In Part One and Part Two of the Great Mortality, we examined the devastation wrought by the Black Death. In this, the third and final part, I'd like to look at life in Europe after the plague. The most easily-measured changes sprang from the reduction in population; yet the horror of what each man and his neighbor had just been through had to have some impact. That impact would shape the course of future events.
Love and Money
In 1347, before the plague came to Europe, the population was pushing the limits of what the continent's agricultural production could support. Famine had already struck in some areas, and starvation was a bleak yet common fact of life. Most peasants lived on the very extremes of existence, fortunate to have a roof over their heads and any food at all to eat. A large number of people meant a great deal of production in every trade, the output of which was just sufficient to meet demand.
After the plague had swept through Europe and reduced the population by a third, a sudden surplus of all items and food drove prices down drastically. In response, people spent (and overspent) wildly. However, it wasn't long before an insufficiency of labor reversed the situation, and prices once again rose -- and kept rising. The few craftsmen that were left in each trade soon realized their power to demand higher wages from those in dire need of their services. Government responded with legislation restricting wages to pre-plague rates (as per the Statute of Laborers in England) or by limiting the amount by which wages could increase. This contributed to the resentment among both skilled laborers and peasants that would eventually become outright rebellion.
The marriage rate rose dramatically; but while some may have married for love, and others may have married for mutual comfort in the wake of horror, there's no doubt that many married for money. Young women orphaned by plague and in possession of their late parents' estate were favored targets of adventurers. The birth rate rose, as well, yet the overall population did not increase. War, famine, and recurrences of the plague more than balanced the number of new lives, and by the end of the 1300s the total population of Europe was only half what it had been at the century's start.
Land and Livelihoods
Villages that had been severely reduced in number were often abandoned as their few remaining residents sought work in cities or still-productive estates, as were farms that could no longer be worked due to a shortage of labor. Crop fields were turned into pastureland for sheep, and landlords let any family willing to work a farm move in and do so for free rather than let the land go to waste or be reclaimed by forest.
Upward mobility took place in many levels of society, although not in large numbers. Lesser knights became more powerful knights, and powerful knights gained control of their late liege-lord's estates. The Church claimed the lion's share of any abandoned property of value, yet poor folk also moved into empty houses, using the belongings of a family now dead, sleeping in their beds, eating with their silverware, and wearing their clothes. In some areas sumptuary laws were renewed in an attempt to keep people not born to the status they had gained from taking advantage of their newfound wealth or raising themselves any further. Yet all in all, society's proportion of wealthy to poor and nobility to peasant remained pretty much the same.
Life after Death
As much as contemporaries may have hoped that the plague had an improving effect on those who survived, the reverse was more often the case. Vandalism, fraud, prostitution and a host of other crimes rose in frequency. Homeless vagrants looted and pillaged everything but the largest of cities. Violence was rampant. Generally, many people behaved more recklessly than ever before in an obvious reaction to recent horror -- for why treat others with respect and have a care for one's own soul when, without any clear reason, God had inflicted such enormous horror on His children?
Continue to Page Two: Darkness in the Church
