The Black Plague In The Middle Ages

"The Black Death" is known as the worst natural disaster in European history. The plague spread throughout Europe from 1346-1352. Those who survived lived in constant fear of the plague's return and it did not disappear until the 1600s. Not only were the effects devastating at the time of infection, but during the aftermath as well. "The Black Death" of the fourteenth century dramatically altered Europe's social and economic structure.

Through the years of 1347 and 1350, a terrible plague took over Europe. In those three years, the plague killed approximately 25 million people or one-third of Europe’s population. Not one family did not lose a family member to the plague. About one hundred people died daily, and mostly of them were never buried in a proper manner. Their bodies scattered the street of the city unclaimed. This plague was the Black Death, the most deadly natural disaster in the history of Europe. The loss of life was tremendous, and the damage was immense. Across Europe, the Black Death appeared and disrupted people daily routine. The Black Death shattered the people of the Middle Ages ways of life. It demolished the economy and as well of traditional beliefs. There was no returning to the ways of Middle Age life that has been for the past five hundred years. The Black Death brought an end to the Middle Ages.

The Black Death, the most severe epidemic in human history, ravaged Europe from 1347-1351. This plague killed entire families at a time and destroyed at least 1,000 villages. Greatly contributing to the Crisis of the Fourteenth Century, the Black Death had many effects beyond its immediate symptoms. Not only did the Black Death take a devastating toll on human life, but it also played a major role in shaping European life in the years following.

Starting in the early 14th century and ending around 1353, the Black Death was a horrific time in history. The Bubonic Plague killed about sixty-seven percent of Europe’s population. People living in Europe at the time of the Black Death responded differently to the devastation around them: many people fled, some stayed to investigate, and others saw it as an opportunity to obtain what others had lost, mostly money.

The Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in history. Many Western Europeans were living with this disease for nearly four hundred years. The disease was able to spread rapidly and affected Europe in many ways. Since this disease was rapidly spreading throughout Europe it scared many of the people during this time. Many historians considered the Black Death in the fourteenth century a turning point in Western European history. According to Streissguth, “Before the epidemic of bubonic and pneumonic plague died out three years later, it would kill more than one-third of the continent’s population.” Hundreds of thousand people died from this horrific disease which changed Europe forever. Near the end of the fourteenth century it was obvious to the people living during that time that the plague had become a regular and destructive aspect of life. The plague had left many rural areas untouched after the late 1300’s but the epidemic began almost every decade. When the Black Death began to spread across Europe it caused unimaginable fear, panic, and chaos for the people. The Black Death was an important turning point in Europe, where the economics, politics, and society would never be the same. The Black Death spread rapidly across Europe causing many people to become ill and die which resulted in social, economic, and religious upheavals.

They believed the outbreak to be merited because of the evils that occurred not only because of them but also their forebears. This belief led some to live their lives in piety, trying to atone for their sins. Thus affecting the way they viewed death because of the plague and resulting in a change of the way they lived their lives. An archetype of this opinion was seen in the flagellants, a radical religious group during the plague. They believed that in order to take away the plague they would have to appease God. In the hopes to achieve this atonement this group would conduct sessions of penance in which they would whip themselves to the point of bloodshed. This point illustrates how the sheer quantity of death due to this epidemic was so abnormal that people perceived this to be the end of times and took to extremes to try to stall this impending apocalypse.

When it comes to the Middle Ages all people think about are knights, kings, queens, and castles. But something happened during that period of time that changed Europe completely. The Bubonic Plague, also known as the Black Plague or the Black Death, was one of the most deadly outbreaks in Europe. In total it killed about 75-200 million people in Europe and some parts of Asia. The plague spread quickly and if you got it, there was no cure. The Black Plague affected Europe with trade from the East, because of all the deaths it brought, because it caused political chaos, because it caused the people to question their faith, and because it led up to the regrowth of Europe.

The Black Death is one of the worst disease in ancient history. It was an epidemic that killed millions of people between 1349-1351.Many people suffered from lack of care and lack of remedy, also it became difficult to find a medical person to diagnose such a horrible disease. Boccaccio, Tura and Venette describe the physical and social effect of Europe when the Plague had begun. In this selection, they describe how people respond and changed their behaviors .People were so scared from Plague therefore, some of them searched isolated place to abode .Another type of people would enjoyed the life with drinking ,singing, dancing, and telling jokes with each other and tried to forget the horrible disease. Other types of people believed to run away from effected place and they abandon all their family and belongings. Plague killed a lot of people and it effected on Europe’s population.

From the reading “The Black Death”, the descriptions that stood out the most were the effects that the plague had on the animals. As described by the author, the plague effected both humans and animals. In paragraph seven, this point was emphasized in very grave details. The author stated that “One day, for instance, the rags of a pauper who had died from the disease were thrown into the street, where they attracted the attention of two pigs. In their wonted fashion, the pigs first of all gave the rags a thorough mauling with their snouts, after which they took them between their teeth and shook them against their cheeks. And within a short time they began to writhe as though they had been poisoned, then they both dropped dead to the ground”

In the middle ages one of the biggest impact on society was the black plague. The black plague was huge, and went on for a long time. It had a lot of BACKGROUND and symptoms it, it effected the middle ages a ton, and the people came up with many weird was of trying to find a cure for it. The plague killed about 25 million people, about 1/3 of the population! Hope you learn a lot from this.

The black plague struck Europe from 1347 to 1351. The infected bacteria traveled through ships from China and Inner Asia to Europe then spread on land. From the devastating impact on the population, to the workings of the society, the impact of the plague was felt on all levels of the social order. The Black Death’s impact on society and the modern world is deep, and although there were many different effects, some had more importance than others. The most significant effects of the Black Death was the church’s shifting place in society, the weakening of feudalism, and the decline of manorialism due to the large effects on society.

The Black Death was the name given to a plague that occurred in the mid 13th century which caused at least a third of the world’s population to perish. During the years in which the plague spread across Europe, many aspects of life for the people that lived were altered forever. This epidemic was like no other in history and had an unprecedented outcome. The effects of the Black Plague on society were substantial resulting in great changes of social classes through role reorganization, changes in belief systems, and ways that society interacted. Before the Black Plague came to Europe, there was a great famine during the early years of the 13th century.

In the Later Middle Ages, from 1300 to 1450, a plague is seen spreading and killing mass amounts of people in Europe, this plague would later be named the Black Death. Starting in China in 1331 and then spreading to Europe by cargo ships in 1347. During the Later Middle Ages the climate also changed, dropping the temperature, killing crops, and freezing water supplies. During this period there were also multiple crisis that began to pop up, and not many can be attributed to the Black Death. One must take each event and look for causation case-by-case rather they labeling all with the same brush stroke.

The Bubonic Plague, more commonly referred to as the "Black Death," ravaged Europe between the years 1347 and 1350 (Herzog, 2000). During this short period, according to Herzog (2000), 25 million people (which were about one third of Europe's population at the time) were killed. In another article, Herlihy (1997), however, claimed that two thirds of Europe’s population were killed. Nevertheless, it is ascertained that thousands of people died each week and dead bodies littered the streets. Once a family member had contracted the disease, the entire household was doomed to die. Parents abandoned their children, and parent-less children roamed the streets in search for food. Victims, delirious with

The Black Death was a vicious, fast moving epidemic that whipped out approximately half of the medieval European population. Medieval Europeans were dying at such a rapid rate that they were buried in mass graves like layers of lasagna. The fear of catching the Black Death was so great that people did not want to touch the deceased, so Europeans that volunteered themselves to dispose of the bodies were paid a high wage. Europeans that came down with the black death (also known as the bubonic plague) would develop buboes, which was classified as swelling of the neck or groin area. Plague victims would experience flu like symptoms such as the chills and fever, causing an agonizing death. Medieval Europeans did not know what scientists today know about sickness and how it is carried by rats and ticks, so they came up with explanations that made sense to them with the information they did have.