Scandinavia, Germany, and western Poland. It also affected some of the Baltic states except for the far eastern Baltic, which was affected only indirectly. The famine was bounded to the south by the Alps and the Pyrenees. Consequences The Great Famine is noteworthy for the number of people who died, the vast geographic area that was affected, its length, and its lasting consequences. Church Nearly all human societies at this time attributed natural disasters as being divine retribution for their apparent misdeeds. In a society whose final recourse for nearly all problems had been religion, and Roman Catholicism was the only tolerated Christian faith, no amount of prayer seemed effective against the root causes of the famine. Thus the famine undermined the institutional authority of the Roman Catholic Church, and helped lay the foundations for later movements that were deemed heretical by the Roman Catholic Church, as they opposed the papacy and blamed the perceived failure of prayer upon corruption and doctrinal errors within the Roman Catholic Church. Cultural Medieval Europe in the 14th century had already experienced widespread social violence, and even acts then punishable by death such as rape and murder were demonstrably far more common (especially relative to the population size), compared with modern times. The famine led to a stark increase in crime, even among those not normally inclined to criminal activity, because people would resort to any means to feed themselves or their families. For the next several decades after the famine, Europe took on a tougher and more violent edge. It became an even less amicable place than during the 12th and the 13th centuries. This could be seen across all segments of society, perhaps most strikingly in the way warfare was conducted in the 14th century during the Hundred Years' War, when chivalry ended, as opposed to the 12th and the 13th centuries when nobles were more likely to die by accident in tournament games than on the field of battle. The famine undermined confidence in medieval governments, due to their failure to deal with its resulting crises. This had particularly dire consequences for Edward II, who was already an unpopular monarch. The famine in England was therefore primarily seen as divine retribution for the perceived misrule of the king as opposed to alleged misconduct within the Church, and contributed to his eventual downfall. Population The Great Famine marked a clear end to