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Death And The Black Death

Decent Essays

The Black Death
The Black Death was a plague that devastated Europe in the fourteenth century. Trade routes, especially, were overrun with people dying from this plague. These trade routes were covered in dirt and full of plenty of people in close quarters, making this plague more damaging. About one out of three people died at the hand of this vile disease, and no one could figure out how it was spread. Anarchy spread throughout Europe. People guessed the causes and tried to deal with the disease, but it still spread like wildfire. Some regions were spared from this plague, but plenty towns were almost completely wiped out (Pavlac 177). The Black Death caused many people in fourteenth-century Europe to go to the extremes in behavior and religion.
Petrarch’s view of the plague was painfully poetic and bleak. He depicted people as terrified and confused, while expressing his own fear. The turmoil in his letter shows that no one truly seemed to know what was happening, which just caused more chaos and terror. Petrarch himself was consumed with worry about his fate, and seemed to feel as if the plague was caused by “the wrath of God, for certainly I would think that our misdeeds deserve it” (Petrarch). Clearly the people of Europe must have done something to anger God, according to Petrarch. He believes, like many others during this period, that the people of Europe deserved this terrible plague, even though he despised the conditions and anarchy. Fear clouded the

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