black death final--- version-4
TRANSCRIPT
THE IMPACT OF THE BLACK DEATH ON EUROPE
Molly Corti
HISTORY 497, Senior Seminar
December 14, 2015
1
Between 1347 and 1350 the Black Death spread from Central Asia to
the Middle East and Europe. The disease also afflicted China, although it is
not clear whether it started there or it was exported to China from Central
Asia. According to many historians, “the great death,” as it was called by the
people who lived through it, ended the lives of millions but made European
society significantly more modern and more open to change than it had been
previously.
The plague was so devastating that many believed that the Black
Death would be the end of the world. When the disease struck Europe in the
middle of the fourteenth century, the people were already in a weakened
condition due to overpopulation, natural disasters, and lack of food or a poor
diet. As the disease ravaged Europe, many explanations were proposed as to
why this disaster could happen, most based on religious beliefs. Medical
responses included bloodletting and beliefs in “bad air” and poisoned ground
water. The Black Death was an event that can be studied in respect to how it
began, how quickly it spread, how deadly it was, and how it was understood
by those who lived throughout it. But the ultimate importance of the plague
is the consequences and changes that it forced upon Europe. The plague was
responsible for far reaching cultural, religious, economic and agricultural
changes in Europe, many related to the sharp decline in population. Although
the Black Death devastated Europe, “it guaranteed that in the generations
2
after 1348 Europe would not simply continue the pattern of society and
culture of the thirteenth century.”2
Most historians believe that the great epidemic known in history as the
Black Death began in Central Asia in the 1330s along the Silk Road that
connects China with the Mediterranean. The unification of much of Central
Asia in a Mongol Empire and the growing popularity of trade between Europe
and China helped spread the disease beyond its original area. Europeans first
came in contact with the disease at the siege of Caffa, a trading outpost of
the Italian city of Genoa, located in the Crimean peninsula on the Black Sea.
While attempting to conquer the area, a Mongol army was devastated by the
plague. The Mongols withdrew from Caffa, but the disease had begun to
spread and the Genoese were infected. Next, Genoese ships brought the
disease to the Byzantine Empire then on to Western Europe.3 The plague
soon stormed the European continent and terrified its people.
In Europe, Sicily was the first area to be struck in the year 1347. The
first documented case was in October when twelve Genoese ships arrived at
the port in the city of Messina.4 From Messina, the disease spread further,
first by sea to other port cities in Italy, France, and Spain, and then by land,
eventually affecting the entire continent. Attempts by municipal authorities
to stop contagion by searching all ships and driving away those carrying dead
2 Herlihy, David. The Black Death and the Transformation of the West: Harvard University Press, 1997. 383 Kelly, John. The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2005.7-104 Aberth, John. The Black Death: The Great Mortality of 1348-1350: A Brief History with Documents. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2005. 1.
3
and sick people were either unsuccessful or only managed to delay contagion
by a few weeks, as in Genoa and Venice.5
There have been disagreements about the actual source of the illness
based on the speed of transmission, mortality rate, season of year, and
symptoms.6 The description of the symptoms of the disease by
contemporaries does not match the symptoms of any current disease. As a
result, some medical researchers have argued that the Black Plague could
have been the product of a combination of diseases. 7 However, there is one
theory that is more widely accepted. This theory is that the illness was
caused by a single deadly bacterium, Yersinia pestis. The bacterium is
thought to have been spread by fleas that feasted on infected rats who first
arrived in Europe on merchant ships. The rat that is more often blamed is the
Black Rat, a species that evolved during the Ice Age, most likely in present
day India. These rats are known to jump high, be able to chew through brick,
and squeeze through quarter inch holes. Although the rats prefer to live in
one place, they travel when hungry and this is how they came to Europe,
although it is not clear when they first arrived. Medieval Europe was a perfect
place for rats to thrive because the streets were full of trash. Livestock
roamed the streets, human waste was thrown out windows and butchers left
blood and waste on the ground.8 After a person was infected with the bacteria
5 Kelly, John . 90-94.6 Theilmann, John, and Frances Cate 2007.” A Plague of Plagues”: The Problem of Plagues Diagnosis in Medieval England.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 37, no3: 371-393. Academic Search complete, EBSCO(accessed November 16, 2015: 372.7 Ibid.8 Kelly, John. 66-69.
4
that caused the plague, it commonly took between two days and a full week
before symptoms would be seen. 9 The disease caused terrible symptoms
including painful swelling in the lymph nodes, bleeding under the skin, high
fevers, vomiting, diarrhea, and in most cases, a swift death. In the spot
where the flea had bitten the person, a swelling would occur. Then the lymph
nodes closest to the bite would also swell. This spread the form of plague
known as the “bubonic” form. The swelling of the nodes in the groin or armpit
area was called a “bubo”. A second and more deadly variant of the same
disease was pneumonic plague, which occurred when the lungs of a person
suffering from the plague also became infected. Unlike the bubonic form of
the plague, pneumonic plague could be spread directly from person to person
as the infected person coughed and would typically spit blood and saliva,
which would pass the bacteria on to other people. Whatever the mode of
transmission, the plague of the Black Death traveled much more quickly from
place to place and infected a much higher percentage of the population than
the ancient or modern versions of the plague.
Also related to the changes brought about by the plague is the idea
that the disease is thought to be only part of the reason so many people died.
“The plague did not by itself cause the high mortality in mid- and late
fourteenth-century England.”10 A series of environmental factors contributed
to make the disease so deadly. Besides the unsanitary conditions of
9 Aberth, John. 23.
10 Theilmann, John and Frances Cate. 372.
5
European cities, the European population of the mid-fourteenth was probably
less resistant to disease than not only modern Europeans, but also Europeans
from previous centuries. In the years immediately preceding the Black
Death, Italy suffered floods, famines, wars, and major earthquakes that
damaged all or most of its major cities. After centuries of population growth,
mid-fourteenth century Europe was overpopulated. Northern Europe suffered
a great famine between 1315-1322. “People of all ages who were already in
poor health before the Black Death subsequently faced higher risks of death
during the epidemic than their healthy peers.”11 The weather had turned
colder and rainy resulting in series of poor harvests. Much land was poor and
peasants were starving. In Ireland there were even cases of reported
cannibalism.12 War also spread and became more deadly. The fourteenth
century was very violent and the Hundred Years War, the bloodiest conflict of
the Middle Ages, began in 1337.13 In the late summer of 1347, the island of
Cyprus, one of the first places in Europe to be hit by the plague, suffered a
massive earthquake. The ensuing tidal wave destroyed much of coastal
Cyprus and was said to have turned the island into a vast desert.14 This
combination of natural disasters, human conflicts, and other man-made
factors such as the prevalence of trade between different parts of Europe
made the Black Death of 1347-1350 so much more devastating than other
epidemics. 11 DeWitte, Sharon N. 2014. "Mortality Risk and Survival in the Aftermath of the Medieval Black Death."
Plos ONE 9, no. 5: 1-8. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed September 17, 2015).12 Kelly, John. 60. 13 Ibid.,74.14 Kelly, John. 89.
6
The sudden and massive population loss is one of the reasons why the
changes in Europe were so significant after the plague hit. It is important to
understand the mortality rate, even though it is a difficult task. There is
much debate over the exact death rate in Europe caused by the Black Death,
but some information is clear. It was not unusual for entire families to die.
“Not just one person in a house died, but the whole household, down to the
cats and the livestock, followed the master to death.”15 The mortality rate of
the Black Death was on average between 30-40 percent of a European
population that is estimated to have numbered about 75 million people
before the plague.16 Some historians believe that the total loss of life was
closer to 50 percent.17 In certain areas, the death rate ranged from 40 to 60
percent.18 One city that had a dramatic decrease in population was he Italian
city of Florence where the population is believed to have gone from 120,000
in 1330 down to 37,000 following the plague. It is interesting to note that in
the fifteenth century Florence will emerge as probably the greatest center of
the Italian Renaissance. In Normandy, a region of Northern France, estimates
are that the death toll was even greater. In Eastern Normandy, it is believed
that 70-80 percent of people died.19
Fourteenth century Europe did not have a cure to stop the plague.
Medical doctors were powerless and were often criticized in the chronicles.
15 Horrox, Rosemary. The Black Death. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994. 3616 Kelly, John. 11-1217 Aberth, John. 318 Kelly, John.1219 Ibid., 281
7
However, at least some of their prescriptions, like fleeing the site of infection,
clearing refuse, or isolating suspected carriers of the disease (quarantine)
were beneficial.20 Some preventive measures, like lighting large fires in the
chamber of Pope Clement at Etoile-sur Rhone near Avignon also helped, not
because the fires purified infected air, as the papal doctor believed, but
because they kept the pope’s quarters free of the infected fleas that spread
the contagion. There were some people who did catch the disease who did
not die. It is estimated that 10 to 40 percent of those who did get sick got
better even without treatment.21 Contemporary writers noticed how fast the
disease spread. The Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio related how, in
Florence, two pigs tore up some rags that had belonged to someone who died
of the plague and the pigs soon dropped dead in the street. The plague was
especially brutal to women and children who spent more time indoors where
the risk of infection was greater.22 The Black Death was said to be cruelest to
pregnant women who gave birth before dying. Another example of how
deadly the Black Death was can be found in the records of the city of Bristol,
England. 23 For in 1575 the city of Bristol saw deaths from the plague in 42 of
its 104 houses.
Adding to the deaths and decline in population due to the plague was
the mass murder of Jews, which was one of the most disturbing results of the
20 Aberth, John. 37-3821 Ibid., 23. 22 Kelly, John. 1223 Porter, Stephen. "An Historical whodunit." Biologist 51, no. 2 (Summer2004 2004): 109-113. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed December 11, 2015).112
8
plague itself. In the mid-fourteenth century there were about 2.5 million Jews
in Europe, mostly in Spain and Southern France. Some of them had been in
the area since Roman times. The majority of the Jews were known to be
relatively rich and were typically more literate than their Christian neighbors.
By the middle of fourteenth century, Jews generally lived apart from
Christians in segregated districts. Jews also had better hygiene than most of
their Christian neighbors because of the Jewish religious requirement to bathe
before the Sabbath. Better hygiene meant that Jews did not catch the plague
as easily or as quickly as Christians, which may have increased suspicion
against them. It was common for Christians to have disagreements and
hostile feelings against the Jews because of religious differences.24 But the
plague itself is believed to have caused or increased divisions among people
and created greater hostility against marginal groups like strangers, beggars,
and religious minorities like the Jews. 25
During the plague, Jews were accused of deliberately poisoning wells
and springs with the substances that caused the plague. According to the
Chronicle of Mathias of Neuenburg who was an eyewitness to a Jewish
pogrom at Strasbourg, in Alsace, a border region between France and
Germany, the Jewish citizens were accused of throwing poison down the
springs and wells.26 The city government that tried to protect the Jews from
the accusations was thrown out of office and replaced by a new government
24 Cantor, Norman. F. 150-16125 Herlihy, David. 59.26 Aberth, John. 151.
9
that gave in to the mob. 27 The Jewish citizens of Strasbourg were stripped
almost naked by the crowd and marched to their death into a house prepared
for burning. 28 About half of Strasbourg Jewish population, 900 persons out of
1,884, was exterminated.29 In Basel, upstream from Strasbourg on the Rhine
River, the authorities built a wooden house on an island in the Rhine. On
January 9, 1349, the entire Jewish community except children who had
accepted to convert to Christianity and those Jews who had managed to
escape were locked in the especially prepared wooden structure. The
building was set on fire and everyone in it died.30 In Strasbourg, Jews “were
put on the wheel and immediately executed.”31 Pogroms also occurred in
Southern Europe in areas close to Mediterranean which were more
cosmopolitan and where Jewish communities had been established for many
centuries. On Palm Sunday in 1348, a mob attacked the Jewish quarter in
Toulon, a city in Southern France east of Marseille. Several dozen Jews were
dragged from their homes and murdered.32 In the morning, dead bodies were
left in the streets and rumors of their guilt in causing the plague spread to
neighboring villages causing more deaths.33
The interrogation and execution of the Jews of Savoy in September–
October 1348 at the lakeside castle of Chillon, in present day Switzerland,
was a turning point in creating a new kind of anti-Semitic hysteria. A Jewish 27 Aberth, John. 151-154, Herlihy, David . 66; Kelly, John. 256; Cantor Norman F. 150.28 Kelly, John. 256.29 Ibid., 256. 30 Ibid., 256.31 Aberth, John. 151-153.32 Ibid., 251.33 Kelly, John.138-141.
10
surgeon known as Balavigny was arrested in the month of September and
confessed under torture to the existence of an international Jewish conspiracy
to spread the disease throughout Europe by agents of a certain Rabbi Jacob
from Toledo, Spain.34 At some point, Balavigny was taken across Lake Geneva
from Chillon to Clarens to identify the spring that he confessed to have
poisoned. Balavigny was said to have described in detail the color of the
poison and the type of cloth used to spread it.35 The addition of all these details
probably gave more credibility to his confession. At that time in Europe, accusations of well
poisoning had grown and the thoughts of some were that the Jewish people were attempting to
dominate the world. The interrogations at Chillon helped to strengthen and to spread the belief of
a conspiracy in which the deliberate and systematic spread of the Black Death was only one part
of a Jewish master plan to seize control of Christian Europe.
Because the plague was so devastating, it is natural that the people of
the time would want to know why it happened and if there was something
they could do about it. Because the people of that time had not experienced
an event as devastating as the Black Death, they had never been as
motivated to seek answers to why such a disease happened. Many doctors
refused to treat the sick because they knew it was useless. No large sums of
money could convince them to get near the infected.36 Medieval chroniclers
accused physicians of being cowards. This disease was new so the doctors did
not really know how to treat it. Several doctors unknowingly got sick as they
34 Kelly, John. 232.35 Horrox, Rosemary. 214.36 Aberth, John. 37.
11
treated their patients. Medieval doctors wrote about the plague and tried to
understand its causes, but their explanations were based on astrology and
fanciful notions derived from the medical texts of Ancient Greece. For
instance, doctors followed the belief of the Greek Physician Galen who
believed that disease was caused by an imbalance in the body and that this
imbalance could be detected by looking at urine.37 The doctors at the
University of Paris produced a treaty on the plague. According to them, the
primary causes of the plague was “[the] configuration of the heavens in 1345
… [when] there was a major conjunction of three planets in Aquarius.” When
the three planets aligned some people speculated that the alignment had
poisoned the air and that the plague was caused by people breathing in the
poisoned air. 38
Hot and damp air was believed to be especially dangerous, so medical
doctors in Paris and elsewhere told people to stay away from swampy areas
and marshes and not to open windows that faced to the south. 39 Treatment
by medieval doctors consisted of avoiding baths, blood–letting, and advice on
what to drink and eat. For example, the Italian physician Gentile da Foligno
recommended white wine and cabbage against the plague.40 In medieval
times doctors tried to treat the plague using the knowledge they had, which
was often based on Greek assumptions or religious notions. But during and
after the Black Death, doctors were criticized. They were accused of being
37 Cantor, Norman F. 9.38 Kelly, John. 169-170.39 Ibid., 171.40 Ibid., 173.
12
cowards for not treating patients, impotent for not being able to help, and
sometimes even greedy.41 This lack of faith in the medical doctors and their
traditional training caused a shift to a more practical kind of medicine
practiced by the surgeons who, until then, had been regarded as inferior to
the university-trained doctors.42 One important development was that
autopsies became more common after the Black Death. Autopsies gave
medical practitioners a more accurate knowledge of the human body and this
knowledge was now put in anatomy texts to train new doctors.43
The Post Black Death era in Europe also challenged the thoughts about
how the plague spread. 44 The physician who is most credited with the study
of this illness is Giovanni Fracastoro who was a health professional in
Florence, the capital of the Tuscany region.45 The plague changed the
purpose of hospitals in Europe. Before the Black Death hospitals existed to
remove the sick from society to prevent invention. The expectation was that
those who were hospitalized would soon die. After the great plague, hospitals
became a place where diseases could be cured. People in hospitals were
seen as patients and were divided into separate wards based on the disease
they had.46 The Black Death was also responsible for the birth of new
institutions to oversee public health, not only hospitals, but also municipal
41 Aberth, John. 27.42 Kelly, John. 288.43 Ibid., 289.44 Ibid., 289.45 Kelly, John. 289.46 Ibid..
13
health boards that set the rules sanitation, burials, and the quarantine of sick
people, including those infected by the plague.47
In terms of the economy, the Black Death at first created a lot of
disruption. Workers died in large numbers or simply fled the cities because
they feared for their lives. There was a sudden need for certain type of
professions like gravediggers, physicians, and priests. In England, during the
plague, a bishop allowed lay people, including women, to hear confessions
and administer the sacrament of penance to the sick.48 Medieval professions
like the various crafts and the merchants were tightly organized in “guilds.”
The guilds were closed associations that did not normally admit apprentices
who were not the sons or other close relatives of the masters. However, the
Black Death killed off large numbers of craftsmen and tradesmen and their
offspring. The guilds adjusted to the new situation by opening up their ranks
to outsiders who would not have had the chance to become craftsmen or
merchants before the Black Death. 49 A similar development happened with
the religious orders. So many priests and friars had died in the plague that
the Church recruited a lot of new persons to fill its ranks. Many of the new
recruits did not have the qualifications or, sometimes, the religious vocation
of their predecessors, which may have contributed to a decline of the
religious orders and the rise of more popular forms of worship.50
47 Ibid..48 Herlihy, David. 39-42.49 Ibid. 44-45.50 Ibid., 45-46.
14
The plague also had a profound effect on the physical environment.
There was vegetation overgrowth that occurred when farms were abandoned
due to the death of peasant families and a decline in the raising of livestock
also resulted in changes. Over the hundred years that followed the Black
Death, forests would overtake areas that had once been dedicated to
agriculture.51 Recent studies have shown, through data collected from soil
layers dating back many centuries, that there was a significant decline in
arable land after the Black Death. There is an absence of pollen in the layers
of soil following the plague, which shows the subsequent collapse of
agriculture following the extreme population decline caused by the Black
Death. It took almost a century for the same levels of pollen to show up in the
layers of soil once again. Paleontologists have looked for certain plant pollen
to denote agricultural activity.52 There were also many other contributing
factors to the shrinking of agriculture during the fourteenth century. The
continent suffered through the Great Famine, The Hundred Years War, and
the Black Death. The Black Death is thought to have greatly accelerated the
decline in crop cultivation at this time.53 Livestock, such as cattle, sheep, and
pigs either perished in the Black Death or ran wild after their owners died
from the plague.54 The loss of arable land and livestock was significant, but
51 Yeloff, Dan, and Bas van Geel. 2007. "Abandonment of Farmland and Vegetation Succession Following the Eurasian Plague Pandemic of ad 1347–52." Journal Of Biogeography 34, no. 4: 575-582. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed December 11, 2015). 576.52 Ibid., 578.53 Ibid., 579.54 Ibid..
15
studies show that the agricultural decline only lasted a century or so before
the land began to be utilized again as the population began to increase.55
Moreover the decline in agriculture, particularly traditional agriculture
based on the extensive cultivation of grains, helped the European economy to
diversify after the Black Death. Land that was once devoted to the cultivation
of wheat and other grains could be freed for other usages such as pasturage
or woods. The mills that were no longer needed to grind grains could be put
to industrial uses, like the production of textiles or of timber.56 Because there
fewer workers left, they could negotiate for better wages. In the towns,
wages were two to three times higher after the Black Death than before it,
despite the attempts of many city governments to keep wages and prices
down.57 The much greater demand for workers after the Black Death also had
a huge impact on the relationship between peasants and their feudal lords.
Almost everywhere, the peasants were big winners. They could now leave the
land and easily found a job in cities. Even if they stayed on the land, their
services were now in higher demand. As a result, the peasants were no
longer treated as serfs of the lords and the institution of serfdom “began to
disappear entirely.”58 The high price of labor also inaugurated an era of
technological innovation. Besides using mills for new purposes, Europeans of
the generations that followed the Black Death invented new tools and
machines like the printing press, bigger ships that could undertake longer 55 Ibid., 580.56 Herlihy, David. 46.57 Ibid., 48-49.58 Ibid., 285.
16
voyages, firearms, and banking and insurance methods that made businesses
more efficient and more productive.59
After the Black Death, the amount of money per capita increased. 60
Historians have found evidence that the standard of living improved in
several areas in Europe, for example in England.61 One economic factor that
affected everyone’s life was the price of grain. Grain prices dropped heavily
towards the end of the fourteenth century and remained low for about a
century, while the price of other grains and of meat products remained
relatively high.62 The decrease in population also meant that more food was
available per capita. After the Black Death, Europeans ate larger quantities
of bread, meat and fish. These nutritional changes lead to a more healthy
way of living in Europe during the late medieval period and the Renaissance.
According to David Harley, the Black Death also made Europe more
modern in its demographic system. Before the Black Death, whenever the
number of people grew too much or too fast for the amount of food available,
the number of people would be cut back by an increase in death rate due to
famine or to an epidemic like the Black Death. This hard break on population
growth is known as a “positive check” and was typical of medieval Europe
before the Black Death and pre-modern societies in general. But some
cultures develop “preventing checks” to keep the population from growing
59 Ibid., 49-51.60 DeWitte, Sharon. 2.61 Ibid., 2.62 Herlihy, David. 47-48.
17
faster than the supply of food. Preventing checks work on lowering the birth
rate. Lower birth rates are typically achieved by delaying the age of marriage
and preventing some people from getting married and having children. After
the Black Death, a majority of Europeans were able to use preventive checks
to maintain and expand their resources. Only the poor remained under the
control of the old positive checks such as famine.63
Another consequence of the Black Death was a change in religious
attitudes and practices. Medieval Europeans held a strong belief that natural
disasters were an act of God.64 Medieval people believed that God sent the
plague to punish mankind for its sinfulness. Most people hoped to avoid the
plague by turning to religion. Masses were used as insurance against the
plague.65 A Catholic mass for turning away the plague was offered by Pope
Clement VI. Those who attended the Pope’s mass were to hold a burning
candle and keep it lit throughout the service.66 The believers where supposed
to kneel during the mass and have faith that death would not harm them
during the epidemic. Most people felt a need for prayer and forgiveness
during a difficult time when Europe suffered huge population losses. Masses
against the plague multiplied as Europeans begged for forgiveness of their
sins. 67 During the era of the Black Death many different prayers were
composed to ward off disease. One popular prayer was addressed to the
63 Herlihy, David. 51-57; Kelly, John. 293-294.64 Horrox, Rosemary. 95.65 Ibid.,. 120.66 Ibid., 122.67 Ibid.,121.
18
Virgin Mary as the star of heaven and of the sea, and the merciful mother of
Christ: “Star of Heaven, who nourished the Lord and routed up the plague of
death which our first parents planted; may that star now deign to counter the
constellations whose strife brings the people the ulcers of terrible death. O
glorious star of the sea, save us from the plague, Hear us: for your Son who
honours you denies you nothing. Jesus, save us, for whom the Virgin Mother
prays to you.”68
The strong desire for religious comfort caused by the Black Death took
new forms that were outside the control of the Church. Like other institutions
of the time, the Church was unable to cope with the plague and many of its
most qualified members died of it. Confidence in the Church’s spiritual
leadership weakened and people expressed their faith through spontaneous
religious movements.69 One religious movement that challenged the
authority of the Church was the Flagellant movement. The Flagellants were
groups of men who travelled from town to town singing marching songs like
the “Stabat Mater, the thirteenth century poem portraying the suffering of
Mary,70 and beating one another with whips until they drew blood. The
Flagellants would often attract large crowds of onlookers with their singing,
their banners, and their dress, which included white cloaks with red crosses
on the back and front. Some people would even bring out dead bodies to be
blessed by the traveling bands of Flagellants.71 68 Ibid., 12469 Herlihy, David. 66; Kelly, John. 290-291.70 Horrox, Rosemary.97.71 Kelly, John. 67.
19
The Flagellants claimed that their processions and bloody whippings
where directly authorized by God through a letter that was said to have been
found in Jerusalem on the altar of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.72 A
German chronicler described the Flagellants as “a race without a head,”
meaning that the Flagellants did not have a leader and did not have any
common sense, either. The Flagellants became increasingly radical and
violent as the plague spread throughout Europe. In Germany, which was the
center of the movement, the Flagellants killed Jews wherever they found
them.73 The Flagellants were also a threat to the Catholic Church because
“they took upon themselves the job of preaching.”74 In the fall of 1349, Pope
Clement denounced the Flagellants for spilling the blood of Jews and
Christians and prohibited the faithful from associating with them.75 Secular
rulers, like King Philip VI of France, quickly followed the pope’s leads in also
banning the Flagellants.76 As a result the movement came to a quick end:
“[The Flagellants] vanished as suddenly as they had come, like night
phantoms or mocking ghosts.”77
The Black Death also caused changes in the relationship people had
with the saints.78 Saint Sebastian, an early Christian martyr who survived
being shot with multiple arrows, became very popular because the arrows he
72 Ibid., 264-265.73 Ibid., 267.74 Ibid., 152.75 Kelly, John. 268.76 Aberth, John. 138-139.77 Kelly, John. 268.78 Horrox, Rosemary. 97.
20
survived where now interpreted as a representation of the plague.79 The
saint who became most popular as a healer of the plague was a new saint,
Saint Rock. Saint Rock was supposed to have lived between 1295 and 1327
and was believed to have caught and survived the plague himself.80 Popular
desire for personal protection from a saint was also reflected in the growing
popularity of Christian first names. Looking at records from Florence from the
periods before, during, and after the Black Death, the historian David Herlihy
found that, from the 13th to the 15th century, the number of first names used
by the people of Florence grew smaller and that the percentage of names
taken from saints increased.81
One major change brought about by the Black Death was a new focus
on understanding and on cause and effect relationships. The disease had
been so horrible that people wanted to know more.82 This desire for
knowledge may not look scientific to us. For example, medieval people
continued to look at the stars and the planets for explanations and astrology
remained closely tied to medicine long after the Black Death. Moreover, the
medieval understanding of the solar system was wrong. Medieval people
counted seven planets, considered the sun and the moon to be planets, and
placed earth at center of universe. Every planet was said to have its own
characteristics and these characteristics were believed to influence people.
For example the planet Mars was known to be associated with war and 79 Horrox, Rosemary. 97; Herlihy, David. 79.80 Herlihy, David. 80.81 Ibid., 73-80.82 Horrox, Rosemary. 100.
21
inclined people to anger and violence. Those who were born under the planet
of Mars were likely to become soldiers, butchers or barbers. 83 However, the
period after the Black Death saw the beginning of a scientific outlook based
on observation and the relationship between the various planets in space.
The universe started to be seen as an integrated system, in which different
parts influenced each other.84
Despite the sharp drop in population, there was a greater demand for
higher education. This was a consequence of the greater desire for
knowledge triggered by the plague, but was also the result of the social and
economic changes that had made it possible for a higher percentage of the
population to escape serfdom, join the professions, and gain some control
over their own destinies. In England, Cambridge University established four
new colleges after the Black Death: Gonville Hall in 1348, Trinity Hall in
1350, Corpus Christi in 1352, and Clare Hall in 1362. Oxford created two
new colleges: Canterbury in 1362 and New College in 1372. In Italy, which
already had a number of universities before the plague, a new university was
founded in Florence in 1350. However, most of the new universities were
founded north and east of the Alps in Heidelberg, Vienna, Prague, Cracow, in
areas that had no universities before the Black Death.85 So, it appears like
the epidemic created both a greater and a wider demand for higher education
in late medieval European society.
83 Ibid., 102.84 Ibid., 101.85 Kelly, John. 289; Herlihy, David. 70.
22
A related change to the spread of higher education after the Black
Death was the demand for books among the growing portion of the
population who could read them: merchants, university trained professionals,
and skilled craftsmen.86 However, producing books in the Middle Ages was a
labor intensive process that required many copyists to write each section by
hand. 87 Johann Guttenberg a native German from the city of Mainz found a
way to combine a number of existing technologies into the invention of the
printing press with movable metal types.88
The Black Death shows how an event outside the control of any group
of people can have a profound and lasting impact on human history.
However, the relationship between the great epidemic known as the Black
Death and medieval Europeans is complicated. Although the plague was
devastating, fourteenth-century Europeans were not passive victims of the
plague. In some ways, it was positive changes in Europe like population
growth and the expansion of trade to China and within Europe that brought
this disaster to Europe and made it more deadly once it got there. After the
disaster struck, people responded and adapted to the new situation fairly
quickly. Europe became more modern and started to look quite different
from China or the Middle East. Many of the old restrictions had to be relaxed
and more people had more control of their lives after the Black Death than
before it. For example, workers got better pay and more food than ever
86 Ibid., 288.87 Ibid., 288.88 Kelly, John. 288; Herlihy, David . 50.
23
before and many ordinary people felt free to practice their religion outside of
control of the church. Serfdom almost disappeared from Europe as peasants
could now leave the land and find employment and freedom in cities. Not all
the changes were good. Religious enthusiasm contributed to the creation of
European anti-Semitism and perhaps a wider hostility towards foreigners.
Even the stronger desire for knowledge had mixed effects. It did spur
technological innovation and a much greater use of books, but also made
wars more deadly and ensured that people would continue to look at the stars
for medical explanations.
24
Bibliography
Aberth, John. The Black Death: The Great Mortality of 1348-1350: A Brief History with Documents. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2005.
Cantor, Norman F. In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made. New York: Free Press, 2001.
DeWitte, Sharon N. 2014. "Mortality Risk and Survival in the Aftermath of the Medieval Black Death." Plos ONE 9, no. 5: 1-8. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed September 17, 2015).
Herlihy, David. The Black Death and the Transformation of the West: Harvard University Press, 1997.
Horrox, Rosemary. The Black Death. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994.
Kelly, John. The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2005.
Porter, Stephen. "An Historical Whodunit." Biologist 51, no. 2 (Summer2004 2004): 109-113. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed December 11, 2015).
Theilmann, John, and Frances Cate. 2007. "A Plague of Plagues: The Problem of Plague Diagnosis in Medieval England." Journal of Interdisciplinary History 37, no. 3: 371-393. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed November 16, 2015).
Yeloff, Dan, and Bas van Geel. 2007. "Abandonment of Farmland and Vegetation Succession Following the Eurasian Plague Pandemic of a.d. 1347–52." Journal of Biogeography 34 no. 4: 575-582. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed December 11, 2015).