Black Death

AP Euro

• In order to have a sound appreciation for Europe in the 15th century, one should understand even the processes that began prior to that time.

• One such major process was the Black Death.

Medically what was the Black Death?

• Brew of three related diseases: bubonic plague, septicaemic plague, and pneumonic or pulmonary plague.

• First two variants carried by fleas hosted by the black rat.

• The third was an airborne variant that was especially fast and lethal.

• The bubonic was the most common form.

With the bubonic form, the disease caused a boil-like nodule or bubo in the victim’s groin or armpit, together with dark blotches on the skin from internal hemorrhage. Three or four days of intolerable pain preceded certain death if the bubo did not burst beforehand.

Notice the chronological Spread of the Black Death. How would you feel if you were in an unaffected area?

Victims of the Plague• Towns hit more severely than countryside.• Poor more so than the rich.• Young and fit more so than the old and

infirmed.• No popes nor kings were stricken.• Over one third of Europe’s population died: 30

million for Europe.

Bones of Victims of Black Death

Social and Economic Consequences• Decisive point in the decline of feudal system.• Black Death accelerated processes rather than their

originator. These included a demographic decline; and serfs commuting their labor dues for money rents which created a more mobile, and less dependent, labor force. Vassals were increasingly commuting their military and judicial obligations for cash payments. Results: 1) with a loss of manpower, wages rose with the increasing demand for workers; 2)the money economy expanded; and 3) social barriers were threatened.

Psychological Results:Some people, such as the Flagellants, felt that

God’s wrath must be placated.

From reading Boccaccio’s Decameron, what did you learn about reactions to the plague?

By Hans Holbein

Psychological Results: scapegoats• Jews were easily blamed. In a number of

German towns, Jews were penned into wooden buildings and burned alive.

• What did you learn from reading the “Medieval Holocaust: the Cremation of the Strasburg Jews”?

• As a result, German Jews fled to Poland, which would become the principal Jewish sanctuary in Europe; that is for Ashkenazi Jews.

The Aftereffects • Popular risings were a prominent feature after the Black

Death. • Nobles made soaring demands on the surviving

peasants. This labor force resented the attempts to hold down wages, such as England’s 1351 Statute of Labourers.

• In France the Jacquerie, a peasant revolt, ravaged the castles and noble families in northern France.

• Florence had a revolt of the wool-carders or Ciompi. They seized the city for months.

• Both revolts were violently suppressed.

Jacquerie

Ciompi