Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Black Death pandemic, medieval Europe [1347–1351]
Britannica ^ | 2/17/24 | Britannica

Posted on 03/13/2024 9:22:50 AM PDT by DallasBiff

Black Death, pandemic that ravaged Europe between 1347 and 1351, taking a proportionately greater toll of life than any other known epidemic or war up to that time.

stis, the bacterium that causes plague.

The Black Death is widely believed to have been the result of plague, caused by infection with the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Modern genetic analyses indicate that the strain of Y. pestis introduced during the Black Death is ancestral to all extant circulating Y. pestis strains known to cause disease in humans. Hence, the origin of modern plague epidemics lies in the medieval period. Other scientific evidence has indicated that the Black Death may have been viral in origin.

(Excerpt) Read more at britannica.com ...


TOPICS: Chit/Chat; History
KEYWORDS: blackdeath; disease; europe; godsgravesglyphs; yersiniapestis
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-22 next last
I'm a history buff, call me morbid, but why did western european civilation, survive?
1 posted on 03/13/2024 9:22:50 AM PDT by DallasBiff
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: DallasBiff

Racist label.


2 posted on 03/13/2024 9:23:14 AM PDT by Jeff Chandler (THE ISSUE IS NEVER THE ISSUE. THE REVOLUTION IS THE ISSUE.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: DallasBiff

..They closed up all the shrubbery shops and forced everyone to get bled..


3 posted on 03/13/2024 9:24:45 AM PDT by joethedrummer (We can't vote our way out of this, folks..)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: DallasBiff
I'm a history buff, call me morbid, but why did western european civilation, survive?

I've often read about stories like linked below that the Gentiles eventually asked the Jews how come they weren't as devastated as Gentile villages were. The Jews responded that they handled the plague like it's leprosy and put people aside until they've no longer had symptoms for 7 days (as per OT law).

One of the first Gentile groups to copy that was an Italian kingdom, though they did it for 40 days. And the way they said "40 days" in their old Italian dialect is where we get the word "quarantine" from today.

https://www.cgg.org/index.cfm/library/commentary/id/4536/quarantine-principles.htm

4 posted on 03/13/2024 9:32:23 AM PDT by Tell It Right (1st Thessalonians 5:21 -- Put everything to the test, hold fast to that which is true.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: DallasBiff

“why did western european civilation, survive?”

Because if it had died out we would have never have had the pleasure of Woke, DEI, ESG, CRT, “sex changes,” trannies, etc. Think how bleak the world would have been.


5 posted on 03/13/2024 9:33:26 AM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom (“Occupy your mind with good thoughts or your enemy will fill them with bad ones.” ~ Thomas More)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: DallasBiff
Everyone else, except the Americas, got hit as well.

The large number of deaths had interesting secondary effects, primarily by causing a labor shortage, especially in towns that were comparatively worse affected than the countryside:

a) serfs slipped away to work in towns;

b) nascent mechanization increased: watermills, windmills, pumps and gunpowder warfare;

c) per-capita wealth & farming efficiency increased.

d) towns developed an even stronger insistence on civic (bourgeois) rights against the crown and nobility.

A lot of changes that with the compass, caravel and cannon prepared Europe to take the lead a 150 years later.

6 posted on 03/13/2024 9:33:41 AM PDT by pierrem15 ("Massacrez-les, car le seigneur connait les siens" )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: pierrem15

The Renaissance..


7 posted on 03/13/2024 9:40:55 AM PDT by Big Red Badger (ALL Things Will be Revealed !)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: DallasBiff

With his forces disintegrating, Janibeg used trebuchets to catapult plague-infested corpses into the town in an effort to infect his enemies. From Kaffa, Genoese ships carried the epidemic westward to Mediterranean ports, whence it spread inland, affecting Sicily (1347); North Africa, mainland Italy, Spain, and France (1348); and Austria, Hungary, Switzerland, Germany, and the Low Countries (1349).

______________________________________________________

Ah...the Mongols were such sweethearts back then.


8 posted on 03/13/2024 9:50:21 AM PDT by Bishop_Malachi (Liberal Socialism - A philosophy which advocates spreading a low standard of living equally.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: DallasBiff

Plagues burn themselves out.


9 posted on 03/13/2024 9:55:27 AM PDT by DeplorablePaul
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: DallasBiff

The custom of saying, “God bless you” in response to a sneeze began during the Black Plague. A sneeze was a symptom of the onset of the plague and a death sentence for most.


10 posted on 03/13/2024 9:58:18 AM PDT by DeplorablePaul
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: DeplorablePaul

And look up the history of the childhood rhyme “ring around the Rosie“… That came from the plague, too, from the characteristic red ring around the infected spots on a persons body.


11 posted on 03/13/2024 10:15:49 AM PDT by NFHale (The Second Amendment - By Any Means Necessary.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: NFHale

11 Posts and NOT one

“bring out your dead” from Monty Python


12 posted on 03/13/2024 10:34:52 AM PDT by woodbutcher1963
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: woodbutcher1963

But I don’t want to go on the cart!


13 posted on 03/13/2024 10:39:38 AM PDT by Fuzz
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies]

To: DallasBiff
Too bad Pfizer didn't exist back then. The death stats would have been much better worse.
14 posted on 03/13/2024 10:45:19 AM PDT by Da Coyote
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: DallasBiff
There were some pretty significant changes. For one, severe labor shortages forced many landlords to start paying their peasants, who found that involuntary servitude couldn't be enforced anymore. For another, the timing of the plague nearly messed up a perfectly good war (Hundred Years' War, 1337-1453), but the war managed to survive somehow.

Not the most fun time to be alive. The scholar Petrarch relates the tale of his brother, a monk in a small monastery, whose monks took treating the sick as a necessary work and after his brother buried all 31 of them, one by one, he fled the now empty monastery with only a dog for a companion. To anywhere that would take him in.

It was urban life that was really devastated, where population density forced mortality rates to skyrocket over what was seen in villages and rural areas. Overall mortality rates have been variously estimated at 30-50% but mortality rates for the pneumonic form - passed directly person to person by coughing - were in the high 90's. Good time to be a hermit.

15 posted on 03/13/2024 10:49:13 AM PDT by Billthedrill
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Fuzz

“I’m not yet yet”


16 posted on 03/13/2024 10:50:28 AM PDT by woodbutcher1963
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: DallasBiff
“why did western european civilation, survive?”

Because there was nobody pushing mRNA shots back then.

17 posted on 03/13/2024 10:51:05 AM PDT by Joe 6-pack
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: DallasBiff

The plague ravaged Europe on multiple occasions from the first recorded history to the last major outbreak in the 17th century. In all accounts it seemed that three out of four people got sick, two recovered and one was not affected. Genetically this suggests that there was a susceptibility gene/genes (p) and a resistant gene/genes (P). If you were PP you did not get sick. If you were Pp you got sick but recovered. If you were pp you got sick and died. After the plague ravaged the population many times over thousands of years eventually the susceptibility gene was weeded out of the population. Fast forward to Europe in WW II. Concentration camps, prisoner of war camps, crowded cities all had poor sanitation with plenty of rats and fleas. Typhus outbreaks but no plague outbreaks. By the 20th century most people were no longer carrying the pp genome.

Inherent genetic resistance and susceptibility determines if with any given pathogen such as Y. Pestis, influenza Covid 19, an individual does or does not get sick.


18 posted on 03/13/2024 11:04:29 AM PDT by allendale
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: DallasBiff

At the time, the pandemic was referred to as the pestilence. “Black Death” was a term coined later, just as “Renaissance,” “Industrial Revolution” and “Roaring Twenties” were coined long after the events.


19 posted on 03/13/2024 4:19:56 PM PDT by Fiji Hill
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: DallasBiff
Part of it did not.

But they were descended of the people who survived the same plague in the Neolithic and probably more recently the Justinian plague.

So they had immune systems that sort of knew what they were dealing with and what to do.

20 posted on 03/13/2024 4:26:41 PM PDT by Harmless Teddy Bear ( Roses are red, Violets are blue, I love being on the government watch list, along with all of you.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-22 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson