- This article concerns the epidemic of the mid-14th century. For detailed information on the most commonly accepted cause of the epidemic, see bubonic plague.
The Black Death (also bubonic plague, and more recently the Black Plague) was a devastating epidemic in Europe in the mid-14th century (1347-1350), and is estimated to have killed about a third of Europe's population. Historical records attribute Black Death to an outbreak of bubonic plague, an epidemic of the bacterium Yersinia pestis spread by fleas with the help of animals like the black rat (Rattus rattus), although contemporary experts debate both the microbiological culprit and mode of transmission. It was called the "Black" Death because one of the symptoms was for victims skin to turn black in color. The plague would return every generation with varying degrees of intensity and fatality until the 1600s.
Evolution It is not entirely clear where the major epidemic of the 14th century started. There is speculation that it originated somewhere around northern India, but the more popular theory places the first cases in the steppes of central Asia, from where it was carried west by Mongol armies and along the Silk Road. This account accords with the first reports of outbreaks in China in the early 1330's.
In this scenario, the Mongols, who were known to catapult diseased corpses into besieged cities, exported the plague to Europe by the way of Crimea, where the Genoese had established themselves in the colony of Kaffa (Feodosiya), a seaport on the Crimean peninsula in modern day Ukraine. An army of Tatar warriors had been laying siege to the city when a terrible sickness began to strike them down. According to accounts, so many had died that the survivors had little time to bury them and bodies were stacked like cords of firewood against the city walls.
In October 1347, a fleet of Genoese trading ships fleeing Kaffa reached the port of Messina. By the time the fleet reached Messina, all the crew members were dead or dying; it is also presumed that the ships carried infected rats. From there, the plague spread to Genoa and Venice by the turn of 1347/1348. On some ships no one remained alive when they reached their port. From Italy the disease spread northwest across Europe, striking France, Spain, and Great Britain by June 1348, then turned and spread east through Germany and Scandinavia from 1348 to 1350, and finally to north-western Russia in 1351. Some parts of Europe were largely spared by the plague, including the Kingdom of Poland and parts of Belgium and the Netherlands.
Whether or not this theory is accurate, what is clear is that there were several preexisting conditions that contributed to the severity of the Black Death. A so-called "Little Ice Age" had begun at the end of the thirteenth century. The disastrous weather reached a peak in the first half of the fourteenth century with devastating results. In the years 1315 to 1322 a catastrophic famine struck all of Northern Europe known as the Great Famine. Food shortages and skyrocketing prices were a fact of life for as much as a century before the plague. Wheat, oat, hay and livestock were all in short supply and their scarcity resulted in hunger and malnutrition. The consequence was a mounting vulnerability to disease due to weakened immunity. The economy entered a vicious cycle in which hunger and small scale disease reduced the productivity of laborers, and so the grain output suffered, causing the grain prices to increase. The famine was self-perpetuating. Places like Flanders and Burgundy were devastated by the famine as much as the Black Death was to devastate all of Europe.
Forms of the plague The plague consisted of three forms: bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic. The septicemic and bubonic plague were transmitted with direct contact with fleas, while the pneumonic plague was transmitted through airborne droplets of saliva coughed up by bubonic or septicemic infected humans. The bacteria multiplied inside a flea, blocking its stomachs and causing it to become very hungry. The flea would then start voraciously biting a host and continue to feed because it was unable to satisfy its hunger. During the feeding process infected blood carrying the plague bacteria flows into the wound. The plague bacteria then has a new host and the fleas eventually die from starvation. The pneumonic plague has a different form of transmission. It is transmitted through infected droplets sprayed from the lungs and mouths of infected people. The bacteria then enters the lungs through the windpipe and starts attacking the lungs and throat.
Signs and symptoms The three forms of plague brought an array of signs and symptoms to those infected. Bubonic plague refers to the painful lymph node swellings called buboes. The septicemic plague is called "Blood poisoning" and pneumonic plague is an airborne plague that forms a first attack on the lungs. The classic sign of bubonic plague was the appearance of buboes in the groin and armpits, which ooze pus and blood. Victims bled under the skin until they were covered in dark blotches, which is why it was called the "Black" plague. Most victims died within four to seven days from when they were infected. When plague reached Europe, it first struck port cities and then followed the trade routes both by sea and land.
The bubonic plague was the most commonly seen form of the Black Death. The mortality rate was thirty percent to seventy-five percent. Victims were subject to headaches, aching joints, nausea, and fevers of 101 to 105 degrees Fahrenheit, vomiting, and a general feeling of malaise. The pneumonic plague was the second most commonly seen form of the Black Death. The mortality rate for the pneumonic plague was ninety to ninety-five percent. Symptoms included slimy sputum tinted with blood. As the disease progressed, sputum became free flowing and bright red. The Septicemic plague was the most rare from of all three forms. The mortality was close to 100 percent. Symptoms were high fevers, and skin turning deep shades of purple due to DIC (Disseminated Intervascular Coagulation).
A typhoid epidemic was to be a predictor of the coming disaster. Many thousands died in populated urban centers, most significantly Ypres. In 1318 a pestilence of unknown origin, sometimes identified as anthrax, hit the animals of Europe. The disease targeted sheep and cattle, further reducing the food supply and income of the peasantry and putting another strain on the economy. The increasingly international nature of the European economies meant that the depression was felt across Europe. The failure of the wool exports of England due to pestilence led to the destruction of the Flemish weaving industry. Unemployment bred crime and poverty.
There was no effective response to these crises by the governments or Church of Europe because no one knew what caused it or how it spread, although most thought it spread through air, called miasma. Most monarchs instituted measures that prohibited exports of foodstuffs, condemned black market speculators, set price controls on grain, and outlawed large scale fishing. At best, they proved mostly unenforceable, and at worse they contributed to a continent-wide downward spiral. The hardest hit lands, like England, were unable to buy grain abroad, from France because of the prohibition, and from most of the rest of the grain producers because of crop failures from shortage of labor. Any grain that could be shipped was eventually taken by pirates or looters to be sold on the black market. Meanwhile, many of the largest countries, most notably England and Scotland, had been at war, using up much of their treasury and exacerbating inflation. On the eve, in 1337, of the first wave of the Black Death, England and France went to war in what would become known as the Hundred Years' War. This, another of the crises of the fourteenth century would deplete the treasuries, manpower, and infrastructure of both kingdoms throughout and beyond the worst of the plague. Malnutrition, poverty, disease and hunger, coupled with war, growing inflation and other economic concerns made Europe in the mid-fourteenth century ripe for a tragedy.
Consequences A graph of the population of Europe before, during, and after the Black Death hits.
Depopulation Information about the death toll varies widely from source to source, but it is estimated that between one-third and one-half of the population of Europe died from the outbreak between 1348 and 1350. Approximately 25 million deaths occurred in Europe alone, with many others occurring in Africa and Asia. As many as 25% of all villages were depopulated, mostly the smaller villages, as the few survivors fled to larger towns and cities.
The Black Death hit the culture of towns and cities disproportionately hard; rural areas, for example Eastern Poland and Lithuania, were so isolated that the plague made little progress. Cities were the worse off because of the population densities and close living quarters making the transmission and spread easier.
Inspired by Black Death, Danse Macabre is an allegory on the universality of death and a common painting motive in the late-medieval
Economic effects Economic historians like Fernand Braudel have concluded that Black Death began during a recession in the European economy that had been under way since the beginning of the century, and only served to worsen it. The great population loss brought economic changes based on increased social mobility, as depopulation further eroded the peasants' already-weakened obligations to remain on their traditional holdings. In Western Europe, the sudden scarcity of cheap labor provided an incentive for innovation that, some argue, caused the Renaissance. In Eastern Europe, by contrast, renewed stringency of laws tied the remaining peasant population more tightly to the land than ever before through serfdom. In many ways the Black Death was good for peasants, at least in Western Europe, because of the shortage of labor they were in more demand and had more power, and because of the reduced population, there was more fertile land available.
Persecutions As with other natural and man-made social disasters, renewed religious fervor and fanaticism bloomed in the wake of Black Death. In many parts of Europe, rumors circulated that the plague was caused by the deliberate poisoning of wells by Jews. Fierce pogroms frequently resulted in the death or banishment of most of the Jews in a town or city. This persecution was often done not out of religious hatred, but as a way of attacking the Kings or Church who normally protected the Jews, indeed Jews were often called the Kings property, it was a way of lashing out at the institutions who had failed them. Lepers were also singled out and persecuted, indeed exterminated throughout Europe. Anyone with a skin disease such as acne or psoriasis was thought to be a leper, and leprosy was believed to be an outward sign of an inner defect of the soul. Both Jews and lepers were persecuted because they became scapegoats for the disasters of society.1
Religion The Black Death led to cynicism of religious officials who could not keep their frequent promises of curing plague victims and banishing the disease. This increased doubting of the clergy culminated in either support for different religious groups such as the flagellants which grew tremendously during the opening years of the Black Death (angering church and political officials greatly) or to an increase in interest for more secular alternatives to problems facing European society and an increase of secular politicians.
The Black Death hit the monasteries very hard because of their close quarters and kindness in helping the sick, so that after it was over there was a severe shortage of clergy. This resulted in a mass influx of new clergy members, most of whom did not share the life-long convictions and experiences of the veterans they replaced. This resulted in a lot of abuses by the clergy in years afterwards and a further deterioration of the position of the Church in the eyes of the people.
Social Change The Black Death greatly helped accelerate social and economic change during the 14th and 15th centuries. First, the church's power was weakened and, in some cases, roles it played were replaced by secular ones. It also led to peasant rebellion in many parts of Europe, such as France (the Jacquerie rebellion), Italy (the Ciompi rebellion, which swept the city of Florence), and in England (the English Peasant Revolt led by Wat Tyler and an unemployed priest called John Ball).
On top of all this the great population reduction due to the plague brought cheaper land prices, more food for the average peasant, and a relatively large increase in per capita income among the peasantry. However the upper class attempted to stop these changes by instituting laws which barred the peasantry from certain actions or material goods. A good example of this is the sumptuary laws which were passed throughout Europe which regulated what people (particularly of the peasant class) could wear.
Alchemy was affected by the plague, and as a specialty and method of treatment it was considered the norm for most scientists and doctors prior and during the Black Death. However, after the plague had taken its toll, the practice of alchemy slowly began to wane as the citizenry began to realize that in most cases it didn't affect the progress of the epidemic and some of the potions and "cures" used by many doctors throughout Christendom and the Islamic world in fact only helped to worsen the condition of the sick. Distilled liquor, originally made by alchemists, was commonly applied as a remedy for the Black Death, and as a result the consumption of liquor rose dramatically in Europe after the plague.
After 1350 European culture in general turned very morbid. The general mood was one of pessimism, the art turned dark with representations of death. The Dies Irae was created in this period as was the popular poem La Danse Macabre. See also Decameron.
Some historians also credit the Black Death for helping or opening the way for the Renaissance and the Reformation but this is for the most part simply a matter of speculation as all three were fairly spread apart by time.
Alternative explanations Recent scientific and historical investigations have led researchers to doubt the long-held belief that Black Death was an epidemic of bubonic plague.
Twigg, 1984 In 1984, Graham Twigg published The Black Death: A Biological Reappraisal, where he argued that the climate and ecology of Europe and particularly England made it nearly impossible for rats and fleas to have transmitted bubonic plague. Combining information on the biology of R. rattus, R. norvegicus, and the common fleas X. cheopis, and P. irritans with modern studies of plague epidemiology, particularly in India, where the R. rattus is a native species and conditions are nearly ideal for plague to be spread, Twigg concludes that it would have been nearly impossible for Y. pestis to have been the causative agent of the beginning of the plague, let alone its explosive spread across all of Europe and England. Twigg also shows that the common theory of entirely pneumonic spread does not hold up. He proposes, based on a reexamination of the evidence and symptoms, that the Black Death may actually have been an epidemic of pulmonary anthrax caused by B. anthracis.
Scott and Duncan, 2001 In 2001, epidemiologists Susan Scott and Christopher Duncan from Liverpool University proposed the theory that the Black Death might have been caused by an Ebola-like virus, not a bacterium. Their rationale was that this plague spread much faster and the incubation period was much longer than other plagues confirmed to be caused by Yersinia pestis. A longer period of incubation will allow carriers of the infection to travel farther and infect more people than a shorter one. When the primary vector is humans, as opposed to birds, this is of great importance. Studies of English church-records indicate an unusually long incubation period in excess of 30 days which could account for the rapid spread, topping at 5 km/day. The plague also appeared in areas of Europe where rats were uncommon like Iceland. Epidemiological studies suggest the disease was transferred between humans (which happens rarely with Yersinia pestis), and some genes that determine immunity to Ebola-like viruses are much more widespread in Europe than in other parts of the world.
Cantor, 2001 In a similar vein, historian Norman F. Cantor, in his 2001 book In the Wake of the Plague, suggests the Black Death might have been a combination of pandemics including a form of anthrax, a cattle murrain. He cites many forms of evidence including: reported disease symptoms not in keeping with the known effects of either bubonic or pneumonic plague, the discovery of anthrax spores in a plague pit in Scotland, and the fact that meat from infected cattle was known to have been sold in many rural English areas prior to the onset of the plague.
Counterarguments Counterarguments have been drawn in defense of the bubonic plague theory. - The uncharacteristically rapid spread of the plague could be due to low levels of immunity in that period's European population. Historical examples of pandemics of other diseases in populations without previous exposure, such as smallpox and tuberculosis amongst American Indians, show that the low levels of inherited adaptation to the disease cause the first epidemic to spread faster and to be far more virulent than later epidemics among the descendants of survivors.
- The plague returned again and again and was regarded as the same disease through succeeding centuries into modern times when the Yersinia bacterium was identified.
- Tooth pulp tissue from a 14th century plague cemetery in Montpelier tested positive for Y. pestis DNA. However, such a finding has never confirmed in any other cemetery. In September 2003, a team of researchers from Oxford University tested 121 teeth from 66 skeletons found in 14th century mass graves. The remains showed no genetic trace of Yersinia pestis, and the researchers suspect that the Montpelier study was flawed.
Miscellaneous - It has been alleged (since 1961) that the Black Death inspired one of the most enduring nursery rhymes in the English language, Ring around a rosie, a pocket full of posies, / Ashes, ashes, we all fall down. However, this explanation is a literary interpretation [1] (http://www.snopes.com/language/literary/rosie.htm) without historical supporting evidence.
- The plague repeatedly returned to haunt Europe and the Mediterranean throughout the 14th to 17th centuries, and finally disappeared suddenly after the Great Plague of London in 1665. One possible explanation for the disappearance of plague from Europe may be that the black rat (Rattus rattus) infection reservoir and its disease vector was subsequently displaced and succeeded by the bigger Norwegian or brown rat (Rattus norvegicus), which is not so prone to transmit the germ-bearing fleas to humans in large rat die-offs (see Appleby and Slack references below). The Great Fire of London in 1666 contributed to the ascendancy of brown rats in England.It is also said that the Great Fire of London killed of the remaining plague bearing rats and fleas left which also declined the plague.
- Gunnar Karlsson (Iceland's 1100 Years: The History of a Marginal Society) points out that the Black Death killed between half and two thirds of the population of Iceland, although there were no rats in Iceland at this time. Rats were accidentally introduced in the 19th century, and have never spread beyond a small number of urban areas attached to seaports. In the 14th century there were no urban settlements in Iceland. Iceland was unaffected by the later plagues which are known to have been spread by rats.
See also
Notes - Note 1: See R.I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society, Oxford, 1987 ISBN 0631171452 and David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence, 1998, ISBN 069105889X
References - Herlihy, David. The Black Death and the Transformation of the West. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1997, ISBN 0674076133 , This text is often taken as the definitive short text on the Black Death.
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