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Welcome to European History Primary Sources (EHPS), an index of scholarly websites that offer online access to digitised primary sources on the history of Europe. The websites listed on EHPS are not only meta-sources but also include invented archives and born digital sources. Each website that is listed in EHPS has a short description and is categorised according to country, language, period, subject and type of source. The portal can be searched in a variety of ways. The listed websites can be accessed for free, though sometimes a registration is required.

The 14th century was an era of catastrophes. Some of them man-made, such as the Hundred Years' War, the Avignon Papacy, and the Great Schism. These were caused by human beings, and we shall consider them a bit later. There were two more or less natural disasters either of which one would think would have been sufficient to throw medieval Europe into a real "Dark Ages": the Great Famine and the Black Death. Each caused millions of deaths, and each in its way demonstrated in dramatic fashion the existence of new vulnerabilities in Western European society. Together they subjected the population of medieval Europe to tremendous strains, leading many people to challenge old institutions and doubt traditional values, and, by so doing, these calamities altered the path of European development in many areas.

Welcome to The History Guide's Lectures on Ancient and Medieval European History. These lectures were written over the past ten years and served as the basis for my western civilization and upper level European history courses at Florida Atlantic University (Davie, FL), Broward Community College (Coconut Creek, FL), Vance-Granville Community College (Henderson, NC), Meredith College (Raleigh, NC) and Wake Technical Community College (Raleigh, NC)

The ECHO Content: Seed Collections of a Growing Web of Culture  European Cultural Heritage Online

"The crusades were arguably the greatest migration event that took place in medieval Europe. In the 12th and 13th centuries, hundreds of thousands of Europeans travelled to the eastern Mediterranean on military campaigns, pilgrimage and to trade. "The crusades are often blamed for the spread of disease during the medieval period," explained Mitchell, whose work was funded by the British Academy. "But only limited research has investigated which diseases might have been spread, in which direction, eastwards or westwards, and what impact this may have had upon the endemic patterns of disease.""

A Swiss-led team of scientists has used tree rings to detail 2,500 years of European summers, identifying the link between climate and major historical changes.

"Why do maps always show the north as up? For those who don't just take it for granted, the common answer is that Europeans made the maps and they wanted to be on top. But there's really no good reason for the north to claim top-notch cartographic real estate over any other bearing, as an examination of old maps from different places and periods can confirm."

"EuroDocs: Online Sources for European History Selected Transcriptions, Facsimiles and Translations"

Hroswitha of Gandersheim is considered Germany's first woman literary writer. Among philosophers she is known as a female 'lover of wisdom' during a time when few Europeans were engaged in the intellectual life. It should be noted that her name is sometimes spelled Roswith, Roswitha or Hrosuit.

The Black Death of the Middle Ages was a truly devastating pandemic - a pandemic being the Military-Industrial Full Blown Version of an epidemic. In the mid-1300s, the Black Death killed at least one third of the European population, so it was truly horrible. So most people think that the Black Death began in Europe - but it didn't.

"Introduction: This essay is concerned not with the formation of all European states of the first millenium A.D., but to highlight and then briefly explore a recurring pattern of historical development on the fringes of the great empires of the era. In the Germanic world beyond the frontiers of the Roman state in the first half of the period, and later in the Slavic world bordering the Carolingian and Ottonian states in the second, there emerged, over time, even more substantial political entities. This paper will compare the processes of development in each case, to establish that they were indeed parallel, and then concentrate upon causation. Wht should history have repeated itself in this way?"

"Recent work has brought together what we know of the Anglo-Saxon and medieval cathedrals beneath and around Wren's St Paul's, the City of London's most important historic building and monument. Now the little-known medieval cathedral, destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666, can be revealed as of European importance. It dominated the City and should be compared with other cathedrals - Ely, Norwich and Winchester."

British Arts and Humanities Data Service can be searched by time period, subject or geographic area.

Euopean History WIki Book. See the Preface and Chapter 1

Consequences of the Black Death

So much death could not help but tear economic and social structures apart. Lack of peasants and laborers sent wages soaring, and the value of land plummeted. For the first time in history the scales tipped against wealthy landlords as peasants and serfs gained more bargaining power. Without architects, masons and artisans, great cathedrals and castles remained unfinished for hundreds of years. Governments, lacking officials, floundered in their attempts to create order out of chaos.