1. The Black Death

2. Key questions Guiding Question What is the “Black Death”?
What caused the Black Death?
What were the consequences?

3. The Plague Arrives
Historians think that the plague arrived in England during the summer of During the following autumn it spread quickly through the south west. Few villages escaped. Churchyards were full with bodies.
The plague spread quickly during the winter of to the north of England. By 1350, nearly the whole of Britain was infected with the plague.
At the end of 1350 nearly two and a half million people were dead!

4. Where did the Black Death come from?
HOW IT REACHED EUROPE AND ENGLAND
• Started in China in mid 1330s.
• Spread along sea and land routes, reaching Europe in early Also brought into Sicily in 1347 by infected traders (and the black rats on board)
fleeing the Black Sea port of Caffa after the besieging Mongol army had spread the disease by flinging the bodies of plague victims into the city.
• It reached England in late June 1348 brought by sailors on trading ships landing at Melcombe Regis, Dorset.
• By 1349 all of England was affected.

5. What were the symptoms of the plague?

6. What Caused the Plague?
The question that you are probably thinking is this; Q: Who or what caused the Black Death? A: This is your answer!
The Oriental Rat Flea!

7. How was the plague transmitted?
We now know that the most common form of the Black Death was the BUBONIC PLAGUE! This disease was spread by fleas which lived on the black rat. The fleas sucked the rat’s blood which contained the plague germs. When the rat died the fleas jumped on to humans and passed on the deadly disease.
HOW WAS THE BLACK DEATH SPREAD
THE MEDICAL CAUSES - (How it was caught.)
• It was caused by a bacteria or bacillus that lived in the blood of black rats. When the fleas that lived on these rats bit into the rat’s blood, the
bacteria entered the flea’s gut, blocking it up and making it very hungry. If the flea got onto another animal or person, it would bite into it and pass
on the bacteria, so infecting it with the bubonic plague.
• spread by contact with an infected person either by the flea bite or, in the case of pneumonic plague, by mucus or phlegm droplets (like flu is).
Inhaling flea faeces also caused pneumonic!!

9. Cures?
Medieval people did not know about germs causing disease. They did not understand that plague was spread by rats and fleas. They thought that people’s bodies were poisoned.
If the swellings burst and the poison came out people sometimes survived. It seemed sensible to draw out the poison.

10. Medieval cure number 1
The swellings should be softened with figs and cooked onions. The onions should be mixed with yeast and butter. Then open the swellings with a knife.

11. Medieval cure number 2
Take a live frog and put its belly on the plague sore. The frog will swell up and burst. Keep doing this with further frogs until they stop bursting. Some people say that a dried toad will do the job better.

12. Question
How useful do you think these medieval cures actually were? Did they help at all or were they more harmful?

14. THE BLACK DEATH
“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.”
- Giovanni Boccaccio

15. THE BLACK DEATH REACTIONS “Charity was dead” “Dementia of despair”
Wrath of God
Debauchery, materialism, corruption
FLAGELLANTS
Jews as scapegoats

16. preoccupation with death
EFFECT ON ART
preoccupation with death
Danse Macabre (Dance of Death)

17. EFFECT ON ART
preoccupation with death
tomb carvings & sculpture

18. Boccaccio’s Decameron (depicted by Botticelli)
EFFECT ON ART
themes of debauchery & corruption
Why do we care?    A.  Plague killed 1/3 of Europe btwn and 1450   B.  Hardship      1.  people fled work      2.  harvest rotted, production ceased, infrastructure abandoned         a.  scarcity in necessities         b.  caused prices to increase III.  Didn’t anything good happen?    A.  Population decreased   B.  Agricultural specialization   C.  Cities and towns became more important due to their ability to diversify their economies
Boccaccio’s Decameron (depicted by Botticelli)