The Black Plague

The 'Black Death' : how it spread and changed 14th century Europe

Origin and Spread of the Plague


    The plague that caused the Black Death originated in China in the early 1300s. It spread along trade routes and worked its way west to the Mediterranean and northern Africa. The plague arrived in Europe in October 1347, when 12 ships that sailed in the Black Sea docked at a Sicilian port. Most sailors aboard the ships were dead, and those still alive were very ill and covered in black boils. Sicilian authorities ordered the fleet of ships out of the harbor, but it was too late. The plague had already spread. Not long after it struck the Sicilian port, the Black Death spread to the ports of France and the ports of North Africa. Then it reached Rome and Florence, which was devastating because two cities were at the center of a web of trade routes. By the middle of 1348, the Black Death had reached Paris and London. The plague is caused by bacteria called Yersinia pestis. It was usually spread by fleas. These fleas would pick up the germs when they bite an infected animal which could be anything from rats and mice or even squirrels. Then they pass the bacteria to the next animal or person they bite.According to one doctor, “instantaneous death occurs when the aerial spirit escaping from the eyes of the sick man strikes the healthy person standing near and looking at the sick. The Black Death was commonly passed through humans by coughing or sneezing. Becoming infected in this way would need direct and close contact with the ill person or animal.
    Source: History.com Editors. “Black Death.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 17 Sept. 2010, www.history.com/topics/middle-ages/black-death.

This section will discuss the course of the Plague in Europe, and how it affected in different aspects.

How many people died?


Death rates across Europe were terrible during the bubonic plague pandemic. (1346 to 1353)

The Black Death killed about 25 million people between 1347 and 1351, almost one-third of Europe's population, some of the countries affected will be discussed below.

France 

Eighty percent of Marseille's population died. The pope of Avignon, where half of the population died, consecrated the Rhône to allow the bodies to be thrown into it for the burial of Christians.

Italy 

More than one-third of Italy's population is said to have died. In Florence, which has a population of about 100,000, 100–200 deaths were reported every day, but the death toll suddenly rose to 400–1,000.

England

In England, “It was reported that the summer of 1348 was exceptionally wet, which the populace believed to be the cause of the pestilence. It is said that the Black Death always struck hardest at seaports and coastal districts. Sparsely populated hilly districts were usually only slightly affected, although villages close to communication routes were often comparatively severely hit, all indicative of person-to-person transmission of an infectious disease spread by travelers. According to a contemporary observation, the common people bore the main toll and among them, it fell most heavily on the young and vigorous.” (Scott, S., & Duncan, C. J.,2001)


Image: Front, S. (2020, March 20).  History's Deadliest Pandemics . World History Encyclopedia. Retrieved from  https://www.ancient.eu/image/12023/historys-deadliest-pandemics/ 

 Original image  by South Front.

“The practice of inflating the numbers dying was continued when the total dying in the plague at Penrith in 1597—98 was given on a plaque in the church; this value greatly exceeds the size of the population. Clapham (1949) suggested that a third of the population of England may have died during the Black Death, in agreement with many other historians, but felt that 20% to 25% may be a more likely figure.” (Cartwright, M. 2020)

Medieval doctors had no idea about microscopic organisms such as bacteria. So they weren’t able to do any proper treatment. They hadn't experienced anything like the epidemic that could kill people in a few days. And the poor hygiene at that time aggravated the situation even more. 

According to Cartwright, “another helpful strategy would have been to quarantine areas but, as people fled in panic whenever a case of plague broke out, they unknowingly carried the disease with them and spread it even further afield; the rats did the rest.. …There were so many deaths and so many bodies that the authorities did not know what to do with them, and carts piled high with corpses became a common sight across Europe. ” 

In Europe, between 1347 and 1352, the death toll reached between 25 and 30 million. The population didn't reach the number of pre-1347 CE until it reached around 1550 CE.


Image:

Miniature from a folio of the Antiquitates Flandriae, By Pierart dou Tielt (c. 1340-1360 CE). Made c. 1353. (Royal Library of Belgium)

Front, S. (2020, March 20). History's Deadliest Pandemics. World History Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.ancient.eu/image/12023/historys-deadliest-pandemics/

Persecution of Jews


The death rate for Jews during this period had a profound effect on European Jews, one of the most violent eruptions of medieval anti-Semitism. 

The town of Chilon in Switzerland played an important role in promoting rumors that the Black Death was a malicious Jewish conspiracy. "Confessions were extracted from local Jews that a certain sinister Rabbi Jacob and a network of agents had delivered packets of poison to Jews throughout Europe."(Kelly, J., & Kirshner, S., 2005)

It killed an unknown number of Jews. "Some were burned at the stake, while others were marched into public bonfires. Still others were barbecued on grills, bludgeoned to death and stuffed into empty wine caskets and rolled into rivers. In several localities, the killings were preceded by show trials." (Kelly, J., & Kirshner, S., 2005) 

Some persecuted Jews fled to Poland, Spain, and Marseille. But usually, Jewish shelters were small, far from the city center, or located in relatively unsafe areas near forests and wildlife.


Image: "In this history book written in the 1340s by the French chronicler and poet Gilles li Muisis, residents of a town stricken by the plague burn Jews, who were blamed for causing the disease."

R. E. Bichell, “Iconic Plague Images Are Often Not What They Seem,” NPR, 18-Aug-2017. [Online]. Available: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/08/18/542435991/those-iconic-images-of-the-plague-thats-not-the-plague. [Accessed: 05-Apr-2021] 

This next section will discuss how Europe as a whole responded to the plague, focusing on the short and long term implications on population


Short term responses to the Black Plague

The black death did not target a particular group that it was more infectious in, although like many diseases it predominantly had a higher mortality rate in the elderly and diseased. This had a direct connection to Europe’s population becoming increasingly younger per capita as the plague progressed. Additionally, those who initially survived had more prosperous lives. With upwards of 50% of the population being eliminated it left an abundance of resources for the survivors allowing them to thrive.

Looking at an average laborer, threshing of wheat was a necessary step in the gathering grain for sustenance which required the grain to be manually separated from the plant. In the immediately following years after the plague threshing laborer's saw their pay increase dramatically as there was less competition for jobs, with an exception to England as there was a law passed to keep wages at pre-plague levels. Still, generally through 1350-1400 wheat prices were lower in relativity and wages were higher. This was uniform with rent decreasing and readily available food sources for the ongoing Hundred Years War. Seeing as the hundred years war was able to continue through such population loss, it showed there were no immediate institutional breakdowns in agriculture production or the government allowing society to continue somewhat normally. 

The picture provided helps visualize the process of threshing which was so labor intensive.


Long Term Consequences


The long-term ramifications of the plague meant that Europe was scare of labor workers. There were two ways to perceive the lack of workers, one being that Europe’s production would remain stagnant which prohibited population growth, or that since workers became more valuable they were able to argue for more autonomy eventually ending serfdom in western Europe.

 The severe decline in labor populations had long lasting effects as a lack of workers to sow the fields meant crop production could not increase to allow the population to grow. Another fact that slowed the progression of growth was the resurgence of the plague flaring up continuously after the initial wave although these were more isolated to countries than all of Europe. It took over 80 years for Europe’s population to reach the population prior to the disease, although this was heavily influenced by war that was fought in Europe throughout the entire duration of the plague.

Image retrieved from Serfdom in Europe (article) | Khan Academy. (n.d.). Retrieved April 3, 2021, from https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/world-history/medieval-times/european-middle-ages-and-serfdom/a/serfdom-in-europe

Resilience and Impact of the Plague


The Black Death was the primary and most annihilating episode of what is commonly alluded to as the Second Pandemic of plague. Within the mid-14th century, the widespread slaughter was estimated 30–60% of the population of the world was affected by it. 

The Black Death altered the economic industry and nations of the European life in the following areas:  

Socio-Economic

Medical Knowledge

Religious Belief and Practice

Persecution and Migration

Women's Rights

Art & Architecture

The mental impacts of the Black Death were reflected north of the Alps (not in Italy) by a distraction with death and the afterlife written in poetry, design, and sculptures. The Roman Catholic Church misplaced a few of its restraining infrastructure over the salvation of citizens as individuals turned to supernatural quality and in some cases to excesses

Anti-Semitism enormously escalates all through Europe as Jews were faulted for the spread of the Black Plague. A wave of rough massacres followed, and whole Jewish communities were murdered by swarms or burned at the stake en masse.

The population in England in 1400 was maybe half what it had been 100 years prior in that nation alone. The Black Plague certainly caused the elimination or vanishing of approximately 1,000 towns. A gauge is that 25 million individuals in Europe died from torment during the Black Death.

The Horrible climate in 1315 annihilated crops and the following Starvation era (1315 - 1322) decreased northern Europe’s populace by (10% - 15%). Bad harvests made Britain and Italy one of the most affected countries of the Black Death.

The variables that affected Europe from the Black Plague are: Climate, Flawed Education, Financial problems, Overpopulation has decreased since the Black Plague took a big part in the transformation of socioeconomic events that occurred during the time era. In other words, financial causes would have occurred anyway, merely more slowly, had the plague never struck Europe.

Reeves, P. (2011, October 12). Did the Black Death give birth to modern plagues? The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/did-the-black-death-give-birth-to-modern-plagues-3820

Noakes, S. ( 2018, January 15) https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/black-death-fleas-lice-1.4485664

Sources

  • Tielt, P. D. (2020, March 22). Citizens of Tournai Bury Their Dead. World History Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.ancient.eu/image/12033/citizens-of-tournai-bury-their-dead/
  • R. E. Bichell, “Iconic Plague Images Are Often Not What They Seem,” NPR, 18-Aug-2017. [Online]. Available: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/08/18/542435991/those-iconic-images-of-the-plague-thats-not-the-plague. [Accessed: 05-Apr-2021] 
  • Serfdom in Europe (article) | Khan Academy. (n.d.). Retrieved April 3, 2021, from https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/world-history/medieval-times/european-middle-ages-and-serfdom/a/serfdom-in-europe
  • Tielt, P. D. (2020, March 22). Citizens of Tournai Bury Their Dead. World History Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.ancient.eu/image/12033/citizens-of-tournai-bury-their-dead/
  • R. E. Bichell, “Iconic Plague Images Are Often Not What They Seem,” NPR, 18-Aug-2017. [Online]. Available: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/08/18/542435991/those-iconic-images-of-the-plague-thats-not-the-plague. [Accessed: 05-Apr-2021] Serfdom in Europe (article) | Khan Academy. (n.d.). Retrieved April 3, 2021, from https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/world-history/medieval-times/european-middle-ages-and-serfdom/a/serfdom-in-europe

Secondary sources: