3. The Culprits

4. The Famine of 1315-1317  By 1300 Europeans were farming almost all the land they could cultivate.  A population crisis developed.  Climate changes in Europe produced three years of crop failures between 1315-17 because of excessive rain.  As many as 15% of the peasants in some English villages died.  One consequence of starvation & poverty was susceptibility to disease.

5. 1347: Plague Reaches Constantinople!

7. From the Toggenburg Bible, 1411

8. The Disease Cycle Flea drinks rat blood that carries the bacteria. Flea’s gut clogged with bacteria. Bacteria multiply in flea’s gut. Flea bites human and regurgitates blood into human wound. Human is infected!

9. Symptoms 1.Enlarged and inflamed lymph nodes (around arm pits, neck and groin) 2.Headaches, nausea, aching joints, fever of 101-105 degrees, vomiting 3.Skins turns black and purple due to blood vessel and blood cell damage.

10. The Symptoms Bubo Septicemic Form: almost 100% mortality rate.

11. Variations of the Black Death

12. Treatments? Burn incense to counter the smell of death. Quarantine the afflicted. Burn fires around one’s self.

13. Lancing a Buboe

14. Medieval Art & the Plague

15. Bring out your dead!

16. Medieval Art & the Plague An obsession with death.

17. The Role of the Church People wanted answers, but the priests and bishops didn't have any. The clergy abandoned their Christian duties and fled. People prayed to God and begged for forgiveness. After the plague, ended angry and frustrated villagers started to revolt against the church.

18. Boccaccio in The Decameron The victims ate lunch with their friends and dinner with their ancestors.

19. Giovanni Boccaccio Wrote Decameron in 1353. Some sought more temperate life, others engaged in sexual promiscuity, others fled the countries or lived in solitude.

20. “An Account of the Plague” "How many valiant men, how many fair ladies, breakfast with their kinfolk and the same night supped with their ancestors in the next world! The condition of the people was pitiable to behold. They sickened by the thousands daily, and died unattended and without help. Many died in the open street, others dying in their houses, made it known by the stench of their rotting bodies. Consecrated churchyards did not suffice for the burial of the vast multitude of bodies, which were heaped by the hundreds in vast trenches, like goods in a ships hold and covered with a little earth." -Giovanni Boccaccio

21. The Danse Macabre

23. Attempts to Stop the Plague A Doctor’s Robe “Leeching”

24. Attempts to Stop the Plague Flagellanti: Self-inflicted “penance” for our sins!

25. They would walk from town to town whipping their own backs; feeling that they must suffer to achieve forgiveness from God. Only then will they be saved. (Or so they believed.)

26. Scapegoats Jews were blamed for the Black Death. Pogroms led by the Flagellants occurred.

27. Attempts to Stop the Plague Pogroms against the Jews “Jew” hat “Golden Circle” obligatory badge

28. Social, Economic Consequences Wages for farmed laborers increased. Skilled artisans needed. Agricultural prices fell. Noble landowners lost power.

29. Statute of Laborers in England Limited wages to pre-plague conditions. Peasants revolted.

30. Death Triumphant !: A Major Artistic Theme

31. French Response Increased the taille- a direct tax on the peasantry. The Jacquerie- a French peasant uprising occurred.

32. The Mortality Rate 35% - 70% 25,000,000 dead !!!

34. What were the political, economic, and social effects of the Black Death??

35. PoliticalEconomicSocial