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By January 1348, the plague was in Marseilles. It reached Paris in the spring, 1348 and England in September, 1348. Moving along the Rhine trade routes, the plague reached Germany in 1348, and the Low Countries the same year. Historians agree that 1348 was the worst of the plague years. In May, 1349, an English wool ship brought the plague to Norway. The Great Mortality then made its way to Greenland and after killing a large proportion of the population there encountered the towering ice cliffs. It was there that in 1351, the Black Death subsided. In the three and a half years it took the Black Death to complete its circle of mortality, plague touched the life of every individual European. The plague killed more than a third of them and left the others to grieve. Historians and biologists have been hard pressed to explain the extraordinary mortality of the 1348 pandemic. Their best guess is that there was more than one variety of plague at work in Europe. And perhaps, as the British zoologist Graham Twigg theorizes, even a simultaneous and severe outbreak of
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It created an economic boon for the lower classes. Under the feudal system regional nobles pledged their allegiance to a central king but retained total judgment in the way they managed their property and lands. The king and nobles formed the head of the social structure and were supported by a large class of peasants. The peasants provided labor, rent and military service to the landowner in exchange for protection from marauding bandits or invading military forces. Under the feudal system there was a very small and limited merchant class that existed primarily in the urban areas. With the population so low, there were not enough workers to work the land. Landowners offered peasants extras such as food, their own beasts of burden, and money as incentives to lure them. Peasants benefited through increased employment options and higher wages and their standard of living rose accordingly. For the first time in centuries, workers of all kinds were in demand across Europe. Serfs, artisans, craftsmen, and church clergy no longer felt compelled to live and work under conditions that were set and enforced by Europe's …show more content…
Just the opposite seemed to have happened. As the plague abated, its effects left Europe in position to enter that period called the Renaissance. In the decades following The Black Death, there was a tremendous upsurge in art, music, science, literature in practically every field of human endeavor. Historian, Robert S.Gottfried writes that these creative changes in everyday life meant a new "growing emphasis on individualism, one of the important characteristics that scholars regard as typically modern." The Black Death caused drastic social and economic changes in Europe and marked a time of transition between medieval man and modern
It created an economic boon for the lower classes. Under the feudal system regional nobles pledged their allegiance to a central king but retained total judgment in the way they managed their property and lands. The king and nobles formed the head of the social structure and were supported by a large class of peasants. The peasants provided labor, rent and military service to the landowner in exchange for protection from marauding bandits or invading military forces. Under the feudal system there was a very small and limited merchant class that existed primarily in the urban areas. With the population so low, there were not enough workers to work the land. Landowners offered peasants extras such as food, their own beasts of burden, and money as incentives to lure them. Peasants benefited through increased employment options and higher wages and their standard of living rose accordingly. For the first time in centuries, workers of all kinds were in demand across Europe. Serfs, artisans, craftsmen, and church clergy no longer felt compelled to live and work under conditions that were set and enforced by Europe's …show more content…
Just the opposite seemed to have happened. As the plague abated, its effects left Europe in position to enter that period called the Renaissance. In the decades following The Black Death, there was a tremendous upsurge in art, music, science, literature in practically every field of human endeavor. Historian, Robert S.Gottfried writes that these creative changes in everyday life meant a new "growing emphasis on individualism, one of the important characteristics that scholars regard as typically modern." The Black Death caused drastic social and economic changes in Europe and marked a time of transition between medieval man and modern