The Dance of Death in Late Medieval and Renaissance Europe

This volume investigates environmental and political crisis that occurred in Europe during the late Middle Ages and the early Modern Period, and considers their effects on people's lives.

This volume investigates environmental and political crises that occurred in Europe during the late Middle Ages and the early Modern Period, and considers their effects on people's lives. At this time, the fragile human existence was imagined as a 'Dance of Death', where anyone, regardless of social status or age, could perish unexpectedly. This book covers events ranging from cooling temperatures and the onset of the Little Ice Age, to the frequent occurrence of epidemic disease, pest infestations, food shortages and famines.

Covering the mid-fourteenth to mid-seventeenth centuries, this collection of essays considers a range of countries between Iceland (to the north), Italy (to the south), France (to the west) and the westernmost parts of Russia (to the east). This wide-reaching volume considers how deeply climate variability and changes affected and changed society in the late medieval to early modern period, and asks what factors, other than climate, interfered in the development of environmental stress and socio-economic crises.

This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Environmental and Climate History, Environmental Humanities, Medieval and Early Modern History and Historical Geography, as well as Climate Change and Environmental Sciences.

Autorentext

Andrea Kiss is a research fellow at the Institute of Hydraulic Engineering and Water Resources Management at the Vienna University of Technology, Austria, also affiliated with the Department of Auxiliary Historical Sciences at the University of Szeged in Hungary.

Kathleen Pribyl is an associate fellow at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, UK, and also affiliated with the Oeschger Centre of Climate Change Research at the University of Bern in Switzerland.

Inhalt

Introduction PART 1: NORTHERN AND WESTERN EUROPE 1. Famines, mortality, livestock deaths and scholarship: environmental stress in Iceland ca. 15001700 Astrid E.J. Ogilvie 2. Winter severity in medieval Sweden: the documentary evidence Dag Retsö and Johan Söderberg 3. The grain trade, economic distress and social disorder at a time of environmental stress in East Anglia, 1400ca. 1440 Kathleen Pribyl 4. War, climatic stress and environmental degradation during the 15th and 16th centuries: the case of the north Flemish coastal landscape in the estuary of the Western Scheldt Adriaan M.J. de Kraker PART 2: CENTRAL EUROPE 5. From the alpine mountain height to the Swiss Lake District: climate and society in the city and Republic of Berne from the 14th to the 16th centuries Chantal Camenisch 6. Apocalyptic riders in the borderlands: dealing with locust invasion, diseases and war in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Eastern and Southern Austria Christian Rohr 7. A dynamic interplay of weather, biological factors and socio-economic interactions: late 15th-centuryearly 16th-century crises in Hungary Andrea Kiss 8. The extreme year of 1540 in terms of climate variation from the perspective of historical sources derived from the Polish and Baltic territories Wiesaw Nowosad and Piotr Oliski PART 3. SOUTHERN EUROPE AND BEYOND 9. Migration patterns from Dalmatian hinterland during and after the great hunger of 14531454 as consequence of environmental and political crisis Zrinka Nikoli Jakus 10. The "Danse Macabre" among climatic variability, famines and epidemics in Northern Italy during the 15th and 16th centuries: an overview through documentary sources Silvia Enzi, Francesca Becherini and Mirca Sghedoni 11. 'Toute chose se desnature': environmental changes of the 14th century in the perspective of contemporary witnesses (c. 13301400) Thomas Labbé 12. Chronology and impact of a global moment in the 13th century: the Samalas eruption revisited Martin Bauch