1.2 The Black Plague/Death

  • The Black Death/Plague

    • 1347-1351

  • The Bubonic Plague and Its Impact

    • Bubonic Plague, also known as the Black Death

    • Highly contagious disease spread by fleas that lived on rats

    • Shortly after a person is bitten by a flea they developed swellings and black sores 

    • In a few days, victims died in agony

    • Bubonic plague was an epidemic, an outbreak that spreads quickly and effects a large number of people

      • Wipes out generations of people

      • Entire towns and cities

    • Trade helped the plague spread

      • Fleas from rats infested traders in the East who carried the plague to the Middle East.

    • The plague brought terror and devastation to all regions

    • 35 million Chinese died

    • At its peak 7,000 people a day died in Cairo, Egypt

    • About a third of the European population died

    • The plague devastated the economies around the world

      • Farm and industrial production declined

      • People that survived demanded higher wages and prices rose

      • Peasants revolted

    • Economic decline led to social and political change

      • Feudalism declined as peasant revolts weakened the power of landowners

        • Feudalism is where the king owns nobles who own landowners and they own peasants

      • Decline in Feudalism led to new political systems in which monarchs gained more power and built more powerful nations.

    • The plague threw society into disorder

    • People questioned their faith in the Church 

      • Turned to magic and witchcraft to seek relief

    • Jewish populations were blamed for the plague and as a result, thousands of Jews were murdered



  • The Famine of 1315-1317

    • By the 1300s Europeans were farming almost all the land they could cultivate.

    • A population crisis developed.

    • Climate changes in Europe produced three years of crop failures between 1315-1317 because of excessive rain.

    • As many as 15% of the peasants in some English villages died.

    • One consequence of starvation and poverty was susceptibility to disease.

      • Population of Europe plummet



  • 1347: Plague reached Constantinople

    • Symptoms: 

      • Bulbous

      • Septicemic Form:

        • Almost 100% mortality/death rate

    • Toggenburg Bible, 1411

      • Shows 2 patients with the plague