The Late Middle Ages (1300-1450) saw the decline of medieval civilization.  This chapter discusses the economic, political, social, and spiritual crises that afflicted Europe during this period.  The chapter also examines the intellectual and artistic currents that developed in this climate of upheaval.  By the end of the period, the seeds of a distinctly modern outlook had been sown, seeds that would flower during the Renaissance and continue to grow over the succeeding centuries.

Late-medieval Europe suffered the cumulative effects of famine, disease, and warfare.  As the fourteenth century opened, an agricultural crisis developed, causing full-scale famine by 1315.  In 1347, the Black Death struck for the first time.  By the end of the last outbreak, approximately one-third of Europe's population had died.  Western Europe was further torn by the Hundred Years War between England and France.  The war finally ended when the French drove the English from virtually all of France.

Destructive as these upheavals were, nothing undermined medieval civilization so deeply as the decline of the papacy.  Conflicts with the French monarchy culminated with the Babylonian Captivity, during which the papacy resided in France and was forced to pursue pro-French policies.  The Great Schism further eroded papal authority as a series of opposing popes, ruling from Avignon and Rome, struggled for control of the church.  By 1418, the work of the Conciliar Movement healed the schism, but a strengthened papacy thwarted its larger aim of transforming the church into a constitutional system.  As the papacy fought to maintain its position, it neglected its spiritual and moral responsibilities, prompting attacks on the concept of papal power.

These attacks came from both political critics and the leaders of dissenting sects.  Critics such as Marsilius of Padua denied the church's temporal authority.  That authority belonged to secular rulers, who must exercise it without clerical interference.  Similarly, the dissenters John Wycliffe and Jan Hus challenged the church's temporal and spiritual authority.  Denouncing the wealth of the higher clergy, both stressed that individuals could achieve salvation without the church by cultivating a personal relationship with God.  The church declared both leaders heretics and persecuted their followers.

Paralleling these political and social crises were changes in philosophical thought and artistic expression.  As the papacy declined, the scholastic synthesis of faith and reason unraveled.  Philosophers such as William of Ockham argued that reason could not prove the truth of Christian doctrines.  Those doctrines, including the existence of God, were matters of faith alone.  Belief, therefore, was the sole basis of theology and reason the proper tool for investigating nature.  Challenging as these ideas were, their proponents did not seek to undermine faith entirely.  Rather, they sought to disentangle faith and reason, freeing both to explore their separate realms of the spirit and nature.

Similarly, late-medieval artists did not reject completely established themes and forms.  Writers such as Catherine of Sienna and the Pearl Poet, as well as many visual artists, examined traditional Christian themes through familiar forms—e.g., romance, dream vision, and the techniques of Gothic art.  However, following the example of Dante, several important authors explored new themes and ways of using established forms.  Petrarch, Chaucer, Christine de Pizan, and others developed a vernacular literature that pushed the limits of formal convention and demonstrated fresh interest in human talents, worldly activities, and the complexities of heterosexual love.  Further, many of these authors, again following Dante, rediscovered classical literature, adapting its rhetoric and forms to their purposes.

Likewise, late-medieval visual artists and musicians expanded the possibilities of their arts.  Sculptors such as Claus Sluter and the Pisanos experimented with spatial perspective and naturalistic representation of the human form.  The Limbourg Brothers included in their manuscript illuminations realistic portraits of their patrons and detailed depictions of peasant life.  Some of the most lasting innovations came from Italian painters.  The most important of these was Giotto, whose dramatic, psychologically engaging style would not be rivaled until the Renaissance.  Similarly, late-medieval music built upon older styles.  The ars nova broadened the limits of the ars antiqua by incorporating into liturgical music a greater rhythmic and vocal range.  Further, ars nova composers, including Guillaume de Machaut and Francesco Landini, introduced new systems of notation and musical analysis, and developed secular vernacular forms such as the madrigal and caccia.

The decline of medieval civilization did not occasion an abrupt break with the past.  Medieval institutions persisted well into the modern age.  Feudalism, for example, survived into the eighteenth century and helped shape such modern ideas as liberty, the rule of law, and representative government.  Further, Christianity continues to influence concepts of justice, and modern thought and art could not have developed as they did without the foundations laid by medieval philosophers and artists.  However, significant changes did occur.  During this period, for instance, Europe began to outstrip the rest of the world in the use of technology.  Further, a secular modern outlook began to emerge.  Over the succeeding centuries, that outlook would replace religious explanations of nature with scientific ones; promote the essential equality and freedom of individuals; and uphold the independence of human reason.