Chapman, Anne. 2014.

Coping With Catastrophe: The Black Death Of The Fourteenth Century, adapted
version. PDF. National Center for History in the Schools, University of California, Los Angeles.
https://whfua.history.ucla.edu/units/five/closeup/Era05_closeup551.php.

Legacies of the Crisis

Historical background

The significance of changes in society resulting from the Black Death is a matter of debate
among historians. No one disagrees that the Black Death and plague recurrences caused the
populations of Europe, north Africa, and the Middle East to take a spectacular nosedive.
Moreover, demographic recovery was slow. Only around 1550 did Europe’s population reach
the level at which it had been before 1348. However, the populations of European countries
had already begun to decline during the first half of the century. This was partly due to the
rapid population growth and expansion in the previous century. This had made it necessary to
cultivate unproductive, marginal land because all the better land had already been put to the
plow to meet the increasing demand for food. This practice in turn depressed wages, created
unemployment, and left many people impoverished. Major outbreaks of animal disease, plus
recurring poor harvests resulting from climate change, also contributed to gradual population
decline. More people were starving or dying of malnutrition-related illness even before the
arrival of the Black Death.

One of the immediate consequences of the Black Death was a crisis in the workforce. The
rapid loss of workers in every occupation, and of customers for every product, resulted first
of all in economic dislocation. Demand for goods fell abruptly and steeply, and both prices
and wages plummeted. Many enterprises shut down. Farms and building programs were
abandoned; textile workshops and universities closed. After the Black Death and the panic-
stage passed, surviving workers came to be much in demand. This labor scarcity drove wages
and prices up. In 1363, a Florentine chronicler observed: “Serving girls and unskilled women
with no experience in service ... and [others] working with their hands want three times or
more their usual pay ...” In many cases people previously held to be unqualified had to be
allowed to do jobs for which no one qualified could be found. Women, contrary to tradition,
were permitted to serve as witnesses. Scribes not admitted to the guild of notaries could draw
up legal contracts. People who knew no Latin were hired as teachers. There was employment
for everyone. Contemporaries commented on the fact that beggars had disappeared, and
“there were not at that time any needy poor.” A general, long-term increase in the income and
standard of living of the lower classes was one of the legacies of the Black Death.

The practice of exchanging serfdom for freedom by making a lump sum cash payment and
thereafter paying the landlord a money rent instead of labor service had been going on in
Europe for many generations. However, it became much more widespread after the Black
Death when labor was at a premium. If a lord refused his serfs’ demand for freedom, they
would simply leave, knowing that there were many other lords eager for workers only too
pleased to give them what they wanted. Serfs often upped the ante, and demanded not only
freedom and a small rent payment, but also assurances that the lord would provide them with
the loan of oxen, seed-corn, tools, or other privileges in return for their agreeing to stay on. In
response to this labor squeeze, many landlords turned from the growing of crops to raising

sheep, which was less labor-intensive. Records from the Middle East show a significant
increase in protein in working class diets and consumption of mutton almost doubling.
Every few years in the second half of the fourteenth century royal decrees and laws were
enacted, demanding that workers stop asking for and employers stop paying wages higher
than they were in 1347. This shows how widespread wage hikes were and how impossible it
was to stop them. Other evidence also shows that the working classes benefited from the
labor shortage. The size of the average peasant holding increased. This affected inheritance
patterns: it became common for all the sons in a family, not just the eldest son, to inherit a
piece of the father’s lands. By the fifteenth century even daughters were getting a piece of the
estate as a legacy. The upper classes repeatedly complained about and enacted laws to control
increased spending by workers, who were buying clothes and other personal items
traditionally thought appropriate only for the bourgeoisie or nobility. Ordinances were
repeatedly issued to regulate the size of sleeves, the length of women’s dresses, the kind of
fur used to trim collars, and the types of food served at weddings of different social classes.
These regulations had little or no effect. In fact, tensions between classes led to several major
uprisings by peasants and urban workers, though such revolts were not unknown before the
Black Death.

The plague discredited the leaders of society—the medical, political, intellectual, and
religious authorities who had clearly failed in their social function of protecting the welfare of
the people. For instance, although many clergymen admirably risked their lives during plague
outbreaks by visiting the sick, hearing confessions, and giving final rites, many others did
not. Whatever the precise reality, the perception was widespread at the time that the
churchmen’s behavior in this crisis was disappointing at best and despicable at worst. Of
twenty-two European chroniclers who commented on the behavior of the clergy during the
pestilence, only one is entirely favorable. Most of the others are wholly, and sometimes
virulently critical. A bishop in England wrote to his flock that, “since no priest can be found
willing ... to visit the sick and administer to them the sacraments of the Church,” he gave
permission to plague victims on the point of death to confess their sins to anyone, clergyman
or not. He added, as if in proof of ultimate desperation, “if no man is present, even to a
woman.” John Wycliffe and Martin Luther would both later argue in favor of the “priesthood
of all believers,” considering ordained priests unnecessary.

The Black Death undoubtedly influenced the subject-matter of visual arts for a century or
more. Paintings of plague-protecting saints were popular, especially on banners carried in the
many religious processions, as well as scenes showing victims being shot by demons with
plague- arrows. Scenes of the Dance of Death became very common: death represented as a
skeleton leading by the hand a procession of kings, princes, bishops, merchants, good wives,
and beggars in a long dancing line towards the grave. Typical of the mood is the tomb of a
cardinal who died just before 1400. It has a sculpture showing his decomposing body with the
inscription “Let the great and humble, by our example, see well to what state they shall be
inexorably reduced ... rotten corpse, morsel and meal for worms.” In line with the broader
anti-authoritarian attitudes, artists and scholars began to be more innovative than had earlier
generations. The arts became more naturalistic and observation-based, while scholarly writers
dared to look at pagan sources instead of restricting themselves to Christian authorities. They
also began to write in vernacular languages, not just in Latin, the language of the Church.

Finally, violence and lawlessness increased in the aftermath of the Black Death. For instance,
twice as many homicides occurred in England in the twenty-year period after 1349 than
between 1320 and 1340, even though the population had drastically declined.