European History
The Ciompi Revolt: Florence after the Black Death
The Ciompi Revolt began in the city of Florence with the Ciompi, the wool workers, demanding better representation among the civic officials. […]
European History
European History
Instability and Chaos: Political Impact of the Black Death
Politically, there was chaos in Europe as most of the people who ran the administration were dead or had fled, and in the vacuum that was created, everyone else pretty much ran wild. […]
European History
The Decline of Serfdom: Impact of The Black Death in England
Serfdom went into decline from 1381. Many landowners were willing to take payment from their serfs and in exchange grant them their freedom. […]
European History
Response to the Plague in Cities and in the Countryside
In the aftermath of the plague spreading through Europe, many farms became unattended, causing livestock to run free with no one to feed them. […]
European History
The Great Mortality and the New Economy
After the plague, everyone who survived was pretty much better off than they had been before. A new pattern emerged in the economy that unsettled a few individuals. […]
European History
The Economic Impact of the Plague
When the plague swept through Europe and its medieval society, it affected everyone’s life. Nobody was safe, and nobody could claim to be unaffected by the epidemic. […]
European History
Revolutionary Storytelling in the Midst of the Black Death
Chaucer was deeply influenced by Boccaccio’s work. This led to the writing of “The Canterbury Tales”, considered an example of revolutionary storytelling at the time. […]
European History
Giovanni Boccaccio’s “The Decameron”: A Series of Plague Tales
The part of “The Decameron” that gets the most attention is Boccaccio’s introduction, in which he details the horrors that the Black Death had wrought on the city of Florence. […]
European History
First Literary Works during the Plague
While ‘consilia’ had been a literary tradition before the arrival of the plague, between 1348 and 1350, there was a veritable flood of them being produced by medical professionals throughout the medieval world. […]
European History
The Dance of Death during the Black Death
During the Great Mortality, the most widespread artistic expression was death dancing around humans, becoming the great equalizer between all levels of society. […]