CLOSE OF THE MIDDLE AGES. Intellectually and spiritually, the closing centuries of the Middle Ages represented ferment and growth. Renewed acquaintance with the literature of the ancient world (see HUMANISII) widened the narrow hori zon of mediawal thought. The invention of printing immensely accelerated the diffusion of new ideas. The basis of political power also was shifted. The invention of gunpowder com pleted the change begun by English bows and Swiss pikes; it destroyed the military superiority of the armored horseman and the power of the feudal nobility. The opening by the Portuguese of the sea route to India, and the discovery, under the auspices of Spain, of a new world in the \Vest, signified primarily for modern Europe the open ing, of new sources of wealth, and an increase of the power of the burgess class and of the Crown. Later it was to signify the expansion of Euro pean civilization over the world; and, last of all, the subordination of European politics to world polities. At the close of the thirteenth
century the power of the Papacy had begun to decrease. England and France were already as serting. as other countries were later to assert, the right of the State to limit ecclesiastical jurisdic tion and taxation and the taking of land into the 'dead hand.' (See MoimmAIN, STATUTES OF.) Early in the fourteenth century the French kings brought the Papacy under their control, and for seventy years the popes were in exile at Avignon. Other popes were set up at Rome. The schism was ended by Church councils in the fifteenth cen tury, but reforms proposed by the councils were not (-pried into operation. Reformation through revolt found its leaders in Wiclif and Huss, and the attempt to crush the Hussite revolt led in the fifteenth century to a long and bloody war.
See WICLIF; 11USS HUSSITES.