Age of Disaster

The 14^th Century saw the whole European world turned upside down.

• The last Crusaders were thrown out of the Middle East, in a decisive defeat for Christendom.
• The papacy, for a thousand years a pillar of civil stability,  was disputed.  The cracks in Western Christian unity that led to the Reformation were already visible in the 1300s.
• The Hundred Years War laid waste not only to much of France, but also to much of the institution of knighthood.  Peasants with longbows wiped out noble heavy cavalry, first at Crecy and again at Agincourt.
• And, to top it all off,  the Black Plague killed nearly one third of the population. 

No wonder, then, that many believed that the scourge of God had fallen on them, and sought  by penance and piety to regain the grace of God that seemed so dramatically to have been withdrawn.

What I find amazing is that even in the face of such disaster people created art and architecture and technology that we still admire to this day.