The Black Death and social upheaval

The Black Death  (1346-53) was one of the worst pandemics in human history. It resulted in the deaths of an estimated 75-200 million people in Europe which at the time represented 30-60% of Europe’s entire population. To put that in perspective, the world population at the time was only around 450 million. Epidemics and pandemics are not uncommon throughout history but what’s significant about the Black Death is that the consequences of it are still felt today.

 

The cause of the Black Death

Rats actually get a bad reputation for spreading the plague that caused the Black Death, the real culprit is the flea.

Plague is caused by a bacteria called Yersinia pestis which gets into fleas when they feed on the blood of an animal already suffering from plague. When the flea unknowingly ingests the plague bacteria it causes a blockage in the ‘throat’ of the flea which prevents the flea from feeding. In a rather disgusting biological mechanism, the hungry flea desperately tries to feed on an animal which dislodges the blockage of bacteria and the flea literally pukes this bacteria back into the animal it’s feeding on. Delightful.

Some rats, however, are what’s called a reservoir for plague bacteria. This means they can be infected by plague bacteria but suffer no consequences. Unfortunately for us this means that the flea simply has to feed on an infected rat and it will transfer the plague bacteria to the next thing it feeds on. In the case of the Black Death, it is believed that the next thing the flea fed on was another type of rat that had no resistance to the plague. Fleas, you see, are normally specific to one type of animal and rat fleas will tend to only feed on rats. The problem occurred when the newly infected rats started dying of plague because suddenly there were a lot of fleas around with nothing to eat. When there were no rats left, humans started looking pretty appetising…

 

Human infection

Once an infected flea bites someone the plague bacteria travels to the lymph nodes which, in humans, are in the groin, armpits and neck. The bacteria causes a swelling of the lymph nodes which then turn black due to an accumulation of dead blood and pus and without treatment the swellings will start travelling all over the body. If the swellings are left alone the victim will die from the build up of dead blood but if the swellings are popped the victim may die from toxic shock. Add to this a fever and vomiting blood and it’s no surprise that as much as 80% of all victims died within 4 days of showing symptoms. Nowadays, with antibiotics, the likelihood of death is only around 15%.

So how did the Black Death actually end? Well, one important reason why is that plague doesn’t spread very easily from human to human. Unless, of course, you go around poking the infected – the blood contained in the swellings were full of bacteria. But luckily the plague bacteria doesn’t exist in large amounts elsewhere in human blood so human fleas rarely consumed enough bacteria to pass it onto someone else. That meant that once enough infected rats and humans had died, the rat fleas quickly died out too due to starvation. It also helped that by that time people had learned to stay away from those already infected.

The population of reservoir rats didn’t change though which meant that plague was still around and further outbreaks did happen throughout the following centuries. There was no further outbreak in Europe however that matched the devastation of the Black Death.

 

Arrival and spread

So where did it come from? Well, plague is actually quite common among many rodents in Asia and there is strong evidence to suggest that there had been plague outbreaks in China occurring around 15 years before it arrived in Europe. Then, thanks to the burgeoning trade routes of the silk road, it was easy for rats harbouring plague bacteria to stow away on transport vessels of Mongol traders.

A more macabre story of the arrival of plague in Europe however was during the Mongol siege of the trading city of Caffa in the Crimea in 1347. The siege had already been quite drawn-out and the Mongol army were suffering from the plague. So, in one of the first recorded examples of biological warfare, the Mongols catapulted infected corpses over the walls of Caffa. Traders from the city fled in fear of the plague, unknowingly carrying it with them to the port of Sicily in the south of Italy. From there it spread north through Europe by trade and also by people trying to run away from the infected regions thereby carrying it with them. The rest, as they say, is history.

Importantly, however, not everyone was slow to realise how fast the plague was spreading. For the first of our consequences of the Black Death that we still feel today, the port of Dubrovnik in Croatia made ships and people wait 40 days before entering to be sure that they wouldn’t bring plague into the city. They called this period of time quaranta giorni which simply means forty days in the Venetian dialect of Italian. This phrase gave us the English word quarantine.

 

Medicine in times of plague

It would be an understatement to say that doctors at the time were not prepared for the plague.

You see, medicine in the middle ages was strongly influenced by alchemy which was a belief system that combined religion and spirituality with magic and mythology. You might be familiar with alchemists as those guys who tried to turn lead into gold and you’d be right. Alchemists believed that everything had a perfect form and the perfect form for metals was gold because gold was believed to be the most perfect form any metal could take. Perfection didn’t just apply to metals though, it applied to all things, even people. Alchemists believed that if a person became pure enough through spiritual means they could achieve longevity, immortality and then redemption.

This translates into medicine because herbs or minerals would be blended to change them into a better form, one that could fight disease. It was all about harnessing the hidden powers of normal objects. It may sound silly now but sometimes they hit upon something worthwhile which gave the theory some credit. St. Johns wort for example is a herb that’s been used for centuries for its anti-inflammatory properties. Alchemists would have made a preparation of St. John’s wort and say they had unlocked its hidden power but we know now that it’s due to the large amounts of the compound hyperforin, a potent anti-inflammatory compound, found in the plant.

So how effective was alchemy against the plague? Simply, it wasn’t. One suggested treatment was to swallow gold as they believed the perfection of gold would counteract the corruption of plague. It didn’t work. Another remedy they used was distilled spirit which just means strong alcohol. That didn’t work either. Although, if I knew I was going to die in a matter of days then I can’t imagine I would turn down a little distilled spirit. Consequently, the demand for distilled spirit rose considerably after the plague.

Many of the doctors of the time realised that their remedies were doing nothing and rather than contract plague themselves, promptly fled – they may not have known about modern medicine but they were not stupid.

 

The plague doctor

The lack of real doctors gave rise to a group of mostly volunteers who produced one of the most iconic images of the time, the plague doctor.

The job of the plague doctor was to verify whether people had been infected or not and record deaths in the public record. They also attempted to treat people, typically with alchemical preparations and blood letting. They had power and respect beyond many other public servants and were paid extremely well.

The costume of the plague doctor really highlighted the medical beliefs of the time. Keep in mind that in the middle ages they had no idea how diseases came about and spread. They didn’t know about bacteria and germs or the importance of cleanliness and hygiene. The dominant theory of the cause of disease was the miasma theory whereby disease came from ‘bad air’. In this theory, a bad area of air would contain poisonous materials that caused disease and could be located by its terrible smell. It was believed that people (or animals) couldn’t pass disease to each other, rather people in the same area got infected because they were in the same area of bad air. This theory is really well exemplified by the disease malaria which is spread by mosquitos living typically around smelly swampland. Malaria in medieval Italian literally means mala aria – bad air.

For this reason, the iconic beak-like mask of the plague doctor would be filled with nice smelling herbs and spices that would overpower the ‘bad air’. The long coat and hat were then worn to further prevent the body from coming into contact with the bad air. And although this did protect the wearer from the real danger, flea bites, it is very likely that the plague doctor helped carry fleas around from infected areas to non-infected areas on the clothing unknowingly spreading the disease even more…

So how does this affect us today? Well, once it became clear that the medicine of the time was completely ineffective against the plague people began to think that maybe they were wrong about the causes of disease and how to treat it. This started a period where doctors looked more at the human body in sickness and in health to study the process of disease. Surgery became an important part of medicine as more doctors stopped thinking of medicine as a spiritual or magical treatment and more as something that needs direct involvement. The truth is that we may have the Black Death to thank for the advances made in medicine that lead to our current level of understanding of disease prevention and cure.

 

Social change

You might expect medicine to undergo changes following such a pandemic but the loss of 30-60% of the population of a continent also effected serious social change.

 

The end of feudalism

Following the end of the Black Death there were not that many people around. England, for example, lost 70% of its population which left them with just 2 million people in 1400. Between 1350-1500 more than 1300 villages were just deserted.

At this time they were deep into feudalism which, broadly speaking, meant that all the land was owned by lords who employed peasants to work the land. There was almost no social mobility, you were born a lord or a peasant and you accepted your role in life. After the Black Death though, there was the same amount of land but a whole lot less people to work it. What this meant for the peasants was that the lords needed them.

Now think about this from the peasants perspective, any peasant who survived the Black Death in England witnessed many of their friends and family die. They now believe that they are special, saved by God, they believe they have a greater purpose. At the same time they have the freedom to move anywhere they want in the country because the lords everywhere need peasants to work the land. And because peasants are so scarce the lords have no choice but to entice the peasants with higher wages and better working conditions. For some, they can even buy their own land.

The price of land fell dramatically because it was desperately needed to grow crops and raise livestock. This lead to a new class of peasants, yeomen, who were farmers that owned the land they worked on – often up to 100 acres. The immediate effect of this was a weakening of the lordship as some minor lords were almost indistinguishable from wealthy yeomen.

Of course, all this had to end eventually. The government of England passed laws to restrict peasant earnings to their pre-Black Death values and to force peasants to stay on the land they had served before. Furthermore, they had to work church lands for free. Admittedly, both peasants and lords broke these laws but contempt for the government over the laws and new taxes ultimately resulted in the peasant revolt of 1381.

And this wasn’t just in England, similar laws and exploitation of the peasants fueled revolts all over Europe. The Jacquerie was a peasant revolt in northern France in 1358 and the revolt of the Ciompi occured in Florence in 1378. Feudalism never recovered.

 

Improving efficiency

With less farmers around, maintaining previous levels of crop production was impossible. Grain farming in particular was incredibly hard work and so it is no surprise that people turned to other methods of farming. One of the more popular changes was an increase in animal husbandry which is the rearing of animals by, usually, a single shepherd on grassland. The selective breeding of animals since then for more meat, more milk and more eggs has lead to the farm animals we have today.

It wasn’t just peasant jobs that were made more efficient, previously a scribe had to painstakingly copy manuscripts and books by hand for wider circulation. Experiments with improving this job after the Black Death eventually lead to the development of Gutenberg’s printing press. Gutenberg finished development of his first press in Germany in 1450, just under a century after the Black Death.

 

Opportunities for women

It was the job of the parish priest to give the final sacraments to those dying of plague. The problem with this was that many priests then caught the plague which resulted in a shortage of priests. Fortunately, the churches often had many laywomen who voluntarily gave their time to the church. It was these women who took over many of the roles that the priests had fulfilled.

Inheritance law was also changed in the wake of the huge death toll. Previously, property and land was inherited by the eldest son but after the Black Death property could be inherited by sons and daughters equally.

 

English language

In 1066 England was conquered by William the Conqueror who came from Normandy in France. Naturally, he didn’t speak Old English like the natives, he spoke Anglo-Norman. Since then Anglo-Norman was used as the spoken language of the courts where it became known as Law French. Incidentally, court documents were written in Latin.

After the Black Death the amount of French Law speakers (mostly educated clerks) was drastically reduced which caused problems for the courts. Furthermore, the peasants and yeomen were gaining power and more laws were being passed that affected them. The problem was that peasants didn’t speak Law French, in fact many lords didn’t speak Law French either, so they complained that they didn’t understand what was being said for them or against them in court. This lead to the Pleading in English Act 1362 which stated that all pleas in courts must be in the common tongue of the land – English. This act practically designated English as the official language of England. The Black Death is directly responsible for the popularisation of the English language.

 

Conclusion

As a final word, I don’t want to give the impression that the Black Death was the cause of all this change, it was always a catalyst. All the things I’ve talked about here – medical changes, peasant revolts, the rise of the yeomen and the growth of the English language – had all been developing throughout the century. What the Black Death did was pull the trigger on social change that had been rising in the chamber for a long time.

And let us not forget that the people living in the time of the Black Death experienced the closest thing to a true apocalypse that any of us will ever know. Let us hope that we never have to witness something the same again.

• alchemy
• animal husbandry
• bacteria
• bad air
• black death
• caffa
• catalyst
• china
• ciompi
• distilled spirit
• dubrovnik
• england
• english
• epidemic
• europe
• feudal
• feudalism
• flea
• gutenberg
• hyperforin
• inheritance
• jacquerie
• law french
• lord
• lymph
• lymph node
• malaria
• miasma theory
• mongols
• mosquito
• pandemic
• peasant
• peasant revolt
• periodically amended
• periodicallyamended
• plague
• plague doctor
• pleading in english act
• printing press
• quaranta giorni
• quarantine
• rat
• reservoir
• sacrament
• selective breeding
• sicily
• silk road
• st. john's wort
• William the conqueror
• yeoman
• yeomen
• yersinia pestis