The stark portrait of the vital statistics of the European economy figures prominently in most traditional histories of medieval Europe. The image is a graph of the population and gross product data revealing the shapely, still-rising curves of the thirteenth century, followed by a period of flattening in the early fourteenth, and then an ugly, precipitous drop during the latter half of that century. The downward slope continues, although more slowly, until the middle of the fifteenth century, when a hesitant, gradual upturn occurs and steepens, angled for the rapid growth of the sixteenth century. Though more comely, the picture of the economy in 1500 is still not as healthy as that of two centuries earlier.

This macroeconomic overview has the advantage of broad perspective, rather like viewing the earth from an aircraft flying at 35, 000 feet. Our closer (or lower altitude) look at the economy of the late Middle Ages in Chapter 6 (see page 141) is also helpful in giving recognition to the shorter-term variations in economic activity, which occur in approximate thirty year spans. But business is done at ground level, the work of infantry, not air force, so our conclusions offer nuance and depth to an overly quantitative view of the period. There is no disputing the macroeconomic data cited above, depicting the European economy of the early sixteenth century finally struggling back to something approaching the level achieved two hundred years earlier.