Western Civilization: Volume B: 1300 to 1815, 8th Edition
Page 11
Christine de Pizan, The Poem of Joan of Arc, July 31, 1429
The year of fourteen twenty-nine
The sun came out to shine again.
It brings the season new and good,
Which we had not directly seen
Too long a time, while many passed
Their lives in sorrow; I am one.
But now, no longer do I grieve
Because I see what pleases me….
And you, the King of France, King Charles,
The seventh of that noble name,
Who fought a mighty war before
Good fortune came at all to you:
Do, now, observe your dignity
Exalted by the Maid, who bent
Your enemies beneath your flag
In record time (that’s something new!)
And people thought that it would be
Impossible indeed for you
To ever have your country back,
For it was nearly lost; but now,
It’s clearly yours; no matter who
Has done you wrong, it’s yours once more,
And through the clever Maid who did
Her part therein—thanks be to God!…
When I reflect upon your state,
The youthful maiden that you are,
To whom God gives the force and strength
To be the champion and the one
To suckle France upon her milk
Of peace, the sweetest nourishment,
To overthrow the rebel host:
The wonder passes Nature’s work!
That is, if God, through Joshua
Performed so many miracles
In conquering those places where
So many met defeat—a man
Of strength was Joshua. But she’s
A woman—simple shepherdess—
More brave than ever man at Rome!
An easy thing for God to do!
But as for us, we’ve never heard
About a marvel quite so great
For all the heroes who have lived
In history can’t measure up
In bravery against the Maid,
Who strives to rout our enemies.
It’s God does that, who’s guiding her
Whose courage passes that of men…
By miracle has she appeared,
Divine commandment sent her here.
God’s angel led her in before
The king, to bring her help to him.
There’s no illusion in her case
Because it’s been indeed borne out
In council (in conclusion, then,
A thing is proved by its effect)….
What honor for the female sex!
God’s love for it appears quite clear,
Because the kingdom laid to waste
By all those wretched people now
Stands safe, a woman rescued it
(A hundred thousand men could not
Do that) and killed the hostile foe!
A thing beyond belief before!…
While ridding France of enemies,
Retaking town and castle both.
No force was ever quite so great,
If hundreds or if thousands strong!
Among our men so brave and apt
She’s captain over all; such strength
No Hector or Achilles had.
All this God does, who’s guiding her….
The English will be crushed through her,
And never will they rise again
For God who wills it hears the voice
Of guiltless folk they tried to harm!
The blood of those they’ve killed, who’ll walk
No more, cries out. God wants an end
To this; instead He has resolved
To chastise them as evil men.
In Christine de Pizan’s view, what had Joan accomplished? Why did Christine consider those accomplishments so unusual? What does Joan’s career as a soldier tell you about the culture of late medieval France?
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When Philip VI (1328–1350) became involved in the Hundred Years’ War with England, he found it necessary to devise new sources of revenue, including a tax on salt known as the gabelle (gah-BELL) and a hearth tax eventually called the taille (TY). These taxes weighed heavily on the French peasantry and middle class. Consequently, when additional taxes were needed to pay for the ransom of King John II after his capture at the Battle of Poitiers, the middle-class inhabitants of the towns tried to use the Estates-General to reform the French government and tax structure.
At the meeting of the Estates-General in 1357, under the leadership of the Parisian provost Étienne Marcel (ay-TYEN mahr-SEL), representatives of the Third Estate granted taxes in exchange for a promise from King John’s son, the dauphin Charles, not to tax without the Estates-General’s permission and to allow the Estates-General to meet on a regular basis and participate in important political decisions. After Marcel’s movement was crushed in 1358, this attempt to make the Estates-General a functioning part of the French government collapsed. The dauphin became King Charles V (1364–1380) and went on to recover much of the land lost to the English. His military successes underscored his efforts to reestablish strong monarchical powers. He undermined the role of the Estates-General by getting it to grant him taxes with no fixed time limit. Charles’s death in 1380 soon led to a new time of troubles for the French monarchy, however.
The insanity of Charles VI (1380–1422), which first became apparent in 1392, opened the door to rival factions of French nobles aspiring to power and wealth. The dukes of Burgundy and Orléans competed to control Charles and the French monarchy. Their struggles created chaos for the French government and the French people. Many nobles supported the Orléanist faction, while Paris and other towns favored the Burgundians. By the beginning of the fifteenth century, France seemed hopelessly mired in a civil war. When the English renewed the Hundred Years’ War in 1415, the Burgundians supported the English cause and the English monarch’s claim to the throne of France.
The German Monarchy
England and France had developed strong national monarchies in the High Middle Ages. Nevertheless, by the end of the fourteenth century, they seemed in danger of disintegrating due to dynastic problems and the pressures generated by the Hundred Years’ War. In contrast, the Holy Roman Empire, whose core consisted of the lands of Germany, had already begun to fall apart in the High Middle Ages. Northern Italy, which the German emperors had tried to include in their medieval empire, had been free from any real imperial control since the end of the Hohenstaufen dynasty in the thirteenth century. In Germany itself, the failure of the Hohenstaufens ended any chance of centralized monarchical authority, and Germany became a land of hundreds of virtually independent states. These varied in size and power and included princely states, such as the duchies of Bavaria and Saxony; free imperial city-states (self-governing cities directly under the control of the Holy Roman Emperor rather than a German territorial prince), such as Nuremberg; modest territories of petty imperial knights; and ecclesiastical states, such as the archbishopric of Cologne, in which an ecclesiastical official, such as a bishop, archbishop, or abbot, served in a dual capacity as an administrative official of the Catholic Church and as secular lord over the territories of the state. Although all of the rulers of these different states had some obligations to the German king and Holy Roman Emperor, more and more they acted independently.
The Holy Roman Empire in the Fourteenth Century
ELECTORAL NATURE OF THE GERMAN MONARCHY Because of its unique pattern of development in the High Middle Ages, the German monarchy had become established on an elective rather than a hereditary basis. This principle of election was standardized in 1356 by the Golden Bull issued by Emperor Charles IV (1346–1378). This document stated that four lay princes (the count palatine of the Rhine, the duke of Saxony, the margrave of Brandenburg, and the king of Bohemia) and three eccles
iastical rulers (the archbishops of Mainz, Trier, and Cologne) would serve as electors with the legal power to elect the “king of the Romans and future emperor, to be ruler of the world and of the Christian people.”12 “King of the Romans” was the official title of the German king; after his imperial coronation, he would also have the title of emperor.
In the fourteenth century, the electoral principle further ensured that kings of Germany were generally weak. Their ability to exercise effective power depended on the extent of their own family possessions. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, three emperors claimed the throne. Although the dispute was quickly settled, Germany entered the fifteenth century in a condition that verged on anarchy. Princes fought princes and leagues of cities. The emperors were virtually powerless to control any of them.
Mercenaries as Looters. Mercenary soldiers, like medieval armies in general, were notorious for causing havoc by looting when they were not engaged in battle. This mid-fourteenth-century manuscript illustration shows soldiers ransacking a house in Paris.
© British Library, London//HIP/Art Resource, NY
The States of Italy
Italy, too, had failed to develop a centralized monarchical state by the fourteenth century. Papal opposition to the rule of the Hohenstaufen emperors in northern Italy had virtually guaranteed that. Moreover, southern Italy was divided into the kingdom of Naples, ruled by the French house of Anjou, and Sicily, whose kings came from the Spanish house of Aragon. The center of the peninsula remained under the rather shaky control of the papacy. Lack of centralized authority had enabled numerous city-states in northern Italy to remain independent of any political authority.
In fourteenth-century Italy, two general tendencies can be discerned: the replacement of republican governments by tyrants and the expansion of the larger city-states at the expense of the less powerful ones. Nearly all the cities of northern Italy began their existence as free communes with republican governments. But in the fourteenth century, intense internal strife led city-states to resort to temporary expedients, allowing rule by one man with dictatorial powers. Limited rule, however, soon became long-term despotism as tyrants proved willing to use force to maintain themselves in power. Eventually, such tyrants tried to legitimize their power by purchasing titles from the emperor (still nominally the ruler of northern
Italy as Holy Roman Emperor). In this fashion, the Visconti became the dukes of Milan and the d’Este, the dukes of Ferrara.
The other change of great significance was the development of larger, regional states as the larger states conquered the smaller ones. To fight their battles, city-states came to rely on mercenary soldiers, whose leaders, called condottieri (kahn-duh-TYAY-ree), sold the services of their bands to the highest bidder. These mercenaries wreaked havoc on the countryside, living by blackmail and looting when they were not actively engaged in battles. Many were foreigners who flocked to Italy during the periods of truce of the Hundred Years’ War. By the end of the fourteenth century, three major states came to dominate northern Italy: the despotic state of Milan and the republican states of Florence and Venice.
DUCHY OF MILAN Located in the fertile Po valley, at the intersection of the chief trade routes from Italian coastal cities to the Alpine passes, Milan was one of the richest city-states in Italy. Politically, it was also one of the most agitated until the Visconti family established themselves as the hereditary despots of Milan in 1322. Giangaleazzo Visconti (jahn-gah-lay-AH-tsoh vees-KOHN-tee), who ruled from 1385 to 1402, transformed this despotism into a hereditary duchy by purchasing the title of duke from the emperor in 1395. Under Giangaleazzo’s direction, the duchy of Milan extended its power over all of Lombardy and even threatened to conquer much of northern Italy until the duke’s untimely death before the gates of Florence in 1402.
REPUBLIC OF FLORENCE Florence, like the other Italian towns, was initially a free commune dominated by a patrician class of nobles known as the grandi (GRAHN-dee). But the rapid expansion of Florence’s economy made possible the development of a wealthy merchant-industrialist class known as the popolo grasso (PAWP-ooloh GRAH-soh)—literally the “fat people.” In 1293, the popolo grasso assumed a dominant role in government by establishing a new constitution known as the Ordinances of Justice. It provided for a republican government controlled by the seven major guilds of the city, which represented the interests of the wealthier classes. Executive power was vested in the hands of a council of elected priors—the signoria (seen-YOR-ee-uh)—and a standard-bearer of justice called the gonfaloniere (gun-fah-loh-NYAY-ray), assisted by a number of councils with advisory and overlapping powers. Around the mid-fourteenth century, revolutionary activity by the popolo minuto, the small shopkeepers and artisans, won them a share in the government. Even greater expansion occurred briefly when the ciompi, or industrial wool workers, were allowed to be represented in the government after their revolt in 1378. Only four years later, however, a counterrevolution brought the “fat people” back into virtual control of the government. After 1382, the Florentine government was controlled by a small merchant oligarchy that manipulated the supposedly republican government. By that time, Florence had also been successful in a series of wars against its neighbors. It had conquered most of Tuscany and established itself as a major territorial state in northern Italy.
REPUBLIC OF VENICE The other major northern Italian state was the republic of Venice, which had grown rich from commercial activity throughout the eastern Mediterranean and into northern Europe. A large number of merchant families became extremely wealthy. In the constitution of 1297, these patricians took control of the republic. In this year, the Great Council, the source of all political power, was closed to all but the members of about two hundred families. Since all other magistrates of the city were chosen either from or by this council, these families now formed a hereditary patriciate that completely dominated the city. Although the doge (or duke) had been the executive head of the republic since the Early Middle Ages, by 1300 he had become largely a figurehead. Actual power was vested in the hands of the Great Council and the legislative body known as the Senate, while an extraordinary body known as the Council of Ten, first formed in 1310, came to be the real executive power of the state. The Venetian government was respected by contemporaries for its stability. A sixteenth-century Italian historian noted that Venice had “the best government of any city not only in our own times but also in the classical world.”13
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CHRONOLOGY The States of Western and Central Europe
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England
Edward III
1327–1377
Richard II
1377–1399
Henry IV
1399–1413
France
Philip VI
1328–1350
John II
1350–1364
Capture at Poitiers
1356
Crushing of the Jacquerie and Étienne Marcel
1358
Charles V
1364–1380
Charles VI
1380–1422
German Monarchy
Golden Bull
1356
Italy
Florence
Ordinances of Justice
1293
Venice
Closing of Great Council
1297
Milan
Visconti establish themselves as rulers of Milan
1322
Giangaleazzo Visconti purchases title of duke
1395
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The States of Italy in the Fourteenth Century
In the fourteenth century, Venice also embarked on a policy of expansion. By the end of the century, it had created a commercial empire by establishing colonies and trading posts in the eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea as well as continuing its commercial monopolies in the Byzantine Empire. At the same time, Venice began to conquer the territory adjoining it in northern Italy.
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br /> The Decline of the Church
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