THE BLACK DEATH

Impact of the Black Death

Impact of the Black Death

Introduction

The black plague or Black Death refers to the pandemic that struck Europe in the fourteenth century and reached to peak between 1347 and 1353. It was estimated that plague cause death of about 75 million people (about one third of the continent's population at that time). There are several theories about the origin of black plague or Black Death; most of scientific community accepted that it was an outbreak which is caused by a variant of the bacterium Yersinia pestis (Scott and Duncan, 2001).

This tragic pandemic claimed an estimated 75 million people, 50 million of which are from Europe (estimated to have killed 305-60% of the continent's population). During the 1700s, this same killer disease is believed to have returned to Europe every generation with different intensities (Senker, 2006). During its return in 1603, it killed approximately 38,000 Londoners. The drastic effect that the Black Death brought upon Europe affected the whole European population thus changing the continent's social structure. The Roman Catholic Church was greatly affected because of the widespread of more persecution of Jews, foreigners, beggars, and lepers (Sanders, 2006). Moreover, the European civilization became so dented that economy suffered so much. Because the Black Death eradicated a major fraction of the population, the more its attacks became severely felt. Then, the people were already weakened by exhaustion due to many reasons thus making the killer attacks more virulent and deadly. The negative domino effect was so catastrophic to the effect that rats would literally jump on travelers. People from all walks of life and ages suffered from the result of deaths and attacks. This essay will identify the impact of Black Death on the European society.

Discussion

Researchers, historians, and scientists who delved into the history of the Black Death are not certain of the origin of this plague. Many of these scientists who have spent many years in the study of this plague made some findings that infected rodents from the Middle East traveled into Russia. Along the routes it passed plague was spread (Nardo, 1999).

When the Black Death strikes Europe, this continent was in a time of economic downturn too, the result of a system open feudal offspring and an economy in a bad state the result of frequent crop failures and a considerable overcrowding. A medieval decline in pessimism and irrationality ruled the thinking of individuals from different strata of society. For example, the bourgeoisie (the force labor ) lived in promiscuity, their houses had flat land and a single room where they all slept together, including their animals, cooked and ate right there, in addition to all this, people at all levels had lost the habit of bathing, as even the bathroom staff had come to be considered sinful (Herlihy, 1997).

Before the Black Death, most of Europe was still organized as some type of manorial system— a cultural, economic, military, and religious system of social organization. This required that the peasantry remained dependent on ...