The Effects Of Plague On The People Of Florence

History reveals the mid-14th century as a very unfortunate time for Europe. It was during this period when the continent became afflicted by a terrible plague. The source of the pathogen is known today as bubonic but was colloquially known as “The Black Death” to Europeans of the day. The plague caused a tremendous number of deaths and was a catalyst of change, severely impacting Europe’s cultural, political and religious institutions.

From 1347 to 1352 a string of the bubonic plague lay waste to western Europe, killing millions. In Italy, nearly a third of the population died; in England, half. The plague was a looming presence, always in the back of people’s minds. The symptoms of the Black Death caused great strife for westerners. Giovanni Boccaccio, an Italian writer and poet, described the symptoms he saw during the first outbreak of the plague: “Not such were they as in the East, where an issue of blood from the nose was a manifest sign of inevitable death; but in men a women alike it first betrayed itself by the emergence of certain tumors in the groin or the armpits, some of which grew as large as a common apple, others as an egg, some more, some less, which the common folk called gavoccioli.” Both Italy and England desperately searched for answers, claiming that the Black Death was the cause of a higher force, but realising that the squalor of their countries also played a part in spreading the illness. Although Italy and England both had a common explanation for the cause of the plague and they both implemented better public health standards, they adopted different public health practices after the plague.

Norman F. Cantor, In the Wake of the Plague (New York: Harper Collins First Perennial edition, 2001) examines how the bubonic plague, or Black Death, affected Europe in the fourteenth century. Cantor recounts specific events in the time leading up to the plague, during the plague, and in the aftermath of the plague. He wrote the book to relate the experiences of victims and survivors and to illustrate the impact that the plague had on the government, families, religion, the social structure, and art.

Amongst the devastation and despair the Black Death left in its wake, it also brought with it some much-needed change to the way medieval Europeans were living. Although it ended many innocent lives, it also began a new era of social and economic living. In the years following the first outbreak of the plague, medical knowledge and awareness of hygiene dramatically improved, as did the living and working conditions of the workers. Other benefits included the rapid growth of Europe’s middle class and thus the fall of the feudal system, the loss of the church’s supreme authority, and the increase in economic power for medieval women.

There were three major outbreaks of the Black Death pandemic in the world. In the history the Black Plague is also called as the Black Death or Bubonic Plague. This research paper will mainly cover the European outbreak of the 14th century as it is considered to be the era of the worst time of the Black Death period. Many historians would agree that the events of 1300s led to dramatic changes affecting every European country in all the aspects. Creating economic, social, religious, and medical issues, the Black Death caused renovation of the Europe. New circumstances forced Europe to reconsider its political system, improve the medicine and look at the situation from a different perspective, shifting from the medieval to modern society. Paul Slack, in his book The Impact of Plague in Tudor and Stuart England, provides a detailed description of the most affected places and the approximation of the victims, estimating that Europe had lost about one third of its population. Comparing to cholera the number of deaths caused by the Black Plague in England is doubled making The Black Plague the most devastating disease (Slack 174). In the book, The Black Death, Robert Gottfried examines the history of the Black Plague and its political consequences as well as social. He introduces the facts how the European population was affected in both positive and negative ways. From his writing it stood out that the lower class was affected the most as the conditions they lived in were worse

The disastrous plague called the Black Death had monumental, long lasting effects that would ultimately change the fate of the entire continent of Europe. The mid-1300s in Europe were part of the Dark Ages. Human populations were near over-crowding, and the land was stretched to produce food. Mother Nature created a drastic solution. The world lifted a bleak shadow of death and chaos over the people of Europe in the form of plague. It originated from fleas, but rats carried the fleas with this plague across seaward trading routes from Asia. Humans were oblivious to the deadly fleas disguised in the familiar sight of the rats aboard their trading ships. The plague was an airborne disease, and it was transmittable to humans. Once one was infected, no escape option was available. The plague was characterized by black cysts on the skin, which influenced humans to later dub the plague “The Black Death”. Europe was previously suffering during the Dark Ages, but what were the Black Death’s effects on Europe? The staggering effects of the Black Death were outlined clearly in the fragility of religion, the floundering population and education, and oddly enough, a recovered and thriving economy.

The Black Death, also known as The Black Plague, is one of the most tragic and deadly pandemics to have occurred throughout all human history. It was introduced to Europe in 1347, when a series of trade ships docked at a Sicilian port after voyaging across the Black Sea from the city of Genoa, Italy. Over the next several years, the disease spread throughout all of Europe, killing countless men, women, and children in its path. While many at the time believed The Black Death to be a punishment from God for all their past sins, the disease was actually caused by bacteria known as Yersinia pestis. This bacterium is typically transmitted by “being bitten by a rodent flea that is carrying the plague bacterium or by handling an animal infected with plague.” When people encountered this bacterium, symptoms of illness began to show very quickly. Giovanni Boccaccio, an Italian author, lived through the plague and experienced its effects on the city of Florence, Italy firsthand. In his detailed account of the event, Boccaccio described some symptoms of the illness, saying “it began both in men and women with certain swellings in the groin or under the armpit. They grew to the size of a small apple or an egg, more or less, and were vulgarly called tumors.” These tumors, among other repulsive and painful symptoms, were a clear sign of upcoming demise to the people of Europe, and nearly all citizens who caught the illness died within days of contracting the disease. Over twenty

The bubonic plague, which occurred in the mid-1400s, was an pandemic that killed many, having both positive and negative effects on society during that time. The positives included the setting up of public health offices and greater resources for the survivors of the plague. Cities were not equipped to handle an outbreak like this, but after the government learned, “many areas established public hospitals and permanent boards to help protect public health” (Byrne). Along with these important health institutions being set up in European cities, due to the fact that Europe was overpopulated then, and that the plague helped to decrease the population size, the survivors also benefitted because they were given more resources and jobs and a lower living cost. Despite the fact that the plague helped the citizens in some ways, it still killed approximately one-third of

Giovanni Boccaccio gives the readers a description of the onset of the Black Death that offers a clear understanding of the events as they unfolded during that particular period. This essay will focus on how the Black Death came about, some of the key aspects of the plague as described by the writer in addition to the immediate and long-term political, economic and social consequences of the Black Death.

Coppo di Stefano Buonaiuti, he provides first hand documentation of the effect of the Black Plague in Florence, Italy. The muse for his inspiration to record his testimony on the matter, just three decades later, was a matter to sway the Italian embassies when his political career ran into a predicament the time. The Black Plague challenged the very core of morals and the faith in God. In his testimony, he describes thousands of people having cases of cold feet on their own family members and abandoning them as shown in the quotes from his document, “Sons abandoning fathers, husbands wives, wives husbands, one brother the other, one sister the other.”.

In the spring of 1938, one of the deadliest pandemics first emerged along the shores of Italy. Through the examination of historical documents regarding this pandemic, it was discovered that the Black Death, or the plague, was initially spread among several Italian merchant ships on the return to the city of Messina from different regions of Asia, and such a sickness was a mystery to the sailors, as well as to the citizens, whom have succumbed to it (“The Black Death”). After a period of three years, while the pathogen spread throughout all of Europe, it has been estimated that about half of the population succumbed. So much terror was struck into the hearts of men and women that individuals avoided one another in fear of contracting the plague. Even

home. My rations to sustain me are few, and I am afraid that the water

Scientifically confirmed in the late 19th century, Yersinina pestis, a bacterium found in rats and their parasitic fleas, traveled from Asian ships along trade routes to Europe. Westward, an outbreak first appeared in Constantinople in 1346, reached Sicily by 1347, then the Italian ports of Venice Genoa, and Pisa a year later in 1348; it thereafter swept through Spain, southern France, and northern Europe rapidly with death at the doorstep, and sporadically reappeared in the following decades. Originally theorized to only spread as an infected flea bit its victim, such an inefficient technique of transmission contradicted the disease’s sudden spread, eventually propelling an additional, airborne culprit. As the bubonic plague infiltrated a host’s lungs, it induced sneezing and coughing that extensively circulated through an area and increased disease exposure. Infected, yet seemingly healthy citizens also moved to clean towns, the vast majority of the living existed under unsanitary conditions, and misinformed physicians practiced either adiaphorous or detrimental treatments, heightening the magnitude of fatalities. In short, although the bubonic plague historically entered through flea-bearing rats that inhabited Asian trading ships on their way to Europe, and aggressively viraled through the air once docked, the naive fourteenth century society reveled in uncovering alternative “causes” for the plague, and distinctly responded to

The Black Death or more commonly known as Bubonic Plague, decimated European society in the mid 14 century to the extent that it has not been seen since in human history. It not only killed fifty to sixty percent of the population, but it also brought huge changes to the people of Europe. The impact of the plague caused effects on the economy, society, family structure, public policy, health science, religion, philosophy and literature. Its’ effects would last until the eighteenth century and beyond. The population would not be replenished to levels before the plague until well into twentieth century.

Economic prosperity because of banking and social dynamism of the city-states made the Reninessance possible. Moreover, Roman infostructure among other things they left behind also made it conceivable. Although in the 14th and 15th centuries the Black Death and other epidemics had ravaged through the Italian peninsula it did not affect the northern part of the peninsula as bad, moreover, it still prospered.