The document summarizes the impact of the Black Death plague on Europe between 1347-1350. It devastated the population, with mortality rates ranging from 30-60% in different areas. This caused widespread social and economic changes. The plague was likely caused by the Yersinia pestis bacterium spread by fleas on rats. It led to antisemitic accusations that Jews had poisoned wells. Many Jewish communities were attacked, with some massacred or burned alive. The plague underscored existing religious tensions and scapegoating of marginalized groups. Overall it marked a period of immense hardship and loss of life that transformed medieval European society.

1. THE IMPACT OF THE BLACK DEATH ON EUROPE
Molly Corti
HISTORY 497, Senior Seminar
December 14, 2015

2. 1
Between 1347 and 1350 the Black Death spread from Central Asia to the Middle East and
Europe. The disease also afflicted China, although it is not clear whether it started there or it was
exported to China from Central Asia. According to many historians, “the great death,” as it was
called by the people who lived through it, ended the lives of millions but made European society
significantly more modern and more open to change than it had been previously.
The plague was so devastating that many believed that the Black Death would be the end
of the world. When the disease struck Europe in the middle of the fourteenth century, the people
were already in a weakened condition due to overpopulation, natural disasters, and lack of food or
a poor diet. As the disease ravaged Europe, many explanations were proposed as to why this
disaster could happen, most based on religious beliefs. Medical responses included bloodletting
and beliefs in “bad air” and poisoned ground water. The Black Death was an event that can be
studied in respect to how it began, how quickly it spread, how deadly it was, and how it was
understood by those who lived throughout it. But the ultimate importance of the plague is the
consequences and changes that it forced upon Europe. The plague was responsible for far
reaching cultural, religious, economic and agricultural changes in Europe, many related to the
sharp decline in population. Although the Black Death devastated Europe, “it guaranteed that in
the generations after 1348 Europe would not simply continue the pattern of society and culture of
the thirteenth century.”2
Most historians believe that the great epidemic known in history as the Black Death began
in Central Asia in the 1330s along the Silk Road that connects China with the Mediterranean. The
unification of much of Central Asia in a Mongol Empire and the growing popularity of trade
between Europe and China helped spread the disease beyond its original area. Europeans first
2 Herlihy, David. The Black Death and the Transformation of the West: Harvard University Press, 1997. 38

3. 2
came in contact with the disease at the siege of Caffa, a trading outpost of the Italian city of
Genoa, located in the Crimean peninsula on the Black Sea. While attempting to conquer the area,
a Mongol army was devastated by the plague. The Mongols withdrew from Caffa, but the disease
had begun to spread and the Genoese were infected. Next, Genoese ships brought the disease to
the Byzantine Empire then on to Western Europe.3 The plague soon stormed the European
continent and terrified its people.
In Europe, Sicily was the first area to be struck in the year 1347. The first documented
case was in October when twelve Genoese ships arrived at the port in the city of Messina.4 From
Messina, the disease spread further, first by sea to other port cities in Italy, France, and Spain, and
then by land, eventually affecting the entire continent. Attempts by municipal authorities to stop
contagion by searching all ships and driving away those carrying dead and sick people were either
unsuccessful or only managed to delay contagion by a few weeks, as in Genoa and Venice.5
There have been disagreements about the actual source of the illness based on the speed of
transmission, mortality rate, season of year, and symptoms.6 The description of the symptoms of
the disease by contemporaries does not match the symptoms of any current disease. As a result,
some medical researchers have argued that the Black Plague could have been the product of a
combination of diseases. 7 However, there is one theory that is more widely accepted. This
theory is that the illness was caused by a single deadly bacterium, Yersinia pestis. The bacterium
3 Kelly, John. The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All
Time. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2005.7-10
4 Aberth, John. The Black Death: The Great Mortality of 1348-1350: A Brief History with Documents. Boston, MA:
Bedford/St. Martin's, 2005. 1.
5 Kelly, John . 90-94.
6 Theilmann, John, and Frances Cate 2007.” A Plague of Plagues”: The Problem of Plagues Diagnosis in Medieval
England.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 37, no3: 371-393. Academic Search complete, EBSCO(accessed
November 16, 2015: 372.
7 Ibid.

4. 3
is thought to have been spread by fleas that feasted on infected rats who first arrived in Europe on
merchant ships. The rat that is more often blamed is the Black Rat, a species that evolved during
the Ice Age, most likely in present day India. These rats are known to jump high, be able to chew
through brick, and squeeze through quarter inch holes. Although the rats prefer to live in one
place, they travel when hungry and this is how they came to Europe, although it is not clear when
they first arrived. Medieval Europe was a perfect place for rats to thrive because the streets were
full of trash. Livestock roamed the streets, human waste was thrown out windows and butchers
left blood and waste on the ground.8 After a person was infected with the bacteria that caused the
plague, it commonly took between two days and a full week before symptoms would be seen. 9
The disease caused terrible symptoms including painful swelling in the lymph nodes, bleeding
under the skin, high fevers, vomiting, diarrhea, and in most cases, a swift death. In the spot where
the flea had bitten the person, a swelling would occur. Then the lymph nodes closest to the bite
would also swell. This spread the form of plague known as the “bubonic” form. The swelling of
the nodes in the groin or armpit area was called a “bubo”. A second and more deadly variant of
the same disease was pneumonic plague, which occurred when the lungs of a person suffering
from the plague also became infected. Unlike the bubonic form of the plague, pneumonic plague
could be spread directly from person to person as the infected person coughed and would
typically spit blood and saliva, which would pass the bacteria on to other people. Whatever the
mode of transmission, the plague of the Black Death traveled much more quickly from place to
place and infected a much higher percentage of the population than the ancient or modern
versions of the plague.
8 Kelly, John. 66-69.
9 Aberth, John. 23.

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Also related to the changes brought about by the plague is the idea that the disease is
thought to be only part of the reason so many people died. “The plague did not by itself cause the
high mortality in mid- and late fourteenth-century England.”10 A series of environmental factors
contributed to make the disease so deadly. Besides the unsanitary conditions of European cities,
the European population of the mid-fourteenth was probably less resistant to disease than not only
modern Europeans, but also Europeans from previous centuries. In the years immediately
preceding the Black Death, Italy suffered floods, famines, wars, and major earthquakes that
damaged all or most of its major cities. After centuries of population growth, mid-fourteenth
century Europe was overpopulated. Northern Europe suffered a great famine between 1315-1322.
“People of all ages who were already in poor health before the Black Death subsequently faced
higher risks of death during the epidemic than their healthy peers.”11 The weather had turned
colder and rainy resulting in series of poor harvests. Much land was poor and peasants were
starving. In Ireland there were even cases of reported cannibalism.12 War also spread and became
more deadly. The fourteenth century was very violent and the Hundred Years War, the bloodiest
conflict of the Middle Ages, began in 1337.13 In the late summer of 1347, the island of Cyprus,
one of the first places in Europe to be hit by the plague, suffered a massive earthquake. The
ensuing tidal wave destroyed much of coastal Cyprus and was said to have turned the island into a
vast desert.14 This combination of natural disasters, human conflicts, and other man-made factors
such as the prevalence of trade between different parts of Europe made the Black Death of 1347-
1350 so much more devastating than other epidemics.
10 Theilmann, John and Frances Cate. 372.
11 DeWitte, Sharon N. 2014. "Mortality Risk and Survival in the Aftermath of the Medieval Black Death." Plos
ONE 9, no. 5: 1-8. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed September 17, 2015).
12 Kelly, John. 60.
13 Ibid.,74.
14 Kelly, John. 89.

6. 5
The sudden and massive population loss is one of the reasons why the changes in Europe
were so significant after the plague hit. It is important to understand the mortality rate, even
though it is a difficult task. There is much debate over the exact death rate in Europe caused by
the Black Death, but some information is clear. It was not unusual for entire families to die. “Not
just one person in a house died, but the whole household, down to the cats and the livestock,
followed the master to death.”15 The mortality rate of the Black Death was on average between
30-40 percent of a European population that is estimated to have numbered about 75 million
people before the plague.16 Some historians believe that the total loss of life was closer to 50
percent.17 In certain areas, the death rate ranged from 40 to 60 percent.18 One city that had a
dramatic decrease in population was he Italian city of Florence where the population is believed
to have gone from 120,000 in 1330 down to 37,000 following the plague. It is interesting to note
that in the fifteenth century Florence will emerge as probably the greatest center of the Italian
Renaissance. In Normandy, a region of Northern France, estimates are that the death toll was
even greater. In Eastern Normandy, it is believed that 70-80 percent of people died.19
Fourteenth century Europe did not have a cure to stop the plague. Medical doctors were
powerless and were often criticized in the chronicles. However, at least some of their
prescriptions, like fleeing the site of infection, clearing refuse, or isolating suspected carriers of
the disease (quarantine) were beneficial.20 Some preventive measures, like lighting large fires in
the chamber of Pope Clement at Etoile-sur Rhone near Avignon also helped, not because the fires
purified infected air, as the papal doctor believed, but because they kept the pope’s quarters free
15 Horrox, Rosemary. The Black Death. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994. 36
16 Kelly,John. 11-12
17 Aberth, John. 3
18 Kelly,John.12
19 Ibid., 281
20 Aberth, John. 37-38

7. 6
of the infected fleas that spread the contagion. There were some people who did catch the disease
who did not die. It is estimated that 10 to 40 percent of those who did get sick got better even
without treatment.21 Contemporary writers noticed how fast the disease spread. The Italian writer
Giovanni Boccaccio related how, in Florence, two pigs tore up some rags that had belonged to
someone who died of the plague and the pigs soon dropped dead in the street. The plague was
especially brutal to women and children who spent more time indoors where the risk of infection
was greater.22 The Black Death was said to be cruelest to pregnant women who gave birth before
dying. Another example of how deadly the Black Death was can be found in the records of the
city of Bristol, England. 23 For in 1575 the city of Bristol saw deaths from the plague in 42 of its
104 houses.
Adding to the deaths and decline in population due to the plague was the mass murder of
Jews, which was one of the most disturbing results of the plague itself. In the mid-fourteenth
century there were about 2.5 million Jews in Europe, mostly in Spain and Southern France. Some
of them had been in the area since Roman times. The majority of the Jews were known to be
relatively rich and were typically more literate than their Christian neighbors. By the middle of
fourteenth century, Jews generally lived apart from Christians in segregated districts. Jews also
had better hygiene than most of their Christian neighbors because of the Jewish religious
requirement to bathe before the Sabbath. Better hygiene meant that Jews did not catch the plague
as easily or as quickly as Christians, which may have increased suspicion against them. It was
common for Christians to have disagreements and hostile feelings against the Jews because of
21 Ibid., 23.
22 Kelly, John. 12
23 Porter, Stephen. "An Historical whodunit." Biologist 51, no. 2 (Summer2004 2004): 109-113. Academic
Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed December 11, 2015).112

8. 7
religious differences.24 But the plague itself is believed to have caused or increased divisions
among people and created greater hostility against marginal groups like strangers, beggars, and
religious minorities like the Jews. 25
During the plague, Jews were accused of deliberately poisoning wells and springs with the
substances that caused the plague. According to the Chronicle of Mathias of Neuenburg who was
an eyewitness to a Jewish pogrom at Strasbourg, in Alsace, a border region between France and
Germany, the Jewish citizens were accused of throwing poison down the springs and wells.26
The city government that tried to protect the Jews from the accusations was thrown out of office
and replaced by a new government that gave in to the mob. 27 The Jewish citizens of Strasbourg
were stripped almost naked by the crowd and marched to their death into a house prepared for
burning. 28 About half of Strasbourg Jewish population, 900 persons out of 1,884, was
exterminated.29 In Basel, upstream from Strasbourg on the Rhine River, the authorities built a
wooden house on an island in the Rhine. On January 9, 1349, the entire Jewish community
except children who had accepted to convert to Christianity and those Jews who had managed to
escape were locked in the especially prepared wooden structure. The building was set on fire and
everyone in it died.30 In Strasbourg, Jews “were put on the wheel and immediately executed.”31
Pogroms also occurred in Southern Europe in areas close to Mediterranean which were more
cosmopolitan and where Jewish communities had been established for many centuries. On Palm
Sunday in 1348, a mob attacked the Jewish quarter in Toulon, a city in Southern France east of
24 Cantor, Norman. F. 150-161
25 Herlihy, David. 59.
26 Aberth, John. 151.
27 Aberth, John. 151-154, Herlihy, David . 66; Kelly, John. 256; Cantor Norman F. 150.
28 Kelly, John. 256.
29 Ibid., 256.
30 Ibid., 256.
31 Aberth, John. 151-153.

9. 8
Marseille. Several dozen Jews were dragged from their homes and murdered.32 In the morning,
dead bodies were left in the streets and rumors of their guilt in causing the plague spread to
neighboring villages causing more deaths.33
The interrogation and execution of the Jews of Savoy in September–October 1348 at the
lakeside castle of Chillon, in present day Switzerland, was a turning point in creating a new kind
of anti-Semitic hysteria. A Jewish surgeon known as Balavigny was arrested in the month of
September and confessed under torture to the existence of an international Jewish conspiracy to
spread the disease throughout Europe by agents of a certain Rabbi Jacob from Toledo, Spain.34
At some point, Balavigny was taken across Lake Geneva from Chillon to Clarens to identify the
spring that he confessed to have poisoned. Balavigny was said to have described in detail the
color of the poison and the type of cloth used to spread it.35 The addition of all these details
probably gave more credibility to his confession. At that time in Europe, accusations of well
poisoning had grown and the thoughts of some were that the Jewish people were attempting to
dominate the world. The interrogations at Chillon helped to strengthen and to spread the belief of
a conspiracy in which the deliberate and systematic spread of the Black Death was only one part
of a Jewish master plan to seize control of Christian Europe.
Because the plague was so devastating, it is natural that the people of the time would want
to know why it happened and if there was something they could do about it. Because the people
of that time had not experienced an event as devastating as the Black Death, they had never been
as motivated to seek answers to why such a disease happened. Many doctors refused to treat the
sick because they knew it was useless. No large sums of money could convince them to get near
32 Ibid., 251.
33 Kelly, John.138-141.
34 Kelly, John. 232.
35 Horrox, Rosemary. 214.

10. 9
the infected.36 Medieval chroniclers accused physicians of being cowards. This disease was new
so the doctors did not really know how to treat it. Several doctors unknowingly got sick as they
treated their patients. Medieval doctors wrote about the plague and tried to understand its causes,
but their explanations were based on astrology and fanciful notions derived from the medical texts
of Ancient Greece. For instance, doctors followed the belief of the Greek Physician Galen who
believed that disease was caused by an imbalance in the body and that this imbalance could be
detected by looking at urine.37 The doctors at the University of Paris produced a treaty on the
plague. According to them, the primary causes of the plague was “[the] configuration of the
heavens in 1345 … [when] there was a major conjunction of three planets in Aquarius.” When
the three planets aligned some people speculated that the alignment had poisoned the air and that
the plague was caused by people breathing in the poisoned air. 38
Hot and damp air was believed to be especially dangerous, so medical doctors in Paris and
elsewhere told people to stay away from swampy areas and marshes and not to open windows that
faced to the south. 39 Treatment by medieval doctors consisted of avoiding baths, blood–letting,
and advice on what to drink and eat. For example, the Italian physician Gentile da Foligno
recommended white wine and cabbage against the plague.40 In medieval times doctors tried to
treat the plague using the knowledge they had, which was often based on Greek assumptions or
religious notions. But during and after the Black Death, doctors were criticized. They were
accused of being cowards for not treating patients, impotent for not being able to help, and
sometimes even greedy.41 This lack of faith in the medical doctors and their traditional training
36 Aberth, John. 37.
37 Cantor, Norman F. 9.
38 Kelly, John. 169-170.
39 Ibid., 171.
40 Ibid., 173.
41 Aberth, John. 27.

11. 10
caused a shift to a more practical kind of medicine practiced by the surgeons who, until then, had
been regarded as inferior to the university-trained doctors.42 One important development was that
autopsies became more common after the Black Death. Autopsies gave medical practitioners a
more accurate knowledge of the human body and this knowledge was now put in anatomy texts to
train new doctors.43
The Post Black Death era in Europe also challenged the thoughts about how the plague
spread. 44 The physician who is most credited with the study of this illness is Giovanni Fracastoro
who was a health professional in Florence, the capital of the Tuscany region.45 The plague
changed the purpose of hospitals in Europe. Before the Black Death hospitals existed to remove
the sick from society to prevent invention. The expectation was that those who were hospitalized
would soon die. After the great plague, hospitals became a place where diseases could be cured.
People in hospitals were seen as patients and were divided into separate wards based on the
disease they had.46 The Black Death was also responsible for the birth of new institutions to
oversee public health, not only hospitals, but also municipal health boards that set the rules
sanitation, burials, and the quarantine of sick people, including those infected by the plague.47
In terms of the economy, the Black Death at first created a lot of disruption. Workers died
in large numbers or simply fled the cities because they feared for their lives. There was a sudden
need for certain type of professions like gravediggers, physicians, and priests. In England, during
the plague, a bishop allowed lay people, including women, to hear confessions and administer the
42 Kelly, John. 288.
43 Ibid., 289.
44 Ibid., 289.
45 Kelly, John. 289.
46 Ibid..
47 Ibid..

12. 11
sacrament of penance to the sick.48 Medieval professions like the various crafts and the
merchants were tightly organized in “guilds.” The guilds were closed associations that did not
normally admit apprentices who were not the sons or other close relatives of the masters.
However, the Black Death killed off large numbers of craftsmen and tradesmen and their
offspring. The guilds adjusted to the new situation by opening up their ranks to outsiders who
would not have had the chance to become craftsmen or merchants before the Black Death. 49 A
similar development happened with the religious orders. So many priests and friars had died in
the plague that the Church recruited a lot of new persons to fill its ranks. Many of the new
recruits did not have the qualifications or, sometimes, the religious vocation of their predecessors,
which may have contributed to a decline of the religious orders and the rise of more popular
forms of worship.50
The plague also had a profound effect on the physical environment. There was vegetation
overgrowth that occurred when farms were abandoned due to the death of peasant families and a
decline in the raising of livestock also resulted in changes. Over the hundred years that followed
the Black Death, forests would overtake areas that had once been dedicated to agriculture.51
Recent studies have shown, through data collected from soil layers dating back many centuries,
that there was a significant decline in arable land after the Black Death. There is an absence of
pollen in the layers of soil following the plague, which shows the subsequent collapse of
agriculture following the extreme population decline caused by the Black Death. It took almost a
century for the same levels of pollen to show up in the layers of soil once again. Paleontologists
48 Herlihy, David. 39-42.
49 Ibid. 44-45.
50 Ibid., 45-46.
51 Yeloff, Dan, and Bas van Geel. 2007. "Abandonment of Farmland and Vegetation Succession Following the
Eurasian Plague Pandemic of ad 1347–52." Journal Of Biogeography 34, no. 4: 575-582. Academic Search
Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed December 11, 2015). 576.

13. 12
have looked for certain plant pollen to denote agricultural activity.52 There were also many other
contributing factors to the shrinking of agriculture during the fourteenth century. The continent
suffered through the Great Famine, The Hundred Years War, and the Black Death. The Black
Death is thought to have greatly accelerated the decline in crop cultivation at this time.53
Livestock, such as cattle, sheep, and pigs either perished in the Black Death or ran wild after their
owners died from the plague.54 The loss of arable land and livestock was significant, but studies
show that the agricultural decline only lasted a century or so before the land began to be utilized
again as the population began to increase.55
Moreover the decline in agriculture, particularly traditional agriculture based on the
extensive cultivation of grains, helped the European economy to diversify after the Black Death.
Land that was once devoted to the cultivation of wheat and other grains could be freed for other
usages such as pasturage or woods. The mills that were no longer needed to grind grains could be
put to industrial uses, like the production of textiles or of timber.56 Because there fewer workers
left, they could negotiate for better wages. In the towns, wages were two to three times higher
after the Black Death than before it, despite the attempts of many city governments to keep wages
and prices down.57 The much greater demand for workers after the Black Death also had a huge
impact on the relationship between peasants and their feudal lords. Almost everywhere, the
peasants were big winners. They could now leave the land and easily found a job in cities. Even if
they stayed on the land, their services were now in higher demand. As a result, the peasants were
no longer treated as serfs of the lords and the institution of serfdom “began to disappear
52 Ibid., 578.
53 Ibid., 579.
54 Ibid..
55 Ibid., 580.
56 Herlihy, David. 46.
57 Ibid., 48-49.

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entirely.”58 The high price of labor also inaugurated an era of technological innovation. Besides
using mills for new purposes, Europeans of the generations that followed the Black Death
invented new tools and machines like the printing press, bigger ships that could undertake longer
voyages, firearms, and banking and insurance methods that made businesses more efficient and
more productive.59
After the Black Death, the amount of money per capita increased. 60 Historians have
found evidence that the standard of living improved in several areas in Europe, for example in
England.61 One economic factor that affected everyone’s life was the price of grain. Grain
prices dropped heavily towards the end of the fourteenth century and remained low for about a
century, while the price of other grains and of meat products remained relatively high.62 The
decrease in population also meant that more food was available per capita. After the Black Death,
Europeans ate larger quantities of bread, meat and fish. These nutritional changes lead to a more
healthy way of living in Europe during the late medieval period and the Renaissance.
According to David Harley, the Black Death also made Europe more modern in its
demographic system. Before the Black Death, whenever the number of people grew too much or
too fast for the amount of food available, the number of people would be cut back by an increase
in death rate due to famine or to an epidemic like the Black Death. This hard break on population
growth is known as a “positive check” and was typical of medieval Europe before the Black
Death and pre-modern societies in general. But some cultures develop “preventing checks” to
keep the population from growing faster than the supply of food. Preventing checks work on
58 Ibid., 285.
59 Ibid., 49-51.
60 DeWitte, Sharon. 2.
61 Ibid., 2.
62 Herlihy, David. 47-48.

15. 14
lowering the birth rate. Lower birth rates are typically achieved by delaying the age of marriage
and preventing some people from getting married and having children. After the Black Death, a
majority of Europeans were able to use preventive checks to maintain and expand their resources.
Only the poor remained under the control of the old positive checks such as famine.63
Another consequence of the Black Death was a change in religious attitudes and practices.
Medieval Europeans held a strong belief that natural disasters were an act of God.64 Medieval
people believed that God sent the plague to punish mankind for its sinfulness. Most people
hoped to avoid the plague by turning to religion. Masses were used as insurance against the
plague.65 A Catholic mass for turning away the plague was offered by Pope Clement VI. Those
who attended the Pope’s mass were to hold a burning candle and keep it lit throughout the
service.66 The believers where supposed to kneel during the mass and have faith that death would
not harm them during the epidemic. Most people felt a need for prayer and forgiveness during a
difficult time when Europe suffered huge population losses. Masses against the plague multiplied
as Europeans begged for forgiveness of their sins. 67 During the era of the Black Death many
different prayers were composed to ward off disease. One popular prayer was addressed to the
Virgin Mary as the star of heaven and of the sea, and the merciful mother of Christ: “Star of
Heaven, who nourished the Lord and routed up the plague of death which our first parents
planted; may that star now deign to counter the constellations whose strife brings the people the
ulcers of terrible death. O glorious star of the sea, save us from the plague, Hear us: for your Son
63 Herlihy, David. 51-57; Kelly, John. 293-294.
64 Horrox, Rosemary. 95.
65 Ibid.,. 120.
66 Ibid., 122.
67 Ibid.,121.

16. 15
who honours you denies you nothing. Jesus, save us, for whom the Virgin Mother prays to
you.”68
The strong desire for religious comfort caused by the Black Death took new forms that
were outside the control of the Church. Like other institutions of the time, the Church was unable
to cope with the plague and many of its most qualified members died of it. Confidence in the
Church’s spiritual leadership weakened and people expressed their faith through spontaneous
religious movements.69 One religious movement that challenged the authority of the Church was
the Flagellant movement. The Flagellants were groups of men who travelled from town to town
singing marching songs like the “Stabat Mater, the thirteenth century poem portraying the
suffering of Mary,70 and beating one another with whips until they drew blood. The Flagellants
would often attract large crowds of onlookers with their singing, their banners, and their dress,
which included white cloaks with red crosses on the back and front. Some people would even
bring out dead bodies to be blessed by the traveling bands of Flagellants.71
The Flagellants claimed that their processions and bloody whippings where directly
authorized by God through a letter that was said to have been found in Jerusalem on the altar of
the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.72 A German chronicler described the Flagellants as “a race
without a head,” meaning that the Flagellants did not have a leader and did not have any common
sense, either. The Flagellants became increasingly radical and violent as the plague spread
throughout Europe. In Germany, which was the center of the movement, the Flagellants killed
68 Ibid., 124
69 Herlihy, David. 66; Kelly, John. 290-291.
70 Horrox, Rosemary.97.
71 Kelly, John. 67.
72 Ibid., 264-265.

17. 16
Jews wherever they found them.73 The Flagellants were also a threat to the Catholic Church
because “they took upon themselves the job of preaching.”74 In the fall of 1349, Pope Clement
denounced the Flagellants for spilling the blood of Jews and Christians and prohibited the faithful
from associating with them.75 Secular rulers, like King Philip VI of France, quickly followed the
pope’s leads in also banning the Flagellants.76 As a result the movement came to a quick end:
“[The Flagellants] vanished as suddenly as they had come, like night phantoms or mocking
ghosts.”77
The Black Death also caused changes in the relationship people had with the saints.78
Saint Sebastian, an early Christian martyr who survived being shot with multiple arrows, became
very popular because the arrows he survived where now interpreted as a representation of the
plague.79 The saint who became most popular as a healer of the plague was a new saint, Saint
Rock. Saint Rock was supposed to have lived between 1295 and 1327 and was believed to have
caught and survived the plague himself.80 Popular desire for personal protection from a saint was
also reflected in the growing popularity of Christian first names. Looking at records from
Florence from the periods before, during, and after the Black Death, the historian David Herlihy
found that, from the 13th to the 15th century, the number of first names used by the people of
Florence grew smaller and that the percentage of names taken from saints increased.81
73 Ibid., 267.
74 Ibid., 152.
75 Kelly, John. 268.
76 Aberth, John. 138-139.
77 Kelly, John. 268.
78 Horrox, Rosemary. 97.
79 Horrox, Rosemary. 97; Herlihy, David. 79.
80 Herlihy,David.80.
81 Ibid.,73-80.

18. 17
One major change brought about by the Black Death was a new focus on understanding
and on cause and effect relationships. The disease had been so horrible that people wanted to
know more.82 This desire for knowledge may not look scientific to us. For example, medieval
people continued to look at the stars and the planets for explanations and astrology remained
closely tied to medicine long after the Black Death. Moreover, the medieval understanding of the
solar system was wrong. Medieval people counted seven planets, considered the sun and the
moon to be planets, and placed earth at center of universe. Every planet was said to have its own
characteristics and these characteristics were believed to influence people. For example the
planet Mars was known to be associated with war and inclined people to anger and violence.
Those who were born under the planet of Mars were likely to become soldiers, butchers or
barbers. 83 However, the period after the Black Death saw the beginning of a scientific outlook
based on observation and the relationship between the various planets in space. The universe
started to be seen as an integrated system, in which different parts influenced each other.84
Despite the sharp drop in population, there was a greater demand for higher education.
This was a consequence of the greater desire for knowledge triggered by the plague, but was also
the result of the social and economic changes that had made it possible for a higher percentage of
the population to escape serfdom, join the professions, and gain some control over their own
destinies. In England, Cambridge University established four new colleges after the Black Death:
Gonville Hall in 1348, Trinity Hall in 1350, Corpus Christi in 1352, and Clare Hall in 1362.
Oxford created two new colleges: Canterbury in 1362 and New College in 1372. In Italy, which
already had a number of universities before the plague, a new university was founded in Florence
82 Horrox, Rosemary. 100.
83 Ibid.,102.
84 Ibid.,101.

19. 18
in 1350. However, most of the new universities were founded north and east of the Alps in
Heidelberg, Vienna, Prague, Cracow, in areas that had no universities before the Black Death.85
So, it appears like the epidemic created both a greater and a wider demand for higher education in
late medieval European society.
A related change to the spread of higher education after the Black Death was the demand
for books among the growing portion of the population who could read them: merchants,
university trained professionals, and skilled craftsmen.86 However, producing books in the Middle
Ages was a labor intensive process that required many copyists to write each section by hand. 87
Johann Guttenberg a native German from the city of Mainz found a way to combine a number of
existing technologies into the invention of the printing press with movable metal types.88
The Black Death shows how an event outside the control of any group of people can have
a profound and lasting impact on human history. However, the relationship between the great
epidemic known as the Black Death and medieval Europeans is complicated. Although the
plague was devastating, fourteenth-century Europeans were not passive victims of the plague. In
some ways, it was positive changes in Europe like population growth and the expansion of trade
to China and within Europe that brought this disaster to Europe and made it more deadly once it
got there. After the disaster struck, people responded and adapted to the new situation fairly
quickly. Europe became more modern and started to look quite different from China or the
Middle East. Many of the old restrictions had to be relaxed and more people had more control of
their lives after the Black Death than before it. For example, workers got better pay and more
food than ever before and many ordinary people felt free to practice their religion outside of
85 Kelly, John. 289; Herlihy, David. 70.
86 Ibid., 288.
87 Ibid., 288.
88 Kelly, John. 288; Herlihy, David . 50.

20. 19
control of the church. Serfdom almost disappeared from Europe as peasants could now leave the
land and find employment and freedom in cities. Not all the changes were good. Religious
enthusiasm contributed to the creation of European anti-Semitism and perhaps a wider hostility
towards foreigners. Even the stronger desire for knowledge had mixed effects. It did spur
technological innovation and a much greater use of books, but also made wars more deadly and
ensured that people would continue to look at the stars for medical explanations.

21. 20
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