Creativity In The Middle Ages

The Middle Ages, despite also being referred to as the Dark Ages, was a time of high creativity. The misconception that it was "dark" is most likely due to the two periods directly before, and after it, which had more advancement and focus on learning and education. This period of creativity would not last. A series of crises would strike the people of medieval Europe in a manner extremely similar to those foretold in the Bible, brought by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. It was so similar in fact, that the people may have believed that Judgment Day had come. These crises would destroy the very foundations of this feudal society such as strict social order and manrialism. In turn, it would help bring about the Renaissance.
The first crisis
It seemed that horseman War, with his sword and blood red stallion, had decided to set out to destroy the Medieval people's peace. It began once France and Britain's straining relationship finally reached a breaking point. France and Bortain went to war and battled for over a century in a war that would be known as the Hundred Years' War. It's cause is most directly related to the confiscation of the Duchy of Aquitaine from King Edward III of England by King Philip VI of France. The land was formerly given to the Royal Family of England as a fief, but king Philip, among others, decided to take it back because he felt that King Edward had not fulfilled his obligation to act as a vassal of the King of France. This was very last straw that set them to war. The tension that the two had been building up had finally become too great. King Edward's response was to proclaim himself the King of France because of blood from his mother's side. The series of battles and wars that ensued became known as the Hundred Years'
During this time, several Genoese trading ships made port in Italy after trading in Asia. Unbeknownst to them, they brought the plague along which was spread through the air and by rats and fleas. Once someone was infected, they would spread it to other people by coughing or sneezing. This was an especially terrible disease to get at the time because the medical knowledge was very limited and poor. The probability of surviving was almost nothing. It was highly contagious and people were dying in quantities so large, it was impossible to give the dead their own graves. At best they were given shallow mass graves, and at worst they were just left to rot where they died. People abandoned family members for fear of getting sick, priests refused to administer last rights, and doctors refused to see patients. Nobles simply locked themselves away in manor houses in the countryside while the pope had "walls" of fire put around him in an attempt to keep the disease away. It seemed as if Death himself were riding among the people, slaughtering all that were in sight. Their was no reprieve, no matter how far one went, it would still get them. By the end of the Black Death outbreak an estimated one-third of the European population had