Later Middle Ages: A History of Western Europe 1254-1494

The years between 1254 and 1494 forged the modern world. When Emperor Frederick II died, he left a vacuum that shattered the Holy Roman Empire into hundreds of semi-independent territories, while in the thriving city-states of Italy and Germany, commerce and capitalism began their long ascent. This was an era of extraordinary turbulence and creativity: the Great Schism that split Christendom into warring factions, the Hundred Years' War that forged England and France into nation-states, and the Renaissance that remade art, thought, and human self-conception. Mowat traces these sweeping transformations with precision, from the fall of Constantinople to the rise of Spain as a European power. Here too we meet the towering figures of Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch, whose works still shape our imagination. This is history at its essential: the story of how the medieval world cracked open and something new emerged.