The plague raged throughout Europe from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century evoking various responses from the people who experienced its terror. It affected all regions of Europe, killing one-third of the population. Various responses to the plague expressed different beliefs and concerns including exploitation, fear, and religious superstition. During the course of the plague these beliefs and concerns underwent change. During the outbreak of the plague fear dominated Europe, and as time passed fear became more irrational and superstitious. The plague stuck fear in many because people during the time did not have the scientific knowledge to understand the plague. People feared traveling in public, especially in highly populated areas, …show more content…
There were very few who dared to travel long distances, but exceptions existed (Doc 12). Physicians and scholars were unable to identify the cause of the plague and therefore developed false reasons for its spread. Erasmus of Rotterdam, a Dutch humanist and classical scholar, demonstrated this by blaming the plague on unsanitary conditions in cities (Doc 2). Johann Weyer, a German physician, gave a more outlandish explanation for the plague, people “smeared the bolts of the town gates with an ointment to spread the plague” (Doc 4). Common people also began to draw false conclusions on how the plague was spread out of fear. For example bureaucrats, who commonly wore wigs as a sign of status, refused to buy wigs during the time “for fear of infection, that the hair had been cut of the head of people dead of the plague” (Doc 13). Fear resulted in chaos, and governments took violent precautions to control the …show more content…
The lack of legitimate scientific knowledge caused people to seek alternative answers. Superstitious beliefs both religious helped to alleviate fear. Many believed that the plague was punishment for their sins and turned to the church for repentance. Flagellantism became a trending movement during the time, and thousands of citizens gathered in processions, whipping themselves as a way of repenting. Feeling powerless, the majority of Europeans turned to the church for hope, especially the poor, who did not have the resources to flee the city like the rich, and were the most affected by the plague (Doc 3). An example of one of these people was Nehemiah Wallington, a devout English Puritan, who expresses the idea of uncertainty and powerlessness best in his diary entry in which he meditates on how he could lose his entire family to the plague without being able to do anything to stop it (Doc 8). Saints were venerated during the plague because of the alluring idea that they could be called upon to cure people. Superstitious rituals involving relics of saints were popular because these relics were thought to cause miracles. For example, Lisabetta Centenni claimed that “Sister Angelica del Macchia, prioress at Crocetta, sent [her] a little piece of bread that had touched the body of St. Somenica,” which alleviated her husbands fever after he ate it (Doc 7). Saints gave people hope that there was a way to actively combat the plague. The
With so many people were dying already from the disease grief was high. Medication at the time was no wear near what it is in present times. The health statue of Europe was falling and the large masses of people who were dying began to raise horror in people. To correspond with that many people had little to no knowledge of cleanliness and how it can affect heath.
It can be argued with a fair amount of certainty that the evidence from modern science does provide a clear cut understanding of how it could’ve started because of how voyages and trade were done in this time period. With no way of cure for the plague, people had to face the pain and die. Trained doctors and nurses who were set to treat the disease had no way of knowing how to cure it much less what caused it. In recent studies done, scientists identified the disease as Yersinia pestis **17 that caused the Black Death. These findings have been accepted in the Historical community for it gives more accurate evidence.
The primary source I chose for my analysis is “A Most Terrible Plague: Giovanni Boccaccio”. This document focuses on the account of how individuals acted when a plague broke out and hundreds of people were dying every day. This source is written by Giovanni Boccaccio as it is a story told by him and friends as they passed the time. Boccaccio discusses how “the plague had broken out some years before in the Levant, and after passing from place to place, and making incredible havoc along the way, had now reached the west.” Readers of this source can assume there wasn’t much cures and medicinal technology weren’t used much during this time as even their physicians stayed away from the sick because once they got close they would also get sick.
It spread rampant among the trade routes to Constaninople and Europe. It claimed the lives of close to sixty percent of the European population. The massive labor shortages are is what to be said what helped boost the emergence of the Renaissance in the 14th century. The Modern Plague also began in China in 1860 in Hong Kong. In just twenty years it had spread to port cities by rats on steamships.
All plagues strike by uprooting individual lives and society as a whole. Nevertheless, the particular circumstances regarding the government, and religious and cultural beliefs in the affected lands influence the specific results of the tragedy, as witnessed through the Black Death and smallpox. Although both diseases led to drastic economic changes, they caused different overturns of religious beliefs, and only the Black Death resulted in the creation of public health services and the marginalization of groups of people. A lack of labor precipitated alterations to the economy--the end of feudalism in the case of the Black Death and the creation of the Transatlantic Slave Trade in the case of smallpox.
The Bubonic plague ended up being catastrophic, and so devastating to European society because it caused changes in attitude towards religion, changes in population, and an increase of antisemitism. The Black Death spread so quickly through Europe that people did not even have time to process what was going on. As seen in the map “The Bubonic Plague spreads through Europe,”
The disease wreaked havoc on the continent for three long years, and it eventually went into Russia (Whipps). Many people believed that the plague was God’s wrath upon man, and they prayed for long hours about this. Due to the danger of trading goods, the economy went through inflation. The prices of goods spiked, and land workers (serfs) were dying very rapidly. This created a huge demand for land workers, and it gave serfs the ability to choose whom they wished to work for (“Social and Economic Effects of the Plague”).
The decline of population was a prominent aspect in the deadly epidemic. Physicians didn’t have any knowledge of the Black Plague, which made it difficult to cure and eliminate the disease. With the lack of information about the disease and how it started, it resulted in many people not being able to get cured: “perhaps either the nature of the disease did not allow for any cure or the ignorance of the physicians… did not know how to cure it; as a consequence, very few were ever cured…” (Bubonic Plague DBQ Doc. 1). There was no medicine for
The epidemic affected Europe culturally, as the citizens developed an excessive reliance on religion as an answer for their tragedy. Additionally, the Black Death shifted the people’s social perspectives; they lost compassion for the sick and indulged in selfish desires. Finally, the pestilence altered the Europeans’ mental state, as their appreciation of life itself diminished, since the rapid spread of the plague caused torrential death rates across Europe. In response to the Black Death, the people of Europe became passionately pious, for they viewed their misfortune as a punishment from God and, thus, believed the only way to bring about continental happiness was through religion.
Before they realize the plague was amongst them they only worried about working. They hardly had time to themselves to just relax and enjoy themselves. The reason being people were getting drunk and acting wilder than usual because they weren’t used to any of the things that were happening. Father Paneloux made them think the plague happened because of their sins, but the evil that happens is this world most of the time has a hidden agenda. Everything is believed to happen for reason; not everyone sees it as soon as evil happens.
The Christians thought the Lord was punishing them with the disease, and that when the Lord was enraged to embrace in acts of penance, so that you do not stray from the right path and parish. The Christians pray to their Lord and ask what they should do? A great number of saintly sisters of the Hotel Dieu, who did not fear to die, nursed the sick in all sweetness and humility, with no thought of honor, a number too often renewed by death, rest in peace with Christ, as we may piously believe. People began to think the Jews were guilty for the disease. The Muslims looked at praying for the disease to go away in disgust, because they believe the plague is a blessing from God.
The black plague was a very successful disease in the mid 1350’s due to the low medical ability and knowledge of the people populating the city or town. I will start off by saying people often run away from the danger to others, where with this you have to stay away from people. If you want to get to switzerland because
During the mid-fourteenth century, a plague hit Europe. Initially spreading through rats and subsequently fleas, it killed at least one-third of the population of Europe and continued intermittently until the 18th century. There was no known cure at the time, and the bacteria spread very quickly and would kill an infected person within two days, which led to structural public policies, religious, and medical changes in Europe. The plague had an enormous social effect, killing much of the population and encouraging new health reforms, it also had religious effects by attracting the attention of the Catholic Church, and lastly, it affected the trade around Europe, limiting the transportation of goods. As a response to the plague that took place
Those who lived through the fourteenth-century plague outbreak in Europe described their experiences in terms of horror, loss, and devastation. Gabriele de’Mussis spoke of those “… who enjoyed the world and upon whom pleasure and prosperity smiled, who mingled joys with follies, the same tomb receives you and you are handed over as food for worms. Oh hard death, impious death, bitter death, cruel death..,” while Francesco Petrarch asked “Will posterity believe these things, when we who have seen it can scarcely believe it, thinking it a dream except that we are awake and see these things with our own eyes, and when we know that what we bemoan is absolutely true…?” Although these are particularly striking reactions to the crisis, the reaction to the onset of plague in 1347 seems to have been remarkably uniform. Although reactions
The plague undoubtedly threatened society and therefore some level of