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Black Death

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: General history

   Illustration of the Black Death from the Toggenburg Bible (1411).
   Enlarge
   Illustration of the Black Death from the Toggenburg Bible ( 1411).

   The Black Death, also known as the Black Plague, was a devastating
   pandemic that first struck Europe in the mid-late-14th century ( 1347–
   1350), killing between a third and two-thirds of Europe's population.
   Almost simultaneous epidemics occurred across large portions of Asia
   and the Middle East during the same period, indicating that the
   European outbreak was actually part of a multi-regional pandemic.
   Including Middle Eastern lands, India and China, the Black Death killed
   at least 75 million people. The same disease is thought to have
   returned to Europe every generation with varying degrees of intensity
   and fatality until the 1700s. Notable later outbreaks include the
   Italian Plague of 1629-1631, the Great Plague of London (1665–1666),
   the Great Plague of Vienna (1679), the Great Plague of Marseilles in
   1720–1722 and the 1771 plague in Moscow. There is some controversy over
   the identity of the disease, but in its virulent form the disease
   appears to have disappeared from Europe in the 18th century. Bubonic
   plague survives in other parts of the world (Central and Oriental
   Africa, Madagascar, Asia, some parts of South America) and was
   responsible for a pandemic in the early 20th century.

   The Black Death had a drastic effect on Europe's population,
   irrevocably changing Europe's social structure. It was a serious blow
   to the Roman Catholic Church, Europe's predominant religious
   institution at the time, and resulted in widespread persecution of
   minorities such as Jews, Muslims, foreigners, beggars and lepers. The
   uncertainty of daily survival created a general mood of morbidity
   influencing people to live for the moment, as illustrated by Giovanni
   Boccaccio in The Decameron (1353).

   The initial fourteenth-century European event was called the "Great
   Mortality" by contemporary writers and, with later outbreaks, became
   known as the 'Black Death'. It has been popularly thought that the name
   came from a striking symptom of the disease, called acral necrosis, in
   which sufferers' skin would blacken due to subdermal haemorrhages.
   However, the term refers in fact to the figurative sense of "black"
   (glum, lugubrious or dreadful). Historical records have convinced most
   scientists that the Black Death was an outbreak of bubonic plague,
   caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis and spread by fleas with the
   help of animals like the black rat (Rattus rattus), however, there are
   some scientists who question this.

Pattern of the pandemic

   The plague disease, caused by Yersinia pestis, is endemic in
   populations of ground rodents in central Asia, but it is not entirely
   clear where the fourteenth-century pandemic started. The most popular
   theory places the first cases in the steppes of Central Asia, though
   some speculate that it originated around northern India. From there,
   supposedly, it was carried east and west by traders and Mongol armies
   along the Silk Road, and was first exposed to Europe at the trading
   city of Caffa in the Crimea from which it spread to Sicily and on to
   the rest of Europe.

   Whether or not this theory is accurate, it is clear that several
   pre-existing conditions such as war, famine, and weather contributed to
   the severity of the Black Death. A devastating civil war in China
   between the established Chinese population and the Mongol hordes raged
   between 1205 and 1353. This war disrupted farming and trading patterns,
   and led to episodes of widespread famine. A so-called " Little Ice Age"
   had begun at the end of the thirteenth century. The disastrous weather
   reached a peak in the first half of the fourteenth century with severe
   results worldwide.

   In the years 1315 to 1322 a catastrophic famine, known as the Great
   Famine, struck all of Northern Europe. Food shortages and sky-rocketing
   prices were a fact of life for as much as a century before the plague.
   Wheat, oats, hay and consequently livestock were all in short supply;
   and their scarcity resulted in hunger and malnutrition. The result was
   a mounting human vulnerability to disease due to weakened immune
   systems. The European economy entered a vicious circle in which hunger
   and chronic, low-level debilitating disease reduced the productivity of
   labourers, and so the grain output suffered, causing the grain prices
   to increase. The famine was self-perpetuating, impacting life in places
   like Flanders and Burgundy as much as the Black Death was later to
   impact all of Europe.

   A typhoid epidemic was to be a predictor of the coming disaster. Many
   thousands died in populated urban centres, most significantly Ypres. In
   1318 a pestilence of unknown origin, sometimes identified as anthrax,
   hit the animals of Europe. The disease targeted sheep and cattle,
   further reducing the food supply and income of the peasantry and
   putting another strain on the economy. The increasingly international
   nature of the European economies meant that the depression was felt
   across Europe. Due to pestilence, the failure of England's wool exports
   led to the destruction of the Flemish weaving industry. Unemployment
   bred crime and poverty.

Asian outbreak

   The Central Asian scenario agrees with the first reports of outbreaks
   in China in the early 1330s. The plague struck the Chinese province of
   Hubei in 1334. During 1353–1354, more widespread disaster occurred.
   Chinese accounts of this wave of the disease record a spread to eight
   distinct areas: Hubei, Jiangxi, Shanxi, Hunan, Guangdong, Guangxi,
   Henan and Suiyuan (a historical Chinese province that now forms part of
   Hebei and Inner Mongolia), throughout the Mongol and Chinese empires.
   Historian William McNeill noted that voluminous Chinese records on
   disease and social disruption survive from this period, but no one has
   studied these sources in depth.

   It is probable that the Mongols and merchant caravans inadvertently
   brought the plague from central Asia to the Middle East and Europe. The
   plague was reported in the trading cities of Constantinople and
   Trebizond in 1347. In that same year, the Genoese possession of Caffa,
   a great trade emporium on the Crimean peninsula, came under siege by an
   army of Mongol warriors under the command of Janibeg, backed by
   Venetian forces. After a protracted siege during which the Mongol army
   was reportedly withering from the disease, they might have decided to
   use the infected corpses as a biological weapon. The corpses were
   catapulted over the city walls, infecting the inhabitants. The Genoese
   traders fled, transferring the plague via their ships into the south of
   Europe, from whence it rapidly spread. According to accounts, so many
   died in Caffa that the survivors had little time to bury them and
   bodies were stacked like cords of firewood against the city walls.

European outbreak

   The Black Death rapidly spread along the major European sea and land
   trade routes.
   Enlarge
   The Black Death rapidly spread along the major European sea and land
   trade routes.

   In October 1347, a fleet of Genovese trading ships fleeing Caffa
   reached the port of Messina. By the time the fleet reached Messina, all
   the crew members were either infected or dead. It is presumed that the
   ships also carried infected rats and/or fleas. Some ships were found
   grounded on shorelines, with no one aboard remaining alive. Looting of
   these lost ships also helped spread the disease. From there, the plague
   spread to Genoa and Venice by the turn of 1347– 1348.

   From Italy the disease spread northwest across Europe, striking France,
   Spain, Portugal and England by June 1348, then turned and spread east
   through Germany and Scandinavia from 1348 to 1350, and finally to
   north-western Russia in 1351; however, the plague largely spared some
   parts of Europe, including the Kingdom of Poland and parts of Belgium
   and the Netherlands.

Middle Eastern outbreak

   The plague struck various countries in the Middle East during the
   pandemic, leading to serious depopulation and permanent change in both
   economic and social structures. The disease first entered the region
   from southern Russia. By autumn 1347, the plague reached Alexandria in
   Egypt, probably through the port's trade with Constantinople and ports
   on the Black Sea. During 1348, the disease travelled eastward to Gaza,
   and north along the eastern coast to cities in Lebanon, Syria and
   Palestine, including Asqalan, Acre, Jerusalem, Sidon, Damascus, Homs,
   and Aleppo. In 1348–49, the disease reached Antioch. The city's
   residents fled to the north, most of them dying during the journey, but
   the infection had been spread to the people of Asia Minor.

   Mecca became infected in 1349. The people of Mecca blamed the disease
   on non-believers entering the city, but it is more likely to have
   arrived with Muslim pilgrims from surrounding infected areas. During
   the same year, records show the city of Mawsil (Mosul) suffered a
   massive epidemic, and the city of Baghdad experienced a second round of
   the disease. In 1351, Yemen experienced an outbreak of the plague. This
   coincided with the return of King Mujahid of Yemen from imprisonment in
   Cairo. His party may have brought the disease with them from Egypt.

Recurrence

   The plague repeatedly returned to haunt Europe and the Mediterranean
   throughout the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries, and although the
   bubonic plague still exists with isolated cases today, the Great Plague
   of London in 1665– 1666 is generally recognized as one of the last
   major outbreaks. The Great Fire of London in 1666 may have killed off
   any remaining plague bearing rats and fleas, which led to a decline in
   the plague. The destruction of black rats in the Great Fire may also
   have contributed to the ascendancy of brown rats in England. According
   to the bubonic plague theory, one possible explanation for the
   disappearance of plague from Europe may be that the black rat (Rattus
   rattus) infection reservoir and its disease vector was subsequently
   displaced and succeeded by the bigger Norwegian, or brown, rat (Rattus
   norvegicus), which is not as prone to transmit the germ-bearing fleas
   to humans in large rat die-offs (see Appleby and Slack references
   below).

   Late outbreaks in central Europe include the Italian Plague of
   1629-1631, which is associated with troop movements during the Thirty
   Years' War, and the Great Plague of Vienna in 1679, which may have been
   due to a reintroduction of the plague from eastern trading ports.

Causes

Bubonic plague theory

   Yersinia pestis seen at 2000x magnification. This bacterium, carried
   and spread by fleas, is generally thought to have been the cause of
   millions of deaths.
   Enlarge
   Yersinia pestis seen at 2000x magnification. This bacterium, carried
   and spread by fleas, is generally thought to have been the cause of
   millions of deaths.

   Bubonic and septicaemic plague are transmitted by direct contact with
   fleas. The bacteria multiply inside a flea, blocking its stomach and
   causing it to become very hungry. The flea then voraciously bites a
   host and continues to feed because it is unable to satisfy its hunger.
   During the feeding process, infected blood carrying the plague bacteria
   flows from the fleas' stomachs into the open wound. The plague bacteria
   then has a new host, and the flea eventually dies from starvation.

   The human pneumonic plague has a different form of transmission. It is
   transmitted through bacteria in droplets of saliva coughed up by
   persons with bloodstream infection (sepsis) or pneumonia, which may
   have started as the bubonic form of disease. The airborne bacteria may
   be inhaled by a nearby susceptible person, and a new infection starts
   directly in the lungs or throat of the other, bypassing the bubonic
   form of disease.

   The ecology of Yersinia pestis in soil, rodent and (possibly &
   importantly) human ectoparasites are reviewed and summarized by Michel
   Drancourt in a model of sporadic, limited and large plague outbreaks .
   Modelling of epizootic plague observed in prairie dogs suggests that
   occasional reservoirs of infection such as an infectious carcass,
   rather than 'blocked fleas' are a better explanation for the observed
   epizootic behaviour of the disease in nature .

   An interesting hypothesis about the appearance, spread and especially
   disappearance of plague from Europe is that the flea-bearing rodent
   reservoir of disease was eventually succeeded by another species. The
   black rat (Rattus rattus) was originally introduced from Asia to Europe
   by trade, but was subsequently displaced and succeeded throughout
   Europe by the bigger Norwegian or brown rat (Rattus norvegicus). The
   brown rat was not as prone to transmit the germ-bearing fleas to humans
   in large die-offs due to a different rat ecology (see Appleby and
   Slack, secondary references below). The dynamic complexities of rat
   ecology, herd immunity in that reservoir, interaction with human
   ecology, secondary transmission routes between humans with or without
   fleas, human herd immunity and changes in each might explain the
   eruption, dissemination, and re-eruptions of plague that continued for
   centuries until its (even more) unexplained disappearance.

Signs and symptoms

   The three forms of plague brought an array of signs and symptoms to
   those infected. Bubonic plague refers to the painful lymph node
   swellings called buboes. The septicaemic plague is a form of blood
   poisoning, and pneumonic plague is an airborne plague that forms a
   first attack on the lungs. The classic sign of bubonic plague was the
   appearance of buboes in the groin, the neck and armpits, which ooze pus
   and blood. Victims underwent damage to the skin and underlying tissue
   until they were covered in dark blotches. This symptom is called acral
   necrosis. Most victims died within four to seven days after infection.
   When the plague reached Europe, it first struck port cities and then
   followed the trade routes, both by sea and land.

   The bubonic plague was the most commonly seen form during the Black
   Death, with a mortality rate of thirty to seventy-five percent and
   symptoms including fever of 38 - 41 ° C (101-105 °F), headaches, aching
   joints, nausea and vomiting, and a general feeling of malaise. The
   pneumonic plague was the second most commonly seen form during the
   Black Death, with a mortality rate of ninety to ninety-five percent.
   Symptoms included slimy sputum tinted with blood. As the disease
   progressed, sputum became free flowing and bright red. Septicaemic
   plague was the most rare of the three forms, with mortality close to
   one hundred percent. Symptoms were high fevers and skin turning deep
   shades of purple due to DIC ( Disseminated intravascular coagulation).

Alternative explanations

   Recent scientific and historical investigations have led some
   researchers to doubt the long-held belief that the Black Death was an
   epidemic of bubonic plague. For example, in 2000, Gunnar Karlsson
   (Iceland's 1100 Years: The History of a Marginal Society) pointed out
   that the Black Death killed between half and two-thirds of the
   population of Iceland, although there were no rats in Iceland at this
   time. Rats were accidentally introduced in the nineteenth century, and
   have never spread beyond a small number of urban areas attached to
   seaports. In the fourteenth century there were no urban settlements in
   Iceland. Iceland was unaffected by the later plagues which are known to
   have been spread by rats.

   In addition, it was previously argued that tooth pulp tissue from a
   fourteenth-century plague cemetery in Montpellier tested positive for
   molecules associated with Y. pestis. However, such a finding was never
   confirmed in any other cemetery, nor were any DNA samples recovered. In
   September 2003, a team of researchers from Oxford University tested 121
   teeth from sixty-six skeletons found in fourteenth-century mass graves.
   The remains showed no genetic trace of Y. pestis, and the researchers
   suspect that the Montpellier study was flawed.

   In 1984, Graham Twigg published The Black Death: A Biological
   Reappraisal, where he argued that the climate and ecology of Europe and
   particularly England made it nearly impossible for rats and fleas to
   have transmitted bubonic plague. Combining information on the biology
   of Rattus rattus, Rattus norvegicus, and the common fleas Xenopsylla
   cheopis and Pulex irritans with modern studies of plague epidemiology,
   particularly in India, where the R. rattus is a native species and
   conditions are nearly ideal for plague to be spread, Twigg concludes
   that it would have been nearly impossible for Y. pestis to have been
   the causative agent of the beginning of the plague, let alone its
   explosive spread across all of Europe. Twigg also shows that the common
   theory of entirely pneumonic spread does not hold up. He proposes,
   based on a re-examination of the evidence and symptoms, that the Black
   Death may actually have been an epidemic of pulmonary anthrax caused by
   Bacillus anthracis.

   In 2001, epidemiologists Susan Scott and Christopher Duncan from
   Liverpool University proposed the theory that the Black Death might
   have been caused by an Ebola-like virus, not a bacterium. Their
   rationale was that this plague spread much faster and the incubation
   period was much longer than other confirmed Yersinia pestis plagues. A
   longer period of incubation will allow carriers of the infection to
   travel farther and infect more people than a shorter one. When the
   primary vector is humans, as opposed to birds, this is of great
   importance. Studies of English church records indicate an unusually
   long incubation period in excess of thirty days, which could account
   for the rapid spread, topping at 5 km/day. The plague also appeared in
   areas of Europe where rats were uncommon like Iceland. Epidemiological
   studies suggest the disease was transferred between humans (which
   happens rarely with Yersinia pestis and very rarely for Bacillus
   anthracis), and some genes that determine immunity to Ebola-like
   viruses are much more widespread in Europe than in other parts of the
   world. Their research and findings are thoroughly documented in Return
   of the Black Death: The World's Greatest Serial Killer. More recently
   the researchers have published computer modeling (Journal of Medical
   Genetics: March 2005) demonstrating how the Black Death has made around
   10% of Europeans resistant to HIV.

   In a similar vein, historian Norman F. Cantor, in his 2001 book In the
   Wake of the Plague, suggests the Black Death might have been a
   combination of pandemics including a form of anthrax, a cattle murrain.
   He cites many forms of evidence including: reported disease symptoms
   not in keeping with the known effects of either bubonic or pneumonic
   plague, the discovery of anthrax spores in a plague pit in Scotland,
   and the fact that meat from infected cattle was known to have been sold
   in many rural English areas prior to the onset of the plague. It is
   notable that the means of infection varied widely, from human-to-human
   contact as in Iceland (rare for plague and cutaneous Bacillus
   anthracis) to infection in the absence of living or recently-dead
   humans, as in Sicily (which speaks against most viruses). Also,
   diseases with similar symptoms were generally not distinguished between
   in that period (see murrain above), at least not in the Christian
   world; Chinese and Muslim medical records can be expected to yield
   better information which however only pertains to the specific
   disease(s) which affected these areas. See ISBN 0-06-001434-2

Counter-arguments

   The majority of historians support the theory that the bubonic plague
   caused the black death. Nevertheless, counterarguments have developed.

   The uncharacteristically rapid spread of the plague could be due to
   respiratory droplet transmission, and low levels of immunity in the
   European population at that period. Historical examples of pandemics of
   other diseases in populations without previous exposure, such as
   smallpox and tuberculosis transmitted by aerosol amongst Native
   Americans, show that the low levels of inherited adaptation to the
   disease cause the first epidemic to spread faster and to be far more
   virulent than later epidemics among the descendants of survivors.
   Moreover, the plague returned again and again and was regarded as the
   same disease through succeeding centuries into modern times when the
   Yersinia bacterium was identified.

Consequences

Depopulation

   Information about the death toll varies widely by area and from source
   to source.

Asia

   Estimates of the demographic impact of the plague in Asia are based on
   both population figures during this time and estimates of the disease's
   toll on population centres. The initial outbreak of plague in the
   Chinese province of Hubei in 1334 claimed up to ninety percent of the
   population, an estimated five million people. During 1353–54, outbreaks
   in eight distinct areas throughout the Mongol/Chinese empires may have
   caused the death of two-thirds of China's population, often yielding an
   estimate of twenty-five million deaths. Japan had no outbreak of plague
   most likely due to the lack of host rodents.

Europe and Middle East

   It is estimated that between one-third and two-thirds of the European
   population died from the outbreak between 1348 and 1350. Contemporary
   observers estimated the toll to be one-third (e.g. Froissart), but
   modern estimates range from one-half to two-thirds of the population.
   As many as 25% of all villages were depopulated, mostly the smaller
   communities, as the few survivors fled to larger towns and cities . The
   Black Death hit the culture of towns and cities disproportionately
   hard, although rural areas (where 90% of the population lived) were
   also significantly affected. A few rural areas, such as Eastern Poland
   and Lithuania, had such low populations and were so isolated that the
   plague made little progress. Parts of Hungary and, in modern Belgium,
   the Brabant region, Hainaut and Limbourg, as well as Santiago de
   Compostella, were unaffected for unknown reasons (some historians have
   assumed that the presence of sanguine groups in the local population
   helped them resist the disease, although these regions would be touched
   by the second plague burst in 1360-1363 and later during the numerous
   resurgences of the plague). Other areas which escaped the plague were
   isolated mountainous regions (e.g. the Pyrenees). Larger cities were
   the worst off, as population densities and close living quarters made
   disease transmission easier. Cities were also strikingly filthy,
   infested with lice, fleas and rats, and subject to diseases related to
   malnutrition and poor hygiene. According to journalist John Kelly,
   "[w]oefully inadequate sanitation made medieval urban Europe so
   disease-ridden, no city of any size could maintain its population
   without a constant influx of immigrants from the countryside." (p. 68)
   The influx of new citizens facilitated the movement of the plague
   between communities, and contributed to the longevity of the plague
   within larger communities.

   In Italy, Florence's population passed from 110,000 or 120,000
   inhabitants in 1338 to 50,000 in 1351. Between 60 to 70% of Hamburg or
   Bremen's population died. In Provence, Dauphiné or Normandy, historians
   observe a decrease of 60% of fiscal hearths. In some regions, two
   thirds of the population was annihilated. In the town of Givry, in the
   Bourgogne region in France, the friar, who used to note 28 to 29
   funerals a year, recorded 649 deaths in 1348, half of them in
   September. About half of Perpignan's population died in several months
   (only two of the eight physicians survived the plague). England lost
   70% of its population, which passed from 7 million to 2 million in
   1400.

   All social classes were affected, although the lower classes, living
   together in unhealthy places, were most vulnerable. Alfonso XI of
   Castile was the only royal victim of the plague, but Peter IV of Aragon
   lost his wife, his daughter and a niece in six months. The Byzantine
   Emperor lost his son, while in the kingdom of France, Joan of Navarre,
   daughter of Louis X le Hutin and of Margaret of Burgundy, was killed by
   the plague, as well as Bonne of Luxembourg, the wife of the future John
   II of France.

   Furthermore, resurgences of the plague in later years must also be
   counted: in 1360-62 (the "little mortality"), in 1366-1369, 1374-1375,
   1400, 1407, etc. The plague was not eradicated until the 19th century.

   The precise demographic impact of the disease in the Middle East is
   very difficult to calculate. Mortality was particularly high in rural
   areas, including significant areas of Palestine and Syria. Many
   surviving rural people fled, leaving their fields and crops, and entire
   rural provinces are recorded as being totally depopulated. Surviving
   records in some cities reveal a devastating number of deaths. The 1348
   outbreak in Gaza left an estimated 10,000 people dead, while Aleppo
   recorded a death rate of 500 a day during the same year. In Damascus,
   at the disease's peak in September and October 1348, a thousand deaths
   were recorded every day, with overall mortality estimated at between
   twenty-five and thirty-eight percent. Syria lost a total of 400,000
   people by the time the epidemic subsided in March 1349. In contrast to
   some higher mortality estimates in Asia and Europe, scholars such as
   John Fields of Trinity College in Dublin believe the mortality rate in
   the Middle East was less than one-third of the total population, with
   higher rates in selected areas.

Socio-economic effects

   Monks, disfigured by the plague, being blessed by a priest. England,
   1360–75.
   Enlarge
   Monks, disfigured by the plague, being blessed by a priest. England,
   1360– 75.

   The governments of Europe had no apparent response to the crisis
   because no one knew its cause or how it spread. Most monarchs
   instituted measures that prohibited exports of foodstuffs, condemned
   black market speculators, set price controls on grain, and outlawed
   large-scale fishing. At best, they proved mostly unenforceable, and at
   worst they contributed to a continent-wide downward spiral. The hardest
   hit lands, like England, were unable to buy grain abroad: from France
   because of the prohibition, and from most of the rest of the grain
   producers because of crop failures from shortage of labour. Any grain
   that could be shipped was eventually taken by pirates or looters to be
   sold on the black market. Meanwhile, many of the largest countries,
   most notably England and Scotland, had been at war, using up much of
   their treasury and exacerbating inflation. In 1337, on the eve of the
   first wave of the Black Death, England and France went to war in what
   would become known as the Hundred Years' War, further depleting their
   treasuries, population, and infrastructure. Malnutrition, poverty,
   disease and hunger, coupled with war, growing inflation and other
   economic concerns made Europe in the mid-fourteenth century ripe for
   tragedy.

   The plague did more than just devastate the medieval population; it
   caused a substantial change in economy and society in all areas of the
   world. Economic historians like Fernand Braudel have concluded that
   Black Death exacerbated a recession in the European economy that had
   been under way since the beginning of the century. As a consequence,
   social and economic change greatly accelerated during the fourteenth
   and fifteenth centuries. The church's power was weakened, and in some
   cases, the social roles it had played were replaced by secular ones.
   Also the plague led to peasant uprisings in many parts of Europe, such
   as France (the Jacquerie rebellion), Italy (the Ciompi rebellion, which
   swept the city of Florence), and in England (the English Peasant
   Revolt).

   Europe had been overpopulated before the plague, and a reduction of 30%
   to 50% of the population could have resulted in higher wages and more
   available land and food for peasants because of less competition for
   resources. However, for reasons that are still debated, population
   levels in fact continued to decline until around 1420 and did not begin
   to rise again until 1470, so the initial Black Death event on its own
   does not entirely provide a satisfactory explanation to this extended
   period of decline in prosperity. See Medieval demography for a more
   complete treatment of this issue and current theories on why
   improvements in living standards took longer to evolve.

   The great population loss brought economic changes based on increased
   social mobility, as depopulation further eroded the peasants' already
   weakened obligations to remain on their traditional holdings. In
   Western Europe, the sudden scarcity of cheap labour provided an
   incentive for landlords to compete for peasants with wages and
   freedoms, an innovation that, some argue, represents the roots of
   capitalism, and the resulting social upheaval caused the Renaissance
   and even Reformation. In many ways the Black Death improved the
   situation of surviving peasants. In Western Europe, because of the
   shortage of labour they were in more demand and had more power, and
   because of the reduced population, there was more fertile land
   available; however, the benefits would not be fully realized until
   1470, nearly 120 years later, when overall population levels finally
   began to rise again.

   Social mobility as result of the Black Death has been postulated as
   most likely cause of the Great Vowel Shift, which is the principal
   reason why the spelling system in English today no longer reflects its
   pronunciation.

   In Eastern Europe, by contrast, renewed stringency of laws tied the
   remaining peasant population more tightly to the land than ever before
   through serfdom. Sparsely populated Eastern Europe was less affected by
   the Black Death and so peasant revolts were less common in the
   fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, not occurring in the east until the
   sixteenth through nineteenth centuries. Since it is believed to have in
   part caused the social upheavals of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century
   Western Europe, some see the Black Death as a factor in the Renaissance
   and even the Reformation in Western Europe. Therefore, historians have
   cited the smaller impact of the plague as a contributing factor in
   Eastern Europe's failure to experience either of these movements on a
   similar scale. Extrapolating from this, the Black Death may be seen as
   partly responsible for Eastern Europe's considerable lag in scientific
   and philosophical advances as well as in the move to liberalise
   government by restricting the power of the monarch and aristocracy. A
   common example is that England is seen to have effectively ended
   serfdom by 1550 while moving towards more representative government;
   meanwhile, Russia did not abolish serfdom until an autocratic tsar
   decreed so in 1861.

   On top of all this, the plague's great population reduction brought
   cheaper land prices, more food for the average peasant, and a
   relatively large increase in per capita income among the peasantry, if
   not immediately, in the coming century. However, the upper class often
   attempted to stop these changes, initially in Western Europe, and more
   forcefully and successfully in Eastern Europe, by instituting laws
   which barred the peasantry from certain actions or material goods. A
   good example of this is the Sumptuary laws which were passed throughout
   Europe which regulated what people (particularly of the peasant class)
   could wear, so that nobles could ensure that peasants did not begin to
   dress and act as a higher class member with their increased wealth.
   Another tactic was to fix prices and wages so that peasants could not
   demand more with increasing value. This was met with varying success
   depending on the amount of rebellion it inspired; such a law was one of
   the causes of England's 1381 Peasants' Revolt.

Persecutions

   Renewed religious fervour and fanaticism bloomed in the wake of Black
   Death. This spelled trouble for minority populations of all sorts, as
   Christians targeted "various groups such as Jews, friars, foreigners,
   beggars, pilgrims and Muslims", and lepers, thinking that they were
   somehow to blame for the crisis.

   Lepers, and other individuals with skin diseases such as acne or
   psoriasis, were singled out and exterminated throughout Europe. Anyone
   with leprosy was believed to show an outward sign of a defect of the
   soul.

   Traditionally a lightning rod for Christian anger and unease, Jews were
   charged with having provoked the Plague through their unbelief and
   sinfulness. Differences in cultural and lifestyle practices between
   Jews and Christians also led to persecution. Because Jews had a
   religious obligation to be clean, they did not use water from public
   wells. Thus Jews were suspected of causing the plague by deliberately
   poisoning wells. Typically, comparatively fewer Jews died from the
   Black Death, in part due to rabbinical laws that promoted habits that
   were generally cleaner than that of a typical medieval villager. Jews
   were also socially isolated, often living in Jewish ghettos. This
   isolation may have caused differences in mortality rates which raised
   suspicions of people who had no concept of bacterial transmission.

   Christian mobs attacked Jewish settlements across Europe; by 1351,
   sixty major and 150 smaller Jewish communities had been destroyed, and
   more than 350 separate massacres had occurred. This persecution
   reflected more than religious hatred. In many places, attacking Jews
   was a way to criticize the monarchs who protected them (Jews were under
   the protection of the king, and often called the "royal treasure"), and
   monarchic fiscal policies, which were often administered by Jews. An
   important legacy of the Black Death was to cause the eastward movement
   of what was left of north European Jewry to Poland and Russia, where it
   remained until the twentieth century.

Religion

   Flagellants practiced self-flogging (whipping of oneself) to atone for
   sins. The movement became popular after general disillusionment with
   the church's reaction to the Black Death.
   Enlarge
   Flagellants practiced self-flogging (whipping of oneself) to atone for
   sins. The movement became popular after general disillusionment with
   the church's reaction to the Black Death.

   The Black Death led to cynicism toward religious officials who could
   not keep their promises of curing plague victims and banishing the
   disease. No one, the Church included, was able to cure or accurately
   explain the reasons for the plague outbreaks. One theory of
   transmission was that it spread through air, and was referred to as
   miasma, or 'bad air'. This increased doubt in the clergy's abilities.
   Extreme alienation with the Church culminated in either support for
   different religious groups such as the flagellants, which grew
   tremendously during the opening years of the Black Death, or to an
   increase in interest for more secular alternatives to problems facing
   European society and an increase of secular politicians.

   The Black Death hit the monasteries very hard because of their close
   quarters with the sick, who had come to the monasteries seeking aid, so
   that there was a severe shortage of clergy after the epidemic cycle.
   This resulted in a mass influx of new clergy members, most of whom did
   not share the life-long convictions and experiences of the veterans
   they replaced. This resulted in abuses by the clergy in years
   afterwards and a further deterioration of the position of the Church in
   the eyes of the people.

Other effects

   Inspired by Black Death, Danse Macabre is an allegory on the
   universality of death and a common painting motif in late-medieval
   periods.
   Enlarge
   Inspired by Black Death, Danse Macabre is an allegory on the
   universality of death and a common painting motif in late-medieval
   periods.

   After 1350, European culture in general turned very morbid. The general
   mood was one of pessimism, and the art turned dark with representations
   of death. The Dies Irae was created in this period as was the popular
   poem La Danse Macabre and the instructive and popular Ars moriendi
   ("the art of dying"). See also The Decameron.

   The practice of alchemy as medicine, previously considered the norm for
   most doctors, slowly began to wane as the citizenry began to realize
   that it seldom affected the progress of the epidemic and that some of
   the potions and "cures" used by many alchemists only served to worsen
   the condition of the sick. Liquor (distilled alcohol), originally made
   by alchemists, was commonly applied as a remedy for the Black Death,
   and, as a result, the consumption of liquor in Europe rose dramatically
   after the plague.

   In 2006 a scientific study by Dr Thomas van Hoof of Utrecht University
   suggests that the Black Death contributed to the Little Ice Age. Pollen
   and leaf data, collected from lake-bed sediments in the southeast
   Netherlands, supports the idea that millions of trees sprang up on
   abandoned farmland soaking up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and
   thus cooling the planet. The line of research is new and there are
   questions and further research is needed, but it does pose an
   interesting theory that man-caused climate change is older than current
   theories suggest.

   A theory put forth by Stephen O'Brien says the Black Death is likely
   responsible, through natural selection, for the high frequency of the
   CCR5-Δ32 genetic defect in people of European descent. The gene affects
   T cell function and provides protection against HIV, smallpox, and
   possibly plague , though for the latter, no explanation as to how it
   would do that exists.

Black Death in literature

Contemporary

   The spectre of the Black Death dominated art and literature throughout
   the generation that experienced it. Much of the most useful
   manifestations of the Black Death in literature, to historians, comes
   from the accounts of its chroniclers, often the only real way to get a
   sense of the horror of living through a disaster on such a scale. A few
   were famous writers, philosophers and rulers (like Boccaccio and
   Petrarch), but most were quite ordinary people who happened to work in
   a job requiring literacy, a rare talent. For example, Agnolo di Tura,
   of Siena, records his experience:

     Father abandoned child, wife husband, one brother another; for this
     illness seemed to strike through the breath and sight. And so they
     died. And none could be found to bury the dead for money or
     friendship. Members of a household brought their dead to a ditch as
     best they could, without priest, without divine offices ... great
     pits were dug and piled deep with the multitude of dead. And they
     died by the hundreds both day and night... And as soon as those
     ditches were filled more were dug ... And I, Agnolo di Tura, called
     the Fat, buried my five children with my own hands. And there were
     also those who were so sparsely covered with earth that the dogs
     dragged them forth and devoured many bodies throughout the city.
     There was no one who wept for any death, for all awaited death. And
     so many died that all believed it was the end of the world. This
     situation continued [from May] until September.

   The scene Di Tura describes is repeated over and over again all across
   Europe. In Sicily, Gabriele de'Mussi, a notary, tells of the early
   spread from Crimea:

     Alas! our ships enter the port, but of a thousand sailors hardly ten
     are spared. We reach our homes; our kindred…come from all parts to
     visit us. Woe to us for we cast at them the darts of death! …Going
     back to their homes, they in turn soon infected their whole
     families, who in three days succumbed, and were buried in one common
     grave. Priests and doctors visiting…from their duties ill, and soon
     were…dead. O death! cruel, bitter, impious death! …Lamenting our
     misery, we feared to fly, yet we dared not remain.

   Henry Knighton tells of the plague’s coming to England:

     Then the grievous plague came to the sea coasts from Southampton,
     and came to Bristol, and it was as if all the strength of the town
     had died, as if they had been hit with sudden death, for there were
     few who stayed in their beds more than three days, or two days, or
     even one half a day.

   In addition to these personal accounts, many presentations of the Black
   Death have entered the general consciousness as great literature. For
   example, the major works of Boccaccio (The Decameron), Petrarch,
   Geoffrey Chaucer ( The Canterbury Tales), and William Langland ( Piers
   Plowman), which all discuss the Black Death, are generally recognized
   as some of the best works of their era.

   La Danse Macabre, or the Dance of death, is an allegory on the
   universality of death, expressing the common wisdom of the time: that
   no matter one's station in life, the dance of death united all. It
   consists of the personified Death leading a row of dancing figures from
   all walks of life to the grave — typically with an emperor, king, pope,
   monk, youngster, beautiful girl, all in skeleton-state. They were
   produced under the impact of the Black Death, reminding people of how
   fragile their lives were and how vain the glories of earthly life. The
   earliest artistic example is from the frescoed cemetery of the Church
   of the Holy Innocents in Paris (1424). There are also works by Konrad
   Witz in Basel (1440), Bernt Notke in Lübeck (1463) and woodcuts by Hans
   Holbein the Younger (1538). Israil Bercovici claims that the Danse
   Macabre originated among Sephardic Jews in fourteenth century Spain
   (Bercovici, 1992, p. 27).

   Additionally see Aleksandr Pushkin's verse play, " Feast in the Time of
   the Plague", and Daniel Defoe's Journal of a Plague Year (1722)—some
   consider this possibly fictional because it was published nearly fifty
   years after the event, others argue that books took a long time to get
   to press in those days and he could have used a lot of firsthand source
   material in its writing.

   The poem "The Rattle Bag" by the Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym (1315-1350
   or 1340-1370) has many elements that suggest that it was written as a
   reflection of the hardships he endured during the Black Death. It also
   reflects his personal belief that the Black Death was the end of
   humanity, the Apocalypse, as suggested by his multiple biblical
   references, particularly the events described in Revelations.

Modern

   The Black Death has been used as a subject or as a setting in modern
   literature and media. This may be due to the era's resounding impact on
   ancient and modern history, and its symbolism and connotations.

   Edgar Allan Poe's short story The Masque of the Red Death ( 1842) is
   set in an unnamed country during a fictional plague that bears strong
   resemblance to the Black Death.

   Connie Willis's Hugo Award-winning science fiction novel Doomsday Book
   ( 1993, ISBN 0-553-35167-2) imagines a future in which historians do
   field work by travelling into the past as observers. The protagonist, a
   historian, is sent to the wrong year, arriving in England just as the
   Black Death is starting. Likewise, Kim Stanley Robinson's alternate
   history novel The Years of Rice and Salt ( 2002, ISBN 0-553-58007-8)
   presents a future dramatically changed by the Black Death, in which
   Christian Europe was almost completely destroyed and played no major
   role in future history. Also in Michael Crichton's book Timeline, a
   character is transported through time to a city that is apparently
   affected by the Black Death.

   It has been alleged (since 1961) that the Black Death inspired one of
   the most enduring nursery rhymes in the English language, Ring a Ring
   O'Roses, a pocket full of posies, / Ashes, ashes (or ah-tishoo
   ah-tishoo), we all fall down. However, this seems to be a myth. There
   are no written records of the rhyme before the late 19th century and
   not all of its many variants refer to ashes, sneezing, falling down or
   anything else that could be connected to the Black Death .

   The relatively new medium of film has given writers and film producers
   an opportunity to portray the plague with more visual realism. One of
   the best known and most expansive depictions of the black plague as art
   is the movie classic The Seventh Seal, a 1957 film directed by Ingmar
   Bergman. The knight returns from the Crusades and finds that his home
   country is ravaged by Black Death. To his dismay, he discovers that
   Death has come for him too. The final scene of The Seventh Seal depicts
   a kind of Danse Macabre. The 1988 science fiction film The Navigator: A
   Medieval Odyssey portrayed a group of 14th-century English villagers
   who dig a tunnel to 20th-century New Zealand, with the aid of a boy's
   vision, to escape the Black Death.

   Black Metal band 1349 are named after the year Black Death spread
   through Norway.

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