The Black Death

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Europe was hit with many disasters and with the population rising, that meant that the number of fatalities was going to rise. In the year 1347 the Black Death arrived in Europe, over the next five years, the mysterious Black Death would kill more than 20 million people in Europe–almost one-third of the continent’s population. They did not understand the science behind the disease, many people believed that the Black Death was a kind of divine punishment–retribution for sins against God such as greed, blasphemy, fornication and worldliness. And the only way to overcome the plague was to win God’s forgiveness. Some people believed that the way to do this was to purge their communities of heretics and other troublemakers–so, for example, many thousands of Jews were massacred in 1348 and 1349. The plague not only affected thousands of families and people in general but it also had drastic economic, social and psychological effects on society. 


The black death arrived in Britain from central Asia in the autumn of 1348. Believed to be spread by infected fleas carried on rats, the disease swept through Europe over the better part of the next year. One of history’s most devastating epidemics. 



Sources: www.historytoday.com/.../black-death-greatest-catastrophe