Historical Research by Michael Walsh
Originally completed at Eastern Illinois University in December 2000.
Republished from Villarrica, Chile.

Photo Used: magnific.com

Introduction

It came from the east. Rolling across the land, creeping its way west, it indiscriminately ravaged all within its path. In its eyes, it was irrelevant whether they were called Italian, German, French, English, or any of a number of names. In its mind, they were all one thing: food. Pressing forward in quick fashion, it rode on the wings of the wind, and was carried in the bellies of rodents. It would stay for such a brief period of time, only two years, yet it would gorge itself on a banquet that no king in any of the nations had ever experienced before. Before the next two years were over, everyone would know its name. It would be on the lips of every man, woman, and child. Its name is the Black Death.

The Arrival of the Black Death

The Black Death would indeed become well known to all of Europe in quick fashion. It was a disease that originated in the east¹ and traveled west, toward Europe. It was primarily carried by flea-infested rats, which were the first to fall victim to the plague. It then spread quickly westward, until reaching Europe. Panic spread through the people of Europe rapidly.² Contemporaries of the plague were at odds as to how it was spreading so quickly; some believed it was being spread through contact,³ while others searched for the source of the pestilence in contaminated air or water.⁴ Some even seemed to think the plague spread through the very air, and even by sight!⁵ While such ideas are, for the most part, unrealistic, they are easily excused when considered alongside the fact that the populace was wild with fear; to them, any answer was satisfactory.

Estimating the Human Cost

These same contemporaries were in relative agreement when it came to the mortality of the plague, but are at odds with more modern historians who are better able to examine the mortality rates from outside the situation. Boccaccio and Agnolo di Tura, two contemporary Italian authors, were quite liberal in the numbers they assigned as victims of the plague: Agnolo figures that only ten thousand men survived the onset of plague in Sienna,⁶ while Boccaccio estimates that “over a hundred thousand human lives were extinguished within the walls of the city of Florence.”⁷ The people's reaction to the onset of the rapid-moving wall of death was varied; according to Boccaccio, “There were some people who thought that living modestly and avoiding any excess might help ...and so they gathered in small groups and lived entirely apart from everyone else,”⁸ while “Others thought the opposite: they believed that drinking excessively, enjoying life ...was the best medicine for such a disease...”⁹ There were still others, according to the author, who found their place midway between these two.¹⁰

Upon a closer examination of the events before, during, and after the Black Death, one can see mixed results. In some cases, it appears that some people's lives actually improved. It is worth studying the effects of the Black Death in England to determine whether or not the country and its people benefited from the plague, in order to understand how “disasters” are multi-faceted rather than wholly “bad.” In doing this, one must take into account the effect that the plague had on the people, the towns and country as a whole, and the religion. Furthermore, it should be understood how various historians have drawn different conclusions from the data available for this time period.

The Peasantry and Economic Opportunity

The Black Death brought with it countless changes to every facet of society. Not one person was left untouched by it. It could be thought of as the great equalizer, for it assaulted the nobility and the peasantry without prejudice or preference. The peasantry was inflicted with terrible losses, yet it appears, on the surface at least, that they had the most to gain from this situation.¹¹

One of the ways in which the Black Death aided the peasantry is by providing, in a rather morbid manner, the opportunity for job and social mobility. The initial onset of the Black Death in 1348 and 1349,¹² which claimed approximately 30%¹³ of the population, not only created jobs for the unemployed, but also increased the value of their work.¹⁴ When the nobility noticed their worth, the wages of the peasantry increased. This is how it appears that the lot of the common man was improved for the better during the Black Death. However, further examination shows that this is not necessarily the case. J.M.W. Bean cautions against “arguing that the real value of wages in the decade following the Black Death was reduced by a series of bad crops,”¹⁵ supporting this by alleging that since the peasantry did not buy their crops on the open market, the state of the economy would not affect them. Many historians take issue with this. Two in particular are David Herlihy and Yves Renouard. Renouard provides as proof against this claim that “the scarcity of labor permitted survivors to obtain wage increases that were proportionally perhaps a bit greater than the increases in food prices.”¹⁶ David Herlihy asserts that wages increased by a factor of three: “Serving girls and unskilled women with no experience in service and stable boys want at least 12 florins per year ...and so also nurses and minor artisans working with their hands want three times or nearly the usual pay.”¹⁷ Furthermore, if the peasants were content, rather than suffering under a terrible economy, what can explain the Peasants Revolt of 1381?¹⁸ Following all of this, while it appears that the lives of the peasantry were improved by a thinning of their ranks, it really provided no real advantages outside of greater job availability. Yet, in some ways, they fared better than the nobility.

The Nobility Under Pressure

During the fourteenth century in England, one of the nobility's greatest problems was their general lack of ability to consistently provide male heirs.¹⁹ In actuality, there were other forces at work completely unrelated to the Black Death. However, the sudden onset of the killer pestilence did contribute significantly to this problem by eliminating many heirs who did manage to come into the world. This problem, compounded by multiple factors, was “causing old family lands to migrate with heiress-brides to other owners.”²⁰ Another problem that the nobility had was with the land and landed servants they managed to retain. Aside from the rather obvious ill effect of losing one third of the population, they were also forced to pay the servants who remained more for the same services; an improvement in the lives of the servants, but a further difficulty for the rulers.

Two authors who are at odds over how severely the Black Death affected the nobility are J.F.D. Shrewsbury, and J.M.W. Bean. While Shrewsbury is of the opinion that the nobility escaped from the Black Death relatively untouched, J.M.W. Bean counters this, saying, “...his view that the Black Death did not affect the nobility and gentry can be easily disproved: the evidence of inquisitions post mortem, which relates to the upper landed classes, indicates that the death rate was roughly ten times the normal one in the year or so following the advent of the Black Death.”²¹ It seems to be the case, therefore, that the peasantry of England benefited at the expense of the nobility. Before turning attention to the changes affecting the structure of the towns and the country, there is yet one more group to consider. The lives of women were also changed during the time of plague.

Women and Social Mobility

The lives of women, both in the lower classes and the upper classes, felt various degrees of improvement as a result of the Black Death. Overall, however, the degree to which they were able to benefit from the social upheaval was about the same as that of the peasantry in general: little, if any. With the Black Death so indiscriminately killing such a large percentage of the population, women were needed in some of the areas formerly held only by men. Mavis E. Mate states that, “women were recruited into the work-force partly because they could be hired more cheaply, and partly because they were often the only available source of labor.”²² The women, especially those of the lower class, experienced greater job mobility, much like their male counterparts. A comparison could be made to the women of the United States during World War II, when many of the men went off to war, leaving the women to take up some of their jobs, including those in fields normally reserved solely for males.

While there was added job and social mobility for women during this period, it was a small improvement at best. It was also not without consequences. Women were not able to leave house and home and set out to work in exactly the same way as men. First, as mentioned earlier, they were usually hired for lower wages than males in the same job. In addition, Mate states that, “the traditional gender specific division of labour did not change in the wake of the Black Death ...women remained responsible for domestic tasks.”²³ Again, much like their male counterparts, the plight of women in the fourteenth century was not greatly enhanced. Women were generally passive receivers of the benefits enjoyed by their husbands via greater job opportunities and wage increases.

The Decline of English Towns

Having examined the situations of the peasantry, nobility, and women in the wake of the Black Death, it is now time to focus attention outward, noting how the pestilence affected the towns of England in general, as well as the nation as a whole, and in particular, the realm of foreign policy. In England, the effects of the Black Death in 1348 and 1349 were immediately felt. The country lost some 30%²⁴ of its population in quick order. While not every city and town in England experienced the same proportion of loss, they were all nevertheless greatly affected by the onset of plague. Even more important, many of them had difficulty recovering from the effects. In a quote from Tolstoy, adapted by Colin Platt, the author says that, “All unhappy [towns] resemble one another, but each unhappy [town] is unhappy in its own way.”²⁵

This is true in the case of one English town, that of Grimsby, which was reduced by 30% as a direct result of the Black Death.²⁶ However, in addition to this loss, the town also suffered a further 40% loss of population between 1377 and 1524.²⁷ This town was not able to fully recover from these twin devastating effects of the plague. Another example of a town that suffered similarly to Grimsby was the town of Boston.²⁸ As mentioned earlier, the main cause of decline in these two towns was that of heavy depopulation caused by the Black Death, coupled with further population loss after the initial effects of the plague. With this, Dr. Rigby might agree, as he has noted himself that population loss in Boston and Grimsby was “the key indication of the town's decay in the later Middle Ages.”²⁹ The Black Death, as asserted earlier, left no part of life in England, and indeed in all of Europe, untouched. The life of the people, and the structure of the English towns have been examined, but the far-reaching plague affected the foreign policies of England as well.

The Black Death and Warfare

Had the devastating effects of the Black Death been confined to England, it would have been truly tragic for the small nation. It may have never recovered. However, what offsets the high casualties experienced by the island nation is the fact that most of the countries in Europe experienced similar loss. One benefit that the Black Death issued to the English populace was that the numerous wars that were afflicting Europe during the Middle Ages were either slowed, or halted altogether, by the pestilence. Renouard supports this conclusion, saying that, “the king of France, the king of England, the pope, and the Italian republics had to renounce temporarily their extensive political and military activities.”³⁰

England and France, who were in the midst of the Hundred Years War, were forced to divide their attention between the fighting and the pestilence, which affected them both at the same time. Another example of the plague bringing hostilities to a halt is that of the Dauphin Humbert. An advance led by Humbert was forced to a halt in 1348 as a result of plague.³¹ This was the same year as the onset of plague. Finally, a third example of the plague's positive effect on curbing excessive warfare is that, “Even the civil war in Flanders caused by the fall of Artevelde in 1346, stopped when the plague entered that country.”³²

Religion During the Plague

It has been shown that the Black Death brought with it a mixture of benefits and disaster, in regards to the populace of England, as well as the country as a whole. During this time of disease and death, the future seemed unclear to many people. The plague served to intensify the value of religion in the hearts of the people. At the same time, however, the religious sector in England was also feeling the effects of the dread Black Plague.

With such widespread death running rampant not only through England, but also the rest of the world, it seemed as if all eyes were on the Church for help, for advice, and for leadership. Indeed, many believed that the end of the world was upon them, referring to the horseman in Revelation that was to kill a quarter of the population on the earth by disease and famine.³³ Most historians later agreed that approximately one-fourth to one-third of the population died during the Black Death; for some, this seems to provide further evidence toward that point. The clergy of 1348 and 1349 were as affected, if not more so, than the common populace. The Black Death would serve to thin the ranks of the priests and monks by an enormous factor. This, in turn, would directly affect the beliefs of the common man, as they still relied on the Scriptures to come from their local clergy. Some, like Robert Gottfried, would argue that the Black Death would spark an increased popularity in indulgences and would play a role in the later Protestant Reformation.³⁴ This appears to have some merit. But however far-reaching the effects of the Black Death were on Christianity as a whole, it is certain, as I will show henceforth, that its immediate effect was dramatic and powerful.

The Crisis of the Clergy

Not even the clergy escaped the ravages of the Black Death. The especially high number of deaths among religious personnel, especially those in the monastic orders living in close quarters, removed a significant proportion of properly trained clergy. William J. Dohar shows in his book that while a significant number of clergy died in the year following the initial Black Death onset, there is an even greater number of vacancies shown whose reasons are unclear. He cites that in 1349, of 160 institutions in Hereford that changed leadership, 59 of these were a result of death. Even more intriguing, however, is that 88 of them have no given cause.³⁵

One reason that has been given to explain this figure is that many of the clergymen simply abandoned their posts. Robert Gottfried's conclusions readily agree with those of Dohar's. He states that, “Many parish priests fled ...in the English dioceses of York and Lincoln, close to 20% of the parish priests in certain deaneries fled the Black Death.”³⁶ Since, at least in the beginning, it was the clergy who were in the most frequent contact with the plague; therefore, they were the most likely to be infected. This explains both the high instances of death among them, and their subsequent loss of morale. After the initial onset of plague, however, not even the clergy would be able to properly bury all of the bodies. The Church could not function under such a lack of leadership, so new clergy had to be appointed. However, as Yves Renouard points out, this is no easy task. He says that the people that were found to replace the dead or missing clergy, “were for the most part fairly young or fairly old people, neither group having any priestly experience ...needed to exercise the office worthily.”³⁷ This sudden change of leadership, from highly trained to inexperienced, threw the doors wide open to moral decline, resulting in the general lifestyle as depicted by Boccaccio earlier.

Charity, Salvation, and Religious Change

At the same time that the personnel structure of the Church was undergoing rapid change, her beliefs themselves were being tested. Such a devastating event as the Black Death prompted the common man to turn his thoughts toward the afterlife, especially with regards to attaining it. Robert Gottfried asserts in his book that the everyday man placed a greater focus on works in order to be saved.³⁸ This was one method that the common man used to try and convince himself of his salvation, that there would be something more than the plague-ridden life many of them faced. The increased focus on what could be done to achieve or work toward one's own salvation was spurred on by the constant fear of death by plague. These works for salvation can be seen as playing a part in inspiring the later selling of indulgences that the future Protestant Reformers would so vehemently rail against.

One example of the works that became increasingly popular during the later 1300's was increases in financial charity.³⁹ Gottfried shows this to be true, stating that, “In France, donations to existing institutions rose about 50% from 1300 to 1350; in England, 70 new foundations were laid between 1350 and 1390.”⁴⁰ This added benefit to the Church of increased financial wealth as a result of plague-inspired charity was not only welcomed, but in likelihood also necessary, when one takes into account the aforementioned increase in the cost of living combined with the fact that the clergy were one of the hardest hit sectors of society in terms of a percentage of casualties.⁴¹ It is, in part, this increase in charity that helped the Church through the stress of economic and personnel shortages.

Conclusion

The Black Death was an amazing event that changed the course of history in the middle of the fourteenth century. When it dispersed, it left no part of England untouched. Lives were altered, for better or for worse. Towns took decades to recover, if they ever managed to. National agendas were placed on hold or abandoned altogether.

Contrary to reports by some contemporaries, which may have been colored by the emotions that come with massive death, recent studies, combined with more reliable contemporary figures, indicate a relatively static figure of morbidity. Silva V. Fernando states: “It has been calculated that a fourth of the population, that is, 25 million people, fell victim to the Black Plague.”⁴² This is comparable to the findings of people working for Pope Clement VI, who provide a rate of 31%.⁴³

At the onset it appeared that the Black Death could potentially be seen as a mixture of blessing as well as curses. However, upon closer examination of the apparent benefits received, mainly by the peasantry in England, it appears that even these gains were slight at best. The Black Death was certainly a disaster, considering the sheer loss of life. When placed next to the few benefits that only a limited number of people enjoyed, the pestilence becomes truly tragic.

Footnotes

1. Starting points for the plague vary. Some have placed it in Asia, while others suggest Siberia or the Middle East. ↩
2. For example, some graffiti found on a church tower in Ashwell, which reads: “Miserable, wild, distracted. The dregs of the people alone survive to witness.” Roberts, Anne, “The Plague in England.” History Today 30 (April 1980): 31. ↩
3. Boccaccio, G., The Decameron, trans. by Mark Musa and Peter Bondanella. (W. W. Norton & Company: New York, 1972), 7. ↩
4. The Black Death: A Turning Point in History?, ed. Bowsky, W.M., Jean de Venette, “The Chronicle of a French Cleric” (Chicago: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), 16. ↩
5. The Black Death: A Turning Point in History?, ed. Bowsky, W.M., Agnolo di Tura del Grasso, “Plague in Sienna: An Italian Chronicle” (Chicago: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), 13. ↩
6. Bowsky, W.M., A Turning Point?, 14. ↩
7. Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, trans. by G. H. McWilliam. (Hammondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972), 57; quoted in Colin Platt, King Death: The Black Death and its Aftermath in Late-Medieval England (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 4. ↩
8. Boccaccio, The Decameron, 7. ↩
9. Ibid., 8. ↩
10. Ibid. ↩
11. They didn't exactly have much to lose. ↩
12. Subsequent plagues occurred in several years after 1349. Unless otherwise indicated in the body, any mention of the plague refers to the 1348–49 epidemic. ↩
13. This statistic is a rough average of the mortality rate. More specific statistics, with citations, may be found on page 13 of this document. ↩
14. A poem by French author Guillaume de Machaut perhaps best sums up the situation: “For many have certainly/ Heard it commonly said/ How in one thousand three hundred and forty nine/ Out of one hundred there remained but nine./ Thus it happened that for lack of people/ Many a splendid farm was left untilled,/ No one plowed the fields/Bound the cereals and took in the grapes,/ Some gave triple salary/ But not for one denier was twenty [enough]/ Since so many were dead...” Jugement du Roi de Navarre, cited in Lucenet, Les grandes pestes, 45; quoted in David Herlihy, The Black Death and the Transformation of the West (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1997), 41. ↩
15. The Black Death: The Impact of the Fourteenth-Century Plague, ed. William, D., vol. 13. Bean, J. M. W., The Black Death: The Crisis and Its Social and Economic Consequences (New York: Center for Medieval & Early Renaissance Studies, 1982), 31. ↩
16. The Black Death: A Turning Point in History?, ed. Bowsky, W.M., Yves Renouard, “The Black Death as a Major Event in World History” (Chicago: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), 31. ↩
17. Cited from the Cronica di Matteo Vittani; quoted in David Herlihy, The Black Death and the Transformation of the West (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1997), 48–49. ↩
18. While a poll tax may have been more of a direct cause for the revolt, it was also triggered by the aristocrats' attempts to lower the wages of the peasants in the years following the Black Death. Dukier, William. J., Spielvogel, Jackson J., World History, vol. 1, Crisis and Rebirth: Europe in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (West Publishing Company: Minneapolis, 1994), 492. ↩
19. Platt, Colin, King Death: The Black Death and its Aftermath in Late-Medieval England (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 49. ↩
20. Ibid., 50. ↩
21. Cited from summary data from the printed Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem; quoted in Bean, The Black Death: Social and Economic Consequences, 29. ↩
22. Mate, M., Daughters, Wives and Widows after the Black Death: Women in Sussex, 1330–1535 (New York: Boydell & Brewer, 1998), 1. ↩
23. Ibid., 12. ↩
24. Again, see page 13 of this document for more specific statistics. ↩
25. Platt substituted “towns” for “families.” Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, ch. 1; quoted in Platt, King Death, 30. ↩
26. Ibid., 19. ↩
27. Ibid. ↩
28. Ibid. ↩
29. Ibid. from Dr. Rigby, Medieval Grimsby: growth and decline (Hull, University of Hull Press, 1993). Colin Platt provides neither footnote nor page number for this quote. ↩
30. Renouard, Major Event in World History, 31. ↩
31. Ibid. ↩
32. Ibid. ↩
33. Rev 6:7–8 NIV. ↩
34. Gottfried, R. S., The Black Death: Natural and Human Disaster in Medieval Europe (New York: The Free Press, 1983), 88. ↩
35. Dohar, W. J., The Black Death and Pastoral Leadership: The Diocese of Hereford in the Fourteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 42. ↩
36. A. Hamilton Thompson: “The Pestilences of the Fourteenth Century in the Diocese of York,” Archeological Journal 71 (1914) and “The Registers of John Gynewell, Bishop of Lincoln, 1347–50,” Archeological Journal 68 (1911); quoted in Gottfried, Natural and Human Disaster, 84. ↩
37. Renouard, Major Event in World History, 33. ↩
38. Gottfried, Natural and Human Disaster, 85. ↩
39. All occurrences of the word “charity” here refer to gifts given to the Church while one was alive, as well as those bequeathed unto the Church in a will, particularly land. ↩
40. Ibid. ↩
41. Ibid. ↩
42. The original text is as follows: “Se ha calculado que un cuarto de la población de Europa, es decir, aproximadamente 25 millones de personas, pereció víctima de la Pesta Negra.” Silva, V. F., “Las Pestes y Los Hombres,” trans. by Michael Walsh. Revista Universitaria: Chile 28 (1989): 32. ↩
43. Gottfried, Natural and Human Disaster, 77. ↩

Works Cited

See the Footnotes section above for full bibliographic details of all works cited in this paper.