The End of an Era

Abstract

A further dimension is added to our understanding of the vita civile of the early fourteenth century by the knowledge that it was not destined to last. Although contemporaries had no real premonition of the fact, Italian society, which had been gradually climbing since the dark days of the tenth century, had now reached a plateau of prosperity and in front of it loomed an abyss. The catastrophes of the mid-fourteenth century, of which the Black Death was the most spectacular, affected the whole of Europe and other parts of the world besides, but nowhere were their results more marked than in communal Italy. As the most complex economy in the medieval world, Italy had most to lose from the disruption caused by famine, plague and warfare; the contraction of markets hit hardest the Italian merchants who handled such a high proportion of the long-distance trade. The ravages of mercenary armies which inflicted so much damage to France during the Hundred Years’ War were at least as severe in parts of Italy, where, around 1350, free companies of soldiers and camp-followers numbering tens of thousands lived off the country uncontrolled by any political authority, in a way reminiscent of the wandering barbarian invaders at the time of the breakdown of the Roman Empire.