 The unity of the Roman Catholic Church was shattered by the Western Schism.The Holy Roman Empire was also in decline; in the aftermath of the Great Interregnum (1247–1273), the Empire lost cohesion and politically the separate dynasties of the various German states became more important than their common empire.The expression "Crisis of the Late Middle Ages" is used commonly in western historiography, especially in English and German, and somewhat less among other western European scholarship to refer individually or collectively to different crises besetting Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries.