The Black Death: Curse or Blessing?

When the Black Death – also known as the Great Plague and the Great Mortality – swept through medieval Europe, life as everyone had known it ceased to exist, both literally and metaphorically.

Having traveled from Mongolia, the Black Death is said to have arrived in a port in Sicily in 1347, and continued its tour of continental Europe and England until 1352, when it headed over to Moscow. The exact death toll is not known, due to so many people dying so rapidly, and due to the deaths of those meant to be recording the deaths of their fellow citizens. Still, most historians agree that, during those few years, the plague claimed around 25 million of Europe’s 75-million population. While this averages out to be 33% of the total population, the death count in some areas, like parts of Italy and England, seemed to reach as high as 40% to 60%.

When the plague finally left Europe in 1352, it did not disappear forever, continuing to wreak havoc here and there for the following three centuries. But with only one or two exceptions – most notably, the Great Plague of London of 1665 – none of the subsequent plague outbreaks matched the ferocity and swiftness of the Black Death. As it swept through the countryside and devastated cities, its insatiable appetite seemed to gloat that no one was safe, and nothing could stop it.

Yet, the Black Death actually arrived at a time when Europe was quickly coming to a point of no return. The prosperity and population increase of the previous couple of centuries now found Europeans struggling to make resources meet demands. Much of the overworked and inferior farmlands produced fewer crops each year. And with poverty and hunger prevalent, the living standards of medieval citizens were rapidly declining.

The Great Plague also helped initiate some very important societal changes and developments: social and economic structures reconfigured; technological advances abounded; Church power and rule weakened; and artistic notions reinvented. Throughout the century following the Black Death’s horrific reign, all areas of life and commerce were drastically affected, and the world hasn’t been the same since.


I. Social and Economic Structures Reconfigured

Given the vast number of deaths the Great Mortality reaped, Europe and England faced a labor shortage: great news for the poor, terrible news for the wealthy. Now, everyone from serving girls to artisans increased their wage demands, sometimes even doubling or tripling the once-typical amounts. Appalled at the brash behavior of the lower classes, high society attempted to refuse the wage demands; grimacing as the lowly classes strutted around town in fine clothes of silk and fur and sat down to treat their palates to tantalizing foods.

The wealthy, however, had no leveraging means. Peasants, not lords of manors, now possessed the power to dictate the terms of wage and labor. If a landowner refused to pay the laborer the amount he requested, he was generally left to tend to his own fields, as he watched the peasant walk on to the next manor to sell his services there. Peasants could also afford to choose only to work on fertile farmland, which yielded better and more plentiful crops. Although serfdom had been slowly dissolving in the years before the plague arrived, it began to perish completely in the wake of the devastation.

Peasants weren’t solely demanding more money, though. With this quaint role reversal, they negotiated other perks from the landowners, such as rent reductions or land grants. In the post-Black Death world, peasants often had the ability to will land to all of their children, not merely the eldest son, which had previously been the case.

Women found new opportunities, as well, as they commandeered some of the better-paying, male-dominated professions, like those in metalwork. While it seems that women in these positions were not paid quite as much as the men, the mere fact that these opportunities had been presented to them remained an astounding turn of events. Additionally, those women whose business-owning husbands had fallen victim to the plague now assumed the roles of running the families’ shops.


II. Technological Advances Abounded

When one has fewer laborers to employ, and perhaps not enough money to fulfill the wage requirements, one must invent new ways of accomplishing the work and meeting the demands: enter the machines.

Johann Gutenberg’s printing press, unveiled in 1453, allowed books to be mass-produced for the increasing number of better-educated and knowledge-thirsty citizens of medieval Europe. Prior to the printing press, each copy of a book had to be crafted by hand; each page, each section meticulously recreated.

After the Great Plague, advancements also came in the world of weaponry, where soldiers could now use muskets and cannons to annihilate their enemies. If there must be fewer men on the front lines, then it’s best to provide them with weapons that can cause a great deal of damage.

Fishing, building, mining, farming – nearly every trade and profession began developing and employing time- and labor-saving devices, forever altering the structure of the workforce.

The medical profession also changed greatly in the aftermath of the Black Death. Medicine had been wholly intertwined with religion through the early and mid medieval time period, to the point that someone could not even begin studying to become a licensed physician without first obtaining a master’s degree in theology. However, as the pestilence ravaged each country, leaving piles of bodies as its calling card, the world began to feel abandoned by its God. The Catholic Church had shown itself to be just as vulnerable to the plague’s wrath as the multitude of peasants, and none of the heartfelt prayers or reliable treatments had cured the suffering. Little by little, the use of pungent herbs and clever concoctions as medicinal saviors was being questioned, and new answers were being sought. In the aftermath of the carnage, clinically oriented medicine began to move to the forefront, with more autopsies performed and yielding more accurate studies and descriptions of the human anatomy. This new focus, complete with scientific theories and analyses, not only changed the medical schools already in existence at the time, but also helped institute new levels of higher education throughout England and the European continent.

By extension, hospitals no longer served merely to separate the sick from the healthy. Once the Great Plague had relinquished its control over the region, hospitals actually began treating the sick in an effort to cure their ills (though medical treatment remained a far cry from what we know today). The concept of placing people suffering from the same afflictions together in one section of the hospital also owes its genesis to this time period. Now, there were different wards for different maladies, instead of everyone being haphazardly thrown together.


III. Church Power and Rule Weakened

Medieval Europe had been ruled by the Catholic Church, where all looked to the priests and the pope for salvation and leadership. At the beginning of the Great Mortality’s reign, citizens believed God was punishing them for their many sins and prayed earnestly for relief. But when the mighty Catholic Church could not stop the pestilence, and, indeed, watched as the Black Death claimed many of its own members, the people lost some of their faith in these men who asserted much, but offered little. The Church’s hypocrisy, which had been growing for years, was also not lost on European citizenry, as they learned of priests keeping concubines and of the clergy living in luxury.

This disgust with and disappointment in the Catholic Church led many to develop a more personal relationship with their God – cutting out the middlemen, so to speak. These sentiments led others, though not many, to form heretical groups in England and Europe, where every creed and sanction of the Church sat in question. As the Catholic stronghold slowly weakened, the stage was set for the many events and influences that would lead to the Reformation 166 years later.


IV. Artistic Notions Reinvented

Since art often imitates life, it’s unsurprising that the paintings and writings during and just after the Great Plague focused primarily on death and human life’s dance with it. And these depictions were not the often-romanticized creations of today, where death seems a beautiful inevitability. When medieval artists portrayed death, it was gruesome, lonely, painful, and grim; artistic screams of incessant grief and destruction.

But when the plague finally released Europe from its clutches, at least momentarily, a feeling of renewal and happiness flooded the distressed and overwhelmed cities. While surely not the sole impetus, there can be no doubt that the Black Death lent its hand to the emergence of the Renaissance in Italy. As artists thought and created in new ways, images of beautiful women replaced skeletons with scythes; tales of dancing with death stepped aside as new writings spoke of the humanist spirit. Italian artists were more than ready to leave the nightmares of the Great Plague behind them.



Although undeniably horrific, the Black Death’s strength and persistence also helped form the world that we know today. Had such desolation not occurred, perhaps we would not be as technologically advanced, or even as sociologically advanced in certain areas. While the world would certainly have changed over time, the plague catapulted the people into areas of reform that might have remained unaltered for several more centuries. History repeatedly tells us that even in the bleakest of times – or perhaps, especially in the bleakest of times – there are things to be learned and gained; and the greatest sufferings often teach more than the greatest triumphs.

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For More Information:

The Black Death is a vast and intriguing subject, of which I have only captured a fragment with this article. Should you wish to learn more about it, there are myriad resources available, but the references listed below will provide a good starting point.

The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time by John Kelly
The Black Death and the Transformation of the West by David Herlihy
“The Plague” documentary by The History Channel