1 - Introduction

Summary

this volume replaces the seventh volume of the Cambridge Medieval History, which was seen through the press in 1932 by C.W. Previté-Orton and Z.N. Brooke. That volume, subtitled Decline of the Empire and Papacy, dealt with ‘roughly speaking, the fourteenth century’, though that was interpreted generously – from 1252 in the case of Spain, and from c. 1270 in the accounts of England, France and Germany, while terminal dates for some chapters ran well into the fifteenth century. Moreover, in a significant proportion of the volume, especially in thematic chapters devoted to the Jews, medieval estates, peasant life, the early Renaissance and medieval mysticism, discussion was set in a broader context, often covering the whole period from 1100 to 1500, with a consequent diminution of specific information on the characteristics of the fourteenth century itself, a period recognised by all scholars, then as now, as amongst the most turbulent, even apocalyptic, of the entire Middle Ages or, as one well-informed contemporary, Filippo Villani, starkly put it, ‘this shipwreck of a century which is going from bad to worse’.

Not that there was any lack of information in Decline of the Empire and Papacy in other respects: approximately three-quarters of the volume was devoted to traditional political history within a strong narrative framework, above all the deeds of popes and emperors, kings and princes, parliaments and estates. Some chapters can still be mined with profit although there are many new sources and, in most cases, a huge modern secondary literature now available to reconstruct the sequence of events or to reinterpret the role of individuals.