Transcript The Black Death - Cloudfront.net

The historian, Barbara Tuchmann wrote in
her book, The Distant Mirror: The
Calamitous 14c, that,
when the gap between the ideal and the
real [in a society] becomes too wide, the
system breaks down.
We will assess the validity of this thesis
by analyzing the major political, economic,
social, and intellectual forces that
contributed to a breakdown of society in
the late 14c and early 15c.
The Culprits
Oriental Rat Flea
The Famine of 1315-1317
 By 1300 Europeans were farming almost all
the land they could cultivate.
 A population crisis developed.
 Climate changes in Europe produced three
years of crop failures between 1315-17
because of excessive rain.
 As many as 15% of the peasants in some
English villages died.
 One consequence of
starvation & poverty
was susceptibility to
disease.
1347: Plague Reaches
Constantinople!
The Symptoms
Bulbous
Septicemia Form:
almost 100%
mortality rate.
From the Toggenburg Bible, 1411
Lancing a Buboe
The Disease Cycle
Flea drinks rat blood
that carries the
bacteria.
Bacteria
multiply in
flea’s gut.
Human is infected!
Flea bites human and
regurgitates blood
into human wound.
Flea’s gut clogged
with bacteria.
Medieval Art & the Plague
Effect on Art and Music
• People's attitudes towards music and art
changed as they began to see the
depression surrounding them. The horrific
nature of the Black Death was reflected in
the realistic depictions of human suffering
and carnage as well as the symbolic use
of the skeleton.
Medieval Art & the Plague
Bring out your dead!
Medieval Art & the Plague
An obsession
with death.
Boccaccio in The Decameron
The victims ate lunch with their
friends and dinner with their
ancestors.
The Danse Macabre
Macabre
• Word History: The word macabre is an excellent
example of a word formed with reference to a specific
context that has long since disappeared for everyone but
scholars.
• Macabre is first recorded in the phrase Macabrees
daunce in a work written around 1430 by John Lydgate.
Macabree was thought by Lydgate to be the name of a
French author, but in fact he misunderstood the Old
French phrase Danse Macabre, "the Dance of Death," a
subject of art and literature. In this dance, Death leads
people of all classes and walks of life to the same final
end. The macabre element may be an alteration of
Macabe, "a Maccabee." The Maccabees were Jewish
martyrs who were honored by a feast throughout the
Western Church, and reverence for them was linked to
reverence for the dead. Today macabre has no
connection with the Maccabees and little connection with
the Dance of Death, but it still has to do with death.
Its Origins
•
If the plague had just stayed in one city, the
containment might have spared Europe.
Unfortunately, the plague spread when people
fled to other cities.
• It is believed the plague originated in Asia, and
moved west with Mongol armies and traders.
• The plague traveled on trade routes and
caravans. Its path of death was generally from
south to north and east to west passing through
Italy, France, England, Germany, Denmark,
Sweden, Poland, Finland, and eventually
reaching Greenland.
Attempts to Stop the Plague
A Doctor’s
Robe
“Leeching”
Attempts to Stop the Plague
Flagellanti:
Self-inflicted “penance” for our sins!
Attempts to Stop the Plague
Pograms against the Jews
“Jew” hat
“Golden Circle”
obligatory badge
Death Triumphant !:
A Major Artistic Theme
A Little Macabre Ditty
“A sickly season,” the merchant said,
“The town I left was filled with dead,
and everywhere these red flies
crawled upon the corpses’ eyes,
eating them away.”
“Fair make you sick,” the merchant said,
“They crawled upon the wine and bread.
Pale priests with oil and books,
bulging eyes and crazy looks,
dropping like the flies.”
A Little Macabre Ditty (2)
“I had to laugh,” the merchant said,
“The doctors purged, and dosed, and bled;
“And proved through solemn disputation
“The cause lay in some constellation.
“Then they began to die.”
“First they sneezed,” the merchant said,
“And then they turned the brightest red,
Begged for water, then fell back.
With bulging eyes and face turned black,
they waited for the flies.”
A Little Macabre Ditty (3)
“I came away,” the merchant said,
“You can’t do business with the dead.
“So I’ve come here to ply my trade.
“You’ll find this to be a fine brocade…”
And then he sneezed……….!
The Mortality Rate
35% - 70%
25,000,000 dead !!!
Question 1
What were the
political,
economic,
and social effects
of the Black Death??
At the end include how you are affected by the information you learned.
Question 2
Is the following thesis true, does it apply?
“when the gap between the ideal and the real [in a
society] becomes too wide, the system breaks
down.”