by Nicholas Greenwood

Created on: September 01, 2010

In the middle of the fourteenth century, Europe was ravaged by a plague that was later to become known as the Black Death. The impact of this epidemic is often debated by historians but it is usually decided that between a third, and a half of the population of Europe lost their lives to it, making it the biggest natural disaster ever to affect European civilisation. It is, however, important to note that the impact of the plague varied across Europe, as indeed it did between rural and urban areas. There were many theories as to how the plague was spread – by miasma (bad air), by earthquakes, or because God was angry with the people – but modern science has led to theories that it was a combination of the bubonic plague, pneumonic plague and septicaemic plague, which was spread primarily by fleas living on infected black rats, and not helped by the poor sanitary conditions at the time.

It affected everyone throughout the class system, even including members of the clergy, nobility and royalty, and left very few areas untouched (those that were unaffected were mainly in the Low Countries). It is, therefore, understandable that this would have huge effects on the people living in Europe at the time and in the following centuries.

A main effect of the plague was a change in the role of religion. The plague brought two main responses to the Church. The first was a loss of faith, because if the clergy were being struck down by the plague, they were obviously either out of favour with God, or not protected by God in the first place, and people could see that the church was actually powerless in stopping its spread. The second was to renew faith in God, as an attempt to protect oneself, exemplified by the flagellants who began to emerge, particularly in the Germanic states, who believed that self-torture would please God.

Another effect was to incite hatred against the Jews, leading some to accuse them of poisoning the wells to spread the disease, although this view was not condoned by the Pope.

The Black Death also affected traditional structures within society. Before the Black Death, there were clearly divided classes within European societies from peasants and serfs to royalty and nobility. However, as a result of the plague, landowners found themselves with more land than they could tend to, and at the same time, a vastly reduced number of people able to work. This meant that workers could now have a more active part in setting their wages, thus allowing

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