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Black Death

The Black Death arrived in Europe in 1347 on trading ships from Genoa, Italy. The sailors were infected with plague and many had died. Over the next five years, the Black Death would kill over 20 million people in Europe, almost a third of the population. People did not understand that the plague was transmitted through the air via the bacteria Yersinia pestis from infected individuals. Without this understanding of disease transmission, many believed the Black Death was divine punishment and scapegoated groups like Jews. The Black Death had devastating social and economic impacts on medieval Europe.

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92 views2 pages

Black Death

The Black Death arrived in Europe in 1347 on trading ships from Genoa, Italy. The sailors were infected with plague and many had died. Over the next five years, the Black Death would kill over 20 million people in Europe, almost a third of the population. People did not understand that the plague was transmitted through the air via the bacteria Yersinia pestis from infected individuals. Without this understanding of disease transmission, many believed the Black Death was divine punishment and scapegoated groups like Jews. The Black Death had devastating social and economic impacts on medieval Europe.

Uploaded by

Alba Elvira Burgos
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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BLACK DEATH

INDROTUCTION

The Black Death arrived in Europe in October 1347 when Genoese trading ships settled at the Sicilian
port of Messina. The people who were in the ships met with a terrible surprise: most of the sailors away
the ships were dead, and those who still alive were gravelly ill. They were overcome with fever and
them delirious from pain. The stranger thing was that they were covered with in a mysterious black boils
that expulse blood and pus, and gave the illness the name of: “Black Death”. The Sicilian authorities
rapidly ordered the expulsion of the “death ships” in the port, but it was too late.

Over the next five years, the mysterious Black Death would killed more than 20 million people in Europe,
almost 1/3 of the population.

“THE BLACK DEATH”

Even before the “death ships” many Europeans had heard about a plague that was carrying lots of
deaths in trade routes. However, they were poor equipped for the horrible Black Death. Blood and pus
get out of these strange injury, which were followed by other horrible symptoms (fever, chills, vomiting,
diarrhea, terrible aches and pains) and then, rapidly the death. The Black Death was contagious. The
disease was also terrifying, because people who were in perfectly health when they went to bed at
night, could be death on morning.

UNDERSTANDING THE BLACK DEATH

Today, by science we know that the Black Death is a spread by a bacillus called Yersina pestis. They know
that the bacillus travels from one person to another pneumatically, or through the air. This pest were
particularly at home and in abroad ships.

Today, this illness is comprehensible. In the middle 14 th century, it seemed not to be an explanation for
it. No one knew exactly how the Black Death was transmitted from one patient to another. Some
doctors said that the Black Death was an instantaneous death that occurs when the spirit escaping from
the eyes of the sick man goes to the healthy person standing near and looking at the sick.

Meanwhile, healthy people did all they could to avoid the illness. Doctors refused to see patients; priests
refused to administer last rites. Shopkeeper closed stores. Many people escaped from the cities to the
countryside, but even there, they couldn’t escape the disease: It affected farm animals as well as people.
In fact, so many sheep died that one of the consequences of the Black Death was a lack of European
wool.

GOD’S PUNISHMENT
Because they didn’t understand the biology of the disease, many people believed that the Black Death
was a kind of divine punishment. By this logic, the only way to overcome the plague was to win God’s
clemency. Some people believed that the way to do this was to purification their communities of
troublemakers- so, for example, many thousands of Jews were massacred in the 14 th century.

Some upper-class men joined processions that traveled from town to town and wen to public displays of
penance and punishment. Then they would move on to the next town and begin the process again.

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 moderate the
impact of the disease, but not prevent it.

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