The Black Death

Key questions

There are 3 questions that will be asked during the course of the lesson; 1.

2.

3.

What is the “Black Death”?

What caused the Black Death?

What were the consequences?

The plague arrives

Historians think that the plague arrived in England during the summer of 1348. During the following autumn it spread quickly through the south west. Few villages escaped. Churchyards were full with bodies.

The plague spread quickly during the winter of 1348 1349 to the north of England. By 1350, nearly the whole of Britain was infected with the plague.

At the end of 1350 nearly two and a half million people were dead!

Where did the Black Death come from?

What were the symptoms of the plague?

What caused the plague?

The question that you are probably thinking is this; Q: Who or what caused the Black Death?

A: This is your answer!

The Oriental Rat Flea!

How was the plague transmitted?

We now know that the most common form of the Black Death was the BUBONIC PLAGUE! This disease was spread by fleas which lived on the black rat. The fleas sucked the rat’s blood which contained the plague germs. When the rat died the fleas jumped on to humans and passed on the deadly disease.

Two Types

• The

Pneumonic

Plague, became a killer when the infection reached the lungs. • Because it destroyed the breathing system, this plague could be caught if someone breathed on you.

• Bubonic Plague did not affect the victim’s lungs, but caused large swellings as the body fought the disease. • To catch this type of plague you had to be bitten by a flea that had already bitten a black rat.

9

The Pneumonic Plague

• Second most commonly seen form of the Black Death

Cures?

• Medieval people did not know about germs causing disease. They did not understand that plague was spread by rats and fleas. They thought that people’s bodies were poisoned.

• If the swellings burst and the poison came out people sometimes survived. It seemed sensible to draw out the poison.

Medieval cure number 1

The swellings should be softened with figs and cooked onions. The onions should be mixed with yeast and butter. Then open the swellings with a knife.

Medieval cure number 2

Take a live frog and put its belly on the plague sore. The frog will swell up and burst. Keep doing this with further frogs until they stop bursting. Some people say that a dried toad will do the job better.

Other Medieval Cures

• Rub the body with melted

butter

.

• Tie a small bag of

garlic

around your neck. The smell would keep the plague away.

• Go to

church

and ask for forgiveness.

• Avoid victim.

breathing in the same air as a plague • Sit next to a blazing hot

fire

. • Brick or board up houses with the sick inside.

14

Question

How useful do you think these medieval cures actually were? Did they help at all or were they more harmful?

Consequences for Population

• Urban populations recovered quickly • Rural populations recovered slowly • Friars took a couple of generations to recover • Pre-plague population reached in the 1500s or 1600s • Later period of Middle Ages was characterized by chronically reduced population

Consequences for Population

• 1348: • Gaza: 10.000 dead • Aleppo: 500 dead per day • Damascus: 1000 dead per day • Syria: total of 400.000 dead • Lower mortality rate in the Middle East of less than one third of population

Economic Consequences

• Shortage of laborers  peasants and artisans rising wages for • Valuable artisan skills disappeared • Oversupply of goods  prices dropped • For the living, standard of living rose!

• Landlords stopped freeing their serfs  revolting and leaving the land serfs • The oppressed demanded fairer treatment

Economic Consequences

• The great equalizer • Lack of sufficient law enforcement personnel • Promoted lawlessness • People tried their luck

Religious Consequences

• Persecutions of the Jews – scapegoats • Massacres and burnings • By 1351, 60 major and 150 smaller Jewish communities had been exterminated • Lepers were also targeted • Jews expelled, moved to Poland & Lithuania

Religious Consequences

• Church lost prestige, spiritual authority, leadership • Promised cures, treatment, and explanations • No answers to the people • Revolt against the church • Severe shortage of clergy – functioned as nurses and consequently died.

• The church targeted the Jews for persecution – had killed Jesus and brought sin to the world

Music and Art

• Culture turned morbid • Sense of death – impending & inevitable • Death is a game, like chess!

• Dance of death – death is random • Everyone suffered • Despair

Music and Art

• Danse Macabre = the dance of death: skeletons mingling with the living (here: Hans Holbein the Younger) • Shocking juxtapositions • Written language almost lost • Coffins had pictures of corpses on the lid • New creativity in motives

The Children

Ring a-round the rosy = rosary beads give you God’s help Pocket full of posies = used to stop the odor of rotting bodies through to cause the plague Ashes, ashes! = the church burned the dead when burying became too laborious We all fall down! = dead  Children suffered mentally and physically  Children were not thought worth the trouble to raise!

And Now?

• The bubonic Plague still exists • Quite common among rodent populations • A cure is known today – but the disease moves very quickly • The Plague is still with us Hythe Ossuary, remains of victims of the Black Death