End of the Middle Age: 1273-1453

Eleanor Constance Lodge, (1869-1936), was the first woman to receive a Doctorate of Letters from the University of Oxford. In this short survey, the 180 years between 1273 and 1453 are characterized as a period of "transition--a time in which medieval characteristics were decaying and modern characteristics were growing up." This is the age of Joan of Arc, of the recovery of Spain from the Moors, of the failed Crusades of the Teutonic Knights, and of the union of Poland and Lithuania under the strong house of Jagello. The Swiss Republic rose, while schism divided the Papacy and the German states. And all the while the European powers were wrangling among themselves, the Ottoman Turks were advancing across the eastern Mediterranean. The book closes with the fall of Constantinople before the overwhelming assault by land and sea of the great general, Mehmed the Conqueror, which marked the end, after 1500 years, of the Eastern Roman Empire. - Summary by Pamela Nagami