The Black Death

In the first half of the 14th century a pandemic swept Europe, a disease for which no cure could be offered by the medical profession of the day. It became known as the Black Death and its awful visitation was to have consequences, both short and long term, which would mark a turning point in the history of the continent.

This essay will examine some of these consequences with particular emphasis on the effects on religion and the church, agriculture, land tenure, education and the way in which the disease, in part, precipitated popular revolt. The main thrust of the essay will be directed towards conditions in 14th and 15th century England but it will at times, perforce, make reference to conditions prevailing in contemporary Europe.

The immediate effects while the plague was still virulent affected the bulk of the people in one of two ways. The first was to cause them to seek solace and salvation in religion. It was reasoned by many that the plague was a scourge on mankind, a divine wrath; God was exacting divine retribution for past and present sins and needed in some way to be placated.[1] The second reaction to what they saw around them was antithetical. Made acutely aware of their own mortality and reasoning that time was, in all probability, not on their side, they took to debauchery and excess.[2]

For those who turned toward religion to assuage their fear of immanent death and the deaths of their loved ones, there was little comfort. It soon became apparent that the plague was an equal opportunity killer and the clergy, far from being afforded a higher degree of immunity by God, were dying in numbers commensurate with, or higher than the mass of the population. Organised religion having failed them many turned to various forms of mysticism and personal religion hoping, in most cases, to achieve direct communion with God. One form which this took was the rise in Europe of the flagellant movement in which bands of men wandered through the towns and countryside doing penance in public.[3] Having observed that the clergy were afforded no better protection from God than themselves the religious lost some of their "superhuman" status. Church finances were negatively affected as people were no longer as inclined to will their estates to the church, give gifts to monasteries or, indeed, to give to church sponsored charities generally.

The desire for a more individual or familial salvation whilst still remaining within the broadly established religious framework gave rise to an increase in chantry foundations[4] in which town corporations and guilds increasingly took over the distribution of institutionalised alms giving.

By far the most immediate effect of the Black Death however, was the general breakdown of law and order; there seemed little point in behaving in an orderly manner when one could well be dead the next day and there was hardly anybody left to enforce the law. Houses of the dead were broken into and anything of value stolen, anything consumable consumed or taken away.[5]

In the short term those of the peasantry who survived the ravages of the plague saw their living standards rise sharply as the loss of between 25[6] - 40%[7] of the West’s population put an end to Europe’s subsistence crisis.[8] The plague did not affect the crops in the fields and there were fewer people left to consume them. Many peasants were now in possession of money, valuables or some form of collateral taken from the homes of the deceased and were clothed in better quality garments from the same source - the latter was to have a lasting effect on the textile industry well into the next century.[9]

The drastic depopulation had caused a massive labour shortage and the basic law of supply and demand inevitably determined that wages would rise as the nobility was no longer in control of sufficient labour to work their fields - the scales had tipped decisively in favour of the peasantry. Not only was the landlord faced with a shortage of labour but his agricultural produce had plummeted in price due to lack of demand. Peasants, once tied to their landlord’s domains, now changed employers at will in the knowledge that all they had to do was to down tools and walk to the farm of another landlord where they were sure to be received favourably, given work at better wages than before and, in all probability, better housing.[10]

So alarming was this disparity between wages and prices, and supply and demand, coupled with the fact that there was little encouragement for those on the land to work as hard as they did in pre-plague times, that as early as 1349 the government of England attempted to peg inflation with a prices and incomes policy.[11] Just how effective the Ordinance of Labourers and the subsequent Statute of Labourers was in achieving what it was put in place to do has been the subject of much debate among historians of the 20th century.[12]

It is certainly unreasonable to dismiss these two pieces of legislation as total failures but newly confident farmhands tended to cock a snook at laws which attempted to limit their earnings to pre-plague levels and to prosecute employers who were willing to pay above the statutory rates. In spite of the fact that over the course of the fifth decade of the 14th century the government appointed nearly seven hundred inspectors[13] to enforce the statutes, it was a relatively easy matter for the peasant and his employer to strike their own deals. The statutes were often thus thwarted by such perquisites as lowered rent, free food, ale or some other commodity in lieu of actual wages.[14] This system of bargaining, of striking individual deals, was partly responsible for changing the system of land tenure all over Europe. Much of the land owning nobility, unable through lack of labour to farm their own land, became rentiers and absentee landlords preferring the security of money to that of the vagaries of agriculture.[15]

The depopulation caused by The Black Death therefore brought about a virtual end to serfdom. As peasants became more valuable through scarcity it was inevitable that different systems of land tenure would emerge. Thus, in the 14th century, we see the commutation of labour taking place,[16] and the weakening of existing copyhold laws.[17]

The initial rise in the living standards of the lower orders however, was short lived and as people slowly recovered from the initial shock of the demographic roulette the plague had visited upon them they came to realise just how disordered society and the economy had become.

The sharp drop in food prices was but fleeting. As untended animals roamed the fields destroying crops and the amount of land under cultivation shrunk dramatically due to the deaths of so many farm labourers, so prices began to rise again. Whereas, before the plague much land had been cleared of forest and swamps drained, the greatly diminished work force after the plague had hit was unable to farm the same amount of acreage using traditional agricultural methods.[18] This gave impetus to a small revolution in agriculture - that of grazing animals, particularly sheep.[19] Grazing was much less labour intensive than growing crops and kept under husbandry larger acreages helping to keep at bay the forests which were slowly beginning to reclaim farming land. In the long term England's wool industry - although not inconsiderable before The Black Death - would benefit immensely from the increase in the national herd.

As the agrarian population returned to the land it soon became evident that industry, also, had been dealt a severe body blow. Much of the work on the land required not so much skill as a strong back. In industries such as building and manufacturing where years of training were invested in a fully indentured master craftsman, recovery was painfully slow. The engineering calculus involved in the building of a cathedral was considerable and took a Master many years of learning to acquire. The loss of people such as these in key positions must have spelt the death knell to many proposed religious edifices. Indeed some cathedrals such as Winchester cathedral were never completed[20] in the style in which the building was begun. Invention was the inescapable corollary to the loss of skilled workmen; technology came to the fore.[21]

The Black Death had both short and long term consequences for the church. In terms of mortality the clergy had been as hard hit, and in some localities harder than the general populace. The percentage of deaths among the clergy during the first attack of the plague was often over 40%.[22] In England where parish records were generally well kept the mortality rates amongst the clergy of the dioceses of both Coventry and Lichfield have been estimated at 40%, Hereford at 43% and Bath and Wells 48% each. Exeter, Norwich and Winchester each recorded mortality rates of 45% among beneficed clergy. Further analysis of the figures for Coventry and Lichfield show that the mortality rate among rectors (who may or may not have been resident) was 33% whilst vicars who were bound by oath to personal residence was 46%.[23]


In an effort to fill the sudden vacancies in monasteries and churches the church allowed great numbers of middle aged widowers, whose wives had died as the result of the pestilence, to take orders. These men were grossly under qualified, more often than not illiterate and more interested in lining their own pockets than in the salvation of souls. In the eyes of the "lumpen proletariat" these priests, and subsequently the church itself, slowly became discredited contributing to the bad feelings which provoked the Peasants Revolt of 1381.

Whilst it is somewhat dangerous to view history as a series of dates which, when viewed with hindsight, imply that an early event provides causation for another later in the sequence; it is nevertheless safe to draw the conclusion that had it not been for the corruption of the church in the immediate aftermath of the Black Death and the long period of gestational discontent flowing from it, Luther would not have found an atmosphere so conducive to change some one hundred and forty years later.

Education, so long a preserve of the church was, long term, to undergo a complete transformation. Since the eleventh century, children at school had been taught in Norman French but now, after the pestilence, there were so few teachers left who could teach French that English was taught in its place.[24] Long term, English became an emblem of a new nationalism to take its place in the legal system and universities - perhaps the most forgotten but enduring impact the Black Death in England[25] had upon the rest of the world

Depopulation had effects both positive and negative upon the economy and trade of Western Europe but none so far reaching as that of the loss of tax revenues. With fewer taxpayers contributing to government coffers revenues were insufficient to finance armies and even some of the planned campaigns of the Hundred Years War were temporarily shelved owing to lack of funds.[26]

In England what was intended as a relatively short term solution to the problem of a depleted treasury had a much longer term outcome. The levying of three successive poll taxes upon the general populace met with a hostile reaction which fanned the flames of rebellion. Although it is fair to say that the third order was already much aggrieved and the Peasants Revolt of Watt Tyler and John Ball had been smouldering for a long time, the reaction to the new taxes provided the spark which ignited the flames.[27]

The Black Death probably did little to directly initiate social or economic change in the short term but it cast forward many harbingers which were to emerge fully developed after lengthy incubation periods generations or even centuries later.[28] Even its impact on the environment is still evident in 20th century Europe.[29]

It is highly probable that almost all of the changes wrought upon Western society by The Black Death would have come to pass in any event; The Black Death merely acted as the precipitator to the inevitable course of history by accelerating developments already in the pipeline. However, The Black Death in one or another of its forms continued to haunt Europe for centuries to come and each recurrence brought with it some form of disruption. Perhaps it is therefore better described as a social catalyst.[30]

Bibliography

W.M. Bowsky Ed. The Black Death A Turning point in History?. New York: Robert E. Krieger Publishing Company. 1978

R.S. Gottfried. The Black Death. Natural and Human Disaster in Medieval Europe. London: Robert Hale. 1983

Internet Medieval History Sourcebook. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook.html

L.W. Cowie. The Black Death and The Peasant’s Revolt. London: Wayland Publishers. 1972

P. Ziegler. The Black Death. London: Collins 1969

The 1995 Grolier Multimedia Encyclopaedia. California1995

J.F.D. Shrewsbury. A History of Bubonic Plague in the British Isles. London: Cambridge University Press. 1970

W.M. Ormrod and P.G. Lindley. The Black Death in England. Stamford: Paul Watkins (Publishing) 1996

C. Platt. King Death: The Black Death and its aftermath in late-medieval England. London: UCL Press. 1996

Expert Software. Florida 1997. Websters Handy College Dictionary.
[1] F. Lutge in The Black Death A Turning point in History?. Ed. W.M. Bowsky (New York 1978) p. 80

[2] R.S. Gottfried. The Black Death. Natural and Human Disaster in Medieval Europe (London 1983) pp. 78-79. Gottfried quotes from The Decameron of Boccaccio in which he wrote " ....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 into other peoples 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."....

[3] Gottfried. Op. Cit. P. 69. Gottfried gives us a description of the flagellants from contemporary chronicler Jean de Venette. “While the plague was still active and spreading from town to town, men in Germany, Flanders, Hainault and Lorraine uprose and began a new sect on their own authority. Stripped to the waist, they gathered in large groups and bands and marched in procession throughout the crossroads and squares of cities and good towns. They formed circles and beat upon their backs with weighted scourges, rejoicing as they did so in loud voices and singing hymns suitable to their rite and newly composed for it. Thus, for 33 days they marched through many towns doing penance and affording a great spectacle to the wondering people. They flogged their shoulders and arms, scourged with iron points so zealously as to draw blood.”

[4] M. Omrod & P. Lindley. The Black Death in England. (Stamford 1996) pp. 112-114.

[5] L.W. Cowie. The Black Death and The Peasant’s Revolt (London 1972) p. 59 in which Cowie quotes Matteo Villani, a 14th century Florentine chronicler: “...they forgot the past as though it had never been, and gave themselves up to a more shameful and disordered life....dissolutely abandoned themselves to the sin of gluttony...unbridled lechery...inventing strange and unaccustomed fashions and indecent manners in their garments....People took advantage of the confusion to rob the survivors and pillage the homes of victims.” Whilst this may not be a universal picture it is certainly indicative of the general mood which sweeps over populations in times of life threatening crises in which the individual sees himself as being anable to exert any control over events.

[6] Omrod & Lindley. Op. Cit. p. 4. Omrod and Lindley state that a figure of 30%-40% may err on the side of caution.

[7] Gottfried. Op. Cit. P. Xiii of the introduction. Gottfried has it that between 25%-50% of Europe's population were killed by The Black Death in its 3 forms (bubonic, septicaemic and pneumonic) between 1347 and 1351. On page 77 he informs us that French contemporary chronicler Froissart claimed that "a third of the world died" and that the estimate is probably a good one.

[8] Prior to the Black Death European agriculture was struggling to keep pace with the demands of the population. Already there was, in some parts, famine and the extent of tillable land had been approaching the limits of expansion. In Gottfried. Op. Cit. Passim pp 26-28 we learn that the whole of Europe was beset with sporadic famines from the 1290s. A major famine in 1315-17 in France, England and Holland caused mortality rates of 10%-15% in some Dutch towns.

[9] Paul Halsall. Internet Medieval History Sourcebook. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook.html

[10] Gottfried. Op. Cit. P. 94. On the same page Gottfried also tells us that William Langland noted in Piers Ploughman that "beggars would no longer accept bread made from beans but insisted on white bread and milk."

[11] Ziegler. Op. Cit. The Black Death. (London 1969) p. 248.
[12] For more on the nature of this debate, the main protagonists of which have been professors Postan & McFarlane, see M. Omrod & P. Lindley. Op. Cit. Pages 14, 18-19 and 50 and C. Platt. Op. Cit. Pages 49, 53 and 58

[13] Ziegler Op. Cit. P. 248

[14] Ziegler. Op. Cit. Pp. 238 - 239

[15] M. Bennett. Ed. Late Medieval and Renaissance Europe A Reader. (Tasmania 1997) p. 12
[16] Bennett. Op. Cit. p. 11 quoting Gottfried ..." Any lord who hoped to keep his workers had to offer them better terms of tenure....this had resulted in lower rents...followed by the commutation of traditional labour and boon services...the substitution of cash payments for old labour services."

[17] Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc. 1996. Copyhold. A portion of the manor reserved for the lord was cultivated by labourers who were bound to the land; their service was obligatory, and they could not leave the manor. They were allowed, however, to cultivate land for their own use.

[18] Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc. Op. Cit.. The Decline of Steppe Power. "....evidence of demographic disaster on the steppe in the 14th and 15th centuries is the almost total lack of habitation found on the rich pastures of the Ukraine when settlers from the Russian forestlands began to move southward in the early 16th century. ....and the fact that rodents in the Ukraine and Manchuria were discovered to be chronic carriers of bubonic infection in the 20th century suggests what may have happened to steppe populations in the 14th and subsequent centuries."

[19] Ziegler. Op. Cit. p 256

[20] Gottfried. Op. Cit. P. 63

[21] Gottfried in Bennett. Op. Cit. P.15. According to Gottfried this depopulation contributed to technological advances in the mining, metallurgy, milling and fishing industries as well as to the development of water pumps.

[22] C. Platt. King Death: The Black Death and its aftermath in late medieval England. (London 1996) p. 97. Colin Platt tells us that according to Richard Gyug in "The effects and extent of the Black Death of 1348: new evidence for the clerical mortality in Barcelona", at least 40% of the parish clergy died.

[23] Omrod & Lindley. Op. Cit. P. 86

[24] Cowie. Op. Cit. p. 62

[25] Ziegler. Op. Cit. P. 253

[26] Bennett. Op. Cit pp 7-8

[27] Cowie. Op. Cit. p. 85

[28] Statutes of labour are still with us in a variety of forms in the 20th century. English is now a predominant language in its own right; had it not been for the Black Death it is more than probable that Shakespeare would have written in French and Latin would have been commonly spoken in English education and the law for centuries to come.

[29] Most European forests are located where they are today as a result of the wiping out of the farming populations of some areas, allowing the forests to encroach upon former arable land.

[30] Websters Handy College Dictionary in Expert Software (Florida 1997) The reference to the word catalyst describes it as...acceleration of a chemical reaction by a substance which itself remains unaffected.