Late Medieval Europe
Black Death, Hundred Years War, end of an era
The Great Famine and the End of the Boom
the climate cools, the harvest fails, and Europe runs out of food
1300–1340
The Black Death
Yersinia pestis arrives via Genoese galleys and kills a third of Europe in four years
1346–1400
The Hundred Years War
longbows destroy chivalry, Joan of Arc reverses the war, French artillery ends it
1337–1453
The Avignon Papacy and the Western Schism
the universal Church splits into rival popes and the moral authority of the papacy never recovers
1309–1417
Wycliffe, Hus, and the Late-Medieval Reformations
the Reformation rehearsed in England and Bohemia a century before Luther
1380–1434
Peasant Revolts and Urban Uprisings
post-plague labor leverage produces three of the largest popular revolts of medieval Europe
1358–1381
The Renaissance Threshold
Italian city-states reinvent painting, architecture, banking, and printing collapses the cost of books
1380–1480
The End of an Era
Constantinople falls, Granada surrenders, Columbus sails, and the Middle Ages mutate into the early modern world
1453–1500