118

SCARCE THE TENTH

PERSON OF ANY SORT
WAS LEFT ALIVE
THE OUTBREAK OF THE BLACK DEATH
IN EUROPE (1347)

IN CONTEXT
FOCUS
The Black Death
BEFORE
1315–1319 Famines strike
western Europe: 15 percent of
Dutch city-dwellers die.
1316 Edward II of England
fixes staple food prices as
shortages drive them upward.
Late 1330s Bubonic plague
spreads gradually westward
from western China.
AFTER
1349 Accused of starting the
plague, Jews are murdered in
the thousands in Germany.
1349 Pope bans the flagellant
“Brothers of the Cross.”
1351 Statute of Labourers
is passed in England.
1381 Peasants’ Revolt stirs
political rebellion across large
parts of England.
1424 Dance of Death painted
on the cloister walls of the
Cimetière des Innocents, Paris.
I
n late November 1347, a galley
entered the Italian port of
Genoa, having fled a Tatar
siege of Kaffa in the Crimea. It bore
a deadly cargo: the bubonic plague.
Within a mere two years, this lethal
pestilence had killed more than a
third of the population of Europe
and the Middle East, and altered
the regions’ economic, social, and
religious makeup forever.
Spread of the Black Death
Having probably originated in
Central Asia or western China
in the 1330s, the plague’s initial
progress westward was slow,
but after it reached Crimea and
Constantinople in 1347 it spread
rapidly along maritime trade routes.
Having hit Genoa, it appeared
quickly in Sicily and Marseilles; by
1348 it had struck Spain, Portugal,
and England, and it reached
Germany and Scandinavia by 1349.
The epidemic’s main vector was
infected fleas and the rats that
harbored them, both of which
flourished in the unsanitary
conditions of the time. The main
symptoms of the disease were
swellings, known as buboes, that
appeared in the groin, neck, or
armpits. These were followed by
black blotches on the skin (hence
“Black Death”) and then, in around
three-quarters of cases, by death.
Contemporaries ascribed the
causes of the pestilence variously
to divine punishment for immorality,
adverse conjunctions of the planets,
earthquakes, or bad vapors. There
was no cure, but preventive advice
included abstinence from hard-to-
digest food, the use of aromatic
herbs to purify the air, and—the
only effective measure—avoiding
the company of others.
More than a hundred million
people may have died of the plague;
estimates put the world population
Employees are
refusing to work unless
they are paid an
excessive salary.
The Ordinance
of Labourers, 1349

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Disease spreads
west from Central Asia
along trade routes.
Black Death
kills over a third of
Europe’s population.
Fall in population
leads to demands for
better living conditions
and wages.
at 450 million before it arrived, and
350 million afterward. Its effects
were more deadly in some areas
than in others—in Egypt, about
40 percent of the population are
thought to have died. Populations
did not reach pre-plague levels
again for nearly three centuries.
Reactions to the plague
Survivors reacted in varying ways.
Jewish communities in Germany
were accused of causing the plague
by poisoning wells, and many were
attacked. In Strasbourg alone, 2,000
Jews were killed.
With the population diminished,
landholdings fell vacant, labor
became scarce, and peasants’
bargaining power increased.
By 1350, English laborers could
demand five times the wages they
had asked in 1347, and tenants were
THE MEDIEVAL WORLD 119
Plague rats and fleas
flourish in unsanitary
living conditions.
Church authority
diminished by mortality
among priests
and monks.
paying rent in cash rather than with
compulsory labor. Governments
tried to clamp down on wages—the
1351 Statute of Labourers aimed to
freeze rates at 1346 levels—but
peasants responded with outbursts
such as the Jacquerie in France in
1358, and the Peasants’ Revolt in
England in 1381.
By the time it ended, the Black
Death had killed proportionately
as many clergy as laity, and some
clergy deserted their posts. As a
result the church’s authority, like
that of the nobility, was greatly
weakened. The plague had loosened
the ties that had previously bound
medieval society together, leaving
a freer and more volatile population
to face the challenges posed by
the Renaissance, Reformation,
and the economic expansion of
the 16th and 17th centuries. ■
Shattered society
The plague’s catastrophic toll
cast a long shadow over
contemporary social attitudes.
A landscape of mass graves,
abandoned villages, and an
all-pervading fear of death
deepened the sense that God
had abandoned his people,
and diluted the claims of
traditional morality. Crime
rose: the incidence of murder
in England doubled in two
decades from 1349. Flagellants
roamed the countryside,
scourging themselves with
knotted ropes, until a Papal
bull banned the practice in
1349. Bequests to charitable
foundations—hospitals in
particular—rose as the rich
gave thanks for their survival.
Artistic production tended
to the morbid: depictions of
the Dance of Death appeared,
showing Death cavorting
among the living; and writers
such as Boccaccio, who
chronicled the plague in his
Decameron, stressed the
briefness and fragility of life.
Death selects his victims
indiscriminately from among the
social orders in the allegorical
Danse Macabre or Dance of Death.