Essay on What Eventually Positive Effects Did the Black Death Have

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To what extent did the Black Death constitute a historical turning point?

In October 1347, ghost ships arrived in the busy trading harbor of Messina, Sicily, to change ineffably the course of European history. Most of the sailors aboard these galleys were already dead, struck down by a mysterious illness; the rest died in quarantine, driven away by the locals. This was not enough, however, to prevent the disease from spreading into Sicily, and from there, the rest of Europe. This disease, later known as the ‘Black Death’, wiped out up to 40% of the continent; as contemporary Michele di Piazze wrote of these events, the sailors “in their bones… bore so virulent a disease that anyone who… spoke to them was seized by a mortal illness and in no manner could evade death.”

Despite the shocking death toll, early historians paid little attention to the Black Death. That this catastrophic disease had a serious impact on the face of Europe, and indeed its history, would only be argued by later 20th-century historians - among them G.M. Trevelyan and David Herlihy. Modern scholars now study the serious ramifications of the disease, and its long-term consequences in economic, social, and epidemiological patterns.

In these trends, the Black Death constitutes a major turning point; both as a catalytic force in the wider socio-economic changes of the era and as a representative (and instigator) of the recurring plague epidemics that would characterize the following centuries. It had recurrent impacts in the fields of economics, society, art, culture, and education, changing in significant ways “every sphere of human activity”. Whilst in some areas it exacerbated (rather than initiated) existing trends, it can be held as a watershed moment in European history.

Many consequences of the plague were economic, due to the monumental and rapid change in the labor force it caused. During the outbreak, it led to immediate and severe disruption; Herlihy writes that an organized economy “was not maintained, that workers either died or fled their posts.” Even after this, longer-term consequences arose. Sean Martin illustrates one such impact as the amelioration of the bargaining power and mobility of the surviving laborers; they were able to demand better wages, under threat of moving to another desperate parish. This empowerment manifested again as ‘serfs’ gained more freedoms in exchange for their service, and women were able to take on roles previously reserved for men. Subsequently, the post-plague period saw an immediate 25% rise in wages and a gradual increase in living standards for the yeomanry – significantly, better diets. These changes aroused major concern amongst employers, however: subsequent Ordinances of Labourers from 1349 (an explicit backlash to the rising wages) not only reflected the significance of these developments to contemporaries but are cited as foundational in employment (and especially English Labour) law.

Another key economic impact was the redistribution of hereditary lands and wealth, as once-prominent families died out. These changes in land ownership and the aforementioned rise of the yeomanry are cited as major contributors to the “demise of the manorial system”, as emerging landowners' accumulated property and social mobility rose. These changes extended to not only regarding who owned the land but also how the ownership was displayed and exacted: Ziegler, whilst emphasizing the plague was not a ‘constant’ economic force in agricultural innovation, does concede “the hedged fields of England can plausibly be argued to have held their genesis in the aftermath of the Black Death”.

However, the impact of the plague was not merely confined to the economy; major social ramifications were a further consequence. Social dynamics changed drastically- significantly in terms of persecution. Whilst the poor, lepers, foreigners, and clerics were all scapegoated, the most vitriolic backlash surrounded ethnic minority groups; the “most monumental of medieval Jewish persecutions… the burning of Jews” arising as a hysterical, reactionary “mass movement”. Archaeological discoveries in Tàrrega revealed six communal graves, material evidence of one such massacre occurring in 1348 – instigated by the arrival of the plague. Such attacks decimated these minority communities and left few survivors, killing alongside its victims the diversity they represented.

There were further long-term impacts: in academia, many older scholars were killed- in their place came “younger men and new institutions; in Cambridge, three new colleges were founded.” This brought with it a shift away from tradition in terms of intellectual outlook and educational priorities. So too does art history mark a rise in the macabre aesthetic; the danse macabre, memento mori, and cadaver tombs; as Martin writes, “an autumnal darkness had fallen across European art, which would not recede until the Renaissance.” This again reflects the major contributions of the plague to the key cultural changes in Europe in the period.

The 1348 outbreak was also a significant watershed moment in the epidemiological patterns that characterized the era. “The most important consequence of the Black Death was simply that the disease was firmly established”, said Roberts, and indeed the introduction of Yersinia Pestis to Europe had a major impact on the history of the disease. In his timeline of plague outbreaks, Joseph Byrne suggests the disease “recurred in epidemic form regionally in waves about every decade until c.1500, then more sporadically in major cities”. Whilst the Black Death pandemic remains the most widespread and deadly wave of plague, such subsequent outbreaks could be similarly devastating on a regional basis- London famously being hit with the Great Plague in 1665. Ziegler may argue the plague was not a constant economic force, but it was a constant; with an ever-increasing death toll and consistent outbreaks. This very first epidemic is therefore crucial in that it introduced the continent to a disease it would take centuries to heal from; that haunted every generation living in the period, and indeed helped define it.

Further distinguishing this initial pandemic from subsequent outbreaks is the scale and shock that it caused – contemporary writings being nothing short of apocalyptic. As Watts conveys in his history of the disease, the Black Death “remains the worst epidemic disaster in Europe since the collapse of the Roman Empire.” Indeed the outbreak was both deadly and (as a disease) unprecedented and had a significant, reverberating impact on the European psyche: “The largely Christian population thought the end of the world was upon them”. The terror and frustration are conveyed in contemporary sources: Boccaccio wrote “a dead man was then of no more account than a dead goat”, and John Clyn of Kilkenny that “in case anyone should still be alive in the future and any son of Adam can escape this pestilence...”. These sources (even in comparison to ‘plague texts’ of later epidemics) are markedly pessimistic, even cataclysmal – based on a real uncertainty as to Europe’s survival in the face of the new and fatal disease. This deep, fearful confusion was shared by the medical community; medical literature and leech books were quick to address the new disease, combining with moral subgenres as plague literature. This again reflects the emergence of a new-disease consciousness very specific to the 1348 plague, that directly conveys the gravitas of the events.

In 1893, Francis Gasquet wrote of the subject “In truth, this great pestilence was a turning point in the national life... It produced a break with the past, and was the dawn of a new era”. Cardinal Gasquet understood the plague as a source of religious and socio-economic upheaval; leading him to be one of the earlier historians proposing the Black Death as a historical turning point, “the real close of the Mediaeval period and the beginning of our Modern age”. Gasquet’s era marked a renewal in historiographical interest in the subject, as an area of both historical research and dispute. Modern historians continue to debate whether the Plague was a catastrophe or an unlikely savior – if it “prepared the road to renewal,” or simply dislocated Europe’s “economy and its social structure”: what remains clear is that the Black Death had undeniable and significant consequences. The mass deaths led to immediate economic changes, a pronounced short-term impact, and a larger significance that is still being explored by historians. The material medical ramifications of the introduction of such an enduring disease, as well as its social and symbolic significance in the era, are further illustrations of the widespread and pronounced impact of the pandemic. Amid the human tragedy and countless deaths, the disease too killed the earlier state of being, a moment in time; those who survived lived to see a new world, that would never quite be the same. This overwhelming criterion qualifies it as a distinctive and certain turning point in European history.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

1. Boccaccio, G., The Decameron: Volume I, trans. J.M Rigg, Project Gutenberg (2003), http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3726/pg3726-images.html [accessed 18 October 2019].
2. Clynn, J., ‘Account of a Pestilence that raged in Ireland in the Year 1348, as given by John Clyn, a Franciscan Friar, of Kilkenny, in his Annals’, The Dublin Penny Journal 1.1 (1832), p.6
3. Platiensis, M., ‘Account of the Plague’, in M.E. Snodgrass (ed.), World Epidemics: A Cultural Chronology of Disease from Prehistory to the Era of Zika (2nd ed, North Carolina, 2017)

Secondary Sources

1. Byrne, J.P., Encyclopedia of the Black Death (Oxford, 2012)
2. Cohn, S.K., ‘The Black Death and the Burning of Jews’, Past & Present 196 (2007), pp.3-36
3. Colet, A., M.E.S. Galdàcano, C. Jáuregui, J.X.M. Santiveri, O. Saula, and J.R Ventura, ‘The Black Death and Its Consequences for the Jewish Community in Tàrrega: Lessons from History and Archeology’, The Medieval Globe 1.1 (2014), pp. 63-96
4. Gasquet, F. A., The Great Pestilence (London, 1893)
5. Herlihy, D., The Black Death and the Transformation of the West (London, 1997)
6. Liebman, L., and M.A. Rothstein., Cases and materials on employment law (6th ed, New York, 2009), vol 1
7. Martin, S., The Black Death (Harpenden, 2001)
8. Roberts, R.S., ‘The Place of Plague in English History’, The History of Medicine 59 (1966), pp.101-5
9. Watts, S., Epidemics, and History: Disease, Power, and Imperialism (London, 1997)
10. Ziegler, P., The Black Death (2nd edn, London, 2008)