Black Death, outbreak of bubonic plague that struck Europe and the Mediterranean area from 1347 through 1351. It was the first of a cycle of European plague epidemics that continued until the early 18th century. A cycle of ancient plagues had preceded these plagues between the 6th and 8th centuries AD; another cycle of modern followed them, but less deadly, plagues that began in the late 19th century and continue in the 20th century. The term “Black Death” was not used to refer to the plagues of 1347 through 1351 until much later; contemporaries usually called it the Pestilence, or the Great Mortality.
Plague is a bacterial infection that can take more than one form. Victims of bubonic plague usually suffer from high fevers and swellings under the armpits or in the groin. Unless treated with modern antibiotics, usually 60 percent of the infected will die, often within the first five days . . . The disease is carried by a variety of rodentsrats, marmots, and prairie dogs, among others. It can pass into a human population when fleas carrying infected rodent blood attach themselves to a human host.
Scientists and historians are still unsure about the origins of plague. Medieval European writers believed that it began in China, which they considered a land of almost magical happenings. Chroniclers wrote that it began with earthquakes, fire falling from the sky, and plagues of vermin. Like medieval travel literature, these accounts are based on most myths about life in areas outside Europe. Infected rodents probably migrated from the Middle East into southern Russia, Plague was then spread west along trade routes . . .
Venetian and Genoese sailors are known to have brought the plague to Europe. Plague moved quickly along the major trade routes. Parts of Europe were initially spared the epidemic. Milan was almost unique among the major Italian towns. The lord of the city closed the gates to travelers coming from plague areas, and few people died. Probably because of their relative isolation, Bohemia, Poland, and central Germany experienced no plague before the 1360s and 1370s. Contemporary doctors and theologians agreed that the epidemic had both religious and physical causes.
The first and most important was God’s judgment on a sinful humanity; the second was a lack of balance in the body’s humors, or fluids. As with earthquakes, floods, and fires, medieval Christians assumed illness was a call to repentance. In response, some Christians, known as flagellants, began ritually to beat themselves as penance for their own and for others’ sins. Although groups of flagellants had existed since the 10th century, the outbreak of the plague radically increased their numbers.
These new groups of flagellants appeared first in Hungary and Germany and then spread throughout the rest of northern Europe. Flagellants traveled as a group and were led by a cleric. They went from town to town and at each stop, after a short sermon by the leader, the penitents would whip or flog themselves before moving onto the next town. Medieval physicians inherited their medical ideas from the Greeks and Romans, who believed that health involved a balance of bodily humors. Imbalances caused by emotional, dietary, or external factors like noxious odors could result in sickness or even death.
Contemporary writers associated plague with the influence of planets and stars, or with earthquakes, which they thought to cause the release of noxious gases from the center of the The Black Death and the other epidemics of bubonic plague had many consequences. One was a series of vicious attacks on Jews, lepers, and outsiders whom they accused of deliberately poisoning the water or the air. The attacks began in the south of France, but were most dramatic in parts of Switzerland and Germanyareas with a long history of attacks on local Jewish communities.
Massacres in Bern were typical of this pattern: After weeks of fearful tension, Jews were rounded up and burned or drowned in marshes. Sometimes there were attacks on Jews even where there was no plague. The Pope, the leader of the Catholic church, and most public officials condemned the massacres and tried to stop them. In the face of mob fury, however, they were often unsuccessful. Persecutions only ended when the deaths from the plague began to decline. Contemporary chroniclers of the Black Death called the epidemic “a horrible and cruel thing.
It seemed to them that the towns of Europe were nearly deserted in the aftermath of the plague. Overall, European population declined by one-third. In many European cities population may have declined by up to 50 percent or more. Most major cities were quickly forced to create mass graveyards where they could bury the dead. Many towns and villages lost most of their populations, and some eventually disappeared altogether. Larger towns declined drastically, as their workforces and merchant classes either died or fled. The plagues also brought economic changes.
The death of so many people concentrated wealth in the hands of survivors. Often those workers who remained alive could earn up to five times what they had earned before the plague. As plague destroyed people and not possessions, the drop in population was accompanied by a corresponding rise in per capita wealth. Profits, however, for landlords and merchants declined as they found themselves having to pay higher wages and getting less when they sold their products. Governments were forced to adjust to the social disruption caused by plague.
First local governments, and then in the case of England, the monarchy, attempted to regulate the movement and price of foodstuffs and wages paid to laborers . . . Economic and political unrest occurred in most parts of Europe during the second half of the 14th century. The Black Death also affected the arts. In Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, a group of young people fleeing the plague takes refuge in a house outside Florence where they entertain each other with colorful and irreverent stories.
While these stories are often seen as a rejection of traditional medieval values, Boccaccio himself was critical of those who abandoned relatives and friends in the face of the plague. The primary impact of the Black Death on painting and sculpture was the willingness of the newly rich to invest in religious art for churches and chapels. These contributions were often made in gratitude for being spared the plague, or with the hope of preventing future infection. As was natural, much of the art and literature in the years immediately following the Black Death dealt with death.
Plague brought few changes in religious life or to medical practices. Europeans continued to visit religious shrines. Saints like St. Roch, whom they thought to protect against plague, were especially popular. Finally, although Europeans often complained that physicians were of little help against the plague, traditional medical ideas and practices did not change. In fact, the same ideas about humors, contagion, and quarantine were also at first used to fight cholera when that disease appeared in Europe in the 1830s.
