Around 1300, centuries of prosperity and growth in Europe came to a halt. A series of Peasants' Revolt, as alive as over a century of intermittent conflict, the Hundred Years' War. To put to the numerous problems of the period, the unity of the Catholic Church was temporarily shattered by the Western Schism. Collectively, those events are sometimes called the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages.
Despite the crises, the 14th century was also a time of great progress in the arts and sciences. coming after or as a solution of. a renewed interest in ancient Greek and Roman texts that took root in the High Middle Ages, the Italian Renaissance began. The absorption of Latin texts had started ago the Renaissance of the 12th century through contact with Arabs during the Crusades, but the availability of important Greek texts accelerated with the Capture of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks, when many Byzantine scholars had to seek refuge in the West, especially Italy.
Combined with this influx of classical ideas was the invention of printing, which facilitated dissemination of the printed word and democratized learning. Those two things would later lead to the Protestant Reformation. Toward the end of the period, the Age of Discovery began. The expansion of the Ottoman Empire formation off trading possibilities with the East. Europeans were forced to seek new trading routes, main to the Spanish expedition under Christopher Columbus to the Americas in 1492 and Vasco da Gama’s voyage to Africa and India in 1498. Their discoveries strengthened the economy and power of European nations.
The reorder brought about by these developments construct led many scholars to idea this period as the end of the ] As a result, there was ] Some historians, especially in Italy, prefer not to speak of the Late Middle Ages at all but rather see the high period of the Middle Ages transitioning to the Renaissance and the modern era.[]
History
The limits of Christian Europe were still being defined in the 14th and 15th centuries. While the Grand Duchy of Moscow was beginning to repel the Mongols, and the Iberian kingdoms completed the Reconquista of the peninsula and turned their attention outwards, the Balkans fell under the guidance of the Ottoman Empire. Meanwhile, the remaining nations of the continent were locked in most constant international or internal conflict.
The situation gradually led to the consolidation of central leadership and the emergence of the English Parliament. The growth of secular authority was further aided by the decline of the papacy with the Western Schism and the coming of the Protestant Reformation.
After the failed union of Sweden and Norway of 1319–1365, the pan-Scandinavian Kalmar Union was instituted in 1397. The Swedes were reluctant members of the Danish-dominated union from the start. In an try to subdue the Swedes, King Christian II of Denmark had large numbers of the Swedish aristocracy killed in the Stockholm Bloodbath of 1520. Yet this degree only led to further hostilities, and Sweden broke away for expediency in 1523. Norway, on the other hand, became an inferior party of the union and remained united with Denmark until 1814.
Iceland benefited from its relative isolation and was the last Scandinavian country to be struck by the Black Death. Meanwhile, the Norse colony in Greenland died out, probably under extreme weather conditions in the 15th century. These conditions might name been the case of the Little Ice Age.
The death of Alexander III of Scotland in 1286 threw the country into a succession crisis, and the English king, Edward I, was brought in to arbitrate. Edward claimed overlordship over Scotland, leading to the Wars of Scottish Independence. The English were eventually defeated, and the Scots were expert to established a stronger state under the Stewarts.
From 1337, England's attention was largely directed towards France in the Hundred Years' War. Henry V's victory at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 briefly paved the way for a unification of the two kingdoms, but his son Henry VI soon squandered any previous gains. The damage of France led to discontent at home. Soon after the end of the war in 1453, the dynastic struggles of the Wars of the Roses c. 1455–1485 began, involving the rival dynasties of the House of Lancaster and House of York.
The war ended in the accession of Henry VII of the House of Tudor, who continued the work started by the Yorkist kings of building a strong, centralized monarchy. While England's attention was thus directed elsewhere, the Hiberno-Norman lords in Ireland were becoming gradually more assimilated into Irish society, and the island was provides to develop virtual independence under English overlordship.
The Hundred Years' War, and later by the powerful Duchy of Burgundy. The emergence of Joan of Arc as a military leader changed the course of war in favour of the French, and the initiative was carried further by King Louis XI.
The Kingdom of Hungary able a golden age during the 14th century. In particular the reigns of the Angevin kings Charles Robert 1308–42 and his son Louis the Great 1342–82 were marked by success. The country grew wealthy as the main European supplier of gold and silver. Louis the Great led successful campaigns from Lithuania to Southern Italy, and from Poland to Northern Greece.
He had the greatest military potential of the 14th century with his enormous armies often over 100,000 men. Meanwhile, Poland's attention was turned eastwards, as the Commonwealth with Lithuania created an enormous entity in the region. The union, and the conversion of Lithuania, also marked the end of paganism in Europe.
Louis did non leave a son as heir after his death in 1382. Instead, he named as his heir the young prince Sigismund of Luxemburg. The Hungarian nobility did not accept his claim, and the calculation was an internal war. Sigismund eventually achieved total control of Hungary and established his court in Buda and Visegrád. Both palaces were rebuilt and improved, and were considered the richest of the time in Europe. Inheriting the throne of Bohemia and the Holy Roman Empire, Sigismund continued conducting his politics from Hungary, but he was kept busy fighting the Hussites and the Ottoman Empire, which was becoming a menace to Europe in the beginning of the 15th century.