The Age of Chaucer

The Age of Chaucer

The Age of Chaucer covers the period from 1 340 to 1400. The principal events, trends and movements of this Age in the political, economic, social, religious, and literary spheres are indicated below and are important for a proper understanding of the background of Chaucer's life and work.

War and France

As a consequence of the terriorial ambitions of Edward Ill, the Hundred Years' War began in 1338 between England and France. In the course of this war, Edward Ill secured English supremacy over the English Channel by thei naval victory of Sluys ( 1340), establshed the prestige of the English soldiery and the military supremacy of the English archers by the startling victory of Crecy (1346), and in 1347 captured Calais. A victory was won by his son, the Black Prince, at Poitiers (September, 1356), and Edward Ill was confirmedi in the independent sovereignty of Aquitaine by the treaty of Bretigny in 1360. Edward Ill was the first king who conspicuously directed policy to commercial expansion, the security of the trade with Flanders being one of the objects of his French wars.

Foreign Trade

Edward Ill realised that it was an important duty of the government to Joster foreign trade. The chief export of that lime was raw wool. When Calais became an English possession in 1347, Edward Ill made that city the sole centre for foreign sales and ordered that all wool should be shipped thither in English ships. This helped to promote the growth of two more national industries-shipbuilding and seafaring. The other branch of the wool industry-the manufacture of cloth-also began to make headway in England at this time.

Chivalry

Edward's reign marks the highest development of medieval civilization in England. It was also the midsummer of English chivalry. Although several changes in the life and thought of the people were taking place, "in some respects Chaucer's England is still characterstically medieval, and nowhere is the conservative feeling more strongly marked than in the persistence of chivalry which reached perhaps its fullest development at this time."

(Comotion -Rickett defines chivalry as a "strange amalgam of love, war and religion ".)

The Black Death

Crecy and Poitiers were the most glorious events in the reign of Edward Ill but the most epoch-making of all was the Black Death, a pestilence which swept over Europe and reached England in 1348. There had been epidemics before, but this outbreak of 1348-49 was the worst that ever befell. Some villages were wiped out altogether. The London graveyards were soon filled. The lower classes fell by hundreds in a day. Wailing and desolation filled every city. Nearly half the people of England died, and two centuries passed before the population of the country again rose to what it had been before 1348.

Statute of Labourers

Nearly all the labourers who had escaped the plague left the country. Labour was so expensive that the crops were often left to wither and the price of food rose four-fold. To check this evil, Parliament in 1351 passed a Statute of Labourers, compelling workmen to accept the wages in use before the plague. It was supplemented by a second statute in 1353, forbidding labourers to quit the localities in which they worked. (Thus was villanage restored). But it proved impossible to carry such regulations into effect. Landlords were compelled to pay higher wages lest they should get no crops at all.

Statutes to Limit Papal Authority

The reign of Edward Ill was marked by the passage of two other statutes which were designed to limit the power of the Pope over the English Church. The Papal power had aroused a good deal of hostility in England as early as the reign of Henry Ill. With the increase of national feeling in the time of Edward Ill, this hostility grew much stronger. The Statute of Provisors was passed in 1351 to forbid the revenues of English benefices to be sent to the Pope, while the Statute of Praemunire (1353) made it illegal to bring law cases before the Papal courts, or to bring Papal bulls (orders) into the country without the King's permission.

Wycliffe's Attacks on the English Church

These statutes were mainly designed to protect the English clergy from being unduly dominated by the Pope; but there had long been a feeling of dissatisfaction with the clergy themselves. The Church had grown enormously wealthy and the desire to share in its wealth attracted persons to become clergymen who had no claim to respect. Some of the monasteries were badly run; the friars were no longer holy and unselfish; and the higher ranks of clergy—archdeacons, deans, and bishops-often lived luxuriously, devoting themselves to worldly interests instead of to their spiritual duties. There was a general feeling that the church was becoming less and less worthy of its wealth and privileges, and this feeling was now focussed by the preaching of John Wycliffe who emerged as the chief adversary and assailant of the church. Beginning as an enemy of the vices and pretensions of the clergymen and as an advocate of their apostolic life, he went on to attack the sacerdotal theory of religion and to question the doctrine transubstantiation. He organized a band of "poor preachers" who went about the country, spreading his message. Those who were converted came to be known as the "Lollards". Wycliffe was condemned by the Archbishop of Canterbury for his "heretical" views, and the Lollards suffered much persecution. By virtue of his attack on the forms and ceremonies and thei malpractices in the Church, Wycliffe became the forerunner of the Reformation and has been called "the Morning Star of the Reformation". Wcliffe initiated the principle of making the words of the scripture the criterion of Christian doctrine, and he translated the Bible into English, a rendering which was the basis of all later translations and which may be regarded as the first English prose classic.

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The Age of Chaucer -Introduction