The Black Death and the Later Middle Ages

Death and the maiden

Okay, future AP Euro students. I'm going to go ahead and jump into the Pre-AP Euro arena in this post. I know it's still early in the summer, but it never hurts to get a good start on the year. I just want to make sure that you understand a few things before you continue reading this post. The AP exam will only hold you responsible for knowledge of history after the year 1450. Anything that occurred before 1450 will not appear on the exam. It would be very convenient if history conformed itself to these nice little bookended dates. It doesn't. 1450, depending upon how you define it, falls in the middle of the first half of the Renaissance. Many AP Euro teachers (certainly the four on this campus) do expect their students to develop an understanding of the events leading up to 1450. This post will begin this process of filling in some of the details of these Pre-AP Euro years.

In an earlier post I talked about trying to find the big ideas in the historical narrative and trying to find the connections between the major events and ideas. One of the major trends of the middle ages (ca. 450 - 1400) was the recovery of Western Europe from the collapse of the Roman Empire and its development as a distinct civilization. This included the development of western Christianity and the Catholic Church, the development of a feudal economy and society, and relatively unbroken population growth as more land came under agricultural cultivation. This final century of the middle ages (the 14th century) saw a series of crises that "primed the pump" for the Renaissance (rebirth) of the 15th and 16th centuries. The population growth of the middle ages was spectacularly halted and reversed by famine and plague Black Death (1347-1351). The decline in the feudal economy and society, which was beginning to break up in the 13th century, was further accelerated in much of Europe by the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453). Even the church lost some of its shine in a series of crises throughout the century, the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1309-1377) and the Great Schism in the Catholic Church (1377-1415). We can get to the crises of feudalism and the church in a later post. I really want to start with the first set of disasters in the 14th century, famine and the Black Death.

The medieval iron plow known as the carruca

The closer historians look at European society at the beginning of the 14th century, the more they see a society on the edge of disaster. By 1300, Europe had seen a tremendous increase in population as more land was brought under cultivation during the High Middle Ages (1100-1300). They did this by clearing the great forests of Europe (gasp!) and draining the swamps. In the Low Countries (the Netherlands) they "reclaimed" land from the sea by creating earthen dikes and pumping out the water behind it to create arable land. The use of a new heavy iron plow, the carruca, pulled by team of horses allowed peasant farmers to cultivate the heavier soils of northern Europe. These innovations are often credited with making this population growth possible. So, what happened? Well, the first thing that happened is that, by 1300, Europe's had reached the limit of what its agricultural system could support. The Three-Field System of agriculture that much of Europe adopted during the High Middle Ages still left a third of Europe's arable land uncultivated each year. As the countryside became overpopulated (I know it sounds crazy) many peasants and rural laborers migrated to urban areas to find better opportunities. Did they find these opportunities? Not really. In fact, the historical record is cluttered with reports of the increasing population of urban poor from cities all over Europe during this time. To make matters worse, as the population expanded to the limit of agriculture to support it the cost of food increased. It wouldn't take much to push the system beyond its limits.

The first disaster struck between the years 1315 and 1317. The middle ages had been a relatively warm period in Earth's history. The summers were regular and balmy (Not quite as warm as they are now, but still nice.). This kind of predictable weather is great for an agricultural society like that of medieval Europe. Right around 1300 those warm summers began to get a little less warm, and a little less predictable. This slight drop in overall temperature shortened growing seasons. It also caused very unpredictable weather. Between 1315 and 1317 torrential rains destroyed most of the harvests in northern Europe. This resulted in a severe shortage of food, hunger, and severe starvation. Chroniclers of the 14th century record the long processions of starving people, many looking like walking skeletons, wandering from town to town in search of food. In some instances, they even reported incidents of cannibalism. The shortage drove prices of food even higher, increasing the death toll of the famine. This Great Famine of 1315-1317 may have killed 10% of the population of Europe. Approximately one quarter of the harvests of the early 14th century may have been destroyed by the continuation of what has come to be called the Little Ice Age, ensuring the continuation of chronic malnutrition through the first half of the century. This first disaster was a perfect setup for the even bigger disaster to follow, the Black Death.

A doctor attempts to treat plague victims

The Black Death is the name given to the outbreak of Bubonic plague that swept like wildfire across Europe between 1347 and 1351. This plague was made possible by the revival of trade routes to the east during the High Middle Ages. A ship full of Genoese merchants brought the plague with them to Sicily from the port of Caffa in the Black Sea in October of 1347. Instead of the silks and spices they were expecting, the Sicilians were treated to high fever, swollen lymph nodes (called buboes), aching joints, bleeding under the skin that caused dark blotches, and, eventually, death. The pneumonic form of the plague killed even faster, and was spread from person to person as the victim coughed up the blood that rapidly filled his lungs. The overcrowded conditions in Italian cities, combined with generally poor sanitation, caused the plague to travel swiftly up the Italian boot. In the preface to the Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio (We'll talk about him later) described the terrifying speed with which this plague travelled.

"It spread without stop from one place to another, until, unfortunately, it swept over the West. Neither knowledge nor human foresight availed against it..."

 Modern science tells us that the plague was caused by a nasty little bacterium called Yersinia pestis, that was brought to Europe by hitchhiking fleas on the backs of hitchhiking black rats on that Genoese ship (So the moral of the story is don't pick up hitchhikers). 14th century medicine had no idea what caused it, and only a vague idea of how it was spread. 

"Neither the advice of physicians nor the virtue of any medicine seemed to help or avail in the cure of these diseases...The virulence of the plague was all the greater in that it was communicated by the sick to the well by contact, not unlike fire when dry or fatty things are brought near it."

A mass burial of plague victims

 The effects of this outbreak of the plague, the first major disease in Europe since the 7th century, were devastating. Europe may have lost one quarter to one half of its population (I lean a little closer to that second figure). In pure numbers, that means that in the space of three years the Black Death claimed the lives of up to 38 million people. The death toll was much higher in the urban areas of Europe. Cities like Florence, Paris, & Rome report numbers as high as 50% killed. It's a little hard for us to imagine this kind of devastation. It's should not be that difficult to imagine the impact of that kind of death on a civilization (The Second World War isn't that far in the past).

Economically, The Black Death was a big game changer. Economic activity cannot carry on as if nothing happened when up to half of the workforce has been killed. Towns and cities struggled to reorganize their workforce. Old systems of work and economy had to be transformed. The shortage of labor created by the plague may have accelerated the mechanization of labor (increased use of windmills and watermills) and increased the incentive for innovative solutions. The rural economy also took a big hit. Because labor was scarce, rural farm workers could ask for higher wages. Serfdom, which was already in decline, ended in much of western Europe. The remaining workforce needed the ability to move to where the work was (and the wages were higher, cha-ching!). Initially, food prices dropped as a result of the lower population (fewer people to eat the food). This was a disaster for the landed nobility. Their income from rents and agricultural produce fell as the cost of their labor increased. In many instances, they were forced to convert the old feudal labor obligations to rents. As they realized that their quality and way of life were threatened by this new social arrangement, feudal lords of Europe imposed wage restrictions and attempted to bring back the old labor obligations. The class tension that this created was one of the factors responsible for the outbreak of peasant revolts in France (the Jacquerie, 1358) and England (The English Peasants' Revolt of 1381) later in the century.

Recently excavated plague burial

The psychological effects of the plague were incredibly disturbing. Death became a regular feature in European life and art. In the face of what seemed to be certain death, many Europeans simply threw any sort of rules of civil society and morality out of the window. In an attempt to enjoy their increasingly limited time on earth, they went on drinking, spending, and sexual binges, described here by Boccaccio.

"Day and night they went from one tavern to another drinking and carousing unrestrainedly. At the least inkling of something that suited them, they ran wild in other people's houses, and there was no one to prevent them, for everyone had abandoned all responsibility for his belongings as well as for himself, considering his days numbered."

Others, fueled by a extreme sense of piety, and believing that the plague was sent to punish mankind for its sinful ways, turned to a form of extremist asceticism. Groups of people known as flagellants roamed from town to town, flogging themselves with metal-tipped whips and begging for God's forgiveness. Wherever they went they caused quite a stir amongst the population. Initially, these flagellants had the support of the Catholic church. This changed when the flagellants began to denounce Pope Clement VI, claiming that the end of the world was at hand, and attacking clergy who spoke out against them. To make matters worse, the flagellants began to incite violence against the Jewish population, blaming them for the plague and claiming that they had poisoned the wells. This violence was worst in Germany, where much of the Jewish population fled east to the protection offered to them by the king of Poland. Clement VI was forced to condemn the flagellants, and by 1350 the movement was crushed. 

Death comes for us all.

The art world also saw a morbid fascination with death. Images of skeletons and decaying corpses dancing amongst the living became a common theme in post-plague art. In countless works of art skeletons tugged at the beards of kings and dragged priests and bishops along by their robes. They carried away old men, beautiful young maidens, and little babies. This Danse Macabre was to serve as reminder that death come to us all, even bishops and kings.

It would take at least 250 years for the population to return to pre-plague levels. Don't worry, it's not as bad as it sounds. As is often the case in history, periods of great devastation and decay are the catalysts for periods of incredible recovery and sweeping change. That was the case with the disastrous 14th century in Europe.

Next Time: The Hundred Years' War! 

Sources

Merriman, John, A History of Modern Europe: From the Renaissance to the Present, 2nd ed., New York: W. W. Norton, 2004

Palmer, R. R., Colton, Joel, A History of the Modern World, 8th ed., New York: McGraw-Hill, 1995

Spielvogel, Jackson, Western Civilization, 6th ed., Belmont, CA: Thompson Wadsworth, 2006