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Black Death

Decent Essays

THE BLACK DEATH
Matthew Brown
P.1
April 17, y
Around 1339 in northwestern Europe, the population was beginning to outgrow the food supply and a severe economic crisis began to take place. The winters were extremely cold and the summers were dry. Due to this extreme weather, very low crops yielded and those that grew were dying. Inflation became a common occurrence and as famine broke out, people began to worry. The time period of approximately 1339 to 1346 is now known as the famine before the plague (history). These seven bad years of weather and famine lead to the greatest plague of all times. In 1347, endemic to Asia, The Black Death began spreading throughout Western Europe. Over the time of three years, the plague killed one …show more content…

“But there were others they had forgotten…the children. They were by all means frequent receivers of the disease and it killed them almost instantly or within a few hours”. The children in plague infested towns had premature exposures which allowed for the disease to affect them physically and mentally. Once infected, the parents of the children would abandon them on the streets instead because many could not bear to watch them die (Science National Geographic). The females who contracted the plague were especially disregarded because they could not carry on the family name for generations to come. The children could not provide for themselves, so they suffered greatly.
As the Church lost spiritual authority, the clergy of the Church began leaving. About sixty percent of the clergy abandoned their Christian duties and fled. “The monasteries and the clergy suffered the greatest loss” (eyewitness). Many of the Churches finest leaders were quitting and some even moved far away to avoid the problems they were facing. Since many head officials were parting, the Church panicked and began aggressively recruiting others to fill the ranks. As the Monks, Nuns, and Friars continued to disappear, the standards for their replacements lowered. This caused the monasteries to be run by less educated people, leading to a decline of vernacular. They knew the townspeople felt that the Church had let them down, because any blow suffered by the Church was also a direct blow

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