essay on the black death

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Black Death

By: History.com Editors

Updated: March 28, 2023 | Original: September 17, 2010

The Black Death was a devastating global epidemic of bubonic plague that struck Europe and Asia in the mid-1300s. The plague arrived in Europe in October 1347, when 12 ships from the Black Sea docked at the Sicilian port of Messina. People gathered on the docks were met with a horrifying surprise: Most sailors aboard the ships were dead, and those still alive were gravely ill and covered in black boils that oozed blood and pus. Sicilian authorities hastily ordered the fleet of “death ships” out of the harbor, but it was too late: Over the next five years, the Black Death would kill more than 20 million people in Europe—almost one-third of the continent’s population.

How Did the Black Plague Start?

Even before the “death ships” pulled into port at Messina, many Europeans had heard rumors about a “Great Pestilence” that was carving a deadly path across the trade routes of the Near and Far East. Indeed, in the early 1340s, the disease had struck China, India, Persia, Syria and Egypt.

The plague is thought to have originated in Asia over 2,000 years ago and was likely spread by trading ships , though recent research has indicated the pathogen responsible for the Black Death may have existed in Europe as early as 3000 B.C.

Symptoms of the Black Plague

Europeans were scarcely equipped for the horrible reality of the Black Death. “In men and women alike,” the Italian poet Giovanni Boccaccio wrote, “at the beginning of the malady, certain swellings, either on the groin or under the armpits…waxed to the bigness of a common apple, others to the size of an egg, some more and some less, and these the vulgar named plague-boils.”

Blood and pus seeped out of these strange swellings, which were followed by a host of other unpleasant symptoms—fever, chills, vomiting, diarrhea, terrible aches and pains—and then, in short order, death.

The Bubonic Plague attacks the lymphatic system, causing swelling in the lymph nodes. If untreated, the infection can spread to the blood or lungs.

How Did the Black Death Spread?

The Black Death was terrifyingly, indiscriminately contagious: “the mere touching of the clothes,” wrote Boccaccio, “appeared to itself to communicate the malady to the toucher.” The disease was also terrifyingly efficient. People who were perfectly healthy when they went to bed at night could be dead by morning.

Did you know? Many scholars think that the nursery rhyme “Ring around the Rosy” was written about the symptoms of the Black Death.

Understanding the Black Death

Today, scientists understand that the Black Death, now known as the plague, is spread by a bacillus called Yersinia  pestis . (The French biologist Alexandre Yersin discovered this germ at the end of the 19th century.)

They know that the bacillus travels from person to person through the air , as well as through the bite of infected fleas and rats. Both of these pests could be found almost everywhere in medieval Europe, but they were particularly at home aboard ships of all kinds—which is how the deadly plague made its way through one European port city after another.

Not long after it struck Messina, the Black Death spread to the port of Marseilles in France and the port of Tunis in North Africa. Then it reached Rome and Florence, two cities at the center of an elaborate web of trade routes. By the middle of 1348, the Black Death had struck Paris, Bordeaux, Lyon and London.

Today, this grim sequence of events is terrifying but comprehensible. In the middle of the 14th century, however, there seemed to be no rational explanation for it.

No one knew exactly how the Black Death was transmitted from one patient to another, and no one knew how to prevent or treat it. According to one doctor, for example, “instantaneous death occurs when the aerial spirit escaping from the eyes of the sick man strikes the healthy person standing near and looking at the sick.”

How Do You Treat the Black Death?

Physicians relied on crude and unsophisticated techniques such as bloodletting and boil-lancing (practices that were dangerous as well as unsanitary) and superstitious practices such as burning aromatic herbs and bathing in rosewater or vinegar.

Meanwhile, in a panic, healthy people did all they could to avoid the sick. Doctors refused to see patients; priests refused to administer last rites; and shopkeepers closed their stores. Many people fled the cities for the countryside, but even there they could not escape the disease: It affected cows, sheep, goats, pigs and chickens as well as people.

In fact, so many sheep died that one of the consequences of the Black Death was a European wool shortage. And many people, desperate to save themselves, even abandoned their sick and dying loved ones. “Thus doing,” Boccaccio wrote, “each thought to secure immunity for himself.”

Black Plague: God’s Punishment?

Because they did not understand the biology of the disease, many people believed that the Black Death was a kind of divine punishment—retribution for sins against God such as greed, blasphemy, heresy, fornication and worldliness.

By this logic, the only way to overcome the plague was to win God’s forgiveness. Some people believed that the way to do this was to purge their communities of heretics and other troublemakers—so, for example, many thousands of Jews were massacred in 1348 and 1349. (Thousands more fled to the sparsely populated regions of Eastern Europe, where they could be relatively safe from the rampaging mobs in the cities.)

Some people coped with the terror and uncertainty of the Black Death epidemic by lashing out at their neighbors; others coped by turning inward and fretting about the condition of their own souls.

Flagellants

Some upper-class men joined processions of flagellants that traveled from town to town and engaged in public displays of penance and punishment: They would beat themselves and one another with heavy leather straps studded with sharp pieces of metal while the townspeople looked on. For 33 1/2 days, the flagellants repeated this ritual three times a day. Then they would move on to the next town and begin the process over again.

Though the flagellant movement did provide some comfort to people who felt powerless in the face of inexplicable tragedy, it soon began to worry the Pope, whose authority the flagellants had begun to usurp. In the face of this papal resistance, the movement disintegrated.

How Did the Black Death End?

The plague never really ended and it returned with a vengeance years later. But officials in the port city of Ragusa were able to slow its spread by keeping arriving sailors in isolation until it was clear they were not carrying the disease—creating social distancing that relied on isolation to slow the spread of the disease.

The sailors were initially held on their ships for 30 days (a trentino ), a period that was later increased to 40 days, or a quarantine — the origin of the term “quarantine” and a practice still used today. 

Does the Black Plague Still Exist?

The Black Death epidemic had run its course by the early 1350s, but the plague reappeared every few generations for centuries. Modern sanitation and public-health practices have greatly mitigated the impact of the disease but have not eliminated it. While antibiotics are available to treat the Black Death, according to The World Health Organization, there are still 1,000 to 3,000 cases of plague every year.

Gallery: Pandemics That Changed History

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Essay On The Black Death

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: Death , Town , History , Sociology , Health , Population , Europe , Pandemic

Words: 2000

Published: 11/13/2019

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The Black Death

Introduction

The Black Death stands out as one of the most destructive pandemics to occur in human history that claimed many lives in Europe between 1348 and 1350. The underlying cause of the pandemic has been a controversial subject, characterized with different perspectives concerning the explanation for its cause. The first reports of the Black Death were in Europe during the summer of 1346 and this occurred in the town of Caffe in the Crimea. The city of Caffa was under siege by the Tartars who would launch corpses infected with the disease over the walls of the city with the intentions of weakening the city’s defenses. The residents of Caffa escaped the attack to other areas through use of boats and in the process carried the disease with them. The Black Death was a term which collectively referred to three separate plagues with the Bubonic and septicaemic plague being carried by fleas while the pneumonic plague was viral in nature and was spread through the air.

The Black Death killed approximately 30-40 percent of the population, resulting to a significant reduction in the world’s population (Byrne, 2004). As the population in Europe started growing, cities began to grow at unprecedented rate bringing with it conditions like waste accumulation, overcrowding and water pollution which only served to provide an enabling environment for the black death to occur. Various sources attribute the main cause of the Black Death to be the outbreak of bubonic plague as a result of the bacterium yersinia pestis. The plague spread throughout Europe and the Mediterranean as a result of being carried by oriental rat fleas residing on black cats which resided in passenger and merchant ships.

Recent forensic search reveals that the major cause of the Black Death was a bubonic plague thought to have originally come from China and spread to regions of Europe by merchant ships. The European’s population recovered from the plague in duration of one and a half centuries. It is evident that the Black Death pandemic had vast effects on the religious and socio-economic turmoil on the history of Europe.

In order to ascertain the religious and socio-economic consequences of the Black Death, it is important to first analyze an overview of the causes of the Black Death pandemic. Prior to the onset of Black Death during the mid 14th century, Europe had not witnessed epidemic ailments. Historians contest that the Black Death had its origin in China and spread to other parts in Europe by ship. It is evident that the scale of the Black Death pandemic had severe impacts on the social structure of Europe’s population (Campbell, 2009). Due to lack of contemporary records concerning the plague, the principal cause of the pandemic has been subject to controversy with different researchers and historians contesting to different causes of the pandemic. The most accepted explanation for cause of the Black Death was the bubonic plague, which argues that the pathogen responsible for causing the plague is Yersinia pestis transmitted by rats and fleas (Herlihy, 1997). The following section outlines the consequences of the plague with respect to socio-economic and religious factors.

The massive population losses associated with the Black Death meant that it had some effects on the social, economic and religious structures of the European population during the 14th century and the subsequent years that followed in the history of Europe. A rough estimate on the mortality rate of the Black Death suggests that in a period of two years, the pandemic claimed one out of every three lives, nothing like that had ever happened in human history. For instance, it is estimated the Black Death claimed lives of about 45-75 percent population of Florence within one year, resulting to the collapse of its economic system (Herlihy, 1997). About 60 per cent of Venice population died within a span of 18 months, approximately 500-600 deaths daily. Such death rates had significant effects on the population structure of the most affected areas. Higher mortality rates affected certain professions whose line of duty required contact with the already sick, for instance the doctors and clergymen (Ormrod, 1996).

The survival rates during the times of the pandemic for such professions were low. For example, eight physicians died out of nine in Perpignan. The high mortality rates significantly affected the religious structure of Europe’s population since most of the clergies had contact with the patients, and this implied that their survival rates were at stake. Historical accounts report that 30 percent of the cardinals succumbed to the pandemic. Recovery of the population loss took approximately 150 years, with urban population recovering faster due to factors such as immigration. Population in the rural areas recovered gradually also due to increased migration to the urban centers. Special groups were the most affected by the Black Death Pandemic, for instance, the friars. It is evident that the Black Death drew a dividing line in the middle Ages into a strong medieval culture and later middle Ages characterized by a strong population and a reduced population respectively (Byrne, 2004).

The Black Death was responsible for economic disruption in Europe during the 14th century, and its effects propagated in the following years. The most affected were the urban cities since they experienced an economic meltdown due to disruption in business activities because there was no time to concentrate on business yet a plague had hit the population. Projects such as building and construction came to a halt. The plague significantly affected Mills and machinery industry by inflicting death on the skilled personnel who had the ability to attend to such machineries (Olea & Christakos, 2005). The Black Death did not spare artisans either, resulting to an economic sabotage for the guilds. This reveals the severity of the labor shortage during the years that the plague was peaking and the subsequent years that followed. As the population reduced, Europe supply of goods increased sand since there was little population, the prices significantly dropped. This meant that those who survived the plague, their standard of living increased. The economic activities in the rural areas also succumbed to the pandemic. This is because most of the population died, and the few survivors decided to move on. It is evident that there was labor shortage in the rural areas during the peak of the pandemic (Olea & Christakos, 2005). It is arguable that the economic disruption caused by Black Death is responsible for the guild revolts that occurred during the century and rebellions in the rural areas of Europe. For instance, England witnessed the Peasant’s revolt during 1381. There a series of revolts that occurred in Europe, such as the rebellion from Catalonian that took place during 1395, and the Jacquerie rebellion that took place during 1358. This serves to reveal the impacts of the Black Death pandemic with regard to economic disruptions and the social structure of Europe’s population (Olea & Christakos, 2005).

The Black Death pandemic affected all of Europe’s population without discrimination, therefore having serious effects on the social relations of the European population. Most chronicles reported that the plague affected everyone, irrespective of one’s social status. Generally, all the elements that made up the community suffered from the plague. For instance, learning institutions found in places mostly affected by the plague closed down. Historical accounts report that only 26 professors survived out of the 40 found in Cambridge University. Religious institutions also succumbed to the effects of the plague through death of the priests and Bishops and their successors (Ormrod, 1996). The most affected religious institution was the Catholic Church. The increased mortality rates associated with Black Death had immense effects on social relations among European population. The European population during the time had no knowledge of the underlying cause of the plague during the time, because of this; they vested their vengeance of the Jews and other foreigners as possible causes of the plague. This is evident by the massive attacks on Jewish communities during 1349. Even the European governments had no mechanism to approach the plague since there was no one who knew how the plague was transmitted from one person to another; as a result, people believed that it was God’s wrath, which resulted to such devastating occurrences (Herlihy, 1997).

The Black Death pandemic had cultural effects in terms of art and literature in Europe within the generation that had a firsthand experience on the plague and subsequent generations. Chroniclers, who were famous writers, are the ones responsible for keeping records on the events of the Black Death. The despair associated with Black Death got its way into the famous works of art and literature in Europe during the later years in the 14th century. The most striking evidence is the tomb sculptures of the times (Olea & Christakos, 2005). Black Death significantly influenced the decorations on the tomb sculptures. The onset of the 1400 saw some tomb sculptures being designed as a way of remembering the pandemic. Artists who designed sculptures on tombs incorporated themes depicting the Black Death by sculpting bodies showing the signs of the pandemic. The pandemic also got its way into paintings of the time, with a painting style commonly referred to as danse macabre, meaning the Dance of Death (Herlihy, 1997). The painting style emphasized on a combination of skeletons interacting with normal beings during their undertaking of daily activities. The most striking element about the paintings is that each scene had an element of living combined with skeletons. This works of art and literature were commissioned with the aim of remembering the Black Death pandemic. Therefore, the Black Death played a big role in influencing subsequent works of Art and Literature across Europe. (Byrne, 2004).

The Black Death pandemic played a significant role in influencing the political cause of Europe. A significant number of political nobles and reigning monarchs died of the plague. The most notable being the queen of France and the queen of Aragon. The plague also affected government operations since it caused the adjournment of parliaments. The war in Europe came was affected by the plague since most of the soldiers died because of the Black Death pandemic. The most notable political effect of the Black Death pandemic was at local levels of governance, whereby city councils were destroyed and the closure of courts. The effects on political disruption were not permanent because government had to resume its duties immediately after the Black Death pandemic (Cohn, 2002).

An overview of the effects of the Black Death Pandemic serves as a demarcation of the Middle Ages in the European History. The consequences of the Black Death cannot be underestimated in the history of Europe. The economic, social and political disruptions of the Black Death marks an integral part of the History of Europe as evident in its effects described in the paper. It is evident that the Black Death pandemic had vast effects on the religious and socio-economic turmoil on the history of Europe.

Byrne, J. (2004). The Black Death. London: GreenWood Publishing Group. Campbell, B. (2009). Factor markets in England before the Black Death. Continuity and change, 24 (1), 79-106. Cohn, S. (2002). The Black Death Transformed: Disease and Culture in Early Renaissance. London: Arnold Publishers. Herlihy, D. (1997). The Black Death and the Transformation of the West. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Olea, R., & Christakos, G. (2005). Urban Mortality and the Black Death. Detroit, Michigan: Wayne State University Press. Ormrod, W. (1996). The Black Death in England. Stamford, UK: Paul Watkins.

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The Black Death and its Aftermath

• John Brooke

The Black Death was the second pandemic of bubonic plague and the most devastating pandemic in world history. It was a descendant of the ancient plague that had afflicted Rome, from 541 to 549 CE, during the time of emperor Justinian. The bubonic plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis , persisted for centuries in wild rodent colonies in Central Asia and, somewhere in the early 1300s, mutated into a form much more virulent to humans.

At about the same time, it began to spread globally. It moved from Central Asia to China in the early 1200s and reached the Black Sea in the late 1340s. Hitting the Middle East and Europe between 1347 and 1351, the Black Death had aftershocks still felt into the early 1700s. When it was over, the European population was cut by a third to a half, and China and India suffered death on a similar scale.

Traditionally, historians have argued that the transmission of the plague involved movement of plague-infected fleas from wild rodents to the household black rat. However, evidence now suggests that it must have been transmitted first by direct human contact with rodents and then via human fleas and head lice. This new explanation better explains the bacteria’s very rapid movement along trade routes throughout Eurasia and into sub-Saharan Africa.

At the time, people thought that the plague came into Mediterranean ports by ship. But, it is also becoming clear that small pools of plague had been established in Europe for centuries, apparently in wild rodent communities in the high passes of the Alps.

The remains of Bubonic plague victims in Martigues, France.

We know a lot about the impact of the Black Death from both the documentary record and from archaeological excavations. Within the last few decades, the genetic signature of the plague has been positively identified in burials across Europe.

The bacillus was deadly and took both rich and poor, rural and urban: the daughter of King Edward III of England died of the plague in the summer of 1348. But quickly—at least in Europe—the rich learned to barricade their households against its reach, and the poor suffered disproportionately.

Strikingly, if a mother survived the plague, her children tended to survive; if she died, they died with her. In the late 1340s, news of the plague spread and people knew it was coming: plague pits recently discovered in London were dug before the arrival of the epidemic.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder's 1562 painting "The Triumph of Death" depicts the turmoil Europe experienced as a result of the plague.

The Black Death pandemic was a profound rupture that reshaped the economy, society and culture in Europe. Most immediately, the Black Death drove an intensification of Christian religious belief and practice, manifested in portents of the apocalypse, in extremist cults that challenged the authority of the clergy, and in Christian pogroms against Europe’s Jews.

This intensified religiosity had long-range institutional impacts. Combined with the death of many clergy, fears of sending students on long, dangerous journeys, and the fortuitous appearance of rich bequests, the heightened religiosity inspired the founding of new universities and new colleges at older ones.

The proliferation of new centers of learning and debate subtly undermined the unity of Medieval Christianity. It also set the stage for the rise of stronger national identities and ultimately for the Reformation that split Christianity in the 16 th century.

Depiction of the Great Plague of London in 1665 (left) . A copper engraving of a seventeenth-century plague doctor (right) .

The disruption caused by the plague also shaped new directions in medical knowledge. Doctors tending the sick during the plague learned from their direct experience and began to rebel against ancient medical doctrine. The Black Death made clear that disease was not caused by an alignment of the stars but from a contagion. Doctors became committed to a new empirical approach to medicine and the treatment of disease. Here, then, lie the distant roots of the Scientific Revolution.

Quarantines were directly connected to this new empiricism, and the almost instinctive social distancing of Europe’s middling and elite households. The first quarantine was established in 1377 at the Adriatic port of Ragussa. By the 1460s quarantines were routine in the European Mediterranean.

Major outbreaks of plague in 1665 and 1721 in London and Marseille were the result of breakdowns in this quarantine barrier. From the late 17th century to 1871 the Habsburg Empire maintained an armed “cordon sanitaire” against plague eruptions from the Ottoman Empire.

Michel Serre's painting depicting the 1721 plague outbreak in Marseille.

As with the rise of national universities, the building of quarantine structures against the plague was a dimension in the emergence of state power in Europe.

Through all of this turmoil and trauma, the common people who survived the Black Death emerged to new opportunities in emptied lands. We have reasonably good wage data for England, and wage rates rose dramatically and rapidly, as masters and landlords were willing to pay more for increasingly scarce labor.

The famous French historian Marc Bloch argued that medieval society began to break down at this time because the guaranteed flow of income from the labor of the poor into noble households ended with the depopulation of the plague. The rising autonomy of the poor contributed both to peasant uprisings and to late medieval Europe’s thinly disguised resource wars, as nobles and their men at arms attempted to replace rent with plunder.

A depiction of the 1381 Peasant's Revolt in England.

At the same time, the ravages of the Black Death decimated the ancient trade routes bringing spices and fine textiles from the East, ending what is known as the Medieval World System, running between China, India, and the Mediterranean.

By the 1460s, the Portuguese—elbowed out of the European resource wars—began a search for new ways to the East, making their way south along the African coast, launching an economic globalization that after 1492 included the Americas.

And we should remember that this first globalization would lead directly to another great series of pandemics, not the plague but chickenpox, measles, and smallpox, which in the centuries following Columbus’s landing would kill the great majority of the native peoples of the Americas.

In these ways we still live in a world shaped by the Black Death.

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The Black Death, Essay Example

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The Black Death, or Bubonic Plague, was an epidemic that drastically changed society in Medieval Europe. Outbreaks occurred from 1348 to the 1600s and killed approximately one third of the population. The Bubonic Plague’s brutal nature impacted the way people treated each other, their customs, and basic political structure.

Transmission was due to lice, rats, and unsanitary living conditions. The plague’s distinguishing symptoms were buboes, or painful and swollen lymph nodes in the axilla or groin. Other symptoms included headache, seizures, fever, and muscle aches. Once onset began, the disease could kill within a few hours.

Fear of the disease caused people to radically change their behavior and customs. Some isolated themselves, restricting both their diet and social interaction. Others over-indulged in food, drinking, and debauchery. People abandoned not only their cities and homes, but also their friends and family. The sick were often neglected and left to die on their own. Many physicians and clergy refused to see the sick for fear of contracting the plague. Prior to the outbreak, it was custom to die surrounded by friends and family and receive a proper funeral and mourning. During the period of the Black Death, funeral processions were discontinued. Sextons would carry the bodies to the nearest open tomb for disposal. No ceremony was given and many times the dead were thrown onto the streets.

Religious fanaticism heightened during the Black Death. Flagellates would travel throughout Europe, beating themselves to repent for sin. Witch hunts and persecution against Jews intensified.

The extreme drop in population altered the economy and class structure. As the wealth was redistributed, standards of living improved for the survivors. Due to a shortage of workers, peasants were able to demand higher wages. Many nobles were forced to free serfs, as they could no longer afford to keep them. Taxes were increased due to depleted finances and to increase funding for projects such as the Hundred Year War. The tax increases and the lack of desire to pay workers higher wages led to peasant uprisings, weakening the strength of the nobility. As the nobility weakened, the merchant class grew stronger and European society began to transform from feudalism to more of a capitalistic economy.

The severe nature of the Black Death inspired mass fear, which led to changes in the economy, government, and customs of Medieval Europe. Though pestilence took the lives of many and caused people to abandon civilized behavior, after a time, positive changes were able to develop.

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124 Black Death Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

Inside This Article

The Black Death is undoubtedly one of the most significant events in human history. This devastating pandemic, also known as the Bubonic Plague, swept through Europe in the 14th century, resulting in millions of deaths and leaving a lasting impact on society. If you are tasked with writing an essay on this historical event, you may be searching for inspiration and topic ideas. In this article, we have compiled a list of 124 Black Death essay topics and examples to help you get started.

• The causes and origins of the Black Death.
• The impact of the Black Death on medieval Europe.
• The role of rats and fleas in spreading the disease.
• Comparing the Black Death to other major pandemics in history.
• The social and economic consequences of the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on art and literature.
• The medical understanding of the Black Death during the 14th century.
• The role of religious institutions during the Black Death.
• The psychological effects of living through the Black Death.
• The impact of the Black Death on the feudal system.
• The Black Death's impact on labor and the workforce.
• The Black Death's effect on the status of women in medieval society.
• The political consequences of the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of medicine.
• The role of quarantine measures during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's impact on urbanization and migration.
• The Black Death's influence on artistic representations of death.
• The response of different European countries to the Black Death.
• The Black Death and its relationship to climate change.
• The role of superstitions and religious beliefs during the Black Death.
• The impact of the Black Death on trade and commerce.
• The Black Death's effect on the educational system.
• The Black Death's impact on religious practices and beliefs.
• The role of social class during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the emergence of public health measures.
• The Black Death and its impact on the development of cities.
• The Black Death's effect on the psychological well-being of survivors.
• The role of medical practitioners during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the perception of death.
• The Black Death's impact on the decline of feudalism.
• The Black Death's effect on population growth and demographics.
• The role of art in commemorating the victims of the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on religious art and iconography.
• The Black Death's impact on religious pilgrimage.
• The Black Death's effect on family structures and dynamics.
• The role of women in nursing and caregiving during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of public health policies.
• The Black Death's impact on social mobility and upward mobility.
• The Black Death's effect on the perception of physical beauty.
• The role of religious rituals and practices during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on religious sects and heresy.
• The Black Death's impact on the perception of time and mortality.
• The Black Death's effect on the development of cemeteries and burial practices.
• The role of architecture in responding to the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the emergence of hospitals.
• The Black Death's impact on the development of public sanitation systems.
• The Black Death's effect on the funeral industry.
• The role of music and dance during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of mortuary practices.
• The Black Death's impact on the perception of personal hygiene.
• The Black Death's effect on the portrayal of death in literature.
• The role of government and leadership during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the emergence of quarantine laws.
• The Black Death's impact on the development of art as a form of therapy.
• The Black Death's effect on the perception of authority and power.
• The role of religion in providing comfort during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of medical textbooks.
• The Black Death's impact on the perception of illness and disease.
• The Black Death's effect on the concept of personal identity.
• The role of women in herbal medicine during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of personal hygiene practices.
• The Black Death's impact on the perception of physical suffering.
• The Black Death's effect on the portrayal of death in visual arts.
• The role of public spaces during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of healthcare infrastructure.
• The Black Death's impact on the perception of bodily decay.
• The Black Death's effect on the concept of community and solidarity.
• The role of folklore and folk remedies during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of medical education.
• The Black Death's impact on the perception of personal space and boundaries.
• The Black Death's effect on the portrayal of death in theater.
• The role of government propaganda during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of public health campaigns.
• The Black Death's impact on the perception of physical beauty and aesthetics.
• The Black Death's effect on the concept of individualism.
• The role of midwives during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of public hygiene practices.
• The Black Death's impact on the perception of bodily functions.
• The Black Death's effect on the portrayal of death in music.
• The role of religious relics and artifacts during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of medical research.
• The Black Death's impact on the perception of spirituality and afterlife.
• The Black Death's effect on the concept of personal responsibility.
• The role of women in caregiving and nursing during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of personal protective equipment.
• The Black Death's impact on the perception of physical pain and suffering.
• The role of public executions during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of public health regulations.
• The Black Death's impact on the perception of physical disability.
• The Black Death's effect on the concept of mortality and immortality.
• The role of religion in consoling the bereaved during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of medical treatments.
• The Black Death's impact on the perception of aging and senescence.
• The role of religious processions and rituals during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of personal hygiene products.
• The Black Death's impact on the perception of physical attractiveness.
• The Black Death's effect on the concept of fate and destiny.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of personal cleanliness practices.
• The Black Death's impact on the perception of physical health.
• The role of government censorship during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of medical ethics.
• The Black Death's impact on the perception of human fragility.
• The Black Death's effect on the concept of suffering and resilience.
• The role of women in herbal remedies during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of personal care products.
• The Black Death's impact on the perception of physical strength.
• The role of religious relics and symbols during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of medical breakthroughs.
• The Black Death's impact on the perception of spirituality and transcendence.
• The Black Death's effect on the concept of human interconnectedness.
• The role of midwives and female healers during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of personal hygiene habits.
• The role of public health officials during the Black Death.
• The Black Death's influence on the development of medical regulations.
• The Black Death's impact on the perception of physical cleanliness.
• The Black Death's effect on the concept of mortality and meaning of life.
• The role of religion in providing solace and hope during the Black Death.

These essay topics provide a wide range of ideas to explore the various aspects and impacts of the Black Death. Remember to conduct thorough research, gather reliable sources, and structure your essay appropriately to create a comprehensive and engaging piece of writing. Good luck with your essay!

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83 Black Death Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best black death topic ideas & essay examples, ⭐ good research topics about black death, 👍 simple & easy black death essay titles, ❓ research questions about the black death.

• Impact of the Black Death An obvious social impact of the plague is the fact that the Black Death led to a significant reduction in the human population of the affected areas.
• The Catholic Church and the Black Death in the 14th Century Therefore, the essence of this research paper is to investigate the role of Catholic Church during the Black Death, specifically paying attention to the steps the church used to prevent the disease, the Flagellants and […] We will write a custom essay specifically for you by our professional experts 808 writers online Learn More
• Black Death and COVID-19 Comparison The availability of highly complex treatment systems and the provision of medical care to the majority of the population alleviates the potential negative effects of the virus, allowing sick individuals to receive necessary medications.
• The Demographics Impact of Black Death and the Standard of Living Controversies in the Late Medieval This article explores the property rights of the Europeans in the aftermath of the Black Death. In this article, Zapotoczny focuses on the effects of the Black Death.
• Flash Point History Documentary About the Black Death IN order to document the spread of the plague, a number of different maps and graphs are used, allowing the creators to showcase the spread of the plague throughout Europe.
• The Black Death: Causes and Reactions This paper discusses the causes of the Black Death, human contribution to the spread of the disease, and describes the responses to the Black Death.
• Comparison of Black Death and COVID-19 Decameron, the classic piece of medieval literature, starts with a depiction of the devastating plague the Black Death. Luckily, COVID-19 mortality rates are nothing in comparison with the Black Death.
• The Black Death in Europe: Spread and Causes The bacterium persists more commonly in the lymphatic system of the groin, armpits, and neck, and increasing pain of the bubonic elements is one of the central symptoms of the disease.
• The Plague (The Black Death) of 1348 and 1350 European population of nearly 30 to 60% has fallen victims to Black Death which indicates the death of 450 million in the year 1400. The objective of this agency is to track and probe the […]
• The Black Death in Medieval Europe According to the institution, the pestilence that affected France, Italy, Germany, and other countries was majorly a result of some configurations of planets. The Faculty added that the vapor and hot air were also a […]
• Economic Impact of the Black Death in the European Society This paper will focus on the economic impact of the Black Death and the changes that occurred to European society after the catastrophe. The most noticeable effect of the Black Death was the abrupt decline […]
• Early Modern Europe After the Black Death The decrease of the population had a considerable on commercial relations since due to the disappearance of the working class which the main basis in the medieval economy, peasants become more conscious and prudent.
• Black Death of Archbishop and Scientific Progress The death led to the development of potential domains in modern medicine. His closeness to the king would have contributed to the rapid development of science.
• The Black Death Effect on the Medieval Europe It is inappropriate to perceive the problem only in the light of sharply declining numbers of population, and changes in the patterns of settlement.
• Black Death’s Effect on Religion in Europe To fully understand the impact of the Black Death pandemic, it is important to establish the power of the Catholic Church in the years before the appearance of the plague.
• The Black Death and Michael Dols’s Theory The biggest problem is that many believed that it cannot be contagious because of religious reasons, and it has led to numerous casualties. However, the issue is that it was not possible to control the […]
• The Black Death Disease’ History The disease is also believed to have come to Europe from the black mice that were often seen on the merchants’ boats.
• The Black Death, the Late Medieval Demographic Crises, and the Standard of Living Controversies Such claims make the name of the pandemic a moot point because another group of historians dispute the idea that the name originated from the discoloration of the victims’ skins, but it is instead a […]
• The Black Death and Its Influence on the Renaissance
• Plague, Politics, and Pogroms: The Black Death, Rule of Law, and the Persecution of Jews in the Holy Roman Empire
• Black Death and Its Effects on Europe’s Population, Economy, Religion, and Politics
• The Black Death and Bubonic Plague During the Elizabethan Era
• Before and After the Black Death: Money, Prices, and Wages in Fourteenth-Century England
• After the Black Death: Labor Legislation and Attitudes Towards Labor in Late-Medieval Western Europe
• The Black Death and Its Effect on the Change in Medicine
• Diseases and Hygiene Issues in England: The Black Death Plague
• The Black Death: Human History’s Biggest Catastrophe
• The Black Death: Bubonic Plague’s Worst Disaster
• Agricultural and Rural Society After the Black Death
• Economic Shocks, Inter-Ethnic Complementarities and the Persecution of Minorities: Evidence From the Black Death
• The Black Death: Key Facts About the Bubonic Plague
• Microbes and Markets: Was the Black Death an Economic Revolution
• The Black Death and Property Rights
• Confusion and Chaos in Europe During the Spread of the Black Death
• The Most Significant Pandemics -The Black Death
• The Black Death and the Comprehensive Outlook of Human Development
• Demographic Decline Black Death and the Ottoman Turks
• The Black Death: How Different Were Christian and Muslim
• The Black Death and Its Effects on Western Civilization
• Black Death and Its Effects on European and Asian Societies
• The Black Death: Long Term and Short Term Effects
• Black Death Slowly Creeps Across Asia, Europe, and Great Britain
• Adverse Shocks and Mass Persecutions: Evidence From the Black Death
• Pandemics, Places, and Populations: Evidence From the Black Death
• Socio-Economic, Political, Religious, and Cultural Consequences of the Black Death
• The Black Death: The Darkest Period of European History
• Agrarian Labor Productivity Rates Before the Black Death
• The Black Death Killed More Than a Third of the Population
• Black Death and the Devastation It Caused: Political, Economic and Social Structures of Medieval Europe
• The Black Death and Its Effects on European Culture
• European Goods Market Integration in the Very Long Run: From the Black Death to the First World War
• Political, Psychological, Economic, and Social Aftermath of the Black Death
• Social and Religious Changes Influenced by the Black Death
• Christian and Muslim Views on the 14th Century Plague, Known as Black Death
• The Destruction and Devastation Caused by the Black Death
• Reform and Relearn: How the Black Death Shaped the Renaissance
• The Black Death and the Transformation of the West
• Black Death: The History of How It Began, the Symptoms, and More
• What Caused the Black Death?
• How Did the Black Death Affect European Societies of the Mid-Fourteenth Century?
• How the Black Death Greatly Improved the European Society?
• How the Black Death Left a Lasting Impression in the Medieval Society?
• What Is the Black Death Called Now?
• How the Justinian Plague Paved the Way to the Black Death?
• How Different Were the Christian and Muslim Responses to the Black Death?
• Was the Black Death the Largest Disaster of European History?
• What Was More Significant to Europe: the Black Death or the Peasants Revolt?
• Why Did the Black Death Kill So Many People?
• Will HIV and Aids Be the Black Death of the Twenty-First Century?
• Is the Black Death Still Alive?
• How Did the Black Death Spread So Quickly?
• Who Discovered the Cure for the Black Death?
• Is There a Vaccine for the Black Death?
• What Was the Chance of Surviving the Black Death?
• Did Anyone Recover from the Black Death?
• What Was It like Living during the Black Death?
• How Is the Black Plague Similar to COVID-19?
• In What Country Is the Black Death Believed to Have Started?
• What Were the Positives of the Black Death?
• Who Was Affected the Most by the Black Death?
• Which Country Was Hit Hardest by the Black Death?
• Are Some People Immune to the Black Death?
• Which Countries Were Not Affected by the Black Death?
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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The Black Death

28 pages • 56 minutes read

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Chapters 7-12

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Discussion Questions

How did the unknown origin of the plague, as well as the inability to find a cure, affect the lives and attitudes of the citizens of Europe?

Research another pandemic—either the Spanish Flu of 1918, or the Covid pandemic of 2020. How has reading The Black Death contributed to your understanding of how a society should react to a global pandemic or health crisis? How were medieval reactions to the Black Death similar to those of the recent past? How were they different?

How did the limited state of medieval medical knowledge contribute to the spread of the Black Death? Why did superstition and disinformation spread in the absence of scientific understanding?

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The Black Death: A Personal History Essay Questions

By john hatcher, essay questions.

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The black death plague was not a health issue but rather a religious issue Show how the writer presents the plague as a religious crisis rather than a health crisis in The Black Death: A Personal History

Written employing the point of view of the local priest, Master John, the book follows the happenings as a result of the black death plague. Through the priest’s eyes and those of the other people, the book examines the question of whether the crisis is a health one as opposed to being a religious one. Throughout the pages, Master John and the other priests struggle in an attempt to find the reason and religious meaning behind the plague. In this sense, these characters are of the idea that the plague is a religious issue. There is a hovering assertion that the plague was sent by God as a punishment. The assertion of the disease being religious-related is thus valid as an argument as it clearly presents the politics affecting the Catholic church.

Show the role that the black death epidemic plays in resulting in economic inequality as presented in John Hatcher’s The Black Death: A Personal History .

The black death as an epidemic spread quickly and widely being transferred from one individual to another and across villages. In so doing, the disease is presented as being responsible for wiping out and eradicating fairly large proportions of people a situation that results into the introduction of unfairness in the distribution of economic resources in the society in which the story is set. This resulted in a different way of doing things. Upon its climax, the poor became poorer and class struggles are implicit. Europe thus required rebuilding as the system was essentially broken.

What role do the historical account at the beginning of chapters in The Black Death: A Personal History play?

In this work, the black death epidemic is brought out quite vividly through the writer’s employment of the perception of Master John as well as other characters. However, the writer also includes a historical account and explanation of events as they were, which plays the role of being the backdrop to the unfolding events through the book.

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The Black Death: A Personal History Questions and Answers

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The Black Death: A Personal History study guide contains a biography of John Hatcher, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

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Essays for The Black Death: A Personal History

The Black Death: A Personal History essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Black Death: A Personal History by John Hatcher.

• The Black Death and the Modernization of Europe: A Critique of Hatcher's Account

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Pvt. Albert King, a Black soldier killed by a white military police officer, was buried in an unmarked grave in 1941.

On Sunday, he received a full military funeral.

It was the Army’s latest effort to correct its record on race going back to the Civil War.

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83 Years After His Killing, a Black Soldier Gets an Army Funeral

Pvt. Albert King, shot dead by a white military police officer in Georgia in 1941, was blamed for his own death and buried in an unmarked grave.

By Alexa Mills

Photographs by Alyssa Pointer

Reporting from Columbus, Ga.

In a Georgia cemetery, surrounded by tombstones cracked and worn by decades of rain and sun, Pvt. Albert King’s gleams new and bright. The Army unveiled it Sunday in a full military funeral, 83 years late.

Since 1941 his body has rested in an unmarked grave near the military base where a white military police officer shot and killed him.

Though Private King enlisted to fight in World War II, it was a fight with white bus drivers and soldiers on a segregated bus that cost him his life. After he escaped the bus and ran, the police officer found him, killed him and was exonerated in a sham military trial the same day.

An Army investigation initially found that Private King had died in the line of duty. But, under pressure from the commanding general at the base, Fort Benning, the investigators reversed their decision and determined that his death was a result of his own misconduct — making him ineligible for a military funeral. That was the official story, until three years ago.

In 2021, the facts of the case came to light in a legal brief and investigative reporting . Three lawyers from the firm Morgan Lewis, all veterans and working pro bono, argued that the Army Board for Correction of Military Records should reinstate the original decision that King died in the line of duty. In 2022, they won .

“His name was stained, and we needed to cleanse that stain,” said Rose Zoltek-Jick, a law professor at Northeastern University and associate director of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, which researches racially motivated Jim Crow-era homicides.

The memorial for Private King, eight decades in the making, is the Army’s latest effort to correct its record on race going back to the Civil War.

It has renamed nine bases originally named for Confederate generals, including Fort Benning, now known as Fort Moore.

Last year, the Army overturned the convictions of 110 Black soldiers accused of rioting in Houston in 1917. Nineteen of them had been executed.

In 2021, it installed a memorial for Pvt. Felix Hall, who was lynched on Fort Benning about a month before Private King was killed.

An Army spokeswoman, Heather J. Hagan, said in a statement, “The Army puts a high priority on honoring the legacy of all our soldiers and their families, especially when there is an error or injustice, as there was in the case of Pvt. Albert King.”

Helen Russell, Private King’s cousin, has been his primary advocate. Though they never met — she was born a generation after his death — she feels connected to him by the chain of care that makes a family tree: She buried her father, and her father buried Private King’s brother, who had been the soldier’s only immediate family when he was killed.

It is unclear from the records who buried Private King.

Ms. Russell pursued the military memorial with the help of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project and her lawyers, Matthew Hawes, Micah Jones and Christopher Melendez. They had trouble gaining traction at first, but Ms. Russell’s congressman from Michigan, Shri Thanedar, helped get the Army’s attention.

“None of this would’ve been possible if not for the Board of Officers’ action back in ’41, which really documented what happened at the time,” Mr. Melendez said. “It was the witnesses who spoke before the board. It was Judge Hastie.”

William H. Hastie, a prominent Black judge and lawyer who worked in the top echelons of the War Department in the early 1940s, called Private King’s death the “callous and wanton shooting of an unarmed soldier” and argued that the man had died in the line of duty. Judge Hastie left the department soon after, fed up that his broad-based efforts to advocate for Black service members had been routinely ignored.

Top leaders from Fort Moore attended the ceremony on Sunday, including Major General Curtis A. Buzzard, the commanding general, and Colonel Colin P. Mahle, garrison commander.

Representative Sanford Bishop of Georgia, who represents Fort Moore and identified himself as a descendant of slaves and a child of Jim Crow, spoke at Private King’s grave.

“Today, after 83 years, the arc has finally bent toward justice,” he said.

In an interview, he spoke of Dr. Thomas Brewer, a Black physician and a founder of the local NAACP chapter, who alerted Judge Hastie to the King case — and who was later shot dead in a racial killing. “He was an unsung hero,” Mr. Bishop said through tears.

This was the defining theme of the memorial: that a succession of citizens, soldiers, family, advocates, lawyers and journalists had spoken up for Private King, starting in 1941, until his name was cleared.

When it came time to choose an inscription for the headstone, Ms. Russell said, the words came immediately: “For my beloved cousin I fought the fight.”

The fight continues. At the memorial Sunday, she announced her intention to have Private King’s story incorporated into the school curriculum where she lives in Michigan.

“The children will be taught what they need to know,” she said.

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