black death essay conclusion

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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.”

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Pandemics That Changed History

In the realm of infectious diseases, a pandemic is the worst case scenario. When an epidemic spreads beyond a country’s borders, that’s when the disease officially becomes a pandemic. Communicable diseases existed during humankind’s hunter‑gatherer days, but the shift to agrarian life 10,000 years ago created communities that made epidemics more possible. Malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy, […]

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.

Social Distancing and Quarantine Were Used in Medieval Times to Fight the Black Death

In the 14th century, health officials didn't understand bacteria or viruses, but they understood the importance of keeping a distance and disinfecting.

How One 17th‑Century Italian City Fended Off the Plague

The town of Ferrara managed to avoid even a single death from the widespread contagion. How did they do it?

5 Hard‑Earned Lessons from Pandemics of the Past

How do populations survive a pandemic? History offers some strategies.

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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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.

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What were the symptoms of the Black Death?

How did the black death affect europe, what are other names for the black death.

• What have been some of the world’s deadliest pandemics?
• How do pandemics end?

Black Death

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• World History Encyclopedia - Black Death
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• Black Death - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
• Table Of Contents

How many people died during the Black Death?

It is not known for certain how many people died during the Black Death. About 25 million people are estimated to have died in Europe from the plague between 1347 and 1351.

What caused the Black Death?

The Black Death is believed to have been the result of plague , an infectious fever caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis . The disease was likely transmitted from rodents to humans by the bite of infected fleas.

Where did the Black Death originate?

The plague that caused the Black Death originated in China in the early to mid-1300s and spread along trade routes westward to the Mediterranean and northern Africa. It reached southern England in 1348 and northern Britain and Scandinavia by 1350.

Yersinia causes three types of plague in humans: bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic. Although there is DNA evidence that Yersinia was present in victims of the Black Death, it is uncertain which form the majority of the infection took. It is likely that all three played some role in the pandemic.

Bubonic plague causes fever, fatigue, shivering, vomiting, headaches, giddiness, intolerance to light, pain in the back and limbs, sleeplessness, apathy, and delirium. It also causes buboes: one or more of the lymph nodes become tender and swollen, usually in the groin or armpits.

Pneumonic plague affects the lungs and causes symptoms similar to those of severe pneumonia: fever, weakness, and shortness of breath. Fluid fills the lungs and can cause death if untreated. Other symptoms may include insomnia, stupor, a staggering gait, speech disorder, and loss of memory.

Septicemic plague is an infection of the blood. Its symptoms include fatigue, fever, and internal bleeding.

The effects of the Black Death were many and varied. Trade suffered for a time, and wars were temporarily abandoned. Many labourers died, which devastated families through lost means of survival and caused personal suffering; landowners who used labourers as tenant farmers were also affected. The labour shortage caused landowners to substitute wages or money rents in place of labour services in an effort to keep their tenants, which benefited those surviving tenants. Wages for artisans and other workers also increased. Art in the wake of the Black Death became more preoccupied with mortality and the afterlife. Anti-Semitism greatly intensified throughout Europe, as Jews were blamed for the spread of the Black Death, and many Jews were killed by mobs or burned at the stake en masse.

The Black Death has also been called the Great Mortality, a term derived from medieval chronicles’ use of magna mortalitas . This term, along with magna pestilencia (“great pestilence”), was used in the Middle Ages to refer to what we know today as the Black Death as well as to other outbreaks of disease. “Black Plague” is also sometimes used to refer to the Black Death, though it is rarely used in scholarly studies.

Recent News

Black Death , pandemic that ravaged Europe between 1347 and 1351, taking a proportionately greater toll of life than any other known epidemic or war up to that time.

The Black Death is widely believed to have been the result of plague , caused by infection with the bacterium Yersinia pestis . Modern genetic analyses indicate that the strain of Y. pestis introduced during the Black Death is ancestral to all extant circulating Y. pestis strains known to cause disease in humans. Hence, the origin of modern plague epidemics lies in the medieval period. Other scientific evidence has indicated that the Black Death may have been viral in origin.

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124 Black Death Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

Inside This Article

The Black Death is undoubtedly one of the most significant events in human history. This devastating pandemic, also known as the Bubonic Plague, swept through Europe in the 14th century, resulting in millions of deaths and leaving a lasting impact on society. If you are tasked with writing an essay on this historical event, you may be searching for inspiration and topic ideas. In this article, we have compiled a list of 124 Black Death essay topics and examples to help you get started.

• The causes and origins of the Black Death.
• The impact of the Black Death on medieval Europe.
• The role of rats and fleas in spreading the disease.
• Comparing the Black Death to other major pandemics in history.
• The social and economic consequences of the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on art and literature.
• The medical understanding of the Black Death during the 14th century.
• The role of religious institutions during the Black Death.
• The psychological effects of living through the Black Death.
• The impact of the Black Death on the feudal system.
• The Black Death's impact on labor and the workforce.
• The Black Death's effect on the status of women in medieval society.
• The political consequences of the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of medicine.
• The role of quarantine measures during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's impact on urbanization and migration.
• The Black Death's influence on artistic representations of death.
• The response of different European countries to the Black Death.
• The Black Death and its relationship to climate change.
• The role of superstitions and religious beliefs during the Black Death.
• The impact of the Black Death on trade and commerce.
• The Black Death's effect on the educational system.
• The Black Death's impact on religious practices and beliefs.
• The role of social class during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the emergence of public health measures.
• The Black Death and its impact on the development of cities.
• The Black Death's effect on the psychological well-being of survivors.
• The role of medical practitioners during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the perception of death.
• The Black Death's impact on the decline of feudalism.
• The Black Death's effect on population growth and demographics.
• The role of art in commemorating the victims of the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on religious art and iconography.
• The Black Death's impact on religious pilgrimage.
• The Black Death's effect on family structures and dynamics.
• The role of women in nursing and caregiving during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of public health policies.
• The Black Death's impact on social mobility and upward mobility.
• The Black Death's effect on the perception of physical beauty.
• The role of religious rituals and practices during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on religious sects and heresy.
• The Black Death's impact on the perception of time and mortality.
• The Black Death's effect on the development of cemeteries and burial practices.
• The role of architecture in responding to the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the emergence of hospitals.
• The Black Death's impact on the development of public sanitation systems.
• The Black Death's effect on the funeral industry.
• The role of music and dance during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of mortuary practices.
• The Black Death's impact on the perception of personal hygiene.
• The Black Death's effect on the portrayal of death in literature.
• The role of government and leadership during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the emergence of quarantine laws.
• The Black Death's impact on the development of art as a form of therapy.
• The Black Death's effect on the perception of authority and power.
• The role of religion in providing comfort during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of medical textbooks.
• The Black Death's impact on the perception of illness and disease.
• The Black Death's effect on the concept of personal identity.
• The role of women in herbal medicine during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of personal hygiene practices.
• The Black Death's impact on the perception of physical suffering.
• The Black Death's effect on the portrayal of death in visual arts.
• The role of public spaces during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of healthcare infrastructure.
• The Black Death's impact on the perception of bodily decay.
• The Black Death's effect on the concept of community and solidarity.
• The role of folklore and folk remedies during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of medical education.
• The Black Death's impact on the perception of personal space and boundaries.
• The Black Death's effect on the portrayal of death in theater.
• The role of government propaganda during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of public health campaigns.
• The Black Death's impact on the perception of physical beauty and aesthetics.
• The Black Death's effect on the concept of individualism.
• The role of midwives during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of public hygiene practices.
• The Black Death's impact on the perception of bodily functions.
• The Black Death's effect on the portrayal of death in music.
• The role of religious relics and artifacts during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of medical research.
• The Black Death's impact on the perception of spirituality and afterlife.
• The Black Death's effect on the concept of personal responsibility.
• The role of women in caregiving and nursing during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of personal protective equipment.
• The Black Death's impact on the perception of physical pain and suffering.
• The role of public executions during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of public health regulations.
• The Black Death's impact on the perception of physical disability.
• The Black Death's effect on the concept of mortality and immortality.
• The role of religion in consoling the bereaved during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of medical treatments.
• The Black Death's impact on the perception of aging and senescence.
• The role of religious processions and rituals during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of personal hygiene products.
• The Black Death's impact on the perception of physical attractiveness.
• The Black Death's effect on the concept of fate and destiny.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of personal cleanliness practices.
• The Black Death's impact on the perception of physical health.
• The role of government censorship during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of medical ethics.
• The Black Death's impact on the perception of human fragility.
• The Black Death's effect on the concept of suffering and resilience.
• The role of women in herbal remedies during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of personal care products.
• The Black Death's impact on the perception of physical strength.
• The role of religious relics and symbols during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of medical breakthroughs.
• The Black Death's impact on the perception of spirituality and transcendence.
• The Black Death's effect on the concept of human interconnectedness.
• The role of midwives and female healers during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of personal hygiene habits.
• The role of public health officials during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of medical regulations.
• The Black Death's impact on the perception of physical cleanliness.
• The Black Death's effect on the concept of mortality and meaning of life.
• The role of religion in providing solace and hope during the Black Death.

These essay topics provide a wide range of ideas to explore the various aspects and impacts of the Black Death. Remember to conduct thorough research, gather reliable sources, and structure your essay appropriately to create a comprehensive and engaging piece of writing. Good luck with your essay!

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Effects of the Black Death on Europe

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The outbreak of plague in Europe between 1347-1352 – known as the Black Death – completely changed the world of medieval Europe. Severe depopulation upset the socio-economic feudal system of the time but the experience of the plague itself affected every aspect of people's lives.

Disease on an epidemic scale was simply part of life in the Middle Ages but a pandemic of the severity of the Black Death had never been experienced before and, afterwards, there was no way for the people to resume life as they had previously known it. The Black Death altered the fundamental paradigm of European life in the following areas:

• Socio-Economic
• Medical Knowledge and Practice
• Religious Belief and Practice
• Persecution and Migration
• Women 's Rights

Art & Architecture

Before the plague, the feudal system rigidly divided the population in a caste system of the king at the top, followed by nobles and wealthy merchants, with the peasants (serfs) at the bottom. Medical knowledge was received without question from doctors who relied on physicians of the past and the Catholic Church was considered an even higher authority on spiritual matters. Women were largely regarded as second-class citizens and the art and architecture of the time reflected the people's belief in a benevolent God who responded to prayer and supplication. The bacterium Yersinia pestis , carried by fleas on rodents, and the actual cause of the plague, was unknown to the people of the time and so did not factor into this world view.

Life at this time was by no means easy, or even sometimes pleasant, but people knew – or thought they knew – how the world worked and how to live in it; the plague would change all that and usher in a new understanding which found expression in movements such as the Protestant Reformation and the Renaissance.

Arrival, Spread, & Effect of the Plague

The plague came to Europe from the East, most probably via the trade routes known as the Silk Road overland, and certainly by ship oversea. The Black Death – a combination of bubonic, septicemic, and pneumonic plague (and also possibly a strain of murrain) – had been gaining momentum in the East since at least 1322 and, by c. 1343, had infected the troops of the Mongol Golden Horde under the command of the Khan Djanibek (r. 1342-1357) who was besieging the Italian-held city of Caffa (modern-day Feodosia in Crimea) on the Black Sea.

As Djanibek's troops died of the plague, he had their corpses catapulted over the city's walls, infecting the people of Caffa through their contact with the decomposing corpses. Eventually, a number of the city's inhabitants fled the city by ship, first arriving at Sicilian ports and then at Marseilles and others from whence the plague spread inland. Those infected usually died within three days of showing symptoms and the death toll rose so quickly that the people of Europe had no time to grasp what was happening, why, or what they should do about the situation. Scholar Norman F. Cantor comments:

The plague was much more severe in the cities than in the countryside, but its psychological impact penetrated all areas of society. No one – peasant or aristocrat – was safe from the disease, and once it was contracted, a horrible and painful death was almost a certainty. The dead and dying lay in the streets, abandoned by frightened friends and relatives. ( Civilization , 482)

As the plague raged on, and all efforts to stop its spread or cure those infected failed, people began to lose faith in the institutions they had relied on previously while the social system of feudalism began to crumble due to the widespread death of the serfs, those who were most susceptible as their living conditions placed them in closer contact with each other on a daily basis than those of the upper classes.

Socio-Economic Effects

Before the plague, the king was thought to own all the land which he allocated to his nobles. The nobles had serfs work the land which turned a profit for the lord who paid a percentage to the king. The serfs themselves earned nothing for their labor except lodging and food they grew themselves. Since all land was the king's, he felt free to give it as gifts to friends, relatives, and other nobility who had been of service to him and so every available piece of land by c. 1347 was being cultivated by serfs under one of these lords.

Europe was severely overpopulated at this time and so there was no shortage of serfs to work the land and these peasants had no choice but to continue this labor – which was in essence a kind of slavery – from the time they could walk until their death. There was no upward mobility in the feudal system and a serf was tied to the land he and his family worked from generation to generation.

Once the plague had passed, the improved lot of the serf was challenged by the upper class who were concerned that the lower classes were forgetting their place. Fashion changed dramatically as the elite demanded more extravagant clothing and accessories to distance themselves from the poor who could now afford to dress more finely than in their previous rags and blankets. Efforts of the wealthy to return the serf to his previous condition resulted in uprisings such as the peasant revolt in France in 1358, the guild revolts of 1378, the famous Peasants' Revolt of London in 1381. There was no turning back, however, and the efforts of the elite were futile. Class struggle would continue but the authority of the feudal system was broken.

Effect on Medical Knowledge & Practice

The challenge to authority also affected received medical knowledge and practice. Doctors based their medical knowledge primarily on the work of the Roman physician Galen (l. 130-210) as well as on Hippocrates (l. c. 460 - c. 370 BCE) and Aristotle (l. 384-322 BCE), but many of these works were only available in translations from Arabic copies and, often, poor ones. Even so, the works they had were put to the best use they possibly could be. Scholar Jeffrey Singman comments:

Medieval science was far from primitive; in fact, it was a highly sophisticated system based on the accumulated writings of theorists since the first millennium BCE. The weakness of medieval science was its theoretical and bookish orientation, which emphasized the authority of accepted authors. The duty of the scholar [and doctor] was to interpret and reconcile these ancient authorities, rather than to test their theories against observed realities. (62)

Doctors and other caregivers were seen dying at an alarming rate as they tried to cure plague victims using their traditional understanding and, further, nothing they prescribed did anything for their patients. It became clear, by as early as 1349, that people recovered from the plague or died from it for seemingly no reason at all. A cure that had restored one patient to health would fail to work on the next.

After the plague, doctors began to question their former practice of accepting the knowledge of the past without adapting it to present circumstances. Scholar Joseph A. Legan writes:

Medicine slowly began changing during the generation after the initial outbreak of Plague. Many leading medical theoreticians perished in the Plague, which opened the discipline to new ideas. A second cause for change was while university-based medicine failed, people began turning to the more practical surgeons…With the rise of surgery, more attention was given to the direct study of the human body, both in sickness and in health. Anatomical investigations and dissections, seldom performed in pre-plague Europe, were pursued more urgently with more support from public authorities. (53)

The death of so many scribes and theoreticians, who formerly wrote or translated medical treatises in Latin, resulted in new works being written in the vernacular languages. This allowed common people to read medical texts which broadened the base of medical knowledge. Further, hospitals developed into institutions more closely resembling those in the modern-day. Previously, hospitals were used only to isolate sick people; after the plague, they became centers for treatment with a much higher degree of cleanliness and attention to patient care.

Change in Religious Attitude

Doctors and theoreticians were not the only ones whose authority was challenged by the plague, however, as the clergy came under the same kind of scrutiny and inspired the same – or far greater – doubt in their abilities to perform the services they claimed to be able to. Friars, monks, priests, and nuns died just as easily as anyone else – in some towns, religious services simply stopped because there were no authorities to lead them - and, further, the charms and amulets people purchased for protection, the services they did attend, the processions they took part in, the prayer and the fasting, all did nothing to stop the spread of the plague and, in some instances, encouraged it.

The Flagellant Movement, in which groups of penitents would travel town to town whipping themselves to atone for their sins, began in Austria and gained momentum in Germany and France. These groups, led by a self-proclaimed Master with little or no religious training, not only helped spread the plague but also disrupted communities by their insistence on attacking marginalized groups such as the Jews.

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Increased Persecution & Migration

The frustration people felt at their helplessness in the face of the plague gave rise to violent outbursts of persecution across Europe. The Flagellant Movement was not the only source of persecution; otherwise peaceful citizens could be whipped into a frenzy to attack communities of Jews, Romani (gypsies), lepers, or others. Women were also abused in the belief that they encouraged sin because of their association with the biblical Eve and the fall of man.

The most common targets, however, were the Jews who had long been singled out for Christian hostility. The Christian concept of the Jew as “Christ Killer” encouraged a large body of superstition which included the claim that Jews killed Christian children and used their blood in unholy rituals, that this blood was often spread by Jews on the fields around a town to cause plague, and that the Jews regularly poisoned wells in the hopes of killing as many Christians as possible.

Jewish communities were completely destroyed in Germany, Austria, and France – in spite of a bull issued by Pope Clement VI (l. 1291-1352) exonerating the Jews and condemning Christian attacks on them. Large migrations of Jewish communities fled the scenes of these massacres, many of them finally settling in Poland and Eastern Europe.

Women's Rights

Women, on the other hand, gained higher status following the plague. Prior to the outbreak, women had few rights. Scholar Eileen Power writes:

In considering the characteristic medieval ideas about women, it is important to know not only what the ideas themselves were but also what were the sources from which they spring…In the early Middle Ages, what passed for contemporary opinion [on women] came from two sources – the Church and the aristocracy. (9)

Neither the medieval Church nor the aristocracy held women in very high regard. Women of the lower classes could work as bakers, milkmaids, barmaids, weavers, and, of course, as laborers with their family on the estate of the lord but had no say in directing their own fate. The lord would decide who a girl would marry, not her father, and a woman would go from being under the direct control of her father, who was subject to the lord, to the control of her husband who was equally subordinate.

After the plague, with so many men dead, women were allowed to own their own land, cultivate the businesses formerly run by their husband or son, and had greater liberty in choosing a mate. Women joined guilds, ran shipping and textile businesses, and could own taverns and farmlands. Although many of these rights would be diminished later as the aristocracy and the Church tried to assert its former control, women would still be better off after the plague than they were beforehand.

The plague also dramatically affected medieval art and architecture. Artistic pieces (paintings, wood-block prints, sculptures, and others) tended to be more realistic than before and, almost uniformly, focused on death. Scholar Anna Louise DesOrmeaux comments:

Some plague art contains gruesome imagery that was directly influenced by the mortality of the plague or by the medieval fascination with the macabre and awareness of death that were augmented by the plague. Some plague art documents psychosocial responses to the fear that plague aroused in its victims. Other plague art is of a subject that directly responds to people's reliance on religion to give them hope. (29)

The most famous motif was the Dance of Death (also known as Danse Macabre) an allegorical representation of death claiming people from all walks of life to come with him. As DesOrmeaux notes, post-plague art did not reference the plague directly but anyone viewing a piece would understand the symbolism. This is not to say there were no allusions to death before the plague, only that such became far more pronounced afterwards.

Architecture was similarly influenced, as noted by Cantor:

In England , there was a parallel increased austerity in architectural style which can be attributed to the Black Death – a shift from the Decorated version of French Gothic, which featured elaborate sculptures and glass, to a more spare style called Perpendicular, with sharper profiles of buildings and corners, less opulent, rounded, and effete than Decorated…The cause may have been economic – less capital to spend on decoration because of heavy war taxation and reduction of estate incomes because of labor shortage and higher peasants' wages. (Wake, 209)

Since peasants could now demand a higher wage, the kinds of elaborate building projects which were commissioned before the plague were no longer as easily affordable, resulting in more austere and cost-effective structures. Scholars have noted, however, that post-plague architecture also clearly resonated with the pervasive pessimism of the time and a preoccupation with sin and death.

It was not only the higher wages demanded by the peasant class, nor a preoccupation with death that affected post-plague architecture, however, but the vast reduction in agricultural production and demand due to depopulation which led to an economic recession. Fields were left uncultivated and crops were allowed to rot while, at the same time, nations severely limited imports in an effort to control the spread of the plague which only worsened their economies as well as those of their former trading partners.

The widespread fear of a death one had not earned, could not see coming, and could not escape, stunned the population of Europe at the time and, once they had somewhat recovered, inspired them to rethink the way they were living previously and the kinds of values they had held. Although little changed initially, by the middle of the 15th century radical changes – unimaginable only one hundred years before – were taking place throughout Europe, notably the Protestant Reformation , the agricultural shift from large-scale grain-farming to animal husbandry , the wage increase for urban and rural laborers, and the many other advances associated with the Renaissance.

Plague outbreaks would continue long after the Black Death pandemic of the 14th century but none would have the same psychological impact resulting in a complete reevaluation of the existing paradigm of received knowledge. Europe – as well as other regions – based its reactions to the Black Death on traditional conventions – whether religious or secular – and, when these failed, new models for understanding the world had to be created.

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Bibliography

• Anna Louise DesOrmeaux. "The Black Death and its Effect on 14th and 15th Century Art." Louisiana State University , N/A, pp. 1-22.
• Biological Warfare at the 1346 Siege of Caffa by Mark Wheelis , accessed 15 Apr 2020.
• Cantor, N. F. In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World it Made. Simon & Schuster, 2015.
• Cantor, N. F. The Civilization of the Middle Ages. Harper Perennial, 1994.
• Joseph A. Legan. "The Medical Response to the Black Death." James Madison University Scholarly Commons , Spring 2015, pp. 1-77.
• Kohn, G. C. Encyclopedia of Plague and Pestilence. Facts on File, 2007.
• Loyn, H. R. The Middle Ages: A Concise Encyclopedia. Thames & Hudson, 1991.
• Nardo, D. Living in the Middle Ages. Thompson/Gale Publishers, 2004.
• Power, E. Medieval Women. Cambridge University Press (1997-10-13), 1996.
• Singman, J. L. The Middle Ages: Everyday Life in Medieval Europe. Sterling, 2013.
• Trachtenberg, J. The Devil and the Jews. Harper Torchbooks, 2002.
• Tuchman, B. W. A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century. Random House Trade Paperbacks, 1987.

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The Black Death Disease’ History Research Paper

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The Black Death is known as one of the most horrible and destructive pandemics that hit the medieval world. The demise was amongst the past unforgettable incidences reported in Europe. It struck in Europe between the years 1348 and 1351. The disease was believed to be a Bubonic plague brought by a lethal bacterium called Pestis Yersinia. Medical archivists and historians believed that the plague originated from China and moved to Crimea in 1346 via the Silk Road. The disease is also believed to have come to Europe from the black mice that were often seen on the merchants’ boats.

Mice had parasites that transmitted and caused the sickness that led to deaths. It killed 40% of the European population thus reducing the world’s population to around 350 million from 450 million in the year 1400 (Alchin par. 1). The Black Death resulted in economic, political, social and religious problems in the European history. Historians think that Europe had to take about 150 years to recover from the Black Death’s severe impacts.

The Black Death came when people were very vulnerable. The physicians could not treat infectious diseases. People were weak due to wars and crop failures. The busy trade routes spread the disease fast enough. The Black Death’s first outbreak was in China in 1328. In a period of fifty years, the disease reduced the number of Chinese to ninety million from the initial figure of 125.0 million. Approximately 7500 victims died each day (Byrne 52). It is believed to have its origin from the Gobi Desert and followed the trade routes to various countries.

The disease appeared to be on the lowest part of Tributary Volga in the fiscal 1345, continued to Caucasus and Crimea in 1346, and Constantinople in 1347. However, the disease arrived at the Egyptians land (Alexandria) in the financial year 1347.

The death invaded the Englishmen from the financial year 1348 to 1350 when Emperor Edward 3 was reigning. The disease was reported in June, and it killed Englishmen until the last case was reported in August. When death cases increased, Bristol city appeared to be essential as the only seaport that served Europe in that period. It is believed that this was the starting point for the Black Death in England (“The Black Death of 1348 to 1350” par. 2).

In the United Kingdom, the disease was first reported in 1348 (November). It flourished in London due to the city’s filthy sanitation, congestion, and spread fast since mice loved dirt and had the disease. The Black Death arrived in the UK via water vessels that sailed through Thames Stream and invaded the whole UK. As a result, 20,000.0 demises were reported in the UK by churches (Alchin par. 4). Many people ended up being buried in communal pits.

The most vulnerable were the elderly, poor and children. The disease was reported in the Norwegian land in 1349 (May) when a boat that transported angora from England arrived at the port. All travelers and boat crews were reported dead days later. The Scots invaded the northern part of England with the thought that the Englishmen were being punished. The army carried the plague to Scotland in 1950. The disease moved as far as Iceland and Greenland.

The phrase black was used to refer to the disease given that it was terrible. In fact, the demise was also named black since its signs on the membrane darkened near the inflammations. People suffering from the disease had thick black plasma, which produced bad smell. The Black Death’s signs were terrible and started once one was infected. The inflammations were on the neckline, armpit, forelegs or groins. The irritations were known as buboes. The bubo initially started by being reddish in pigment then eventually turned dark. The other symptoms were delirium, mental disorder, muscular pains, high fever, bleeding lungs, and vomiting.

The victim also had a strong desire to sleep, but the resultant effects were fatal. The victims only lived from two to four days (“The Black Death of 1348 to 1350” par. 5). The disease killed its victim quickly and was difficult to treat, as no one knew what had caused it. In fact, the disease did not have a known cure, and just concoctions were given to the victims to reduce the symptoms.

For instance, flowers, tree barks, and lavender were used to relieve headaches while nausea’s treatment was mint, wormwood, and balm. A washing detergent known as Vinegar that was assumed to eradicate the malady was used to stop the spread of this disease.

The Black Death was important in England’s history. It caused many deaths and in some areas, everybody died. For example, in the Durham District, all the inhabitants were found dead. The death toll in monasteries was the highest given that the monks lived together. High value was placed on labor due to the population drop. In 1381, the Peasants Revolt began thus ending the Feudal System (Ziegler 33).

The wool industry did well as farming took a new direction. Most of the farming lands were turned into pastoral fields that did not require labor. The Black Death caused various migrations of peasants to towns. Church power and influence declined since people had lost faith in the church.

The rate of death was high that not everyone could be given the last rights to confess his or her sins. They ended up being allowed to confess to anyone that could listen. People thought this was God’s punishment though the church had no answer to offer to his congregation (Byrne 67). Thus, the disease made people to start doubting religion and the situation brought about English Reformation

. The cause of the Black Death was unknown. Individuals assumed that the disease was caused by air freed from volcanic activities. Others believed that the Jews caused the disease to get rid of Christians. However, the plague affected everyone including the Jews. Many Jews were killed and expelled. The Jews in Germany were told to change their religion to Christianity or burned.

The Dark Demise invaded European countries often during the fifteenth century. However, the disease was hardly deadly compared to the first time it appeared (Alchin par. 3). Another plague hit the Chinese and Indians in 1890 and spread to the United States. At this point, the cause and cure of the Black Death were discovered.

Even though life in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was uncivilized, the mortality rate during the Black Disease could not be compared to those normal days without the disease. For example, in the early fourteenth century, unfavorable weather caused wheat failures in Europe leading to famine ((Ziegler 37). The mortality rate during this period reached 10%, but it was only in some areas.

The Black Death is today known as the Bubonic Plague, which only affects a few people. The victims do not die since it is treatable in the modern times. The disease influenced Europe and most of the things that happened in the centuries that followed had their origin in the Black Death. The disease left a lasting mark on Europe and the entire world. Eventually, Europe recovered from the negative impacts with its population growing and economy improving.

Works Cited

Ziegler, Philip. The Black Death, London, UK: Faber & Faber, 2013. Print.

Byrne, Joseph. The Black Death , Portsmouth, NH: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004. Print.

Alchin, Linda 2014, Black Death . Web.

The Black Death of 1348 to 1350 . Web.

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Essay On The Black Death

Type of paper: Essay

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

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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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Home — Essay Samples — History — Medieval Europe — Black Death

Essays on Black Death

When it comes to writing an essay on the Black Death, also known as the Bubonic Plague, it’s crucial to choose a topic that is not only interesting but also relevant and impactful. The Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, and its impact on society, culture, and economy was immense. Therefore, selecting the right essay topic is essential to ensure that you can delve deeper into this historical event and provide valuable insights to your readers.

The Black Death had a profound and lasting impact on European society. It led to widespread death and suffering, economic collapse, and significant shifts in religious and cultural practices. As a result, studying the Black Death is crucial for understanding the broader historical context of the period and its long-term consequences. By choosing the right essay topic, you can contribute to the ongoing scholarly conversation about the Black Death and its impact on human history.

When selecting a Black Death essay topic, it’s important to consider your interests, the available research material, and the specific angle or perspective you want to explore. Whether you’re interested in the medical, social, economic, or cultural aspects of the Black Death, there are plenty of thought-provoking essay topics to choose from.

Recommended Black Death Essay Topics

There are numerous topics to consider in the Black Death essays. Whether you are interested in the history, social impact, or scientific aspects of this devastating pandemic, there is a wide range of topics to explore. Below is a list of Black Death essay topics categorized by different themes.

Medical Aspects

• The spread of the Black Death: causes and transmission
• The impact of the Black Death on medieval medicine
• The role of physicians and healers during the Black Death
• Comparing the Black Death to modern-day pandemics

Social and Economic Impact

• The demographic consequences of the Black Death
• The economic repercussions of the Black Death
• Changes in labor and land ownership after the Black Death
• The Black Death and the decline of feudalism

Religious and Cultural Effects

• Religious responses to the Black Death
• The portrayal of the Black Death in art and literature
• The Black Death and the development of public health measures
• The impact of the Black Death on social and cultural norms

Global and Comparative Perspectives

• The Black Death and its impact beyond Europe
• Comparing the Black Death to other historical pandemics
• The Black Death in the context of global trade and travel
• The Black Death and its legacy in different regions of the world

These are just a few examples of the wide range of essay topics that you can explore when writing about the Black Death. By choosing a topic that resonates with your interests and expertise, you can produce an engaging and insightful essay that contributes to our understanding of this pivotal moment in history.

The Black Death: Impact, Consequences, and Societal Shifts

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The Black Plague in Medieval Europe

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The Black Death of 1348 as The Greatest Biomedical Disaster in World History

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How The Black Death Pandemic Affected The Lifes of People

Impact of black death on england, perception of black death in the world, the bubonic plague pandemic and its impact on the world, social effects of the black plague, the biggest pandemics in history and how they affected people’s lifes, major sources for the black deaths, microbial disease report: the plague, black death vs. covid-19: a comparative analysis, the profound impact of the black death, black death: humanity's grim catalyst, essay on the black death.

75,000,000–200,000,000

1346 - 1353

Eurasia, North Africa

The Pestilence, the Great Mortality, the Plague.

The Black Death was a bubonic plague pandemic occurring in Afro-Eurasia, and became the most fatal pandemic recorded in human history. The Black Death had profound effects on the course of European history.

The Black Death is believed to have been the result of plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, but it may also cause septicaemic or pneumonic plagues. The disease was likely transmitted from rodents to humans by the bite of infected fleas. The Definitive appearance of the Black Death was in Crimea in 1347 and reached southern England in 1348.

Yersinia pestis causes three types of plague in humans: bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic, and it is likely that all three played some role in the pandemic. The Bubonic Plague causes fever, chills, vomiting, diarrhea, terrible aches and pains. Also, it attacks the lymphatic system, causing swelling in the lymph nodes. The disease was also terrifyingly progressive, people who went to bed at night could be dead by morning. The bacillus travels from person to person through the air.

The Black Death estimated to have killed 30 percent to 60 percent of the European population. The bacterial infection still occurs but can be treated with antibiotics. The Black Death had profound effects on the course of European history.

Relevant topics

• Imperialism
• Middle Ages
• Romanticism
• Scientific Revolution
• French Revolution
• Renaissance

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The Black Death and the Effects on Society

Explore the impact of the Black Death on medieval European society. Discuss the plague’s effects on population, economy, social structure, religion, and art. Analyze how it led to significant social and cultural changes, including the weakening of feudalism and the shift towards the Renaissance. You can also find more related free essay samples at PapersOwl about Black Death.

How it works

• 1 Introduction
• 2.1 The Changes brought upon
• 3 The Catholic Church
• 4 Conclusion

Introduction

The focus of my essay is on the Bubonic Plague also known as the Black Death that struck Europe in 1348, and its many effects on the daily lives of the people. Specifically understanding how the churches came to lose their influence over the European people due to the epidemic and the medical advances that came from this. It is interesting to see how drastically the people’s beliefs changed from something that they so deeply believed in, and to see the many effects that were caused by the Black Death.

The Black Death brought many consequences to the people’s daily lives and brought many changes which will be analyzed in this essay. I hope to learn the kinds of effects that were brought upon by the Black Death and the modern medical changes that came of this. Analyzing how this devastating global epidemic came to be is important to understand and be aware that it not only brought death to people, but changes were also made because of this. In this essay, I will be exploring some of the changes that came from the Black Death which are identified as either positive or negative, and I will be analyzing thoroughly.

The positive changes being that it improved European society specifically their standards of living, and the advancements that were made in both technology and medicine. The negative changes were depopulation, shortage of labor, and the disrupted customs of daily life. By exploring these changes, I will be determining whether most of the changes that were brought upon by the Black Death were short term or long term in the way that technology was made to improve medicine. A long-term effect would be the living conditions, trading opportunities, and education that came after the Bubonic Plague that brought negative consequences in the long run.

Some of the short-term effects would be that most of the population died, there was famine, and the fear of death that struck people as the Black Death was happening rather than in the distant future which is what a long term effect would be. It is interesting to see how the Black Death brought many developments towards the future that may have improved the lives of the European people, as well as having changed their lifestyles. The spread of the Black Death brought consequences and huge impacts in areas such as cultural, religious, and economic influences. The sources I will be using are secondary sources such as academically high level books, and history books. In addition, I will be using primary sources such as a chronicle written in 1314 at the cathedral, and some writers wrote accounts such as documents. Furthermore, I will ultimately be analyzing the separation between state and church as Europeans began to become secular and the medical technologies that improved due to the faith that was lost in the churches, and whether this was ultimately caused by the Black Death.

The Start of The Black Death

The Black Death came to Europe in 1348 greatly causing many changes ever since. It struck both in Asia and Europe when 12 ships from the Black Sea docked at the Sicilian port of Messina. After this first encounter, it eventually came to be known as the Black Death or even the Bubonic Plague. In Europe there occurred about 20 million deaths (?) of Europe’s population was deceased. According to historian William H. McNeal, the arrival of the Black Death lasted for several years and shifted from town to town or region to region with the seasons. Long before the Black Death even came to Europe ‘people had heard rumors about a “Great Pestilence” that was a deadly path across the trade routes of the Near and Far East.’ People knew that there was a deadly epidemic that was spreading around but they never could have imagined how deadly it truly was. The Black Death is thought to have come from a ‘population of black rats of the kind whose fleas were liable to carry bubonic plague to humans’ and it is still today being questioned how this disease came to truly be. In which at the time people were not sure how the Black Death was spreading so rapidly, it was assumed that humans were the ones spreading the disease.

This caused many people to become paranoid because one day a person could be healthy and the next day they could be dying from the plague. They ultimately thought that the disease was spread through others coughs and sneezes, while some thought that it could be getting transferred by something in the air. This installed a huge fear of death because in the end nobody was sure how people were truly becoming infected with the plague. The plague was hitting people hard and quickly. ‘People lay ill a little more than two or three days and then 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. The symptoms that came with the Bubonic Plague were very deadly such as ‘fever, chills, vomiting, diarrhea, terrible aches and pains – and then, in short order, death.’

It was later concluded but still being questioned that the Bubonic Plague was a disease caused by the bacterium in Yersinia pestis coming from rats who become infected and lived close to people. Before the Black Death occurred in Europe the daily lives of the people were under the influence of the Catholic church. The churches held an important role as they were an influence to the people in knowing what was right and what was wrong, making the church an important aspect in the daily lives of the Europeans. This was such a devastating phenomenon that brought upon many modifications to the people’s daily lives, the towns, and the medical technological advances that also came from this epidemic. The Black Death showed that the medical system in Europe was flawed as the doctors were not able to treat the disease that was affecting people. The changes that were brought upon by the Bubonic Plague may not have happened without it.

The Changes brought upon

The Bubonic Plague brought many changes to the Europeans as well as other parts of the world where the outbreak had occurred. The changes that came with the plague were either positive or negative and changed the way society came to be. According to historian, William H. McNeal ‘human populations adjusted to confluence of the various infectious diseases in earlier times that were developed differently in different parts of Eurasia and Africa.’ People had to learn to adjust to the new ways of life after the outbreak that came from the Black Death since so many changes needed to be addressed. The plague caused many people to fear for their lives because it was ‘an unfamiliar infection that attacked a population for the first time who had never been expunged from European memory.’ The Bubonic Plague was usually not completely gone because it would at times return to places that had already been previously affected, but most of the people were already immune to it so it wouldn’t come to be of an affect to them as much as it had been in the past.

People were becoming susceptible to the plague. There was a 60% decline in Europe’s population, which in turn affected agricultural prices because of the low demand that was coming from it. Another problem that was encountered was that there was a shortage of labors, causing the system of serfdom to end. The wages improved although the prices for food and goods fell. Since there was a small population of workers it gave them more opportunities to be more free and choose a job that they preferred. The Black Death set the stage in helping improve towards modern medicine and made changes to the public’s health. There was a greater emphasis on medicine that was based on science rather than their own faith and intuition. The medieval medicine in Europe slowly took a turn towards modern medicine as the doctors noted that they were not able to help treat the plague. The plague came to the Europeans as a realization that they were behind in there modern technology/medicine due to the lack of help they were able to provide. As the church was becoming less influential in the daily lives of Europeans they began to question their faith and looked for a reason as to why so many people were dying.The Black Death also drove a development in a much higher education than there was before. Without the Black Death, many of the substantial changes that occurred may not have happened this early on.

The Catholic Church

The Bubonic Plague had a huge impact on the way the Catholic Church ran. Before the Black Death hit Europe, the church’s power had been absolute, it was basically it’s own government that was ruling over the European people. It was a religion and a mindset that had been in all of the Europeans heart. The church would massacre people who chose to oppose them in any way and drove them away from their society. There were times when the secular state would try to assert their control from the churches power, but the churches were much more powerful and influential. Before the Black Death happened in Europe, the churches had been the center of influence for the people. Europeans believed that ‘these hospitals took more care of one’s soul than one’s body, since disease and sickness were regarded as punishments for sins.’ This shows that everything was centered around the Church, it was something that was so significant to them that they did not feel the need to believe in medicine but rather rely on their faith. When the Bubonic Plague first hit Europe, the churches ‘explained that the plague had been God who was punishing the sins of the people. The church had called for people to pray, and it even organized religious marches, pleading to God to stop the “pestilence.”

Even before the Plague had made it’s huge impact on the Europeans they still prayed and believed that God could treat their sickness during the medieval medicine time period. According to William H. McNeal, God had shown himself on their side, and each new outbreak of the infectious disease that had been imported from Europe. So at this point, Europeans believed that God would be their savior, they did not rely on any medical assistance but prayed to God that they will be saved. As the Bubonic Plague became worse, and affected many Europeans they began to question their own faith. Nobody was entirely sure how anybody was becoming ill so they came up with their own conclusions. Such as the Jews being responsible for the plague in an attempt to kill Christians and dominate the world, which set off a conflict between Jews and Christians. Pope Clement VI was the fourth pope to reside in Avignon, during the Black Death and survived the worst disease to happen in Europe. According to History and Culture, ‘He also offered protection to the Jews when many were persecuted under suspicion of starting the pestilence.’ Pope Clement VI announced a religious order to stop the brutality against the Jews, because he believed that they were not responsible for the plague but it was God who was striking at Christian’s for their sins. As the Christians started to calm their anger towards the Jews, they ended up turning their anger towards the Catholic Church that did not seem to be helpful in curing the Black Death. Since the Church was not able to save the people from the disease, it lead to many Europeans to question their beliefs.

During this time period people did not necessarily believe in doctors or science, leading them to deeply believe that God could save them but since people were not being saved from the disease it lead to many Europeans to question their beliefs. They began to believe that the plague had been a punishment from God. Flagellation, is an “act of self-mutilation in which a person would beat/hurt themselves in order to make amends for their sins.” They would ‘each whip themselves which consisted of a stick with three knotted thongs hanging from the end. Two pieces of needle-sharp metal were run through the center of the knots from both sides, forming a cross, the end of which extended beyond the knots for the length of a grain of wheat or less. Using these whips, they beat and whipped their bare skin until their bodies were bruised and swollen and blood rained down, spattering the walls nearby. I have seen, when they whipped themselves, how sometimes those bits of metal penetrated the skin so deeply that it took more than two attempts to pull them out.’

They would do this until one of them fell to the ground even then they would still continue and keep going the next day. In October 1349 Pope Clement VI announced publicly that the Flagellants were not supporting the regulations and principles of the Church. They were excluding people from being involved in the sacraments and services of the Church. By the following years the Flagellant Movement began to disappear. Not only during the Black Death was there a rise in the Flagellant Movement but there was also a widespread persecution of Jews. Referring back to my question whether the churches lost their influence over the people due to the Black Death, I would agree with this. People began to believe many different things when they were hit with this epidemic, that destroyed most of its civilization. Their views began to change over time because they started to realize that praying was not doing much in stopping the Bubonic Plague which led to the creation of modern medicine. The plague left many damaging consequences and left the churches reputation to suffer as well. As Europeans began to calm down and stop blaming the Jews, they turned their anger towards the Catholic Church who seemed to not be helping out in stopping the Bubonic Plague.

The Bubonic Plague resulted in many local priest’s death or the abandonment of their parishes when the plague struck. Leading to the Flagellant Movement being a direct provocation to challenge the Catholic Churches dominance. Due to many people believed that the plague was a punishment from god they began to doubt their faith and question god as to why he would treat them in such a cruel way. Many could not commit to the church anymore because of that reason and decided to leave the church. The destruction that came from the Bubonic Plague was the loss of clergymen, who had often devoted their entire lives to doing work for god and had to be replaced by less experienced men. Some problems that they faced with these less experienced men is that they were corrupt and abused their power in order to have authority over the people. During the mid-fourteenth century the Jewish massacre arose because they were accused of poisoning town wells. The pogroms had a desire to kill the Jews even in some cases they would burn their homes and murder them in really awful ways. In one occasion 900 Jews were locked up and burned alive, this showing how paranoid the people were during the plague. And the Flagellant Movement which arose because of the Europeans who wanted to get rid of their sins and believed that self-mutilation was the answer considering that the church was not helpful.

The aim of this essay is to analyze the way in which the Black Death made its impact on the European people’s beliefs and how that affected the Catholic Church causing there to be a transition from medieval medicine to modern medicine. Having observed the ways in which the Black Death came to Europe and the power that the Church had before and after the Plague, as well as the history behind it, we can finally come to a reasoning as to the significance the church had over the people. As it has been revealed, the Bubonic Plague came to Europe and made its impact on humans in many ways specifically in the way the church was viewed afterwards and the shift of medicine. As the Europeans were very supportive of the churches considering they had a huge influence over them, they began to realize that they were actually no help when it came to the Bubonic Plague thus turning to their own conclusions as to what was spreading the Black Death. People began to believe that it was the Jews who wanted to kill the Christians, leading to a massacre of Jews. When it was proclaimed to stop the violence against them they turned their hate towards the church, which lead to the Flagellant Movement.

The Bubonic Plague changed the view of the churches as they used to dominate the Europeans and were now being challenged. On the other hand, the Black Death may have brought positive changes to the people it also leads to a new way of life. The church was the center of people’s daily lives, people did not really believe in medicine and doctors but in god and praying. The black death brought a change to that as people realized that the church was not helping. The clergymen who were devoted to god began to die and people were scared because they could ultimately also die considering that god seemed to not be helping them out. In the same way, the church attempted to regain their power back and integrate themselves as the center of the daily lives of the people. But it was much too late Europeans were finding other ways to pay for their sins such as flagellation. The Bubonic Plague changed the way that people viewed the church as it became less influential in the daily lives of the people. In the end, there was a separation between state and church as people stopped putting their faith out in god’s hand and came up with their own conclusions as to what is causing the plague. They began to move into a more secular state as it was noticed that the Bubonic plague was not only killing peasants and people of lower classes but also clergymen and men of religion. If it were not for the bubonic plague, the church may have still been dominant and been the center of the daily lives of people. 

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Measuring the Black Death

In 1346, more than five hundred years before germ theory, the Black Death spread relentlessly across Europe. Within seven years, it’s estimated to have killed around half of Europe's population.

Medieval Europeans had little idea of how to protect themselves. They didn’t know what caused the plague, how it spread, or how to prevent it, nor did they have the antibiotics that treat bubonic plague today. They also lacked institutions to count the dead; censuses, population registries, and cause-of-death records didn’t become common practice until centuries later.

Our estimates of the Black Death’s toll come from decades of research using a wide range of other historical sources, such as tax and rent registries, parish records, guild records, and court documents. Despite this, large uncertainties remain in the estimates. The case of the Black Death underscores the vital importance of statistical record-keeping, practices that we take for granted today.

Even now, many poorer countries lack such records. Without them, we struggle to learn from the past, make further progress against diseases, and track new outbreaks.

Plague Spreaders

The bacteria Yersinia pestis , responsible for bubonic plague, is ingested and carried by fleas. Y. pestis multiplies in the flea’s midgut and produces a biofilm, choking the flea until it feeds again, at which time it regurgitates the bacteria into its next host. The fleas prefer feeding on rats, living in their coats, and releasing bacteria into their bloodstream. The Y. pestis bacteria produce toxins that break down rats’ blood vessels, killing them in days. Sick and dying rats hide away to avoid being eaten alive by their kin.

Within weeks, infected rat colonies die out. As fleas lose their preferred food source, they turn to nearby humans, often biting during the night. The regurgitated Y. pestis in our skin drains into the lymph nodes, which swell and form the eponymous necrotic “buboes” in the groin, thighs, armpits, or neck.

Bacteria build up in these buboes, destroying their walls and seeping out into our bloodstream, where their toxins break down our blood vessels, much like what happens in rats. If left untreated, the bacterial toxins result in fevers, chills, vomiting, and excruciating headaches as our damaged blood vessels fail to circulate blood properly. This soon kills us.

Other fleas stow away on clothing, furniture, or even luggage, hoping to be whisked away to more plentiful lands. In the 14th century, the plague spread in just this way across Europe. It traveled most efficiently by ship, with new epidemics springing up along rivers and coasts at ports. It also journeyed overland into new communities, swiftly crippling and depleting the populace.

Only a few regions in Europe—medieval Greenland, Iceland, and Finland, where communities were small, disparate, and largely isolated from the rest of Europe by trade and migration—are believed to have escaped it. 1 Centuries later, researchers poured over historical records to understand its impact. They dubbed this devastating plague “the Black Death.”

The enormous toll of the Black Death led to significant cultural and economic changes, causing a sudden loss of skilled labor and knowledge, and disrupting agriculture, crafts, and trades. “Crops went unharvested, and building projects stopped,” write the economic historians Remi Jedwab, Noel Johnson, and Mark Koyama. The scarcity of labor increased demand and wages for the survivors. Many of them migrated to towns and cities, taking both the jobs and empty houses of those who had died.

The inability of religious authorities to prevent or cure the plague led to questioning of and a decline in the Church’s influence. Plague was seen as either a punishment from God or a result of insidious conspiracies: Jews were accused of poisoning wells, leading to pogroms and expulsions.

All these changes contributed to the transformation of European society before the Renaissance and the rise of early modern Europe.

Aligning History

Our knowledge of the Black Death has evolved in the past few decades as research on the topic has grown. In the 1980s, even fundamental facts like whether the Black Death was caused by Yersinia pestis came under question.

Back in 1894, Alexandre Yersin had identified the causative bacteria from post-mortem samples of buboes in patients in Hong Kong, where he was posted to help in scientific efforts against the disease. He also noted the presence of the bacteria in rats and rat fleas. Later historians, looking at the clinical symptoms and epidemiology of modern plague, made the connection between it and the Black Death, identifying both as the same disease.

But from the 1980s, some researchers argued that there were irreconcilable differences between the Black Death and modern plague. They claimed that the Black Death had spread too rapidly and killed too invariably for it to be bubonic plague, which was less fatal in the 19th century. Moreover, while Yersin had described seeing dead rats on Hong Kong’s streets, historical records from the 14th century did not contain descriptions of widespread rat deaths. This led some to believe that the Black Death was caused by a different pathogen, perhaps anthrax or a virus like influenza or even Ebola .

Others countered that the plague could have rapidly spread across the continent by means of the trading ships available at the time. Plus, rat populations declined with urbanization and hygiene, while nutrition and living standards improved, so we should expect lower mortality rates in modern times. And since rats tend to hide away before they die, perhaps their deaths hadn’t been noted by those keeping records in medieval times.

By the 2010s , this debate had been resolved. Paleogeneticists identified nearly identical strains of Y. pestis DNA in the dental pulp of skeletons in various medieval burial sites across Europe, which corresponded to recorded outbreaks, including in cemeteries used exclusively for Black Death victims. Subsequent research also showed that Y. pestis was responsible for an earlier pandemic that occurred between 541 and 750, which began with the “Justinianic Plague” (541–549 CE).

Counting Deaths

Unlike its pathogenic cause, the death toll of the Black Death is much harder to resolve.

Direct records of mortality are sparse and mostly relate to deaths among the nobility. Researchers have compiled information from tax and rent registers, parish records, court documents, guild records, and archaeological remains from many localities across Europe. However, even those who have carefully combed over this data have not reached a consensus about the overall death toll.

For example, in 2005, statistician George Christakos and his colleagues compiled data from over a hundred European cities. Using their data, the economists Jedwab, Johnson, and Koyama estimated in 2019 that 38.75 percent of Western Europe’s population had died on average. In contrast, the historians John Aberth (2021) and Ole Benedictow (2021) have estimated that 51–58 percent or upwards of 60 percent of Europe’s population died, respectively.

Most data used to estimate the Black Death’s toll comes from medieval regions in present-day Italy, England, Spain, France, and Germany—which were more urbanized than the rest of Europe. Data is thin in other countries, leaving us to extrapolate from the few localities where it is available.

Take parish records from medieval England as an example. In the 14th century, English dioceses in several areas such as York, Winchester, Coventry, and Lincoln recorded data on when parish priests were replaced. Comparing these replacements over time can be used as a rough guide for understanding the impact of the Black Death, and suggests a mortality rate between 40 and 73 percent. 2

Yet there are various issues with using pastoral replacements as a proxy for mortality. Some priests may have resigned or fled rather than died, and some replacements may not have been recorded. Often priests and their successor would have both died in an outbreak before being recorded. Additionally, it was challenging to update records because many new, smaller churches and other religious institutions were being built, making it difficult for dioceses to keep track of all the changes accurately. 3

Moreover, parish priests were probably unrepresentative of the medieval population as a whole. They tended to be well-fed but also older and more vulnerable to disease. They also tended to live in houses with grain stores that would be attractive to rats. Due to their duties, they were likely to have visited many families in their local area, exposing themselves to a greater risk of infection. Given these factors, they may not be representative of the mortality rate across England.

For an alternative picture, we could instead examine tax registries.

States in medieval Europe collected revenue in many different ways and for different reasons, such as poll taxes, death duties, fines, and rents. But generally speaking, they tended to exclude certain demographics: the very impoverished, young children, the nobility, the clergy, and of course, those who evaded taxes.

Moreover, taxes were payable by the heads of households, mostly men, and didn’t necessarily include data on household size. Therefore, to calculate the population size, the number of households in tax records is usually multiplied by the average household size.

This reveals two important weaknesses in how we count mortality from the Black Death.

First, we lack good historical data on the Black Death’s impact on women and children. However, we do know that modern plague has been more deadly for both due to social and biological reasons: women and children spent more time at home and women tended to care for the ill, resulting in higher exposure to rats, and pregnant women infected with bubonic plague have very high rates of abortion and/or death during pregnancy.

Second, we lack certainty regarding average household size and makeup. The Black Death led to labor shocks, migration, and social mobility , wherein laborers inherited resources and moved into housing that had been left empty. This likely affected the size and makeup of households in the following years, which would then be used as the comparison for estimating pre-plague populations.

In some cases, censuses were conducted to gather this data. An example was in the Tuscan commune San Gimignano, a self-governing area that included a town and its surrounding rural areas. In 1350, the local government sought to make good on its salt monopoly and organized a tax list similar to a census to estimate the area’s population size, so it could implement a “salt tax” on all citizens except children under seven years old. 4

Comparing the 1350 tax list to the town’s previous tax list, compiled in 1332, suggests that 52 to 60 percent of the population died during the Black Death. 5 (Note that 18 years elapsed between the two tax lists, which means we’re making a strong assumption that the population was roughly stable up to the Black Death.)

It might seem reasonable to assume everyone would want to be counted because salt was important for taste and food preservation. But the salt tax was costly, and households might avoid paying it for servants and maids, or claim that older children were under seven years old. And there were urban workers who commuted to Florence for day work and could bypass the tax or the need for local salt provision. This goes to show that even with detailed medieval data, we’re required to make strong assumptions in order to make estimates of the death toll.

Finally, the plague itself disrupted historical record-keeping, taxation, and burials, and caused demographic shifts, which affected records from the time. Given such limitations, how can we accurately estimate the Black Death’s toll?

One approach is to make educated guesses about some of the factors we’re unsure of, such as the average number of children, rates of tax evasion, child mortality, pregnancy mortality, and disparities between regions. This allows us to develop plausible ranges of mortality for different data sources and is what historians and demographers have done so far.

Another approach is to combine many different data sources and their uncertainties together in a single statistical model, but this has been less common .

In either case, we still face a large underlying problem. We lack sufficient data to fully understand many past pandemics. The COVID-19 pandemic, whose estimated death toll varies between 19 million and 35 million , is just the most recent example. Most of the uncertainty comes from low- and middle-income countries, which tend to have patchier data.

Or consider influenza. Since 1580, researchers believe that we’ve faced between 10 and 28 separate flu pandemics, but without further historical research and genomic sampling, it’s hard to be confident. Global mortality estimates have only been made for a handful of these flu pandemics. This includes the 1918 “Spanish flu” pandemic, whose estimated death toll ranges between 50 and 100 million deaths worldwide.

The same holds for cholera, which has caused seven pandemics in the last 200 years. Around 23 million people died from the disease in India alone between 1865 and 1947, but there are no global mortality estimates. For the third plague pandemic (1894–1940), only rough estimates have been made for India and China.

We lack knowledge of the cause of plenty of additional pandemics, such as “ sweating sickness ,” which led to multiple deadly outbreaks in Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries.

The Black Death isn’t an isolated case, though it happens to be one of the most well-studied. Our poor understanding is the result of a historical dearth of statistical institutions collecting data on deaths and their causes.

We don’t have sufficient data on most areas of 14th-century Europe. We lack data on the number of deaths broken down by cause from most medieval states. In fact, we generally lack data on the number of deaths in total from any cause. Even data on the total population size of Europe in history must be extrapolated from a few regions and periods, based on strong assumptions.

While some states collected this data in the past, it tended to be infrequent or came from select regions. London, for example, only began collecting data on the number of deaths by cause in the 16th century, to track epidemics such as plague and smallpox. England as a whole followed much later, in the 1830s .

Censuses, population registers, and cause-of-death records have been adopted by countries relatively recently. Often, these records were started in response to epidemic outbreaks, and their introduction quickly transformed our understanding of disease. One of the most famous examples is the cholera map by Dr. John Snow, who tracked cases in London during the second cholera pandemic. His work helped identify the connection between cases and traced one outbreak to a single contaminated water pump.

Many modern examples reveal a similar struggle to track deaths.

Since cause-of-death registries have been limited or dysfunctional in many countries in Africa and South Asia, some researchers have conducted national “verbal autopsies” to fill the gap. In these studies, millions of families were interviewed about recently deceased relatives and their diseases and symptoms before death. Doctors then used their answers to estimate their cause of death.

The results suggest that we had greatly underestimated the death toll of diseases such as tuberculosis and venomous snakebites. Revised international estimates suggest that they kill over 1 million and 100,000 people, respectively, each year.

But the lack of medical testing and precise hospital records means that we must extrapolate deaths and their causes from these surveys conducted in only a few countries, and often infrequently. It is hard to imagine that millions of people could die without being recorded, but that is precisely the case throughout history.

Without proper record-keeping, we can easily underestimate the frequency and severity of epidemics. Data is crucial to track their impact and identify where resources are needed—and it needs to be collected regularly and thoroughly. By fostering statistical institutions, we can make every death, or more importantly, every life, count.

Saloni Dattani is a co-founder of Works in Progress magazine and a researcher on global health at Our World in Data .

Cite: Dattani, Saloni. “Measuring the Black Death.” Asimov Press . DOI: https://doi.org/10.62211/93tr-12wn

Published on 25 August 2024

Disclosure: Saloni is an advisor to Asimov Press .

• The Complete History of the Black Death, Benedictow (2021). pp 616–619.
• ibid. pp 818.
• ibid. pp 792–802.
• ibid. pp 711–714.
• Aberth estimates a mortality rate of 52 percent in San Gimignano, while Benedictow estimates 60 percent.