black death history essay

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Black Death

By: History.com Editors

Updated: March 28, 2023 | Original: September 17, 2010

The Black Death was a devastating global epidemic of bubonic plague that struck Europe and Asia in the mid-1300s. The plague arrived in Europe in October 1347, when 12 ships from the Black Sea docked at the Sicilian port of Messina. People gathered on the docks were met with a horrifying surprise: Most sailors aboard the ships were dead, and those still alive were gravely ill and covered in black boils that oozed blood and pus. Sicilian authorities hastily ordered the fleet of “death ships” out of the harbor, but it was too late: Over the next five years, the Black Death would kill more than 20 million people in Europe—almost one-third of the continent’s population.

How Did the Black Plague Start?

Even before the “death ships” pulled into port at Messina, many Europeans had heard rumors about a “Great Pestilence” that was carving a deadly path across the trade routes of the Near and Far East. Indeed, in the early 1340s, the disease had struck China, India, Persia, Syria and Egypt.

The plague is thought to have originated in Asia over 2,000 years ago and was likely spread by trading ships , though recent research has indicated the pathogen responsible for the Black Death may have existed in Europe as early as 3000 B.C.

Symptoms of the Black Plague

Europeans were scarcely equipped for the horrible reality of the Black Death. “In men and women alike,” the Italian poet Giovanni Boccaccio wrote, “at the beginning of the malady, certain swellings, either on the groin or under the armpits…waxed to the bigness of a common apple, others to the size of an egg, some more and some less, and these the vulgar named plague-boils.”

Blood and pus seeped out of these strange swellings, which were followed by a host of other unpleasant symptoms—fever, chills, vomiting, diarrhea, terrible aches and pains—and then, in short order, death.

The Bubonic Plague attacks the lymphatic system, causing swelling in the lymph nodes. If untreated, the infection can spread to the blood or lungs.

How Did the Black Death Spread?

The Black Death was terrifyingly, indiscriminately contagious: “the mere touching of the clothes,” wrote Boccaccio, “appeared to itself to communicate the malady to the toucher.” The disease was also terrifyingly efficient. People who were perfectly healthy when they went to bed at night could be dead by morning.

Did you know? Many scholars think that the nursery rhyme “Ring around the Rosy” was written about the symptoms of the Black Death.

Understanding the Black Death

Today, scientists understand that the Black Death, now known as the plague, is spread by a bacillus called Yersinia  pestis . (The French biologist Alexandre Yersin discovered this germ at the end of the 19th century.)

They know that the bacillus travels from person to person through the air , as well as through the bite of infected fleas and rats. Both of these pests could be found almost everywhere in medieval Europe, but they were particularly at home aboard ships of all kinds—which is how the deadly plague made its way through one European port city after another.

Not long after it struck Messina, the Black Death spread to the port of Marseilles in France and the port of Tunis in North Africa. Then it reached Rome and Florence, two cities at the center of an elaborate web of trade routes. By the middle of 1348, the Black Death had struck Paris, Bordeaux, Lyon and London.

Today, this grim sequence of events is terrifying but comprehensible. In the middle of the 14th century, however, there seemed to be no rational explanation for it.

No one knew exactly how the Black Death was transmitted from one patient to another, and no one knew how to prevent or treat it. According to one doctor, for example, “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.”

How Do You Treat the Black Death?

Physicians relied on crude and unsophisticated techniques such as bloodletting and boil-lancing (practices that were dangerous as well as unsanitary) and superstitious practices such as burning aromatic herbs and bathing in rosewater or vinegar.

Meanwhile, in a panic, healthy people did all they could to avoid the sick. Doctors refused to see patients; priests refused to administer last rites; and shopkeepers closed their stores. Many people fled the cities for the countryside, but even there they could not escape the disease: It affected cows, sheep, goats, pigs and chickens as well as people.

In fact, so many sheep died that one of the consequences of the Black Death was a European wool shortage. And many people, desperate to save themselves, even abandoned their sick and dying loved ones. “Thus doing,” Boccaccio wrote, “each thought to secure immunity for himself.”

Black Plague: God’s Punishment?

Because they did not understand the biology of the disease, many people believed that the Black Death was a kind of divine punishment—retribution for sins against God such as greed, blasphemy, heresy, fornication and worldliness.

By this logic, the only way to overcome the plague was to win God’s forgiveness. Some people believed that the way to do this was to purge their communities of heretics and other troublemakers—so, for example, many thousands of Jews were massacred in 1348 and 1349. (Thousands more fled to the sparsely populated regions of Eastern Europe, where they could be relatively safe from the rampaging mobs in the cities.)

Some people coped with the terror and uncertainty of the Black Death epidemic by lashing out at their neighbors; others coped by turning inward and fretting about the condition of their own souls.

Flagellants

Some upper-class men joined processions of flagellants that traveled from town to town and engaged in public displays of penance and punishment: They would beat themselves and one another with heavy leather straps studded with sharp pieces of metal while the townspeople looked on. For 33 1/2 days, the flagellants repeated this ritual three times a day. Then they would move on to the next town and begin the process over again.

Though the flagellant movement did provide some comfort to people who felt powerless in the face of inexplicable tragedy, it soon began to worry the Pope, whose authority the flagellants had begun to usurp. In the face of this papal resistance, the movement disintegrated.

How Did the Black Death End?

The plague never really ended and it returned with a vengeance years later. But officials in the port city of Ragusa were able to slow its spread by keeping arriving sailors in isolation until it was clear they were not carrying the disease—creating social distancing that relied on isolation to slow the spread of the disease.

The sailors were initially held on their ships for 30 days (a trentino ), a period that was later increased to 40 days, or a quarantine — the origin of the term “quarantine” and a practice still used today. 

Does the Black Plague Still Exist?

The Black Death epidemic had run its course by the early 1350s, but the plague reappeared every few generations for centuries. Modern sanitation and public-health practices have greatly mitigated the impact of the disease but have not eliminated it. While antibiotics are available to treat the Black Death, according to The World Health Organization, there are still 1,000 to 3,000 cases of plague every year.

Gallery: Pandemics That Changed History

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Europe 1300 - 1800

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The Black Death

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The plague hit hard and fast. People lay ill little more than two or three days and died suddenly….He who was well one day was dead the next and being carried to his grave,” writes the Carmelite friar Jean de Venette in his 14th century French chronicle. From his native Picardy, Jean witnessed the disease’s impact in northern France; Normandy, for example, lost 70 to 80 percent of its population. Italy was equally devastated. The Florentine author Boccaccio recounts how that city’s citizens “dug for each graveyard a huge trench, in which they laid the corpses as they arrived by hundreds at a time, piling them up tier upon tier as merchandise is stowed on a ship.

Trade was to Blame

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The Black Death and its Aftermath

• John Brooke

The Black Death was the second pandemic of bubonic plague and the most devastating pandemic in world history. It was a descendant of the ancient plague that had afflicted Rome, from 541 to 549 CE, during the time of emperor Justinian. The bubonic plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis , persisted for centuries in wild rodent colonies in Central Asia and, somewhere in the early 1300s, mutated into a form much more virulent to humans.

At about the same time, it began to spread globally. It moved from Central Asia to China in the early 1200s and reached the Black Sea in the late 1340s. Hitting the Middle East and Europe between 1347 and 1351, the Black Death had aftershocks still felt into the early 1700s. When it was over, the European population was cut by a third to a half, and China and India suffered death on a similar scale.

Traditionally, historians have argued that the transmission of the plague involved movement of plague-infected fleas from wild rodents to the household black rat. However, evidence now suggests that it must have been transmitted first by direct human contact with rodents and then via human fleas and head lice. This new explanation better explains the bacteria’s very rapid movement along trade routes throughout Eurasia and into sub-Saharan Africa.

At the time, people thought that the plague came into Mediterranean ports by ship. But, it is also becoming clear that small pools of plague had been established in Europe for centuries, apparently in wild rodent communities in the high passes of the Alps.

The remains of Bubonic plague victims in Martigues, France.

We know a lot about the impact of the Black Death from both the documentary record and from archaeological excavations. Within the last few decades, the genetic signature of the plague has been positively identified in burials across Europe.

The bacillus was deadly and took both rich and poor, rural and urban: the daughter of King Edward III of England died of the plague in the summer of 1348. But quickly—at least in Europe—the rich learned to barricade their households against its reach, and the poor suffered disproportionately.

Strikingly, if a mother survived the plague, her children tended to survive; if she died, they died with her. In the late 1340s, news of the plague spread and people knew it was coming: plague pits recently discovered in London were dug before the arrival of the epidemic.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder's 1562 painting "The Triumph of Death" depicts the turmoil Europe experienced as a result of the plague.

The Black Death pandemic was a profound rupture that reshaped the economy, society and culture in Europe. Most immediately, the Black Death drove an intensification of Christian religious belief and practice, manifested in portents of the apocalypse, in extremist cults that challenged the authority of the clergy, and in Christian pogroms against Europe’s Jews.

This intensified religiosity had long-range institutional impacts. Combined with the death of many clergy, fears of sending students on long, dangerous journeys, and the fortuitous appearance of rich bequests, the heightened religiosity inspired the founding of new universities and new colleges at older ones.

The proliferation of new centers of learning and debate subtly undermined the unity of Medieval Christianity. It also set the stage for the rise of stronger national identities and ultimately for the Reformation that split Christianity in the 16 th century.

Depiction of the Great Plague of London in 1665 (left) . A copper engraving of a seventeenth-century plague doctor (right) .

The disruption caused by the plague also shaped new directions in medical knowledge. Doctors tending the sick during the plague learned from their direct experience and began to rebel against ancient medical doctrine. The Black Death made clear that disease was not caused by an alignment of the stars but from a contagion. Doctors became committed to a new empirical approach to medicine and the treatment of disease. Here, then, lie the distant roots of the Scientific Revolution.

Quarantines were directly connected to this new empiricism, and the almost instinctive social distancing of Europe’s middling and elite households. The first quarantine was established in 1377 at the Adriatic port of Ragussa. By the 1460s quarantines were routine in the European Mediterranean.

Major outbreaks of plague in 1665 and 1721 in London and Marseille were the result of breakdowns in this quarantine barrier. From the late 17th century to 1871 the Habsburg Empire maintained an armed “cordon sanitaire” against plague eruptions from the Ottoman Empire.

Michel Serre's painting depicting the 1721 plague outbreak in Marseille.

As with the rise of national universities, the building of quarantine structures against the plague was a dimension in the emergence of state power in Europe.

Through all of this turmoil and trauma, the common people who survived the Black Death emerged to new opportunities in emptied lands. We have reasonably good wage data for England, and wage rates rose dramatically and rapidly, as masters and landlords were willing to pay more for increasingly scarce labor.

The famous French historian Marc Bloch argued that medieval society began to break down at this time because the guaranteed flow of income from the labor of the poor into noble households ended with the depopulation of the plague. The rising autonomy of the poor contributed both to peasant uprisings and to late medieval Europe’s thinly disguised resource wars, as nobles and their men at arms attempted to replace rent with plunder.

A depiction of the 1381 Peasant's Revolt in England.

At the same time, the ravages of the Black Death decimated the ancient trade routes bringing spices and fine textiles from the East, ending what is known as the Medieval World System, running between China, India, and the Mediterranean.

By the 1460s, the Portuguese—elbowed out of the European resource wars—began a search for new ways to the East, making their way south along the African coast, launching an economic globalization that after 1492 included the Americas.

And we should remember that this first globalization would lead directly to another great series of pandemics, not the plague but chickenpox, measles, and smallpox, which in the centuries following Columbus’s landing would kill the great majority of the native peoples of the Americas.

In these ways we still live in a world shaped by the Black Death.

The Black Death: Medieval Europe's recurring nightmare

The Black Death, also known as 'the Plague', is one of the most devastating events of the Middle Ages . It was a disease that spread across much of the world over several centuries.

However, the most lethal moment in its history occurred in the mid-1300s.

This terrible event has had a lasting impact on European history, and its effects can still be felt today. In this article, we will take a closer look at the Black Death and what caused it.

We will also explore its aftermath and how it changed Europe forever.

What was the Black Death?

The Black Death was a pandemic of bubonic plague that swept through Europe and Asia  primarily in the 14th century.

It is estimated to have killed up to 200 million people, or about 60% of Europe's population, making it one of the deadliest pandemics in human history.

Symptoms of the disease included fever, chills, weakness, and swollen and painful lymph nodes, known as buboes.

In severe cases, death could occur within just a few days of the onset of symptoms.

How people at the time explained the plague

Medieval people in the 14th century believed that the Black Death, which was a pandemic of bubonic plague, was caused by a combination of natural and supernatural factors.

The term "supernatural factors" refers to beliefs and explanations that go beyond the natural world and are often associated with religion or spirituality.

In the context of the Black Death in the 14th century, people attributed the cause of the pandemic to various supernatural factors, such as bad air (miasma), the alignment of planets, and divine punishment.

The belief in bad air or miasma held that the disease was caused by noxious fumes in the air, often associated with rotting organic matter.

This belief was based on the ancient Greek theory of the four humors, which held that imbalances in the body caused by bad air could lead to illness.

The alignment of planets was another belief, as people of the time believed that the movements of celestial bodies could influence events on Earth, including diseases.

Divine punishment was a commonly held belief that the Black Death was a result of God's anger towards humanity for its sins.

This idea was rooted in religious and moral beliefs, and was often used to explain natural disasters and other forms of suffering.

The real cause of the Black Death

These beliefs, while they were widely held, were not scientifically accurate and did not reflect the true cause of the disease.

We now know that it was a bacterium called Yersinia Pestis . This disease spreads through fleas which live on rats and other rodents.

Research suggests that human ectoparasites, such as body lice and human fleas, might have also played a significant role in spreading the plague among humans.

The Black Death was first reported in Europe in 1346, and it spread rapidly across Europe over the next few years.

The plague was especially deadly in cities and towns, where there were large concentrations of people living in close quarters.

There was no cure for the disease, and so it killed indiscriminately.

For a long time, it was not known where the Black Death originated from.

However, in 2022, scientists, who had examined DNA from the teeth of plague victims , suggested that it came from an area in modern Kyrgyzstan.

They suggested that a small mammal in the region, called marmots, which still have fleas that carry the bacterium even today, helped transmit the disease to humans. 

From there, it then spread to Europe along trade routes.

First outbreaks

The Black Death first appeared in Europe in the city of Caffa in the Crimea in 1346, which is now part of Ukraine.

The inhabitants of Caffa were besieged by Mongol forces, and a group of merchants who had been trapped inside managed to escape the city.

They sailed to Constantinople (now Istanbul), where they unwittingly brought the plague with them.

Reports from Florence, Italy suggests that the disease then spread through trade routes from Constantinople to other parts of Europe.

The first case in Florence was recorded on March 20th, 1348, and it quickly spread throughout Tuscany.

The Black Death reached England by October 1348 and had killed an estimated 30–60% of London’s population by the end of the year.

Description of symptoms

The symptoms of the plague were very frightening and painful, which gave it its name: “the Black Death” because victims’ skin turned black with gangrene as they died.

The disease was also known as “the Great Mortality,” due to how many people perished from infection.

After infection, people could live as long as two weeks before dying. The disease was often fatal within five days, and most people died within seven to ten days after they first started showing symptoms of infection.

The main symptom of the Black Death was a swelling called a bubo on the neck or groin area that would fill with pus until it burst open, releasing blood and other bodily fluids.

These swellings were so painful that some victims would try to cut them off themselves!

Response to the Black Death

The Black Death caused widespread panic and hysteria throughout Europe.

People believed that it was a punishment from God, and they did everything they could to avoid catching the disease.

There were reports of people being burned alive or thrown into rivers as a way of preventing them from spreading the plague.

People also turned to prayer as a way of avoiding infection. They would pray for God’s mercy and forgiveness, and some people prayed for death instead of living with the fear of contracting plague every day.

Others went on pilgrimages in an attempt to be purged from sinfulness by visiting holy sites like Jerusalem or Rome.

There were also many superstitions surrounding the plague, and people believed that it was caused by bad air (called miasma) or evil spirits.

Effects of the Black Death

The Black Death had a devastating impact on Europe. It killed millions of people and left whole towns and villages empty.

The Black Death killed somewhere between 75 million to 200 million people in Europe during its first outbreak from 1346 to 53.

It had a devastating effect on society and changed the course of European history.

The plague left behind a continent full of empty villages and towns, as well as a shortage of labor which led to higher wages and increased social mobility.

There was also a rise in crime rates, as people were desperate to find food and other resources to survive. 

The Black Death also had a profound effect on European society. People became much more fearful and superstitious, as they were unsure why this terrible disease had appeared without warning.

The Church was blamed for failing to protect its flock from this scourge and many people turned away from religion in fear that God had abandoned them.

Some Europeans became convinced that Jews were responsible for the plague because they were different and didn’t follow Christian beliefs or practices.

This led to many pogroms against Jewish communities .

The Black Death also had a lasting economic impact on Europe. The plague caused a huge labor shortage, as so many people had died.

This led to a rise in wages and the prices of goods. It also created opportunities for new businesses to emerge, such as the printing press, which was invented by Johannes Gutenberg around 1440, more than a century after later.

The Black Death was a devastating epidemic which killed millions of people and left behind a changed Europe.

It is one of the most significant events in European history and has had a lasting impact on the continent to this day.

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The Black Death: An Intimate History

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Samuel K. Cohn, The Black Death: An Intimate History, The English Historical Review , Volume CXXIV, Issue 509, August 2009, Pages 940–942, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/cep210

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John Hatcher, perhaps the most prominent economic historian of the middle ages now teaching in Great Britain, has produced a new book on the social and personal drama of the Black Death. It centres on the parish of Walsham-le-Willows in north-western Suffolk and its exceptionally rich manorial rolls in the 1340s and 1350s. The book is not, however, as one might have expected from Professor Hatcher, a statistical or economic analysis of these records that purports new findings for the plague history of England. Instead, it is ‘An Intimate History’, what he labels as a docudrama of this traumatic and crucial decade in western civilisation. In it, Hatcher attempts to penetrate through the frame of macro-history, to flesh out the daily lives of men and women through the insights of contemporary authors such as Langland and Chaucer, along with Hatcher's own imaginary reconstructions.

Seventeen chapters, each entitled as a chronological sliver of this decade, such as ‘Christmas and New Year 1347–8’, run through the lives of the Walsham parishioners from late summer 1345 to 1350; each chapter begins with a historical sketch of the circumstances, which Hatcher (the historian as opposed to the docudramatist) draws from the sources—manorial records, chronicles, and secondary literature. From these we learn of the events of the Hundred Years War, the hardships from taxation imposed on villagers coupled with poor harvests and sharply rising prices in 1346; memories of the Great Famine of 1317–18; the spread of plague from the East; the story of bodies lobbed into the Genoese trading compound at Caffa; the plague's arrival in Messina and dissemination through Italy and southern France and then to England through the port of Weymouth; the supposed fact that the disease was one of rats transmitted to humans by the flea vector (although none of the sources mention any epizootic of rats and the high levels of contagion, speed of transmission, and seasonality of the disease fail to support the inference); the rise of prices and especially wages in England after the plague's soaring mortality in 1349; the spread of disobedience and a new assertiveness on the part of labourers because of their increased power created by labour scarcity; the social problems caused by numerous orphans and the crises of inheritance; new attitudes towards land with its sudden abundance and few labourers available to cultivate it; new strategies of estate management; and more.

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Encyclopedias, Companions & Handbooks

Books & book chapters, academic journals, selected primary sources.

• Primary and Secondary Sources on Selected Topics

Citation Management

The black death - his 1165 - rebecca winer.

This research guide introduces selected academic publications in the field of medieval studies. Use the menu on the left to navigate and feel free to contact me if you have questions. Use the book now button on the right to schedule a meeting with me.

• Horrox, Rosemary. The Black Death .  Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994. A collection of documents written by those who lived and died in the mid-fourteenth century (1348-1350). It traces the impact of the Black Death in Europe through contemporary writings with particular emphasis on its spread across England.
• Aberth, John. The Black Death: The Great Mortality of 1348-1350 : A Brief History With Documents. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2005.
• Marcus, Jacob Rader, and Marc Saperstein. "The Black Death and the Jews: 1348–1349." In The Jews in Christian Europe: A Source Book, 315–1791, 153-59. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015. doi:10.2307/j.ctt1f89t1n.28.
• Simonsohn, Shlomo. The Apostolic See and the Jews: Documents: 1394-1464. Toronto : Leiden: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1989.

Expand Primary & Secondary Sources on Selected Topics to review a list of locally available primary and secondary sources on specific topics.

  Primary and Secondary Sources on Selected Topics

Secondary sources.

• Jackson, Peter. The Mongols and the West, 1221-1410 . Oxfordshire, England: Routledge, 2014.
• Rachewiltz, Igor de. The Secret History of the Mongols: A Mongolian Epic Chronicle of the Thirteenth Century . Leiden: Brill, 2013.
• More e-books about the Mongols.

Black Death Cemeteries: East Smithfield, London

• Antoine, Daniel. "The Archaeology of Plague." Medical History 52, no. S27 (2008): 101-14. doi:10.1017/S0025727300072112 .
• Kendall, E.J. "Mobility, Mortality, and the Middle Ages: Identification of Migrant Individuals in a 14th Century Black Death Cemetery Population." American Journal of Physical Anthropology 150, no. 2 (2013): 210-222. doi:10.1002/ajpa.22194 .
• DeWitte, Sharon N. "Age Patterns of Mortality During the Black Death in London, A.D. 1349-1350." Journal of Archaeological Science 37, no. 12 (2010): 3394-3400. doi:10.1016/j.jas.2010.08.006 .
• Gilchrist, Roberta. Medieval Life: Archaeology and the Life Course . Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2012.

Economic Impact of the Black Death (England)

• Bothwell, James, P. J. P. Goldberg, and W. M. Ormrod, eds. The Problem of Labour in Fourteenth-Century England . Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 2000. doi:10.7722/j.ctt9qdhss.
• Bridbury, A. R. Economic Growth: England in the Later Middle Ages . London: Routledge, 2016.
• Dodds, Ben., and R. H. Britnell. Agriculture and Rural Society After the Black Death: Common Themes and Regional Variations . Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press, 2008.
• Getz, Faye Marie. "Black Death and the Silver Lining: Meaning, Continuity, and Revolutionary Change in Histories of Medieval Plague." Journal of the History of Biology 24, no. 2 (1991): 265-289. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4331174 .
• Hatcher, John. "England in the Aftermath of the Black Death." Past and Present , no. 144 (1994): 3-35. http://www.jstor.org/stable/651142 .
• Miskimin, Harry A. The Economy of Early Renaissance Europe, 1300-1460 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511562693 .
• Poos, L. R. "The Social Context of Statute of Labourers Enforcement." Law and History Review 1, no. 1 (1983): 27-52. doi:10.2307/744001 .
• Putnam, Bertha Haven. The Enforcement of the Statutes of Labourers During the First Decade After the Black Death, 1349-1359 . New York: Longmans, 1908.
• Simon A. C. Penn, and Christopher Dyer. "Wages and Earnings in Late Medieval England: Evidence from the Enforcement of the Labour Laws." The Economic History Review , New Series, 43, no. 3 (1990): 356-76. doi:10.2307/2596938 .

Social Impact of the Black Death

• Wray, Shona Kelly. Communities and Crisis: Bologna During the Black Death . Leiden: Brill, 2009.

Black Death in Barcelona

Primary sources.

• Gyug, R.F. The Diocese of Barcelona during the Black Death: The Register 'Notule Communium' 15 (1348-1349) . Toronto: Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies, 1994.
• Bisson, Thomas N. Fiscal Accounts of Catalonia Under the Early Count-kings (1151-1213) . Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Vol.1 Vol. 2
• Bensch, Stephen P. Barcelona and Its Rulers, 1096-1291 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
• Bisson, Thomas N. Medieval Crown of Aragon: A Short History . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
• Franklin-Lyons, Adam. " Famine—Preparation and Response in Catalonia After the Black Death ." Ph.D. thesis, Yale University, 2009.
• Freedman, Paul. The Origins of Peasant Servitude in Medieval Catalonia . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
• Fynn-Paul, Jeff. “Plague, War, and Calamity.” In The Rise and Decline of an Iberian Bourgeoisie: Manresa in the Later Middle Ages, 1250–1500 , 92–118. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. doi:10.1017/CBO9781316135693.006 .
• Gampel, Benjamin R. “Barcelona.” Chapter. In Anti-Jewish Riots in the Crown of Aragon and the Royal Response, 1391–1392 , 92–113. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. doi:10.1017/CBO9781316690970.006 .
• Gyug, R. "The Effects and Extent of the Black Death of 1348: New Evidence for Clerical Mortality in Barcelona." Mediaeval Studies 45 (1983): 385-398. (available via interlibrary loan)

Daniel Defoe

• Defoe, Daniel. A Journal of the Plague Year . London: Printed for E. Nutt, J. Roberts, A. Dodd & J. Graves, 1722.
• Mueller, Andreas. "Daniel Defoe". In Oxford Bibliographies Online in British and Irish Literature. doi: 10.1093/obo/9780199846719-0124 .
• Spencer, Mark G. "Daniel Defoe (1660-26 April 1731)." Eighteenth-Century British Historians , edited by Ellen J. Jenkins, vol. 336, Gale, 2007, pp. 82-94. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 336. Gale Literature: Dictionary of Literary Biography .

Medicine and the Black Death

• Duran-Reynals, M.L., and C.-E. A. Winslow. "Regiment de Preservacio a Epidimia o Pestilencia e Mortaldats." Bulletin of the History of Medicine 23, no. 1 (1949): 57-89. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44443424 . English translation of d’Agramont’s treatise.
• Schupbach, William M. “A Venetian ‘Plague Miracle’ in 1464 and 1576.” Medical History 20, no. 3 (1976): 312–16. doi:10.1017/S0025727300022699 .
• Archambeau, Nicole. "Healing Options during the Plague: Survivor Stories from a Fourteenth-Century Canonization Inquest." Bulletin of the History of Medicine 85, no. 4 (2011): 531-59. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44452234 .
• Carmichael, Ann G. "Plague Legislation in the Italian Renaissance." Bulletin of the History of Medicine 57, no. 4 (1983): 508-25. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44443062 .
• Carmichael, Ann G. “Universal and Particular: The Language of Plague, 1348–1500.” Medical History 52, no. S27 (2008): 17–52. doi:10.1017/S0025727300072070 .
• Heinrichs, Erik A. "The Live Chicken Treatment for Buboes: Trying a Plague Cure in Medieval and Early Modern Europe." Bulletin of the History of Medicine 91, no. 2 (2017): 210-232. doi:10.1353/bhm.2017.0025 .
• Jackson, Mark, and Peregrine Horden. "Medieval Medicine." In The Oxford Handbook of the History of Medicine . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199546497.013.0003 .
• Winslow, C.-E. A., and M. L. Duran-Reynals. "Jacme d’Agramont and the First of the Plague Tractates." Bulletin of the History of Medicine 22, no. 6 (1948): 747-65. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44442234 .
• Wray, Shona Kelly. "Boccaccio and the Doctors: Medicine and Compassion in the Face of Plague." Journal of Medieval History 30, no. 3 (2004): 301-322. doi:10.1016/j.jmedhist.2004.06.005 .
• Bulletin of the History of Medicine Coverage: 1939-2014 (Vol. 7, No. 1 - Vol. 88, No. 4) https://www-jstor-org.ezp1.villanova.edu/journal/bullhistmedi Vols. 1-7 under different title: Bulletin of the Institute of the History of Medicine https://www-jstor-org.ezp1.villanova.edu/journal/bullinsthistmedi 1996 – present https://muse-jhu-edu.ezp1.villanova.edu/journal/24
• Medical History: An International Journal for the History of Medicine and Related Sciences

Joan of Arc

• Taylor, Craig. Joan of Arc: La Pucelle: Selected Sources . Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006.
• Taylor, Larissa Juliet. The Virgin Warrior: The Life and Death of Joan of Arc . Yale University Press, 2009. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5vm27v .

Catherine of Siena

• Raymond, of Capua. Life of Saint Catharine of Sienna . New York: P.J. Kenedy, 1862. Earliest biography written by her confessor.
• Catherine of Siena. Saint Catherine of Siena as Seen in Her Letters . London: J.M. Dent & Co, 1911.
• Coakley, John W. "Managing Holiness: Raymond of Capua and Catherine of Siena." In Women, Men, and Spiritual Power: Female Saints and Their Male Collaborators , 170-92. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. doi:10.7312/coak13400.13 .
• Muessig, Carolyn., George Ferzoco, and Beverly Mayne Kienzle. A Companion to Catherine of Siena . Leiden: Brill, 2012.
• Scott, Karen. "Mystical Death, Bodily Death: Catherine of Siena and Raymond of Capua on the Mystic’s Encounter with God." In Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their Interpreters , edited by Catherine M. Mooney, 136-67. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt19dzcxg.12 .

Military Weaponry

• De re militari: The Society for Medieval Military History
• Curry, Anne. "Hundred Years War". In Oxford Bibliographies Online in Medieval Studies. doi:10.1093/obo/9780195396584-0076 . (see section on armies and weapons)
• Electronic books and journals on medieval military history.

Witchcraft in the Fifteenth Century

• Mackay, Christopher S., and Heinrich Institoris. The Hammer of Witches: A Complete Translation of the Malleus Maleficarum . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
• Broedel, Hans Peter. "Fifteenth-Century Witch Beliefs." In The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America , edited by Brian P. Levack. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199578160.013.0003 .
• Kieckhefer, Richard. "The First Wave of Trials for Diabolical Witchcraft." In The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America ., edited by Brian P. Levack. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199578160.013.0010 .
• Levack, Brian P. "Introduction." In The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America , edited by Brian P. Levack. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199578160.013.0001 .

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Essay On The Black Death

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: Death , Town , History , Sociology , Health , Population , Europe , Pandemic

Words: 2000

Published: 11/13/2019

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The Black Death

Introduction

The Black Death stands out as one of the most destructive pandemics to occur in human history that claimed many lives in Europe between 1348 and 1350. The underlying cause of the pandemic has been a controversial subject, characterized with different perspectives concerning the explanation for its cause. The first reports of the Black Death were in Europe during the summer of 1346 and this occurred in the town of Caffe in the Crimea. The city of Caffa was under siege by the Tartars who would launch corpses infected with the disease over the walls of the city with the intentions of weakening the city’s defenses. The residents of Caffa escaped the attack to other areas through use of boats and in the process carried the disease with them. The Black Death was a term which collectively referred to three separate plagues with the Bubonic and septicaemic plague being carried by fleas while the pneumonic plague was viral in nature and was spread through the air.

The Black Death killed approximately 30-40 percent of the population, resulting to a significant reduction in the world’s population (Byrne, 2004). As the population in Europe started growing, cities began to grow at unprecedented rate bringing with it conditions like waste accumulation, overcrowding and water pollution which only served to provide an enabling environment for the black death to occur. Various sources attribute the main cause of the Black Death to be the outbreak of bubonic plague as a result of the bacterium yersinia pestis. The plague spread throughout Europe and the Mediterranean as a result of being carried by oriental rat fleas residing on black cats which resided in passenger and merchant ships.

Recent forensic search reveals that the major cause of the Black Death was a bubonic plague thought to have originally come from China and spread to regions of Europe by merchant ships. The European’s population recovered from the plague in duration of one and a half centuries. It is evident that the Black Death pandemic had vast effects on the religious and socio-economic turmoil on the history of Europe.

In order to ascertain the religious and socio-economic consequences of the Black Death, it is important to first analyze an overview of the causes of the Black Death pandemic. Prior to the onset of Black Death during the mid 14th century, Europe had not witnessed epidemic ailments. Historians contest that the Black Death had its origin in China and spread to other parts in Europe by ship. It is evident that the scale of the Black Death pandemic had severe impacts on the social structure of Europe’s population (Campbell, 2009). Due to lack of contemporary records concerning the plague, the principal cause of the pandemic has been subject to controversy with different researchers and historians contesting to different causes of the pandemic. The most accepted explanation for cause of the Black Death was the bubonic plague, which argues that the pathogen responsible for causing the plague is Yersinia pestis transmitted by rats and fleas (Herlihy, 1997). The following section outlines the consequences of the plague with respect to socio-economic and religious factors.

The massive population losses associated with the Black Death meant that it had some effects on the social, economic and religious structures of the European population during the 14th century and the subsequent years that followed in the history of Europe. A rough estimate on the mortality rate of the Black Death suggests that in a period of two years, the pandemic claimed one out of every three lives, nothing like that had ever happened in human history. For instance, it is estimated the Black Death claimed lives of about 45-75 percent population of Florence within one year, resulting to the collapse of its economic system (Herlihy, 1997). About 60 per cent of Venice population died within a span of 18 months, approximately 500-600 deaths daily. Such death rates had significant effects on the population structure of the most affected areas. Higher mortality rates affected certain professions whose line of duty required contact with the already sick, for instance the doctors and clergymen (Ormrod, 1996).

The survival rates during the times of the pandemic for such professions were low. For example, eight physicians died out of nine in Perpignan. The high mortality rates significantly affected the religious structure of Europe’s population since most of the clergies had contact with the patients, and this implied that their survival rates were at stake. Historical accounts report that 30 percent of the cardinals succumbed to the pandemic. Recovery of the population loss took approximately 150 years, with urban population recovering faster due to factors such as immigration. Population in the rural areas recovered gradually also due to increased migration to the urban centers. Special groups were the most affected by the Black Death Pandemic, for instance, the friars. It is evident that the Black Death drew a dividing line in the middle Ages into a strong medieval culture and later middle Ages characterized by a strong population and a reduced population respectively (Byrne, 2004).

The Black Death was responsible for economic disruption in Europe during the 14th century, and its effects propagated in the following years. The most affected were the urban cities since they experienced an economic meltdown due to disruption in business activities because there was no time to concentrate on business yet a plague had hit the population. Projects such as building and construction came to a halt. The plague significantly affected Mills and machinery industry by inflicting death on the skilled personnel who had the ability to attend to such machineries (Olea & Christakos, 2005). The Black Death did not spare artisans either, resulting to an economic sabotage for the guilds. This reveals the severity of the labor shortage during the years that the plague was peaking and the subsequent years that followed. As the population reduced, Europe supply of goods increased sand since there was little population, the prices significantly dropped. This meant that those who survived the plague, their standard of living increased. The economic activities in the rural areas also succumbed to the pandemic. This is because most of the population died, and the few survivors decided to move on. It is evident that there was labor shortage in the rural areas during the peak of the pandemic (Olea & Christakos, 2005). It is arguable that the economic disruption caused by Black Death is responsible for the guild revolts that occurred during the century and rebellions in the rural areas of Europe. For instance, England witnessed the Peasant’s revolt during 1381. There a series of revolts that occurred in Europe, such as the rebellion from Catalonian that took place during 1395, and the Jacquerie rebellion that took place during 1358. This serves to reveal the impacts of the Black Death pandemic with regard to economic disruptions and the social structure of Europe’s population (Olea & Christakos, 2005).

The Black Death pandemic affected all of Europe’s population without discrimination, therefore having serious effects on the social relations of the European population. Most chronicles reported that the plague affected everyone, irrespective of one’s social status. Generally, all the elements that made up the community suffered from the plague. For instance, learning institutions found in places mostly affected by the plague closed down. Historical accounts report that only 26 professors survived out of the 40 found in Cambridge University. Religious institutions also succumbed to the effects of the plague through death of the priests and Bishops and their successors (Ormrod, 1996). The most affected religious institution was the Catholic Church. The increased mortality rates associated with Black Death had immense effects on social relations among European population. The European population during the time had no knowledge of the underlying cause of the plague during the time, because of this; they vested their vengeance of the Jews and other foreigners as possible causes of the plague. This is evident by the massive attacks on Jewish communities during 1349. Even the European governments had no mechanism to approach the plague since there was no one who knew how the plague was transmitted from one person to another; as a result, people believed that it was God’s wrath, which resulted to such devastating occurrences (Herlihy, 1997).

The Black Death pandemic had cultural effects in terms of art and literature in Europe within the generation that had a firsthand experience on the plague and subsequent generations. Chroniclers, who were famous writers, are the ones responsible for keeping records on the events of the Black Death. The despair associated with Black Death got its way into the famous works of art and literature in Europe during the later years in the 14th century. The most striking evidence is the tomb sculptures of the times (Olea & Christakos, 2005). Black Death significantly influenced the decorations on the tomb sculptures. The onset of the 1400 saw some tomb sculptures being designed as a way of remembering the pandemic. Artists who designed sculptures on tombs incorporated themes depicting the Black Death by sculpting bodies showing the signs of the pandemic. The pandemic also got its way into paintings of the time, with a painting style commonly referred to as danse macabre, meaning the Dance of Death (Herlihy, 1997). The painting style emphasized on a combination of skeletons interacting with normal beings during their undertaking of daily activities. The most striking element about the paintings is that each scene had an element of living combined with skeletons. This works of art and literature were commissioned with the aim of remembering the Black Death pandemic. Therefore, the Black Death played a big role in influencing subsequent works of Art and Literature across Europe. (Byrne, 2004).

The Black Death pandemic played a significant role in influencing the political cause of Europe. A significant number of political nobles and reigning monarchs died of the plague. The most notable being the queen of France and the queen of Aragon. The plague also affected government operations since it caused the adjournment of parliaments. The war in Europe came was affected by the plague since most of the soldiers died because of the Black Death pandemic. The most notable political effect of the Black Death pandemic was at local levels of governance, whereby city councils were destroyed and the closure of courts. The effects on political disruption were not permanent because government had to resume its duties immediately after the Black Death pandemic (Cohn, 2002).

An overview of the effects of the Black Death Pandemic serves as a demarcation of the Middle Ages in the European History. The consequences of the Black Death cannot be underestimated in the history of Europe. The economic, social and political disruptions of the Black Death marks an integral part of the History of Europe as evident in its effects described in the paper. It is evident that the Black Death pandemic had vast effects on the religious and socio-economic turmoil on the history of Europe.

Byrne, J. (2004). The Black Death. London: GreenWood Publishing Group. Campbell, B. (2009). Factor markets in England before the Black Death. Continuity and change, 24 (1), 79-106. Cohn, S. (2002). The Black Death Transformed: Disease and Culture in Early Renaissance. London: Arnold Publishers. Herlihy, D. (1997). The Black Death and the Transformation of the West. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Olea, R., & Christakos, G. (2005). Urban Mortality and the Black Death. Detroit, Michigan: Wayne State University Press. Ormrod, W. (1996). The Black Death in England. Stamford, UK: Paul Watkins.

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Essay on The Black Death

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The Black Death: A Personal History

By john hatcher, the black death: a personal history analysis.

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Instead of discussing the Black Death, what happens when a person looks past the subject matter of the book to analyze the construction of the book instead? What they find is a fascinating discussion of truth. Truth is an abstract concept which is different in many ways than fact, and in fact often times discussions which solely focus of factual knowledge miss the deeper truth that can be seen. In this case, truth is attained through a dual approach to narrative, half factual (historical fact) and half personal.

The fictional aspect of the book comes from Master John 's personal life, and that fictitious aspect allows more truth to be included, because the facts of the Black Death are rooted in a personal narrative about one man's experience. The fact that the protagonist is a minister allows a natural conversation between the Plague and theodicy. Theodicy is the philosophical practice of justifying human suffering to the potential existence of a loving and almighty God. That is literally Master John's role in his community, helping his parish to understand God's love as they suffer and die in horrible confusion.

Of course Master John is also subject to horror and death, so as he attempts to navigate the fictional aspects of this story, John Hatcher's own authorial voice can be seen in the background, using this fascinating thought experiment for philosophical considerations of human suffering. This is also a major conundrum in the Humanities, because human suffering seems to add tension and value to human experience, but on the face plagues like the Black Death seem horrific and dour. How could a loving God allow terror and sickness to afflict his children? The struggle to understand this points to transcendental religious considerations.

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The Black Death: A Personal History study guide contains a biography of John Hatcher, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

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The Black Death: A Personal History essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Black Death: A Personal History by John Hatcher.

• The Black Death and the Modernization of Europe: A Critique of Hatcher's Account

83 Black Death Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best black death topic ideas & essay examples, ⭐ good research topics about black death, 👍 simple & easy black death essay titles, ❓ research questions about the black death.

• Impact of the Black Death An obvious social impact of the plague is the fact that the Black Death led to a significant reduction in the human population of the affected areas.
• The Catholic Church and the Black Death in the 14th Century Therefore, the essence of this research paper is to investigate the role of Catholic Church during the Black Death, specifically paying attention to the steps the church used to prevent the disease, the Flagellants and […] We will write a custom essay specifically for you by our professional experts 808 writers online Learn More
• Black Death and COVID-19 Comparison The availability of highly complex treatment systems and the provision of medical care to the majority of the population alleviates the potential negative effects of the virus, allowing sick individuals to receive necessary medications.
• Flash Point History Documentary About the Black Death IN order to document the spread of the plague, a number of different maps and graphs are used, allowing the creators to showcase the spread of the plague throughout Europe.
• The Black Death: Causes and Reactions This paper discusses the causes of the Black Death, human contribution to the spread of the disease, and describes the responses to the Black Death.
• Comparison of Black Death and COVID-19 Decameron, the classic piece of medieval literature, starts with a depiction of the devastating plague the Black Death. Luckily, COVID-19 mortality rates are nothing in comparison with the Black Death.
• The Black Death in Europe: Spread and Causes The bacterium persists more commonly in the lymphatic system of the groin, armpits, and neck, and increasing pain of the bubonic elements is one of the central symptoms of the disease.
• The Plague (The Black Death) of 1348 and 1350 European population of nearly 30 to 60% has fallen victims to Black Death which indicates the death of 450 million in the year 1400. The objective of this agency is to track and probe the […]
• The Black Death in Medieval Europe According to the institution, the pestilence that affected France, Italy, Germany, and other countries was majorly a result of some configurations of planets. The Faculty added that the vapor and hot air were also a […]
• Economic Impact of the Black Death in the European Society This paper will focus on the economic impact of the Black Death and the changes that occurred to European society after the catastrophe. The most noticeable effect of the Black Death was the abrupt decline […]
• Early Modern Europe After the Black Death The decrease of the population had a considerable on commercial relations since due to the disappearance of the working class which the main basis in the medieval economy, peasants become more conscious and prudent.
• Black Death of Archbishop and Scientific Progress The death led to the development of potential domains in modern medicine. His closeness to the king would have contributed to the rapid development of science.
• The Black Death Effect on the Medieval Europe It is inappropriate to perceive the problem only in the light of sharply declining numbers of population, and changes in the patterns of settlement.
• Black Death’s Effect on Religion in Europe To fully understand the impact of the Black Death pandemic, it is important to establish the power of the Catholic Church in the years before the appearance of the plague.
• The Black Death and Michael Dols’s Theory The biggest problem is that many believed that it cannot be contagious because of religious reasons, and it has led to numerous casualties. However, the issue is that it was not possible to control the […]
• The Black Death Disease’ History The disease is also believed to have come to Europe from the black mice that were often seen on the merchants’ boats.
• The Demographics Impact of Black Death and the Standard of Living Controversies in the Late Medieval This article explores the property rights of the Europeans in the aftermath of the Black Death. In this article, Zapotoczny focuses on the effects of the Black Death.
• The Black Death, the Late Medieval Demographic Crises, and the Standard of Living Controversies Such claims make the name of the pandemic a moot point because another group of historians dispute the idea that the name originated from the discoloration of the victims’ skins, but it is instead a […]
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• Which Countries Were Not Affected by the Black Death?
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2024, March 2). 83 Black Death Essay Topic Ideas & Examples. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/black-death-essay-topics/

"83 Black Death Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." IvyPanda , 2 Mar. 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/topic/black-death-essay-topics/.

IvyPanda . (2024) '83 Black Death Essay Topic Ideas & Examples'. 2 March.

IvyPanda . 2024. "83 Black Death Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." March 2, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/black-death-essay-topics/.

1. IvyPanda . "83 Black Death Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." March 2, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/black-death-essay-topics/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "83 Black Death Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." March 2, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/black-death-essay-topics/.

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