The Black Death, a crisis
which swept England in 1348 and lasted until 1349 tore the country apart. It
happened on such a large scale, firstly because the epidemic spread at such a
speed that there was no time for reflection on its origins before the disease
had ‘cracked apart…thrown down and engulfed’[1]
towns in England. When there were no obvious scientific or reasonable
explanations for The Black Death, the Medieval people turned to blame God and
human sin and secondly because no government or person within England or Europe
had a response. Nobody knew its’ causes, how it was spread or treatments. The
most obvious effects of the events of 1348-1349 can be seen in the vast changes
in society and economy.
It has been argued that an
important immediate social consequence of the Black Death was that ‘of course,
the very sharp fall in population’[2]
which was hailed the ‘great pestilence’[3]
and that the Black Death represented ‘the beginning of a major cycle of plague
that remained active far into the nineteenth century’[4].
From this drop in population of ‘between two-fifths and half of the population’[5],
there followed a lot of other social and economic issues.
Following the Black Death
there was an extreme fear of death amongst English society, and many were
terrified of further punishments from God. People became obsessed with death as
we can see from the rise of art containing images of death and the macabre,
designed to remind everyone of the threat of death. The dance of death was a
popular and wide-spread theme in the late Middle Age art, and ‘The insecurity of daily survival created
an atmosphere of gloom and doom, influencing artist to move away from joyful
spiritual themes and turn to images of Hell, Satan and the Grim Reaper’[6].
This was a theme which continued into the 1500s, shown by Hans Holbein who
created a series of wood cuttings to show how death lurks everywhere[7].
In the Decameron, Boccacio describes the obsession with death during the plague
and says nothing is talked about ‘but that such and such is dead or dying; and
were any left to mourn we should hear nothing but lamentations’ and describes a
woman who says ‘I am frightened out of my senses and wherever I go, the ghosts
of the departed seem always before me, not like the persons whilst they were
living but assuming a ghastly and dreadful aspect’[8],
demonstrating why, in the aftermath of the plague, English society was
terrified. However, it could be argued that the sheer amount of dead meant that
it became an every day occurrence for English people, and could have somewhat
desensitised people to death. Shown by the treatment of the dead who ‘received
no more consideration than the odd goat would today’[9]
and were often left about the city to rot, or thrown in huge pits of other dead
bodies with no priest present.
Religious belief temporarily soared in the time of the Black Death, with an increase in flagellancy within Europe, who ‘came to London from Flanders…Sometimes at St Paul's and sometimes at other points in the city they made two daily public appearances wearing cloths from the thighs to the ankles, but otherwise stripped bare…whipped themselves with these scourges on their naked and bleeding bodies’[10] in a desperate attempt to free England of the Plague, showing that there was belief that the disease was God sent. However, this attitude changed in the wake of the plague, represented by a decrease in faith to God. ‘Grave changes in mental attitudes such as a loss of confidence in traditional faith, the idea of “Christendom” being abandoned and the beginning of the decline of the medieval papacy, for example the Avignon Popes.’[11] Perhaps this was all because their belief in God had been futile in their attempts to prevent sickness, and consequently family and friends had been taken from them with sudden and painful deaths, meaning that they lost hope in God. Furthermore, people were left without any guidance in their time of need due to the huge reduction in numbers of the Clergy in the plague, and before long ‘there were not enough living to bury the dead’[12] This was due to the Clergy living in tightly knit communities like monasteries, and also having to deal with the last rites and burial of the dead bodies which had been attacked by Plague. Therefore, there was nobody to preach or lead the disillusioned communities and so ordinary people were left to their own faith.
The Plague changed Medieval medicine somewhat, as it forced people to question why the remedies they had produced for the Plague failed to work, and when there was no explanation, there was an emphasis placed on older theories such as Galen’s Humoural theory in which ‘physicians attributed the plague to a physiological imbalance’ and it had been argued that there was a ‘persistence of the medical theory… that good health was a matter of maintaining a balance of humours rather than combating specific disease-carrying microbes’.[13] This affected people because it changed the way illness was viewed and treated on a day-to-day basis, and herbal treatments which had been favoured were replaced with the likes of blood-letting and purging. Charms were also a favoured treatment in the plague because people were left with no other option. Death was inevitable because a cure was not available, and so the priority was to calm the patient down, and hopefully slow the death down to avoid mors improvisa and perform the last rites.
There are two ways people reacted to the plague which stand out. Firstly, some were so terrified that they were keen to escape from their communities, still fearing the plague many individuals fled from their family and deserted their towns. It has even been claimed by Boccaccio ‘Men and women alike were possessed by such a visceral terror of this scourge that a man would desert his own brother, uncle would forsake his nephew, sister her brother, and often a wife her husband’ and he claims that there were even cases where ‘mothers and fathers would avoid visiting and tending their children and they would virtually disown them’[14]. People also locked themselves away, either in sole isolation or with the rest of their families, to avoid further spread of the disease, showing the uncontrollable terror which gripped England.
However, some people, most likely the younger and childless individuals, accepted that the best option was to embrace what time they may have left in life and kept spirits high by going to alehouses, singing and dancing. This, to a degree, showed that there was a lost hope for any future, as they abandoned their duties within society and instead indulged in sinful activities, which could also demonstrate their abandonment of faith as they were risking their soul in purgatory.
There were many class changes after the Black Death. During the Plague there was no place for extravagancy, everyone was equal in that a wide range of people, including Priests, peasants and nobility were all struck down with the disease, removing the social elevations which had previously in place. Whilst the landowners and the elites struggled, the peasantry saw both economic and social benefits as they ‘found they were better off as a consequence of the plague’[15] and discovered a new found power over the landowners in that employers were forced to offer higher wages and ‘employers who failed to allow their employees the new wages found that labour went elsewhere.’[16] Furthermore, Boccaccio states in The Decameron that due to the absence of the magistrates, either due to death or loss of minions ‘to the point where they were powerless’ that ‘the laws of God and men had lost their authority and fallen into disrespect’ and that every man did ‘precisely as he pleased’[17] which suggests the absence of social order and distinctions. However, he also states that the corpses of the dead would not ‘be borne on the shoulders of prominent or distinguished citizens’[18], showing that there is still evidence of class differences because noble people are exempt from the gruesome job of meddling with the dead, even at this time of crisis. Furthermore, there is evidence to show that in the aftermath of the Plague social distinctions were sharpened, not blurred, perhaps because some people had been deprived of their superior identity during the time of the Plague. This can be seen through the fashions of the nobility, which became more extravagant so people recognised their social position.
Other groups within society also saw a change in the wake of the plague, such as women, who found that they were becoming involved with labour and jobs that men would have been completing prior to the Black Death such as agriculture. There is evidence of numbers of women who took advantage of this change, as they were ‘found among the names of harvest workers indicted under the Statute of Labourers for going ‘outside the vill in autumn’ and receiving excess wages’[19], which shows women as opportunists, trying to increase the income of their family by exploiting the post plague circumstances.
There were also other economic changes within England as a result of the Black Death.
The vast decrease in population probably had the biggest impact on the economy, as it meant that land was deserted, left unoccupied with nobody to keep up on their agricultural responsibilities which had previously allowed medieval society to keep moving. This lack of production had a knock on effect which then caused price increases which led to inflation. The abandonment of lands meant that ‘sheep and cattle roamed unchecked through the fields and through the standing corn, and there was no one to chase them and round them up’[20] and had devastating effects after the plague when ‘holdings remained vacant for decades and experienced a severe loss of revenues’.[21] However, it could also be argued that the effects of land abandonment were somewhat positive because ‘The greater availability of land encouraged peasants who already held land to further extend their landed resources as a way of increasing the surplus they could produce for the market’[22].
Religious belief temporarily soared in the time of the Black Death, with an increase in flagellancy within Europe, who ‘came to London from Flanders…Sometimes at St Paul's and sometimes at other points in the city they made two daily public appearances wearing cloths from the thighs to the ankles, but otherwise stripped bare…whipped themselves with these scourges on their naked and bleeding bodies’[10] in a desperate attempt to free England of the Plague, showing that there was belief that the disease was God sent. However, this attitude changed in the wake of the plague, represented by a decrease in faith to God. ‘Grave changes in mental attitudes such as a loss of confidence in traditional faith, the idea of “Christendom” being abandoned and the beginning of the decline of the medieval papacy, for example the Avignon Popes.’[11] Perhaps this was all because their belief in God had been futile in their attempts to prevent sickness, and consequently family and friends had been taken from them with sudden and painful deaths, meaning that they lost hope in God. Furthermore, people were left without any guidance in their time of need due to the huge reduction in numbers of the Clergy in the plague, and before long ‘there were not enough living to bury the dead’[12] This was due to the Clergy living in tightly knit communities like monasteries, and also having to deal with the last rites and burial of the dead bodies which had been attacked by Plague. Therefore, there was nobody to preach or lead the disillusioned communities and so ordinary people were left to their own faith.
The Plague changed Medieval medicine somewhat, as it forced people to question why the remedies they had produced for the Plague failed to work, and when there was no explanation, there was an emphasis placed on older theories such as Galen’s Humoural theory in which ‘physicians attributed the plague to a physiological imbalance’ and it had been argued that there was a ‘persistence of the medical theory… that good health was a matter of maintaining a balance of humours rather than combating specific disease-carrying microbes’.[13] This affected people because it changed the way illness was viewed and treated on a day-to-day basis, and herbal treatments which had been favoured were replaced with the likes of blood-letting and purging. Charms were also a favoured treatment in the plague because people were left with no other option. Death was inevitable because a cure was not available, and so the priority was to calm the patient down, and hopefully slow the death down to avoid mors improvisa and perform the last rites.
There are two ways people reacted to the plague which stand out. Firstly, some were so terrified that they were keen to escape from their communities, still fearing the plague many individuals fled from their family and deserted their towns. It has even been claimed by Boccaccio ‘Men and women alike were possessed by such a visceral terror of this scourge that a man would desert his own brother, uncle would forsake his nephew, sister her brother, and often a wife her husband’ and he claims that there were even cases where ‘mothers and fathers would avoid visiting and tending their children and they would virtually disown them’[14]. People also locked themselves away, either in sole isolation or with the rest of their families, to avoid further spread of the disease, showing the uncontrollable terror which gripped England.
However, some people, most likely the younger and childless individuals, accepted that the best option was to embrace what time they may have left in life and kept spirits high by going to alehouses, singing and dancing. This, to a degree, showed that there was a lost hope for any future, as they abandoned their duties within society and instead indulged in sinful activities, which could also demonstrate their abandonment of faith as they were risking their soul in purgatory.
There were many class changes after the Black Death. During the Plague there was no place for extravagancy, everyone was equal in that a wide range of people, including Priests, peasants and nobility were all struck down with the disease, removing the social elevations which had previously in place. Whilst the landowners and the elites struggled, the peasantry saw both economic and social benefits as they ‘found they were better off as a consequence of the plague’[15] and discovered a new found power over the landowners in that employers were forced to offer higher wages and ‘employers who failed to allow their employees the new wages found that labour went elsewhere.’[16] Furthermore, Boccaccio states in The Decameron that due to the absence of the magistrates, either due to death or loss of minions ‘to the point where they were powerless’ that ‘the laws of God and men had lost their authority and fallen into disrespect’ and that every man did ‘precisely as he pleased’[17] which suggests the absence of social order and distinctions. However, he also states that the corpses of the dead would not ‘be borne on the shoulders of prominent or distinguished citizens’[18], showing that there is still evidence of class differences because noble people are exempt from the gruesome job of meddling with the dead, even at this time of crisis. Furthermore, there is evidence to show that in the aftermath of the Plague social distinctions were sharpened, not blurred, perhaps because some people had been deprived of their superior identity during the time of the Plague. This can be seen through the fashions of the nobility, which became more extravagant so people recognised their social position.
Other groups within society also saw a change in the wake of the plague, such as women, who found that they were becoming involved with labour and jobs that men would have been completing prior to the Black Death such as agriculture. There is evidence of numbers of women who took advantage of this change, as they were ‘found among the names of harvest workers indicted under the Statute of Labourers for going ‘outside the vill in autumn’ and receiving excess wages’[19], which shows women as opportunists, trying to increase the income of their family by exploiting the post plague circumstances.
There were also other economic changes within England as a result of the Black Death.
The vast decrease in population probably had the biggest impact on the economy, as it meant that land was deserted, left unoccupied with nobody to keep up on their agricultural responsibilities which had previously allowed medieval society to keep moving. This lack of production had a knock on effect which then caused price increases which led to inflation. The abandonment of lands meant that ‘sheep and cattle roamed unchecked through the fields and through the standing corn, and there was no one to chase them and round them up’[20] and had devastating effects after the plague when ‘holdings remained vacant for decades and experienced a severe loss of revenues’.[21] However, it could also be argued that the effects of land abandonment were somewhat positive because ‘The greater availability of land encouraged peasants who already held land to further extend their landed resources as a way of increasing the surplus they could produce for the market’[22].
After the plague, there
was so few people left to work the land that landowners were forced into a
position where the wages they paid were more than the prices of goods
purchased. Subsequently, the standard of living increased for the poorer
people, something which had not been seen before in Medieval England. There were many ‘disjunctions in terms of
patterns of land holding and employment’[23]
which was to the advantage of ‘the lower echelons of society and to
disadvantage the traditional elites’[24].
Whilst this was a positive move forward for the lower classes, this social
effect of the plague meant that the new power of the lower classes initially hindered
the economic re-growth of England, challenged the higher orders and often
‘hired workers took advantage of higher wages to invest in leisure’[25]
and in the preamble to the Statute of Labourers (1351) they direct it against
the ‘malice of servants who were idle and unwilling to serve after the
pestilence without taking outrageous wages’[26].
However, patterns of consumption changed for medieval England as the ‘enhanced economic well-being of numbers of peasants’[27] meant that people had more disposable income and made way for the flourishing of a new market, in this case the likes of basic furniture, a wider range of foods and cheap cloth. So whilst the peasantry exploited landowners, their ‘enhanced spending power…probably also resulted in an increased call for housing and building work’[28] and stimulated the economy once again.
To conclude, it is hard to isolate the most important factors without looking at the devastation in population figures, as this affected everything following the plague, and acted as the spark to an onslaught of social and economic changes such as social mobility and economic instability; from standstill to growth and development. It seems that there was an accumulative effect of all social and economic changes which altered English society, but this all began with the Black Death’s ‘its appalling mortality’[29].
However, patterns of consumption changed for medieval England as the ‘enhanced economic well-being of numbers of peasants’[27] meant that people had more disposable income and made way for the flourishing of a new market, in this case the likes of basic furniture, a wider range of foods and cheap cloth. So whilst the peasantry exploited landowners, their ‘enhanced spending power…probably also resulted in an increased call for housing and building work’[28] and stimulated the economy once again.
To conclude, it is hard to isolate the most important factors without looking at the devastation in population figures, as this affected everything following the plague, and acted as the spark to an onslaught of social and economic changes such as social mobility and economic instability; from standstill to growth and development. It seems that there was an accumulative effect of all social and economic changes which altered English society, but this all began with the Black Death’s ‘its appalling mortality’[29].
Bibliography:
Primary
J. R. Lumby (ed), Chronicon Henrici Knighton vel Cnitthon monachi Leycestrensis
G. Boccacio, The Decameron
Secondary
C.
F. Mullet, The Bubonic Plague and England, (1956 Kentucky), page 15
D. Williman, Ed.,The Black Death, the impact of the fourteenth-century plague, (New York 1982), page 30
M. Damen, Powerpoint on The Black Death: http://www.usu.edu/markdamen/1320Hist&Civ/PP/slides/06blackdeath.pdf, accessed 29/11/12
N. F. Cantor, In the Wake of the Plague, (2001 United States of America), page 119
P.J.P Goldberg, Medieval England A Social History 1250-1550
‘The effect of Plague on Art and Artists in the Middle Ages’-http://www.historyofpainters.com/plague.htm, accessed 22/11/12
D. Williman, Ed.,The Black Death, the impact of the fourteenth-century plague, (New York 1982), page 30
M. Damen, Powerpoint on The Black Death: http://www.usu.edu/markdamen/1320Hist&Civ/PP/slides/06blackdeath.pdf, accessed 29/11/12
N. F. Cantor, In the Wake of the Plague, (2001 United States of America), page 119
P.J.P Goldberg, Medieval England A Social History 1250-1550
‘The effect of Plague on Art and Artists in the Middle Ages’-http://www.historyofpainters.com/plague.htm, accessed 22/11/12
The
Dance of Death - http://www.dodedans.com/Eindex.htm, accessed 22/11/12
"The Flagellants Attempt to Repel the
Black Death, 1349", EyeWitness to History, www.eyewitnesstohistory.com
(2010) accessed 29/11/12
[1]J. R. Lumby (ed), Chronicon Henrici Knighton vel
Cnitthon monachi Leycestrensis, 2 vols, Rolls Series, 1889-95, II, Page 58, (1390
Leicester)
[2] P.J.P
Goldberg, Medieval England A Social History 1250-1550 (Bloomsbury Publishing,
London and New York, 2010), page 163
[3] P.J.P
Goldberg, Medieval England A Social History 1250-1550, page 161
[4] P.J.P
Goldberg, Medieval England A Social History 1250-1550, page 163
[5] P.J.P
Goldberg, Medieval England A Social History 1250-1550, page 164
[6] The
effect of Plague on Art and Artists in the Middle Ages-http://www.historyofpainters.com/plague.htm,
accessed 22/11/12
[7] The
Dance of Death - http://www.dodedans.com/Eindex.htm, accessed 22/11/12
[8] Giovanni
Boccacio, The Decameron (1348–53), page 4
[9]
Boccacio, The Decameron, page 3
[10] "The Flagellants Attempt to Repel
the Black Death, 1349", EyeWitness to History, www.eyewitnesstohistory.com
(2010) accessed 29/11/12
[11]
Powerpoint on The Black Death by Professor Mark Damen: http://www.usu.edu/markdamen/1320Hist&Civ/PP/slides/06blackdeath.pdf
accessed 29/11/12
[12] J. R.
Lumby (ed), Chronicon Henrici Knighton vel Cnitthon monachi Leycestrensis, page
59
[13] Norman
F. Cantor, In the Wake of the Plague, (2001 United States of America), page 119
[14]
Boccaccio, The Decameron, page 2
[15] P.J.P
Goldberg, Medieval England A Social History 1250-1550, page 170
[16] P.J.P
Goldberg, Medieval England A Social History 1250-1550, page 166
[17]
Boccaccio, The Decameron, page 2
[18]
Boccaccio, The Decameron, page 3
[19] P.J.P
Goldberg, Medieval England A Social History 1250-1550, page 170
[20] J. R.
Lumby (ed), Chronicon Henrici Knighton vel Cnitthon monachi Leycestrensis, page
59
[21] The
Black Death, the impact of the fourteenth-century plague, (New York 1982), page
30
[22] P.J.P
Goldberg, Medieval England A Social History 1250-1550, page 169
[23] P.J.P
Goldberg, Medieval England A Social History 1250-1550, page 166
[24] P.J.P
Goldberg, Medieval England A Social History 1250-1550, page 166
[25] P.J.P
Goldberg, Medieval England A Social History 1250-1550, page 166
[26] P.J.P
Goldberg, Medieval England A Social History 1250-1550, page 167
[27] P.J.P
Goldberg, Medieval England A Social History 1250-1550, page 171
[28] P.J.P
Goldberg, Medieval England A Social History 1250-1550, page 171
[29] Charles
F. Mullet, The Bubonic Plague and England, (1956 Kentucky), page 15
