Late Middle Ages

Europeans were forced to seek new trading routes, leading to the Spanish expedition under Christopher Columbus to the Americas in 1492 and Vasco da Gama's voyage to Africa and India in 1498.

It is now generally acknowledged that conditions were vastly different north and south of the Alps, and the term "late Middle Ages" is often avoided entirely within Italian historiography.

While the Grand Duchy of Moscow was beginning to repel the Mongols, and the Iberian kingdoms completed the Reconquista of the peninsula and turned their attention outwards, the Balkans fell under the dominance of the Ottoman Empire.

[28] The war ended in the accession of Henry VII of the House of Tudor, who continued the work started by the Yorkist kings of building a strong, centralized monarchy.

[29] While England's attention was thus directed elsewhere, the Hiberno-Norman lords in Ireland were becoming gradually more assimilated into Irish society, and the island was allowed to develop virtual independence under English overlordship.

[34] At the same time, the County of Burgundy and the wealthy Burgundian Netherlands came into the Holy Roman Empire under Habsburg control, setting up conflict for centuries to come.

[48] Under the reign of Ivan the Great (1462–1505), Moscow became a major regional power, and the annexation of the vast Republic of Novgorod in 1478 laid the foundations for a Russian national state.

[57] With the return of the Pope to Rome in 1378, the Papal State developed into a major secular power, culminating in the morally corrupt papacy of Alexander VI.

[58] Florence grew to prominence amongst the Italian city-states through financial business, and the dominant Medici family became important promoters of the Renaissance through their patronage of the arts.

[64] Portugal had during the 15th century – particularly under Henry the Navigator – gradually explored the coast of Africa, and in 1498, Vasco da Gama found the sea route to India.

[65] The Spanish monarchs met the Portuguese challenge by financing the expedition of Christopher Columbus to find a western sea route to India, leading to the discovery of the Americas in 1492.

One exception to this was North-Eastern Europe, whose population managed to maintain low levels of violence due to a more organized society resulting from extensive and successful trade.

[86] Through battles such as Courtrai (1302), Bannockburn (1314), and Morgarten (1315), it became clear to the great territorial princes of Europe that the military advantage of the feudal cavalry was lost and that a well equipped infantry was preferable.

[104] Even though the unity of the Western Church was to last for another hundred years, and though the Papacy was to experience greater material prosperity than ever before, the Great Schism had done irreparable damage.

[114] The subsequent Hussite Wars fell apart due to internal quarrels and did not result in religious or national independence for the Czechs, but both the Catholic Church and the German element within the country were weakened.

[123] The increasingly dominant position of the Ottoman Empire in the eastern Mediterranean presented an impediment to trade for the Christian nations of the west, who in turn started looking for alternatives.

Families like the Fuggers in Germany, the Medicis in Italy, and the de la Poles in England and individuals like Jacques Cœur in France would help finance the wars of kings, achieving great political influence in the process.

Though primarily an attempt to revitalise the classical languages, the movement also led to innovations within the fields of science, art, and literature, helped by impulses from Byzantine scholars who had to seek refuge in the west after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453.

Ockham introduced the principle of parsimony – or Occam's razor – whereby a simple theory is preferred to a more complex one and speculation on unobservable phenomena is avoided.

Particularly within the field of theories of motion, great advances were made, when such scholars as Jean Buridan, Nicole Oresme, and the Oxford Calculators challenged the work of Aristotle.

[143] Certain technological inventions of the period – whether of Arab or Chinese origin or unique European innovations – were to have great influence on political and social developments, in particular gunpowder, the printing press, and the compass.

[152] Though not – as previously believed – the inventor of oil painting, Jan van Eyck was a champion of the new medium and used it to create works of great realism and minute detail.

The crowning work of the period was the Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, with Giotto's clock tower, Ghiberti's baptistery gates, and Brunelleschi's cathedral dome of unprecedented proportions.

[164] In England, Geoffrey Chaucer helped establish Middle English as a literary language with his Canterbury Tales, which contained a wide variety of narrators and stories (including some translated from Boccaccio).

A larger number of plays survive from France and Germany in this period, and some type of religious drama was performed in nearly every European country in the late Middle Ages.

[174] The end of medieval drama came about due to a number of factors, including the weakening power of the Catholic Church, the Protestant Reformation, and the banning of religious plays in many countries.

Hunyadi was considered one of the most relevant military figures of the 15th century: Pope Pius II awarded him the title of Athleta Christi, or Champion of Christ, for being the only hope of resisting the Ottomans from advancing to Central and Western Europe.

This battle became a real crusade against the Muslims, as the peasants were motivated by the Franciscan friar Saint John of Capistrano, who came from Italy predicating him holy war.

King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary (1458–1490) was one of the most prominent figures of the period, directing campaigns to the West, conquering Bohemia in answer to the pope's call for help against the Hussite Protestants.

At the Battle of Mohács, the forces of the Ottoman Empire annihilated the Hungarian army and Louis II of Hungary drowned in the Csele Creek while trying to escape.