| Week 3
|
LECTURE
THE BLACK DEATH |
The Black Death is modern (C19) term to describe specific pandemic of 1347-50. Followed by number of later epidemics, eg 1361-2 -- so-called Grey Death -- and many regional and local outbreaks.
How do we know about it? Chronicles, bishops' registers, manor court rolls, wills.
What was it? Traditional view (Yersinia pestis spread by fleas carried by rats), ie bubonic plague, but only historians tend to find this convincing (but not Cantor, Cohn). Epidemiologists and biologists periodically dissent. The main thing is, lots of people died. Perhaps some 45%, though impact uneven and parts of central Europe spared.
Why did so many die? McNeill -- new disease > pandemic / high mortality > epidemic / lower mortality > endemic / 'background' mortality. Later epidemics probably hit especially the young (and perhaps males more than females).
What did medievals think about it?
Divine
punishment for sin. Hence need to look around and root out sin and hence
chroniclers etc. obsession with sin. We can read behind this discourse
of sin.
Eg labourers before the plague
(high population) were cheap, but made scarce by high mortality so (supply
and demand economics) demanded higher wages which they could then spend
on clothing, food or even leisure. Response from educated elites was these
people of greedy (why should they earn more for doing the same work as
before?), idle, and disrespectful of their proper (divinely sanctioned)
place.
Implications of the plague.
Old view (cf Huizinga) -- waning
of the Middle Ages. Assumption that demographic recession must be mirrored
by economic recession. Sense that emergence of nation states, decline of
authority of papacy, failure of crusading ideal, growing importance of
vernacular over Latin represents a falling away from an (elitist, intellectual,
male, authoritarian) ideal
Economic: Labourers
better off (despite labour legislation) -- stimulate demand for goods and
services (but especially basic commodities rather than luxury goods eg
metal cooking utensils, inexpensive cloth, furnishings) -- hence artisans
better off.
but restructuring -- Flemish textiles
in decline, development of new rural cloth production
Peasant agriculturalists -- less
competiton for land so rents etc. tend to fall, but grain prices also tend
to fall (in time) whilst the cost of hired labour goes up.
Agrarian: Shift away from intensive arable. Growing importance of pastoralism. Rural industry. Lords see rental income etc. fall > leasing out of manors. Serfdom becomes increasingly irrelevant (but 'second serfdom' in parts of Eastern Europe)
Urban: Smaller, but no worse for it! Artisans increasingly affluent / assertive -- friction with established 'patriciates'. Development of rural industry and associated growth of urban centres, but not necessarily at expense of established towns to begin with.
Cultural: Shift in cultural patronage from primarily great landlords (including religious institutions) to persons of lesser rank -- patronage of parish churches, proliferation of books of hours. Also shift in types of patronage -- almshouses, schools and colleges rather than monasteries and hospitals. Concern with burial / memorialisation (cf. Cohn) after traumatic experience of mass graves etc. Search for order and stability -- conduct literature, sumptuary legislation (what dress people could wear).
BUT always difficult to distinguish
evolutionary change that may owe little to Black Death, from change accelerated
by Black Death, from change initiated by Black Death. Examples of the Perpendicular
(English architectural style) and representations of death.