Consequences of the Black Death
From the perspective of many of the survivors, the effect of the plague may have been ultimately favourable, as the massive reduction of the workforce meant their labor was suddenly in higher demand.
Death toll
Figures for the
Europe
Europe suffered an especially significant death toll from the plague. Modern estimates range between roughly one third and one half of the total European population in the five-year period of 1347 to 1351 died during which the most severely-affected areas may have lost up to 80% of the population.[8] Contemporary chronicler Jean Froissart estimated the toll to be one-third, which modern scholars consider less an accurate assessment than an allusion to the Book of Revelation meant to suggest the scope of the plague.[9] Deaths were not evenly distributed across Europe, and some areas were affected very little, but others were all but entirely depopulated.[10]
The Black Death hit the culture of towns and cities disproportionately hard although rural areas, where most of the population lived at the time, were also significantly affected. Larger cities were the worst off, as population densities and close living quarters made disease transmission easier. Cities were also strikingly filthy, infested with
Some places, including the
All social classes were affected, but the lower classes, living together in unhealthy places, were most vulnerable.
Asia
Estimates of the demographic effect of the plague in Asia are based on population figures during the time and estimates of the disease's toll on population centers. The most severe outbreak of plague, in the
The precise demographic effect of the disease in the
Social, environmental, and economic effects
Because 14th-century healers were at a loss to explain the cause of the Black Death, many Europeans believed supernatural forces, earthquakes, malicious conspiracies were credible explanations for the plague's emergence.[19] No one in the 14th century considered rat control a way to ward off the plague, and people began to believe that only God's anger could produce such horrific displays of suffering and death. Giovanni Boccaccio, an Italian writer and poet of the era, questioned whether it was sent by God for their correction, or if it came through the influence of the heavenly bodies.[20] Christians accused Jews of poisoning public water supplies and alleged that Jews were making an effort to ruin European civilization. The spreading of those rumours led to the complete destruction of entire Jewish towns. In February 1349, 2,000 Jews were murdered in Strasbourg. In August that year, the Jewish communities of Mainz and Cologne were murdered.[21]
Where government authorities were concerned, most
The historian Walter Scheidel contends that waves of plague following the initial outbreak of the Black Death had a levelling effect, which changed the ratio of land to labour by reducing the value of the former and boosting that of the latter, which lowered economic inequality by making landowners and employers less well-off and improved the lot of the workers: "the observed improvement in living standards of the laboring population was rooted in the suffering and premature death of tens of millions over the course of several generations". The levelling effect was reversed by a "demographic recovery that resulted in renewed population pressure".[22] On the other hand, in the quarter-century after the Black Death, many labourers, artisans, and craftsmen, those living from money-wages alone, suffer a reduction in real incomes in England from rampant inflation.[23] In 1357, a third of property in London was unused because of a severe outbreak in 1348–49.[13] However, for reasons still debated, population levels declined after the Black Death's first outbreak until around 1420 and did not begin to rise again until 1470 and so the initial Black Death event on its own does not entirely provide a satisfactory explanation to that extended period of decline in prosperity. See medieval demography for a more complete treatment of this issue and current theories on why improvements in living standards took longer to evolve.
The trade disruptions in the Mongol Empire caused by the Black Death was one of the reasons for its collapse.[24]
Peasantry
The great population loss brought favorable results to the surviving peasants in England and the rest of
In Eastern Europe, by contrast, renewed stringency of laws tied the remaining peasantry more tightly to the land than ever before through serfdom.
Furthermore, the plague's great population reduction brought cheaper land prices; more food for the average peasant; and a relatively large increase in per capita income among the peasantry, if not immediately, in the coming century. Since the plague left vast areas of farmland untended, they were made available for pasture and put more meat on the market. The consumption of meat and dairy products went up, as did the export of beef and butter from the Low Countries, Scandinavia and northern Germany. However, the upper class often attempted to stop the changes, initially in Western Europe and more forcefully and successfully in Eastern Europe, by instituting
The rapid development of the use was probably one of the consequences of the Black Death during which many landowning nobles died and left their realty to their widows and minor orphans.[citation needed]
Urban workers
In the wake of the drastic population decline brought on by the plague, wages shot up, and labourers could move to new localities in response to wage offers. Local and royal authorities in Western Europe instituted wage controls. The government controls sought to freeze wages at the old levels before the Black Death. Within England, for example, the
Cohn, comparing numerous countries, argues that the laws were not designed primarily to freeze wages. Instead, he says that the energetic local and royal measures to control labour and artisans' prices were responses to elite fears of the greed and the possible new powers of the lesser classes that had gained new freedom. Cohn continues that the laws reflected the anxiety that followed the Black Death's new horrors of mass mortality and destruction and from elite anxiety about manifestations, such as the flagellant movement and the persecution of Jews, Catalans (in Sicily) and beggars.[31]
Labour-saving adaptations
The Black Death encouraged innovation of labour-saving technologies, leading to higher productivity.[32] There was also a shift from grain farming to animal husbandry. Grain farming was very labor-intensive, but animal husbandry needed only a shepherd and a few dogs and pastureland.[33]
By 1200, virtually all of the Mediterranean basin and most of northern Germany had been deforested and cultivated. Indigenous flora and fauna were replaced by domestic grasses and animals, and domestic woodlands were lost. With depopulation, the process was reversed. Much of the primeval vegetation returned, and abandoned fields and pastures were reforested.[33]
Changing land-contracts and end of serfdom
Plague brought an eventual end of serfdom in Western Europe. The manorial system was already in trouble, but the Black Death assured its demise throughout much of Western and Central Europe by 1500. Severe depopulation and migration of the village to cities caused an acute shortage of agricultural labourers. Many villages were abandoned. In England, more than 1300 villages were deserted between 1350 and 1500.[33] Wages of labourers were high, but the rise in nominal wages after the Black Death was swamped by inflation and so real wages fell.[30]
Labour was in such a short supply that landlords were forced to give better terms of tenure. That resulted in much lower rents in Western Europe. By 1500, a new form of tenure called copyhold became prevalent in Europe. In copyhold, both a landlord and peasant made their best business deal, whereby the peasant got use of the land and the landlord got a fixed annual payment, and both possessed a copy of the tenure agreement. Serfdom did not end everywhere and lingered in parts of Western Europe and was introduced to Eastern Europe only after the Black Death.[33]
There was also a change in inheritance law. Before the plague, only sons, especially the eldest son, inherited the ancestral property. After the Plague, all sons and daughters started to inherit property.[33]
Persecutions
Renewed religious fervor and fanaticism came in the wake of the Black Death. Some Europeans targeted "groups such as Jews, friars, foreigners, beggars, pilgrims"[34] lepers[34][35] and Romani, who were thought to have caused the crisis.
Differences in cultural and lifestyle practices also led to persecution. As the plague swept across Europe in the mid-14th century, annihilating more than half the population, Jews became scapegoats,partly because better hygiene among Jewish communities and their isolation in ghettos meant that Jews were less affected.[36][37] Accusations spread that Jews had caused the disease by deliberately poisoning wells.[38][39] Mobs attacked Jewish settlements across Europe; by 1351, 60 major and 150 smaller Jewish communities had been destroyed, and more than 350 separate massacres had occurred.
According to Joseph P. Byrne, women also faced persecution during the Black Death. Muslim women in Cairo became scapegoats when the plague struck.[40] Byrne writes that in 1438, the sultan of Cairo was informed by his religious lawyers, that the arrival of the plague was "Allah's punishment for the sin of fornication" and that in accordance with that theory, a law was set in place stating that women were not allowed to make public appearances, as "they may tempt men into sin". Byrne describes that law as being lifted only when "the wealthy complained that their female servants could not shop for food".[40]
Religion
The Black Death hit the monasteries very hard because of their proximity with the sick who sought refuge there. That left a severe shortage of clergy after the epidemic cycle. Eventually, the losses were replaced by hasty and inexperienced clergy members, many of whom knew little of the rigours of their predecessors. New colleges were opened at established universities, and the training process was sped up.[41] The shortage of priests opened new opportunities for laywomen to assume more extensive and more important service roles in the local parish.[42]
Reformers rarely pointed to failures on the part of the Church in dealing with the catastrophe.[44]
Cultural effects
The Black Death had profound effects on art and literature. After 1350,
They died by the hundreds, both day and night, and all were thrown in... ditches and covered with earth. And as soon as those ditches were filled, more were dug. And I, Agnolo di Tura... buried my five children with my own hands.... And so many died that all believed it was the end of the world.[47]
Literary influences
Boccaccio wrote:
How many valiant men, how many fair ladies, breakfast with their kinfolk and the same night supped with their ancestors in the next world! The condition of the people was pitiable to behold. They sickened by the thousands daily, and died unattended and without help. Many died in the open street, others dying in their houses, made it known by the stench of their rotting bodies. Consecrated churchyards did not suffice for the burial of the vast multitude of bodies, which were heaped by the hundreds in vast trenches, like goods in a ship's hold and covered with a little earth.[48]
Another common painting motif that originated from the Black Death was called "three living meet the three dead", which depicts three living people encountering three corpses, reminding the living of their inevitable fate. [45]
Medicine
Although the Black Death highlighted the shortcomings of medical science in the Middle Ages, it also led to positive changes in the field of medicine. As described by David Herlihy in The Black Death and the Transformation of the West, more emphasis was placed on "anatomical investigations" after the Black Death.[49] The way that individuals studied the human body notably changed and became a process that dealt more directly with the human body in varied states of sickness and health. Furthermore, the importance of surgeons became more evident.[49]
A theory put forth by Stephen O'Brien is that the Black Death is likely responsible by natural selection for the high frequency of the CCR5-Δ32 genetic defect in people of European descent. The gene affects T cell function and provides protection against HIV, smallpox and possibly plague,[50] but for the last, no explanation exists on how it would do that. However, that is now challenged since the CCR5-Δ32 gene has been found to be just as common in Bronze Age tissue samples.[51]
Architecture
The Black Death also inspired European architecture to move in two different directions: (1) a revival of Greco-Roman styles, and (2) a further elaboration of the
See also
References
- ^ The Black Death Documentary, Oliver Wendell Holmes Middle School, 23 October 2015.
- ^ Barbara A. Hanawalt, "Centuries of Transition: England in the Later Middle Ages", in Richard Schlatter, ed., Recent Views on British History: Essays on Historical Writing since 1966 (Rutgers University Press, 1984), pp 43–44, 58
- ^ a b R. H. Hilton, The English Peasantry in the Late Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon, 1974)
- ISBN 978-0691165028.
- ^ Dunham, Will (29 January 2008). "Black death 'discriminated' between victims". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 3 November 2008.
- ^ "De-coding the Black Death". BBC News. 3 October 2001. Retrieved 3 November 2008.
- ^ Philipkoski, Kristen (3 October 2001). "Black Death's Gene Code Cracked". Wired. Retrieved 3 November 2008.
- ISBN 978-1-59803-345-8. Stéphane Barry and Norbert Gualde, in L'Histoire no. 310, June 2006, pp. 45–46, say "between one-third and two-thirds"; Robert Gottfried (1983). "Black Death" in Dictionary of the Middle Ages, volume 2, pp. 257–267, says "between 25 and 45 percent". Daileader, as above; Barry and Gualde, as above, Gottfried, as above. Norwegian historian Ole J. Benedictow ("The Black Death: The Greatest Catastrophe Ever", History Today, Volume 55 Issue 3, March 2005; cf. Benedictow, The Black Death 1346–1353: The Complete History, Boydell Press (7 December 2012), pp. 380ff.) suggests a death rate as high as 60%, or 50 million out of 80 million inhabitants.
- ^ Jean Froissart, Chronicles (trans. Geoffrey Brereton, Penguin, 1968, corrections 1974), p. 111.
- ISBN 0-313-32492-1, p. 64.
- ^ According to Kelly (2005), "[w]oefully inadequate sanitation made medieval urban Europe so disease-ridden, no city of any size could maintain its population without a constant influx of immigrants from the countryside". The influx of new citizens facilitated the movement of the plague between communities and contributed to the longevity of the plague within larger communities. Kelly, John. The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time. New York: HarperCollins, 2005, p. 68
- ^ Harald Aastorp (1 August 2004). "Svartedauden Enda verre enn antatt". Forskning.no. Archived from the original on 31 March 2008. Retrieved 3 January 2009.
- ^ a b Kennedy, Maev (17 August 2011). "Black Death study lets rats off the hook". The Guardian. Retrieved 18 August 2011.
- ^ Barry and Gualde 2006.
- ^ Stéphane Barry and Norbert Gualde, "La peste noire : la plus grande épidémie de l'histoire" [The Black Plague: the largest epidemic in history], in L'Histoire no. 310, June 2006, pp. 45–46
- S2CID 145085710.
- ^ Maguire, Michael (22 February 1999). "Re: How many people recovered from Black Death (Bubonic Plague)". MadSci Network. ID: 918741314.Mi. Retrieved 3 November 2008.
- ^ King, Jonathan (8 January 2005). "World's long dance with death". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 3 November 2008.
- OCLC 56615921.
- ^ Boccaccio, Giovanni. "Boccaccio on the Plague". Virginia Tech. Archived from the original on 6 February 2016.
- ^ Bennett and Hollister, 329–30.
- ISBN 978-0691165028.
- ^ Munro 2005, p. 14.
- ^ Getz, Trevor. "READ: Unit 3 Introduction – Land-Based Empires 1450 to 1750". Khan Academy. Retrieved 19 April 2024.
- ISBN 978-0-520-07018-9.
- ^ Barbara A. Hanawalt, "centuries of Transition: England in the Later Middle Ages," in Richard Schlatter, ed., Recent Views on British History: Essays on Historical Writing since 1966 (Rutgers UP, 1984), pp. 43–44, 58
- ^ "Statute of Labourers Act". Spartacus Educational.
- .
- ^ Gregory Clark, "The long march of history: Farm wages, population, and economic growth, England 1209–1869," Economic History Review 60.1 (2007): 97–135. online, page 36
- ^ a b Munro, John H. A. (5 March 2005). "Before and After the Black Death: Money, Prices, and Wages in Fourteenth-Century England". Working Papers. Retrieved 5 August 2014.
- ^ Samuel Cohn, "After the Black Death: Labour Legislation and Attitudes Towards Labour in Late-Medieval Western Europe," Economic History Review (2007) 60#3 pp. 457–85 in JSTOR
- ^ "Plagued by dear labour". The Economist. London. 21 October 2013. Retrieved 5 August 2014.
- ^ ISBN 0-02-912630-4.
- ^ ISBN 0-691-05889-X.
- ISBN 0-631-17145-2
- ^ Naomi E. Pasachoff, Robert J. Littman A Concise History of the Jewish People 2005. p. 154 "However, Jews regularly ritually washed and bathed, and their abodes were slightly cleaner than their Christian neighbors'. Consequently, when the rat and the flea brought the Black Death, Jews, with better hygiene, suffered less severely...".
- ^ Joseph P Byrne, Encyclopedia of the Black Death Volume 1 2012. p. 15 "Anti–Semitism and Anti–Jewish Violence before the Black Death.... Their attention to personal hygiene and diet, their forms of worship, and cycles of holidays were off-puttingly different".
- ^ Anna Foa The Jews of Europe After the Black Death 2000 p. 146 "There were several reasons for this, including, it has been suggested, the observance of laws of hygiene tied to ritual practices and a lower incidence of alcoholism and venereal disease".
- ^ Richard S. Levy Antisemitism 2005 p. 763 "Panic emerged again during the scourge of the Black Death in 1348, when widespread terror prompted a revival of the well poisoning charge. In areas where Jews appeared to die of the plague in fewer numbers than Christians, possibly because of better hygiene and greater isolation, lower mortality rates provided evidence of Jewish guilt".
- ^ a b Joseph P. Byrne, The Black Death (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2004), 108.
- ^ Steven A. Epstein, An Economic and Social History of Later Medieval Europe, 1000–1500 (2009) p. 182
- ^ Katherine L. French, The Good Women of the Parish: Gender and Religion After the Black Death (U of Pennsylvania Press, 2011)
- ISBN 9780141019956.
Flagellants Come To London, Michaelmas 1349. Robert of Avesbury.
- ^ Epstein, p. 182
- ^ ISBN 978-0-8225-9076-7.
- ^ J. M. Bennett and C. W. Hollister, Medieval Europe: A Short History (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006), p. 372.
- ^ "Plague readings". University of Arizona. Retrieved 3 November 2008.
- ^ Spignesi, Stephen (2002). Catastrophe!: The 100 Greatest Disasters of All Time. New York: Kensington Publishing Corp. p. 1.
- ^ a b David Herlihy, The Black Death and the Transformation of the West (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), 72.
- ISSN 1522-3086. Archived from the original on 14 February 2008. Retrieved 12 December 2006.)
{{cite journal}}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link - PMID 16678299.
- ^ Bennett and Hollister, p. 374.
- ^ Bennett and Hollister, p. 375.
- ^ Bennett and Hollister, p. 376.
Further reading
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