Bacteria As The Cause Of The Black Death

The “Black Death” was one of, if not the most devastating pandemics to sweep the earth since humans have populated it. It was widely thought to be caused by a bacteria called Yersinia Pestis and in recent studies and research, evidence has made a strong case for the confirmation of that bacteria as the cause of the Black Death. Graves in Europe that were tied to that time period and the Black Death showed traces of that bacteria in both southern and northern Europe (Haensch et al. 4). In the 14th century about 20-30 years before the outbreak of the Black Death, there was a great famine occurring in much of Europe and coincidentally the same was happening in a large part of Asia along with China. The occurrence of these famines caused a large …show more content…
Because of the Black Death there was an extreme shortage of workers and laborers. This caused for wages for those workers and laborers to skyrocket. There was an ordinance of labourers put into place to control the wages that these labourers received. Another way it affected the people of Europe was the fact that it sped up the movement towards the end of feudalism. Feudalism was the system in which peasants gave their services in return for land grants. The fact that the Black Death killed so many peasants didn’t exactly cause the end of feudalism but led to the end of it because there was a significantly less amount of peasants to offer their services for land grants (Jones, 3) There were also other laws that sought to control the higher wages and possession of wealth that stemmed fro the death of many …show more content…
After the outbreaks were over there were, what many thought, a large amount of clergy and laity killed. Many others hypothesized that the clergy and laity completely abandoned their posts and were never seen again. That is one argument that still occurs today. This made for a large need for recruitment of new clergy and laity. This was one contributing factor to a reformation in the 16th century. With religion, overall the faith began to decline regardless of what people thought. They began to lose hope in humanity and expected the world to end. Many of the people that didn’t abandon religion altogether felt that God was unleashing his wrath on the human population for some reason. Because of this people just completely turned away from their normal way of life and responsibilities and drank more, at more, and played more because they felt the world was coming to an end. Inflation was a huge issue as a result of the Black Death. Because of the outbreak, it was extremely hard to produce goods, and at the same time people were in a frenzy to obtain them, and because of this prices increased exponentially. Lastly, the social line dividing nobility was noticeably ambiguous after the outbreak because of the change in distribution of wealth, and despite the efforts to reverse this ambiguity with laws that required peasants to wear distinctive clothing it continued to become more and more