The Plague: The Black Death

Knowing that the Church couldn’t provide answers to their questions, people started developing their own methods of coping with the Black Death. For example, the Flagellant movement emerged soon after the first breakout of the Black Death. Flagellants were men who travelled to different cities and beat themselves with a whip that had a piece of sharp metal knotted at the end (Constitutional Rights Foundations, 2016). The bleeding Flagellants would fall down and make the shape of the cross. A Heavenly letter was read to God at the end of a procession, pleading for forgiveness and asking to end the plague.

The Black Plague effected Europe religiously because they lost followers of the church so the numbers decreased which led to empty churches. “Population before the Plague was 75,000,000 and after the plague the numbers decreased rapidly by 1351 the population was 51,160,00” (Doc 2). Some of the town or community lost faith in their God because they thought that God should’ve answered their prayers when they were asking for their family members to get better and to heal or make things and people better around them. During this time period people were big believers in God, the people believed that god was powerful, but then after the plague their opinions were mistaken because the church didn’t help at all to make anyone better many people died because of this

The Black Death was the worst epidemic in the history of the world to date. The plague killed off more than a third of the total European population during the mid-1300’s. Several people believed that the plague was punishment from God for the sins of man, while others believed it was brought about by natural causes, and there were yet others who did not care where or why the plague came but only how they could better their own lives.

Many people thought that it was a punishment from God, so this led to people about questioning their faith. This concerns the religious impact of the Black Death, the plague that devastated Europe during the middle of the fourteenth century. It goes into the effect of the Black Death on the Catholic Church and the religious movements that emerged in response to it. The Catholic Churches played a significant role during the Middle Ages because religion was an important aspect of daily life for European Christians. When the Black Death struck Europe somewhere around 1347, the Church struggled to deal with the plague’s “damaging consequences and its reputation suffered as a result.” (History.com, 2010) “ Moreover, a large number of Catholic priests died during the Black Death...this made it even more difficult for the Catholic Church to recover from the shaken faith of its following”. (History.com, 2010). Since many priests had died because of the plague, several uneducated people did not fully understand why this disease was spreading around. They last almost all their faith in God which led to fewer people going to church and practicing their faith. This concludes that the “Black Death contributed to the decline in the confidence and faith of the Christian laity towards the institution of the Church and its leadership”(History.com, 2010). During the middle ages, Catholic Churches held enormous power in Europe and were still very religious and political even after the impact of the Black

As a result of the plague many religious people felt terrified the church had no power over the plague. It was then easier for them to lose faith in God. This would erupt into a blaming battle between the Christians and the Jews. If the tension couldn’t get any thicker between the two, the Christians would turn to murder in Europe, killing

The plague was a disease that devastated Europe and the Christian population. Christians handled the plague very differently than the other groups it affected. The mortality rate for European Christians was an estimated 31%. (Robert S. Gottfried, The Black Death, New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1983.) They believed the plague was a cruel and horrible punishment on the men, women, and children of their society brought upon them by God.

The Bubonic Plague, otherwise known as the Black Death, devastated the world between 1347 and 1351. Due to the plague being transmitted through fleas, many people were susceptible to the disease that wiped out much of the population. The plague caused much throughout Europe because of the number of lives lost, the number of people affected, and the limited amount of medical research that came from this period in time. The number of lives lost caused devastation in Europe.

Beginning in the mid-fourteenth century, a plague swept the world like no other. It struck in a series of waves that continued into the eighteenth century. The first wave was estimated to have killed twenty-five million people, about a third of the Western Europe population at that time. Throughout the different outbreaks, the plague, also known as the Bubonic Plague or the Black Death, caused people to react in several ways. Some people believed the plague was a medical problem that can be treated, some found themselves concerned only with their own greed, still others believed there was nothing they could do and reacted in fear, and most people believed it was a form of divine

The plague, otherwise known as “the Black Death”, brought on much turmoil and suffering for the habitants of Pistoia. Numerous ordinances were put into effect with the primary goal of limiting the spread of the plague as well as to keep the city as healthy as possible. These ordinances typically focused on confinement, i.e. no one goes to Pisa and Luca and no one from Pisa and Luca is allowed to enter Pistoia (ordinance 1), how death and burials are to be processed (ordinances 3-12), and how butchers were to handle their animals and animal carcasses (ordinances 13-19). Essentially, confinement was targeted in hopes of stopping the spread of the infection while keeping the city isolated. Secondly, how the bodies of plague victims and their

The survivors of the plague were more cynical, fearful, and less virtuous than ever. The murder rate during this time tripled what it had been in the past and people became care free. The religious began to question their beliefs and church officials began to indulge. Many wondered why they should obey the old customs when the Black Death could easily resurface

In Italy, there was death around for many people, families would fall apart as members died. “The Lord is punishing us”, the Christians would say. Meanwhile, in Syria, the Muslims saw the plague as a divine act, they believed that if it came from God that it might be some type of blessing, so they accepted it. Still, in Europe, people were starting to see things as ‘less lively’. Even though the plague brought many bad things, it also brought something good, as Jews and Christians came together to pray. The Jews would read the book of the law and Christians with the

25-50 million people. That is the amount of casualties caused by the Black Death, it was brought to Europe in the 1340’s by ships returning from the eastern side of the world. However, most of the men on the ships were already dead or nearly dead, sick with the terrible virus. Although the Black Death is very lethal and difficult to survive, they have now found ways to prevent the virus from infecting anyone else.

During that time, these events were unexplainable and no one knew what to do. People turned to witchcraft to cure the plague with magic, some people saw it as God’s punishment, and some people blamed it on the Jews and accused them of poisoning the wells, while others just accepted the fact that they were going to die. As workers and employers died, production declined and so did the economy. The survivors wanted higher wages, leading to inflation. The higher prices were hard on landowners, and forced them off their farms and revolts followed when farmers went to towns looking for work and guilds refuse to hire. The Roman Catholic Church experienced scandals, division, and spiritual crisis when it is not able to provide strong leadership during the crisis of the plague. The decline of the Black Death is thought to have been influenced by several factors, including staying away from infected humans, rats, and fleas, as well as carrying out proper hygiene, inhaling pure air by sitting between two burning fires, traveling less, warmer temperatures, and loud noises which were believed to have driven infection out of a city or village. The Black Death came to its end in 1350, although it has never completely disappeared

From 1347 to 1352 a string of the bubonic plague lay waste to western Europe, killing millions. In Italy, nearly a third of the population died; in England, half. The plague was a looming presence, always in the back of people’s minds. The symptoms of the Black Death caused great strife for westerners. Giovanni Boccaccio, an Italian writer and poet, described the symptoms he saw during the first outbreak of the plague: “Not such were they as in the East, where an issue of blood from the nose was a manifest sign of inevitable death; but in men a women alike it first betrayed itself by the emergence of certain tumors in the groin or the armpits, some of which grew as large as a common apple, others as an egg, some more, some less, which the common folk called gavoccioli.” Both Italy and England desperately searched for answers, claiming that the Black Death was the cause of a higher force, but realising that the squalor of their countries also played a part in spreading the illness. Although Italy and England both had a common explanation for the cause of the plague and they both implemented better public health standards, they adopted different public health practices after the plague.

The Black Plague, also known as Black Death, the Great Mortality, and the Pestilence, is the name given to the plague that ravaged Europe between 1347 and 1351. It is said to be the greatest catastrophe experienced by the western world up to that time. In Medieval England, the Black Death killed 1.5 million people out of an estimated 4 million people between 1348 and 1350. There was no medical knowledge in England to cope with the disease. After 1350, it stroke England another six times by the end of the century.