The Black Death 1346-1353: The Complete History

The roots of the early modern period, which included the Italian and Northern Renaissances, are grounded in the High Middle Ages. The Black Death played an important role in this transition.

For example, the changes the Black Death wrought “were reflected in the rise of a capitalist class of proto-industrial entrepreneurs, of the proto-industrial proletariat and of the salaried classes of clerks and office workers […] the ‘birth’ of class society in its Early Modern form” (388). This transition began long before the 1300s. It is rooted in the High Middle Ages and continued into the late medieval period with the development of new universities and primary and secondary institutions of learning that were needed to create an educated class of workers for emerging states.

Massive population decline due to the Black Death caused a fall in the cost of living; for example, grain prices that previously soared now dropped. Commoners who had been unable to find work now had choice and demanded higher wages. Elites competed for their labor. Those who survived the pandemic enjoyed some social mobility, and the post-plague years were a “golden age” for laborers. Wages for those who worked in the building trade, for example, were the same in 15th-century England as they were at the time of World War I.

These changes laid the groundwork for the coming Industrial Revolution that involved mass-producing inexpensive goods. The medieval feudal economy gradually collapsed, and capitalism emerged. Moreover, because elites suffered the economic consequences of population loss, they found alternative means of filling their coffers, both through warfare that allowed the extraction of new taxes and the accumulation of the spoils of war and through colonialism and imperialism in the Americas. The Spanish crown, for instance, found new ways to extract resources and wealth from the Americas.

The plague also led to “a new obsession with death in art and literature” (392). It also caused some, like the flagellants, to fall into extreme religious frenzy. These people believed they had to perform public flagellation as penance for their sins, for which God punished them by bringing plague. The flagellants were also involved in antisemitic pogroms. Antisemitism was on the rise before the Black Death, and the pandemic served to increase this bigotry as some medieval people scapegoated European Jewish people by accusing them of poising water wells and making others ill. The flagellants were instrumental in disseminating this fear and fostering violence against Jewish communities; Pope Clement VI ordered them to stop, and when they refused, he condemned the movement in 1349. This violence—a “sort of medieval holocaust”—caused Jews in German lands to flee to Eastern Europe, where centuries later, many tragically fell victim to “a new and even far more violent holocaust” (393).

The Black Death additionally contributed to the development of public health services in Europe. These were, at first, focused on stopping the plague, which they successfully did after some generations. These organizations gave rise to modern systems of national health care.