BLACK DEATH

1498 WD

How did the Black Death affect European societies of the mid-fourteenth century? The Black Death is the most significant natural phenomenon in human history and continues to be the subject of medical, historical and sociological analysis . The ‘first epidemic of the second plague pandemic’ devastated Europe between 1347 and 1351, killing 25 to 45% of Europe’s population (over 75 million people across the three continents affected) and created dramatic cultural, economic, political and social upheavals to mid-fourteenth century European society. The disease was caused by three different plague types, consisting of bubonic (60% fatal), pneumonic (100% fatal) and septicaemic (100% fatal); bacterial infections caused by Yersinia Pestis . The first records of Black Death in Europe, was October 1347 when a Genoese fleet of ships landed in a Sicilian port in Messina. Within six months the Black Death was rampant in all of Italy which was the most economically sophisticated and urbanized hub of all Europe at this time. From Italy, the disease had struck France, Spain, Portugal, England, Germany, Scandinavia, and by 1351 it had spread to north-western Russia . Italian scholar and poet, Francesco Petrarch best describes the epidemic and aftermath as, “O happy posterity who will not experience such abysmal woe, and will look on our testimony as fable” . The following essay will examine how the Black Death affected the cultural, economic, political and social parameters of Europe throughout the mid-