Terms –

Black Death - a form of bubonic plague that spread over Europe in the 14th century and
killed an estimated quarter of the population.

Flagellants - groups of men and women who practiced public flagellation as a penance.

Jacquerie - insurrection of peasants against the nobility in northeastern France in 1358-so

named from the nobles' habit of referring contemptuously to any peasant as Jacques, or
Jacques Bonhomme

Ciompi - a popular revolt in late medieval Florence by wool carders known as ciompi
who rose up in 1378 to demand a voice in the commune's ordering.

Joan of Arc - A French military leader of the fifteenth century, a national heroine who at
the age of seventeen took up arms to establish the rightful king on the French throne. She
claimed to have heard God speak to her in voices. These claims eventually led to her trial
for heresy and her execution by burning at the stake. Joan of Arc is a saint of the Roman
Catholic Church.

Estates-General - the representative assembly of the three “estates” or orders of the

realm: the clergy and the nobility (both privileged minorities) as well as the Third Estate,
which represented the majority of the people.

Golden Bull of Charles IV - a decree issued by a Reichstag in Nuremberg headed by

Emperor Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor that fixed, for a period of more than four
hundred years, important aspects of the constitutional structure of the Holy Roman
Empire. It was named the Golden Bull for the golden seal it carried.

Statute of Laborers - a law enacted by the English parliament under King Edward III in
1351 in response to a labor shortage. It was introduced by John Hale. The Black Death or
Bubonic Plague, which killed more than one-third of the population of Europe (mostly
peasants), caused a dramatic decrease in the supply of labor. Landowners suddenly faced
a sharp increase in competition for workers. Laborers had increased bargaining power
and commanded higher wages. The increase in labor cost also led to inflation throughout
the economy. The elite class lamented the sudden shift in economic power.

Scutage - feudal payment, usually in cash, given in lieu of actual military service due
from a vassal to an overlord. It applied especially to the vassals of the king.

Villein - peasant under the manorial system of medieval Western Europe. The term
applies especially to serfs in England, where by the 13th cent. The entire unfree peasant
population came to be called villein. The villein was a person who was attached to the
manor and who performed the servile work of the lord and in some respects was
considered the property of the lord.
Boniface VIII - born Benedetto Caetani, was Pope of the Roman Catholic Church from
1294 to 1303. Best remembered for his feuds with Dante, who placed him in a circle of
Hell in his Divina Commedia, and with King Philip IV of France.

Unam Sanctam – statement of papal supremacy issued by Pope Boniface VIII in 1302 in
the heat of his conflict with the French King Philip IV. It was the strongest statement ever
made by a pope on the supremacy of the spiritual authority over the temporal authority.

Avignon - a city in and the capital of Vaucluse, in South Eastern France, on the Rhone
River: papal residence 1309–77.

Great Schism - a period of division in the Roman Catholic Church, 1378–1417, over
papal succession, during which there were two, or sometimes three, claimants to the
papal office.

Conciliarism - in the Roman Catholic church, a theory that a general council of the
church has greater authority than the pope and may, if necessary, depose him.

Council of Constance - the council in 1414-1418 that succeeded in ending the Great
Schism in the Roman Catholic Church

Brothers of Common Life - a Roman Catholic pietist religious community founded in the
14th century by Gerard Groote, formerly a successful and worldly educator who had had a
religious experience and preached a life of simple devotion to Jesus Christ. Without
taking up irrevocable vows, the Brethren banded together in communities, giving up their
worldly goods to live chaste and strictly regulated lives in common houses, devoting
every waking hour to attending divine service, reading and preaching of sermons,
laboring productively and taking meals in common that were accompanied by the reading
aloud of scripture.

Decameron - a collection of 100 novellas by Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio, probably

begun in 1350 and finished in 1353. It is a medieval allegorical work best known for its
bawdy tales of love, appearing in all its possibilities from the erotic to the tragic.

Divine Comedy - an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in
1321. It is widely considered the preeminent work of Italian literature, and is seen as one
of the greatest works of world literature. The poem's imaginative and allegorical vision of
the afterlife is a culmination of the medieval world-view as it had developed in the
Western Church.

Meister Eckhart – a German mystical theologian. He studied and taught in the chief
Dominican schools, notably at Paris, Strasbourg, and Cologne, and held a series of
offices in his order. Eckhart communicated in various ways his burning sense of God's
nearness to humanity.
Canterbury Tales - a collection of stories written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century
(two of them in prose, the rest in verse). The tales, some of which are originals and others
not, are contained inside a frame tale and told by a collection of pilgrims on a pilgrimage
from Southwark to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury
Cathedral.

Mysticism – a doctrine of an immediate spiritual intuition of truths believed to transcend

ordinary understanding, or of a direct, intimate union of the soul with god through
contemplation or ecstasy

Christine de Pizan - a Venetian-born woman of the medieval era who strongly challenged
misogyny and stereotypes prevalent in the male-dominated realm of the arts. As a poet,
she was well known and highly regarded in her own day.