The Black Death 1346-1353: The Complete History

Most of the evidence for Black Death mortality rates comes from registers of taxation and local studies centered on specific regions including Navarre and Catalonia in Spain; Tuscany and the Piedmont of northern Italy; Provence, Languedoc, and the County of Savoy in France; and England. As mentioned above, social class must be considered when examining this data, since elites would have been more likely to survive, while supermortality affected the impoverished due to their living conditions. Similarly, women and children were more likely to perish because of the time they spent in contaminated homes and due to women’s roles as caregivers.

Evidence shows high marriage rates after the Black Death had run its course. Prior to the pandemic, Europe’s population was too large for its resources; thus, it was difficult to find work that would enable one to marry and set up a new household. However, after the Black Death this problem disappeared. Since so many died, labor opportunities abounded, and more and better land became available. This rise in households due to new marriages disguises the demographic evidence related to surviving householders by making it appear that there were more surviving households after the Black Death than there really were. Instead, some of these households did not exist before the plague. They were new households, not surviving ones. Thus, “the effects of this surge must be deducted in order to reconstruct a number of surviving households […]” (271). Scholars must adjust their estimates derived from tax registers in consideration of the marriage surge. Benedictow argues, “A cautiously realistic standard assumption could be an annual net increase of the number of households owing to the formation of new marriages at the rate of 0.5 per cent in the towns and of 0.75 per cent in the countryside” (272). Upward social mobility for survivors who were assessed in tax records after the Black Death—but not before because of their lower status at that time—also impacts results.

Evidence from Spanish tax records in the kingdom of Navarre and Catalonia shows high plague mortality. In Navarre, for example, the mortality rate for householders who paid taxes and rents, and who are, as a result, recorded in the registers, was between 55 and 60%. For the total population, which included children, the poor, and the destitute who were subject to supermortality, the rate is even higher: 60-65%. The countryside was harder hit than cities, and this evidence further confirms that the form of plague that characterized the Black Death was bubonic.

The Italian data shows that mortality was high, albeit slightly lower than in the other aforementioned areas. This lower rate is attributed to the excellent administrative capabilities of the Italian city-states and communes, which responded to the Black Death via previously established social programs. In rural areas, populations of households before the pandemic, averaged 4.5 persons. In urban centers, the average was four. Post-Black Death, that average was 3.5 household members, but Benedictow cautions that this estimate may be low. Florence’s population just prior to the pandemic was around 92,000. Afterward, the population fell to 32,250. This number indicates a decrease of 59.5%. Accounting for holes in the primary source evidence, the mortality rate likely ranged between 55 and 65% of the populace in Florence. This estimate contradicts previous lower scholarly estimates of a mortality rate of one third of the population.

Most surviving information on mortality in the French realm comes from the south and southeast, thus only reflecting a total of 6-7% of the total French populace at the time. For example, tax records from Provence indicate a 52% drop in the number of households after the Black Death, but this number is distorted by the high rate of new marriages and upward mobility of survivors who were now taxable. The true number for total mortality in Provence is closer to 60%. Similarly, data from the castellany of Ugine within the County of Savoy allows for a comparable estimate of the plague’s death rate. After adjusting for new marriages and mobility, the data shows that the number of tax-paying households had decreased by 58.3% after the Black Death completed its reign of terror in 1353. Other scholars have suggested that the Hundred Years’ War that raged on French soil in the 1300s was more significant in demographic changes than the Black Death. Yet, the data that survives mostly comes from regions that suffered little impact from the war. Thus, the overall mortality rate for French lands of approximately 60% is due to the pandemic.

Belgian data likewise shows a huge mortality rate due to the bubonic plague. Manorial (estate) records from the County of Hainault that record death duties that tenants paid their overlords show a large rise in the death rate among the rural peasantry in the south and central areas of the county starting in the summer of 1349. There are no extant earlier records to which one can compare these; however, records from 1358 to 1359 can serve a comparative purpose. These show that mortality in Ath in western Hainault increased by five times between June of 1349 and the spring of the following year. This figure is probably an underestimate, since the population was smaller in 1358 than it was just before the plague struck. Data shows a significant decrease in households across hamlets in Artois between 1347 (the eve of the pandemic’s landing) and 1386. For example, the settlement of Izel recorded 61 households in 1347 but only 23 in 1385 and 29 in 1386. Therefore, in Izel the population declined over 30%. Nevertheless, householders from other areas may have also moved to occupy abandoned land in the hamlet after the Black Death, thereby impacting and inflating the number of surviving households. An obituary register from a monastic institution in Bruges is also useful. It records 60 deaths from between 1301 to 1400. For 58 of those recorded years, no deaths are on record. In the remaining years, recorded deaths ranged from one to three. But in 1349 and 1351 there were nine and four deaths, respectively, a clear indicator of the plague’s impact.

England provides the most comprehensive data and, thus, the most accurate picture of plague mortality. Previous scholarship focused on the death rates of clerics and elites, rather than on the whole population. In England, estimates for the mortality rate range between 66.67 and 58.33%, which is in line with the overall estimate for Europe: 60%. Although parish clergy were highly vulnerable to infection, their death rates were lower than for the general populace due to factors such as their superior living conditions and freedom from secondary effects that lessened their supermortality. Parish priests’ mortality rate is about 45%, with an even lower rate for bishops. For the laity of low status, however, circumstances were different. Across Glastonbury Abbey’s manors, for example, among the tenants—those who held land—the average mortality rate is 55%. Fifty-seven percent of the landless men who paid the head-tax perished; this number is likely underestimated, because assessors would have overlooked some of them. Likewise, this estimate fails to account for women’s and children’s supermortality. The impoverished, landless class was more vulnerable to the plague’s secondary effects, as care disintegrated when entire families became ill. Deaths among the commoners in the countryside are probably approximately 65%. This data, combined with surviving evidence that suggests a mortality rate of about 50% among elites, means that “the general population mortality in England appears to have been of the order of magnitude of 62.5 per cent” (377).

A 60% mortality rate for all of Europe means that millions of people perished in the pandemic. Before the arrival of the bubonic plague in the mid-1300s, Europe’s population hovered around 80 million people. If 60% died in the outbreak, 50 million people succumbed to the Black Death and its secondary effects.