Middle Age - The decay of the Middle Age

The late Middle Age, "the decay of the Middle Age", was a period of transition. It was an economic junction - which causes remain without explanation - that originated a certain insecurity and social effervescence. In the century XIV the bubonic plague devastated Europe, marking the epoch with the own shady clutches. The Black Death, or bubonic plague, started in Asia and diffused all along the commercial roads, at first in the South and West of Europe, and after by the north and east. More than a third of the European population paid with the own life their tribute to that disease.

During the Middle Age, the European peasants were strictly bond to the own lords. Besides working all day long in the field, they should deliver part of the harvest to the owner of the land. After the passage to the monetary economy, the owners of the Western Europe started to receive a constant sum of money by the renting of the own lands, and the labour passed to charge the own salary in coin and not in genders. The bubonic plague, decimated the population - origin of the lack of workers - caused the high of the salaries and of the prices. Precisely the high price of the cereals allowed that so many peasants could get free from the servitude, buying the old lands for renting. Nevertheless, the rise of the salaries found a resistance of the landlords, who in certain parts imposed such rigorous conditions to the workers that sometimes these arrived to the armed insurrection. In the cities, the active traders got the industry of businessmen going: they employed those that worked in their home, providing to them the tools and the row materials for the own production that they used to sell in distant markets. The traders that with the own commercial transitions had assembled a big capital converted into bankers, and passed to finance the enterprises of kings and popes, introducing in the medieval society, strictly cooperative, a capitalistic organization.

The bubonic plague, the economic and social transformations, the debilitation of the power of the Church inculcated in the medieval men the insecurity and the anguish, which assumed delirious expressions. The devastating bubonic plague was considered a punishment of God because of the human sins, against which they tried to defend with penitence and processions. The belief in witches and the fear of the devil and of the death dominated most people. The solid position of the Church started to vacillate before the pressure of the internal fights and of the opposition.