Exercise 1

Successive outbreaks of the Black Death during the fourteenth century powerfully affected the minds of Europeans.  As more and more died from the seemingly incurable disease, many people grew convinced that God was punishing humanity for its sins.  Some turned to religious frenzy, including self-flagellation, in hope of appeasing God's wrath.  Many others became fascinated with graphic images of death, including open tombs and rotting corpses.  One of the most notable artistic motifs to develop during this period was The Dance of Death.  The Dance typically takes the form of a series of images in which skeletons or decayed corpses whirl all manner of people off to the grave.  The earliest complete Dance of Death comes from fifteenth-century France, but perhaps the richest and most famous version is one composed by the German artist, Hans Holbein the Younger.  Though Holbein completed his version during the 1530s, the sequence involves imagery and conveys ideas that would have been familiar to death-obsessed fourteenth-century audiences.  Visit Hans Holbein's Dance of Death and take a look at the list of images included in the sequence.  Then examine several of the images.  Who are Death's victims? Does Death take them all in the same way? What reactions do the victims have to the arrival of Death? What role does God play in the Dance of Death? Based on your observations of the images, what conclusions can you draw about what late-medieval Europeans thought was happening to them?

Exercise 2

In addition to the effects of famine and plague, the people of fourteenth-century France and the Low countries bore the brunt of the Hundred Years War.  Between 1337 and 1453, the French and English monarchies vied for control of France, each new king inheriting the struggle begun by Edward III of England and Philip VI of France.  You can get an overview of this long and complex war from this timeline.  As this map of English territories suggests, by the 1420s it looked as if England would rule most of France.  However, inspired by Joan of Arc, the French rallied and by 1453 pushed the English out of all French territory except the city of Calais.

The preeminent chronicler of the war was the French writer Jean Froissart, who either witnessed or spoke with witnesses to most of the major battles of the conflict.  Two of those battles took place near the French towns of Crecy and Poitiers.  Read Foissart's accounts of those struggles at this sight devoted to medieval battles (you'll see the links to click to access the texts themselves).  Now look at images of the battles of Crecy (1346) and Poitiers (1356) from a French illuminated manuscript.  Why, according to Froissart, did he English win these battles? What do the two paintings illustrate about the course of the battles? What, if any, information do these images provide that Froissart does not?