The Black Death:
The World’s Most Devastating Plague
Scope
In the mid-14th century, the medieval world experienced one of the most
devastating pandemics to ever strike humankind: the Black Death. Between
1346 and 1353, this disease—commonly thought to be some form of bubonic
plague—swept across Europe from the east in a clockwise motion, tightening
around the medieval world like a noose. When it was finally over, at least
half of the population was dead. Social structures, political and economic
infrastructure, familial relationships, religious institutions, and more were all
dramatically affected and, in many cases, irrevocably altered. Indeed, many
scholars believe that it was the plague that served as the catalyst that began
the process of transforming the medieval world into the modern one.
In this course, we’ll explore the Black Death from multiple angles in order
to understand how this pandemic originated, spread, and transformed the
medieval world. Beginning with a discussion of what the medieval world
looked like on the eve of the Black Death, we’ll go on to examine plague’s
epidemiology and mode of transmission and then trace its progression across
the 14th-century landscape. We’ll see how plague was a key component of one
of the first recorded instances of germ warfare, and how the city-states of Italy
unwittingly facilitated plague’s initial movement into the medieval world
along its advanced and comprehensive trading networks. We’ll examine first-
person accounts from places like Florence, Sicily, Siena, Avignon, and more, in
which the writers describe a landscape of death in once-bustling city centers:
mass graves in public piazzas, a panicked mass exodus to the countryside,
bodies lying in the streets or walled up in houses, and psychosocial responses
that ranged from self-punishment to hedonistic orgies to pragmatic stoicism.
As we explore the plague’s progression, we’ll spend some time with some
of the most recent theories about its source and transmission, including the
2 The Black Death: The World’s Most Devastating Plague
recent discovery that gerbils—not rats—may have been one of the primary
vectors of transmission. We’ll also look at the range of arguments from many
scholars that there was something besides bubonic plague raging through
the medieval world at this time. A virulent strain of tuberculosis, anthrax
exposure, an animal murrain that had leaped to humans, a heretofore
unknown hemorrhagic fever similar to Ebola, and bacteria raining down
from space: These and more are all explanations that have been put forward
to explain why the mid-14th epidemic was so deadly.
As we track the plague’s progress across the medieval world, we’ll pause
to perform “case studies” of individual communities who coped with the
plague in unique ways. In Florence, we’ll see how the government struggled
to maintain normalcy and order in the face of utter devastation. In Avignon,
we’ll see how the seat of the papacy under Pope Clement VI attempted to
cope with a threat not only to the population, but also to ecclesiastical
authority. In Walsham, we’ll see how a typical English village and manor
estate was transformed when roughly 60–70 percent of the population died
in the space of a few months.
We’ll examine how the greatest medical and scientific minds of the day
attempted to explain and cope with the Black Death, identifying planetary
conjunctions, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and “bad air” or miasma as
the cause of infection. We’ll see how the Scandinavian countries and what
is today Poland and Russia had a very different reaction to plague than did
most of the rest of the medieval world, especially in terms of folklore and
traditions in the countryside.
We’ll meet the flagellants, who traveled from town to town and whipped
themselves in public displays of fleshly humiliation, attempting by these
means to appease God and obtain his mercy. We’ll see how the Church’s
authority was radically undermined when members of the clergy died in
record numbers and those who were left often refused to perform the duties
of last rites or did so only reluctantly. While the institution of the Church
suffered, popular religious practices were very much in evidence, as there was
an increase in the practice of pilgrimage to holy sites. New “plague saints”
became the recipients of prayers from an increasingly desperate population.
The Black Death: The World’s Most Devastating Plague 3
In this course, we’ll also examine the few exceptions to the rule—communities
that were somehow spared during the initial outbreak. Milan was saved by
the policies of its draconian ruler, Nuremberg by its unusually advanced
systems of sanitation and culture of hygiene, and Iceland by luck and timing.
After the initial discombobulation caused by the outbreak of plague,
medieval society attempted to get back to normal—but it was a new normal,
one that was constantly disrupted by continued outbreaks of plague every
generation or so.
In response to the Black Death, new art forms and literature came into
existence. Indeed, the careers of writers like Geoffrey Chaucer may have been
made possible by the arrival of plague and the possibility for social mobility
that came with it.
In the end, the medieval world was utterly transformed. For most of those
who survived the plague, life was much better than it had been before.
Religious institutions, economic practices, social and political infrastructure,
and more were radically reshaped by the plague. From the ashes of the Black
Death, a new world—and the Renaissance—was born. ■
