Plague and Progress in the 1300s

Between the years 1000 and 1300 the availability of food in Christendom allowed its population to grow 2.5 times. Paris, Milan, Florence and Venice had become cities with more than 80,000 inhabitants. London, Cologne and Barcelona had more than 40,000. Rome, Naples, Vienna, Prague and Lisbon had more than 20,000, and Dublin had more than 10,000. But a decline in Europe's economy was on its way, and it would be followed by the worst of plagues.

Farm expansion in Western Europe had come to an end by the year 1300. Marginally productive lands had been abandoned. Pastures, heaths and meadows had been converted to farming, and cattle raising had declined, reducing the amount of protein in diets and reducing manure for fertilizer, contributing to a decline in crop yields. This coincided with a climate change caused by the advance of polar and alpine glaciers, bringing longer winters, wetter weather and what is called a "Little Ice Age" – which was to last for the next 400 years. The growing season shortened, and a major food source from the sea – herring – began to disappear.

Viking settlements in Greenland disappeared. Grain production failed in Iceland and diminished in Scandinavia. Rains In the year 1315 were incessant, and people talked about the return of the flood described in Genesis. Crops were ruined. With food shortages came a rise in food prices. Between the years 1315 to 1317, famines developed in the poorer areas of Christendom. Hunger produced cannibalism. It is said that  in Poland and Silesia the bodies of hanged criminals were taken down from the gallows as food for the poor.

Technological Progress

Europe was enduring its longest economic depression. But linen production as an alternative to wool had arisen. Metal and glass industries were growing. The use of free labor – in contrast to slave gangs of ancient times – would in the 1300s contribute to inventions such as cogwheels, gears and suction pumps in mining. Power driven bellows were soon to make it possible to fully melt iron. Rare and expensive in ancient times, iron would soon become inexpensive and its use more widespread.

Europe was benefiting from geographical advantages. It had a variety of slow-moving rivers on which goods could be transported, which was easier and cheaper than transporting goods across land by pack animals as was done in some other parts of the world.  Europe had just enough mountains for the slow moving rivers useful in transforming water movement into mechanical power.

In Europe governments were uninterested in taking over or holding a monopoly on any industry, leaving industry freer than in China. Instead of businessmen being dependent on government for favor, monarchs in Europe were dependent on businessmen. If a monarch repudiated his debts he was in effect killing the geese that laid the golden eggs.

The increase in world trade and movement of people within the last two centuries exposed more people to the bubonic plague. Rats gave the disease to fleas, the rats were transported by humans and fleas passed the disease – a bacterium, Yersinia pestis – to humans by biting them. Then diseased humans made the disease airborne, spreading it to the lungs of others.

In December 1347 the disease was in the Crimea and Constantinople. That same month it spread to Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica and Marseille. By June, 1348, it was in Spain, Italy and as far north as Paris. By June 1349 it had advanced through London and central Europe. From there in the year and a half that followed it swung as if on a hinge in central Europe, through Ireland and through Scandinavia. It reached people weakened by decades of hard times and malnutrition.

Black Death and Sin

Spread of the disease was made worse by crowding in the cities. Some cities lost from half to two-thirds of their population. Some small cities became ghost towns. Common folks were dying as well as the most pious. Perhaps a third of the Catholic clergy died, with priests who attended the afflicted being hit the hardest. The poor were hit harder than aristocrats because they were generally in poorer health and less able to resist the disease and because they lived closer together. Wolves fared better and appeared in some cities.

The mindset of these times was on the spiritual as causation rather than the purely physical. The benefit of wearing the kind of medical mask that people might wear in the 21st century was unknown. The belief in witchcraft was revitalized. There was panic. Believing that the end of the world was at hand, some groups engaged in frenzied bacchanals and orgies. People called the Flagellants believed with others that the plague was the judgment of God on sinful mankind. The Flagellants traveled the country, men and women flogging each other. They preached that anyone doing this for thirty-three days would be cleansed of all his sins – one day for every year that Christ lived. The Church was still on guard against innovative religious proclamations, and in 1349 Pope Clement VI condemned the movement.

The wandering mobs focused their wrath upon clergy who opposed them, and they targeted Jews, whom they blamed for inciting God's wrath. In Germany rumors arose that Jews had caused the plague by poisoning the water. Pogroms followed. Jews were arrested. Their fortunes were seized by the lords under whose jurisdictions they lived, and Jews were put to death by burning. The attacks on Jews were condemned by Clement VI, and he threatened excommunication for those Christians who harmed Jews.

The success of this greatest of plagues was limited and destined to diminish as it had centuries before in Europe. The body that the bacterium entered was its environment and source of life. It used up its environment and again faded away, but not completely.

Depopulation, Rebellion and Social Progress

It has been roughly estimated that a third of England died from the Black Death of 1348-49, and perhaps this is not far from the percentage of losses suffered in other areas of Europe.  Much farm land went into disuse, reducing the output of food. Farm animals died, further diminishing the food supply. With all the deaths and drop in demand for food, the price of food dropped. In Western Europe, with fewer people to work the demand for labor increased, as did wages.

The shortage of labor increased the demand for slaves, cutting into the demand for free labor. Wealthy merchants vied for servants to staff their households. Craftsmen and shopkeepers felt that they had to keep slaves. Cobblers, carpenters, weavers and woolworkers bought men and women from the slave dealers to help in their industries. And more slaves were put on the market as hungry parents sold their children, preferring their children's enslavement to watching them starve to death.

With labor in short supply, common people were aware of their added value as producers and eager to improve their situation. In response to rising wages, authorities started to fix wages at a low level. Hostility toward employers and authorities increased. Peasants and other workers tried to dodge these impositions. Peasants called for a reduction in service obligations. In cities, workers rose against the wealthy merchants who had been running city hall. Peasants and workers revolted in Spain, the Netherlands, southern Germany, Italy, and England.

In England, some asked why there was bondage when all were from one father and mother – Adam and Eve. Rebellion was mixed with religious fervor and a call for holding everything in common and for the abolition of differences between lord and serf. But in most of England were castles with soldiers enough to control local peasants, and the peasants failed to transform their questions and hostilities into successful social revolution.

But other changes were taking place. Land had become cheaper to buy. With fewer people to labor in agriculture, serfdom was diminishing in Western Europe. Landlords in need of people to work their lands had begun renting out their land to peasants for sharecropping, and great estates were being replaced by small farms.

The opposite, however, was happening in Eastern Europe. There, populations had been less dense and towns smaller and more distant from one another. In Eastern Europe the availability of land had given peasants freedom and opportunity, and serfdom had all but disappeared. But, following the plague, this changed. Large estates were not regulated by governmental authority, and they were able to force peasants to work their land under the added servitude of serfdom.

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