the black death

“We see death coming into our midst like black smoke, a plague which cuts off the young, a rootless phantom which has no mercy for fair countenance. Woe is me of the shilling of the armpit…It is of the form of an apple, like the head of an onion, a small boil that spares no-one. Great is its seething, like a burning cinder, a grievous thing of ashy colour… They are similar to the Seeds of the black peas, broken fragments of brittle sea-coal...cinders of the peelings of the cockle weed, a mixed multitude, a black plague like half pence, like berries…

-Welsh poet Ieuan Gethin, 1349

The Black Death

Mr. Garfinkel 1/30/14

“The Plague”• http://www.history.com/videos/the-black-death-begins#the-black-death-begins (The start)

• The Black Death of 1347-1350 was an epidemic- “A widespread occurrence of an infectious disease at a particular place and time”

• It consisted of a combination of three deadly diseases: the bubonic plague, septicaemic plague, and pulmonary plague

Causes

• The first two diseases were carried by fleas which lived on the black rat, the last traveled through the air… and moved fast.

• The disease originated in central Asia and travelled east to China and then west to Europe

Symptoms

• Boils and blotches on the skin

• Internal bleeding

• Intolerable pain

• Death

Picture from Toggenburg Bible of Switzerland, 1411

Modern re-creation

Losses• Conservative estimates are that about ⅓ of

Europe’s population diedo 1.4-2 million people in Englando 8 million in Franceo 30 million in Europe as a whole

• People who were more likely to die:o lived in cities/townso pooro the young

Aftermath• Accelerated the decline of feudalism

o Huge labor shortages (due to so many people dying)o What do you think this did to the price of labor?o Emergence of a more mobile labor force

• Church weakened, but increased piety among individualso People thought the disease was a way that God was punishing them

• More popular uprisingso Peasants fed up with the demands on them