Change was Good: Plague and the end of Medieval Europe

This is the last of a six-part series about the Middle Ages with the goal of giving casual readers of medieval romances a better understanding of the time period. Today's topic is the Black Death and end of the Middle Ages.

Previously

In First the Fall, Then the Barbarians, we discussed the macro trends of the early medieval period and how they set the foundation for the Early Middle Ages. We painted kings and knights with a broad brush and learned the benefits of political stability in Huzzah! Knights, Kings and Living the High Life. We looked at war and social change in Ideals of Chivalry and Realities of War and discussed the lives of medieval women in Wives, Mothers, and Nuns. We considered the difference between ‘the church’ and ‘The Church’ in The Desire for God, Power, and Learning.

Some scholars put the beginning of the Renaissance—or the end of the Middle Ages—as early as 1215 with the reign of Frederick II, whose personality and intellectual curiosity heralded the Renaissance. Others put it as late as 1469, the year Lorenzo de Medici began ruling Florence and who could arguably be called the patron of the Italian Renaissance.

If I had to pick a date and defend it for a dissertation, I would argue for 1352, the year after the first wave of the plague burned itself out and the shattered survivors began the painful process of rebuilding their world.

The beginning of the End

Numerically, more died in the Spanish Flu epidemic between 1917-18, but total deaths were 3 percent to 5 percent of the global population.

Yersinia pestis, the bacteria associated with the Great Mortality, touched European shores in 1347, and in the course of five years, killed an estimated 50 million people from the Mediterranean to the North Sea. That’s 60 percent of the European population. In other words, every six out of 10 people living in Europe died; in some places, however, mortality was 80 percent. That would be 30 million to 48 million dead in California and 12,000 to 18,000 where I currently live.

Scholars will argue the exact number, but noodle the idea of at least half (if not more) of the people in your town dying of disease within a month. If you live in a town of 25,000, you will have ~15,000 people die in a few weeks. You have to find those people, bury them, divvy up their goods, and fill their place in the town’s social structure.

The Black death, also called Bubonic Plague because many victims suffered from swollen lymph nodes or buboes in the neck, armpit or groin, is often attributed to infected fleas biting humans after their preferred host, the black rat, died. However, based on the speed, virulence, and rapidity of transmission, many Plague scholars believe there were at least three strains of plague circulating Europe, including a pneumonic strain that appears to have been airborne.

Most scholars believe Yersinia pestis originated in central Asia and spread through China along the main east-west trade routes through commerce and war. It came to Europe in the fall of 1347 on Italian merchant ships fleeing Caffa (sometimes spelled Kaffa). In what might well be the most effective instance of germ warfare ever, when Mongol leader Jeni Beg realized he could not take the city because plague had destroyed his army, he lobbed the plague-riddled corpses over the wall, infecting those within the city (although rats came and went unimpeded by either army, so Jeni Beg can’t take all the credit or the blame). Defenders, fleeing plague, brought the disease to Marselles in the second week of September. By November, it was in Genoa, Venice and Pisa. These cities served as bridgeheads from which the plague conquered all of Europe.

Nothing to do but Wait and Pray

Horrifyingly, people knew it was coming. Stories arrived in a town or city weeks or months in advance of the assault. As people fled cities to avoid the plague (often bringing it with them) they told stories of thousands dead in a few weeks, of people dancing  in the morning, feeling ill in the afternoon, and being dead by evening, and of whole families lost and no one realizing it because their neighbors were dead, as well.

Surviving accounts tell us of mass burials and wild pigs and dogs digging up the shallowly buried corpses and of rivers being consecrated to handle the dead because a city ran out of land and people to bury its dead. One Italian man wrote of burying his wife and five sons with his own hands.

Modern epidemiologists may debate the exact cause of the Plague, but the key point from a societal point-of-view is simply this: all efforts to contain or stop the plague failed.

• Medicine failed.
• Human sacrifice failed (i.e. the slaughter of thousands of urban Jews accused of poisoning wells to kill Christians).
• Prayer failed.

As a result of the horror and the failure of social systems to contain the suffering, the plague altered how people saw themselves and each other, weakened their faith in institutions and God, and bestowed unprecedented opportunities for mobility and prosperity on survivors.

Loss of Faith

As we discussed in an earlier post, the church (local parish priests and monks) and The Church (the institution) were the driving force of medieval society, but when society turned to the church in both forms for comfort, for answers, for intercession, the Church failed. It could neither offer answers nor comfort for the dying. Many churchmen fled their posts in an attempt to save their own lives and those that stayed, usually died.

Then—as now—people searched for reason behind the plague and in the absence of answers, many people believed the plague was divine punishment for sins. When prayers, votive churches, and the various fasts days called for by the Church failed to even slow the plague, people began to question the righteousness of the church and its divine role in society. This change in perception weakened people’s faith in the church, which led directly to the Reformation, as well the Enlightenment, separation of Church and State, the idea of upward mobility and concept of to individual liberty.

It also changed individual lives—often for the better.

Moving on Up

To be honest, if you survived plague, your life was almost immediately materially better off than it had been or would have been if the Black Death hadn’t overrun Europe. That’s harsh, especially to the millions who died horrific deaths, but it’s also true.

Prior to 1347, Europe was over-populated and culturally stagnant. The 12^th century intellectual blossoming that led to the High Middle Ages had faded. Social mobility had come to a standstill and Europe struggled to feed itself, which means the majority of the population was malnourished and one bad harvest from starvation.

As Plague wiped out the population, many people found themselves the sole heirs to their extended family. When consolidated, this inheritance was often substantial enough to change the life of the survivor. This wealth included food animals as well as tools (looms, hence the word heirloom) and money. Food was no longer scarce or unaffordable, which means diet and overall health improved, as well.

Our survivors had health and wealth, skills that were in demand, and an understandable skepticism of the church. They could afford to educate their children. They were willing to risk their noble lord’s wrath and move to the city or to another estate where that lord offered a relief of heriot and daily wages, and were no longer content with their place in the Great Chain of Being. They were needed enough by society that they could ignore efforts from the nobility and the church to reinstitute “traditional values,” and efforts to put the lower orders back into their place failed.

Many of the social changes brought by the plague would have happened anyway, but probably not for another century or two. What the plague did was concentrate these changes into a few painful decades.

A New Outbreak

The plague resurfaced in Europe every decade or so until 1666, but we are not free of the bubonic plague. An outbreak occurred in the early 19th century in China and southeast Asia. Much of our medical knowledge of the plague comes from this outbreak.

And in 1994, bubonic and pneumonic plague surfaced in Surat India, killing only 56 people thanks to the quick and efficient response of India's government and modern antibiotics. Of note, however, is how people reacted to this outbreak. As with the 14th century outbreak, Doctors and nurses refused to treat the sick. People fled the city of Surat in packed trains going to New Delhi and other cities. The plague traveled with them. Others blamed local Muslim populations for poisoning the city’s water supply. Sigh.

About 20 people in the U.S. are infected with plague every year and a few die, mostly because the medical community doesn’t recognize symptoms in time.

If you’d like to learn more about the plague, let me know and I can most links and suggestions in the comments. Overall, though, the clearest learning from a study of plague, is simply this: individuals are fragile, but humanity is resilient.

I hope you have enjoyed this blog series of medieval Europe. I have only skimmed the surface of long and complex time period, so please ask questions. However, I am on a plane from Hawaii today, so feel free to discuss among yourselves until I land stateside.

Keena Kincaid writes historical romances in which passion, magic and treachery collide to create unforgettable stories. Her books are available from Prairie Rose Publications and Amazon. For more information on her stories, visit her Amazon page, her website, or Facebook.

Wives, Mothers, and Nuns

This is the fourthof a six-part series about the Middle Ages with the goal of giving casual readers of medieval romances a better understanding of the time period and why there were no damsels in distress. (My apologies for not posting it on the right date) This brief blog doesn’t even begin to cover it the complexity of women’s lives in the Middle Ages, which varied greatly depending upon class, location, and all the other variables that are lumped into “socio-economic status.”

Previously:

In First the Fall, Then the Babarians, we discussed the macro trends of the early medieval period and how they set the foundation for the Early Middle Ages. We painted kings and knights with a broad brush and learned the benefits of political stability in Huzzah! Knights, Kings and Living the High Life and looked at war in Ideals of Chivalry and Realities of War. Today, we’re focusing on women in the Middle Ages.

 

Love and Marriage

So would you want to be a woman in the middle ages? Probably not. Besides the very real lack of aspirin, tampons and coffee, the lack of choices would be unbearable to a modern woman.

The key to understanding the medieval women is to understand the role of the individual and land in determining status, wealth and survival.

First of all, the idea of an “individual” didn’t exist. That’s not to say that people didn't think of themselves, and sometimes put their own wants and needs above that the whole, but the people who had the means to do that were very rare. Even Eleanor of Aquitaine was married off the first time. An individual's desires didn't equal or supersede society’s needs.

Secondly, the more land you controlled, the less likely you were to go hungry or fall to a neighbor. Land equaled security, and those with land (whether it was a hundred hundreds scattered throughout England or a dozen strips in a field) used marriage to determine whom of the next generation got the land and all that came with it.

Love wasn’t the goal. Neither were happiness, contentment or emotional and sexual satisfaction. The goal was a stable society where wealth, titles and land passed without chaos from one generation to the next.

Younger sons and bastards were left to secure their own future if they wanted land and a wife. Daughters inherited only if there were no sons. As you can imagine, heiresses were prized as a quick route to wealth and power. Kings often used heiresses as “rewards” for services rendered and to tightened the binds with vassals.

For good or ill, these same scenes played out on smaller scales as you move down the social ladder. The merchant wanted to align with other merchants to found dynasties and make sure his grandchildren are heirs to a dynasty. The master craftsman could train all his sons, but his eldest would be the one to take over the family business.

Among peasants, childless couples would adopt two or three of the younger children of a large, neighboring family, and those children would inherit after taking care of the couple in their old age. These arrangements are spelled out in contracts that stipulate what the elderly woman would eat, including how often and in what amounts, clothing she would receive in a year, where she would sit in the house in relation to the hearth, where she would sleep, and healthcare in old age. We know about these because of the number of suits brought by one party against the other for not meetings the terms of the contract, and the great majority of these suits involve impoverished women.

Marriage as a political and financial arrangement changed little throughout the Middle Ages. What changed was the Church’s growing influence over marriage. Initially, the Church was tangential to the ceremony. By the 12th century, a priest was part of the wedding ceremony, but it would be another century before he was required for the proceedings.

The Church also decreed that marriages required the free consent of both partners. And thought this idea became doctrine, it doesn’t mean the participants had a say in the matter. Consent could be “coaxed.”

Wife and Mothers

The roles for medieval women codified by the Church and society weren’t negotiable. There were strict expectations defining a woman’s duty both inside the home and within a marriage. Straying from these expectations brought harsh social and perhaps legal or religious reprisals. Women were expected to bear children and nurture them, be obedient to their husband and take care of domestic matters.

The importance—and narrowness of this role—is reflected in how young girls were educated. Education focused on the practical, not the academic.

Among the nobility, girls as young as seven were sent from their home to live with another noble family, often because they were betrothed to a son of the family. She learned how to run a household, manners, etiquette, and leisure pursuits important to the nobility, such as hawking, dancing, riding and embroidery or needlework.

They would act as a servant in these households, waiting upon older women in the family. Unfortunately, because marriages weren’t legal until after consummation. Many of these young women were neither daughter nor servant. Worse, if their betrothed died before the marriage, they were either wanted by neither family—or in a tug-of-war between their father-in-law who wanted to keep their dowry and their father who wanted it back. Several historians, including Georges Duby, have written about the physical and sexual abuse that grew out of this situation.

Theoretically, the young lady had the right to say no when it came time for the actual marriage. The question of whether both parties are entering into the marriage of their own free will was real and important. Even with this, few young women said no. The “Nos” that we know about are typically part of a saint’s hagiography designed to show the woman’s piousness or commitment to a life of chastity. For most women, saying no would often bring on worse consequences than being married, i.e. the physical and sexual abuse mentioned above or a life in a convent.

If she didn’t say no, a noblewoman’s marriage would be consummated around age 14, but many times it happened even younger. We look at this as abusive today, but then it gave the girl legal protection if her husband died that her betrothed status did not.

Girls on a lower social rung learned how to run a household, perhaps how to run a business, as well, and to treat minor illnesses. There was less emphasis on leisure pursuits, and more on practical matters. For instance, while many noble women learned to read, only some women of the merchant class learned. Freewomen and serfs almost never did.

Independent women

There is some debate as to whether becoming a nun was actually better than life as a married woman. It wasn’t necessarily a life of quiet contemplation. These were self-supporting communities, and young noblewomen could be expected to work. However, nuns were educated (although much less so than their male counterparts) and were responsible for the administration of their convents.

Outside of the cloister, widowhood was often the first time that most women were able to make their own decisions and chart their own course. Women who enjoyed widowhood most were those who were financially secure but not too rich.

Of course, we know so much about widows’ entitlements and lives because of lawsuits and court records. The fact is many women had to seek legal recourse against sons, stepsons, in-laws, and lords to receive their due inheritance. Like the young bride who had the right to say no, but who faced punishment worse than marriage if she did so, widows had the right to property and chattel, but often faced violence, inaction, and collusion to deprive them of their property when they exercised that right.

One interesting trend that defies all the restrictions placed on women is the pilgrimage. A large majority of pilgrims seems to have been women. We know this from burial goods, which include badges or other tokens that signify a pilgrimage, and wills that bequeath goods, lands or coins to pilgrimage sites or specified that someone be hired to make a pilgrimage on behalf of the deceased

One interesting exception to everything we know about woman in the late Middle Ages is Margery Kempe (d. 1438). Kempe wrote what is believed to be the first autobiography in the English language. The Book of Margery Kempe chronicles her extensive pilgrimages to various holy sites and her “conversations” with God.

What makes Margery so interesting to historians is she went against all social codes, systematically violating each one of them for religious purposes. She faced a great deal of criticism for her efforts from society and the Church. From her book, we can learn what happened to women who went against the expectations. She wore fine clothes in the latest fashions, started her own business as a brewer and was thought of as “proud” (pride is one of the seven deadly sins, btw).

She is “punished” for her sins. Her business fails, the Archbishop chastises her, and her husband more or less agrees to a separation. Remember there is no divorce.

Damsel in Distress

The fairytale view of the princess locked in the tower until rescued by the knight in shining armor is pure fiction. In the Middle Ages—frankly, until just last century—women were seen only as someone’s daughter, sister, wife or mother. In general, women could not inherit or hold property (it passed “through” them but not “to” them), did not retain custody of children if widowed or divorced, and rarely had a say in who or when they wed.

If she were brilliant and capable, the type of woman who could defend a castle (Margaret Paston), run a country (Eleanor of Aquitaine, Eleanor of Castille, ) or out-argue Peter Abelard (Heloise) she was seen as the exception to what "everyone" knew about women.

If her father, her brother, or her in-law locked a woman in a tower no one would come to save her. They had every right to put her there and keep her there for as long as they wished.

Keena Kincaid writes historical romances in which passion, magic and treachery collide to create unforgettable stories. Her books are available from Prairie Rose Publications and Amazon. For more information on her stories, visit her Amazon page, her website, or Facebook.