wealthy families from Novgorod and replacing them with families from Moscow.
With Islamic rule having come to Constantinople, church leaders in Moscow spoke of "Holy Russia and described Moscow as the "Third Rome." Ivan III saw himself as the heir of Rome's emperors - the word tsar (czar) being derived from the word Caesar. Ivan III saw Eastern Orthodox Christianity as the one true faith. All the Catholic kings in the West, he believed, were heretics.
In 1480 Ivan III felt strong enough to refuse to pay tribute to the Mongols. The Mongols were fighting among themselves, and Ivan was able to make his independence stick. He annexed Tver in 1485. He maintained friendly relations with the khan in the Crimea. And with passage through the Crimea, Ivan maintained communications with Islamic Constantinople. He was interested in trade and knew its benefits and the benefits of diplomacy, and he opened an embassy in Constantinople in 1495.
Toward the end of the 1400s the area around Moscow and the rest of Europe was returning to the population levels that had existed before the Black Death. Earlier agriculture had been largely slash and burn. Now, with more people, agriculture around Moscow became what it was in the West - the three-field system, with the raising of farm animals. Farming was becoming more profitable around Moscow, and those with wealth, including enterprising monasteries, were absorbing more land.
A trend had begun: the rich were getting richer. The nobles were buying more land and less land was available to free peasants - not only in Russia but elsewhere in Eastern Europe. In Russia, Ivan III gave land away as a reward for military service. These new landholders hired people to work their lands, and in 1497 Ivan III accommodated the landowners by limiting the rights of agricultural workers. More peasants in Eastern Europe were forced to labor on the estates of nobles and to give an exorbitant amount of their produce to the nobles as rent.
The Black Death had encouraged the development of sailing ships that would not require a lot of manpower. The Portuguese built such ships - three-masted ships with stern rudders that could sail forty-five degrees into the wind, carry more cargo and sail the high seas. These ships carried cannon that fired stone or iron balls, which could demolish a ship at a distance, reducing the need for armed marines. [note]
The sea captains benefited from pilot books - first created around the year 1280. Away from shore they benefited from use of a magnetic compass and from an astrolabe for measuring the angle of celestial bodies from the horizon, the astrolabe enabling sea captains to determine their location north and south. Positions east and west were calculated from speed and time.
The Portuguese were interested in trade. They reached the Canary Islands in 1415, off the coast of northwestern Africa. They discovered the Azores Islands in 1419, about 900 miles west of Portugal. Of concern to the Portuguese was Islam. They wished to find a route to India that outflanked Muslim dominated trade routes. They also wished to convert the "heathen" and to establish Christian colonies. In 1424 they began to colonize Madeira Island. They warred against Muslims at Ceuta and Tangier. In 1441 a ship brought back to Portugal the first slaves and some gold dust. In 1443 the Portuguese discovered the four by two-mile Arguin (Arguim) Island - a 1,600 kilometer sail from the Canaries. An increase in slave trading followed, with the Portuguese buying more slaves from Africans, while believing that they were giving the slaves an opportunity to become Christians.
The kingdom of Castile had expanded to Cordoba and Seville in 1236, and since then it had been forcing Grenada to pay tribute. In 1469 Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon, married, more or less unifying these two kingdoms, creating what looks like the modern map of the Iberian peninsula - except for Islamic kingdom of Grenada in the south and the small kingdom of Navarre in the northeast.
Pursuing what they believed was God's will, Isabella and Ferdinand moved against Judaism and Islam within their realms - an effort toward creating Christianity as the universal faith. It was the time of Tomás de Torquemada, Inquisitor General under Isabella and Ferdinand. Converted Jews and Muslims as well as Catholic intellectuals, among them Ignatius Loyola, were among the persecuted. Of the 200,000 or so Jews who had lived in Spain, perhaps as many as 150,000 fled. And in 1482 Castile launched a war of conquest against Grenada.
Meanwhile, the Portuguese had reached the equator, and in 1487 a Portuguese explorer, Bartolomew Diaz, sailed as far as the southern tip of Africa - the Portuguese having overcome fears of monsters at sea and boiling water at the equator.
In 1492, after having defeated Grenada, Isabella and Ferdinand backed Christopher Columbus's dream of reaching India by sailing westward. Columbus believed, as did many literate Europeans, that the world was round. He had calculated that a couple thousand miles of ocean lay between his point of departure and Japan. He promised to bring back gold, spices and silks, to spread Christianity and to lead an expedition to China. If a more accurate calculation of the size of the planet were known, he might have tried to reach India by going east.
Christopher Columbus and his crew were at sea for seventy days, his crew saying their vespers and singing a hymn to the Virgin Mary every night before sleeping. The island they came upon Columbus called Hispaniola (the island that today includes the Dominican Republic and Haiti). If people on this island had known what was coming their way they would have been praying to their gods and sharpening their spears.
In 1498 a Portuguese explorer, Vasco da Gama, did make it to India, by sailing around Africa, stopping at four places in eastern Africa along the way and picking up a guide. He dropped anchor at Calicut in India (modern Kozhikode), and he returned to Portugal in 1499 with a load of spices which brought him a huge profit. This inspired a mad scramble for more voyaging across the sea. From his king he received the rank of an untitled noble, a pension and property. Portugal then sent a fleet of thirteen ships to make another voyage south around Africa. The fleet was blown off course and ended in what is today called Brazil, which the Portuguese claimed as theirs.
Christendom's penetration of the "New World" had begun, with the excuse that they had an opportunity to convert heathens to Christianity - a motivation that had been lacking in the Chinese. Also unlike the Chinese, the Spanish, Portuguese and English were far from isolationism. They did not see themselves at the center of the world; they saw Jerusalem as the center of the world.
Another motive for their penetration of the New World was the search for gold - the monetary value of gold had risen relative to the price of other things with the recovery of Europe's population. But Europeans venturing overseas cannot be said to have been any more greedy than the Mongols had been, or any more greedy than other Asians, or Arabs and Africans who also traded. Islam still had its trade routes in Africa and across the Indian Ocean, and its slave trade.
The Portuguese, Spanish, English and Dutch had the technology needed to sail across the Atlantic - and around the world. Technology had shrunk the world - the voyage of Columbus and that of Vasco da Gama being the first of what was to be called "globalization." Also in the second half of the 1400s printing with movable type had come into being in Europe - printing on paper. A new age was dawning.
Recommended Books
Nicolo's Smile: A Biography of Machiavelli, by Maurizio Viroli
Byzantium: the Decline and Fall, by John Julius Norwich, chapter 23, "The Fall," p 410.
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