page_title: Consequences of the Black Death
section_title: Cultural effect
hierarchical_section_title: Consequences of the Black Death / Cultural effect
caption_attribution_description: English: Illustrations from the Nuremberg Chronicle, by Hartmann Schedel (1440-1514)
context_page_description: The consequences of the Black Death have had both immediate and long-term effects on human population across the world. These include a series of biological, social, economic, political and religious upheavals which had profound effects on the course of world history, especially the History of Europe. Often simply referred to as "The Plague", the Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, peaking in Europe between 1348 and 1350 with an estimated one-third of the continent's population ultimately succumbing to the disease. Historians estimate that it reduced the total world population from 475 million to between 350 and 375 million. In most parts of Europe, it took nearly 80 years for population sizes to recover, and in some areas more than 150 years.
  From the perspective of many of the survivors, the effect of the plague may have been ultimately favorable, as the massive reduction of the workforce meant their labour was suddenly in higher demand. R. H. Hilton has argued that those English peasants who survived found their situation to be much improved. For many Europeans, the 15th century was a golden age of prosperity and new opportunities.
context_section_description: The Black Death had a profound effect on art and literature. After 1350, European culture in general turned very morbid. The general mood was one of pessimism, and contemporary art turned dark with representations of death. The widespread image of the "dance of death" showed death (a skeleton) choosing victims at random. Many of the most graphic depictions come from writers such as Boccaccio and Petrarch. Peire Lunel de Montech, writing about 1348 in the lyric style long out of fashion, composed the following sorrowful sirventes "Meravilhar no·s devo pas las gens" during the height of the plague in Toulouse:
  They died by the hundreds, both day and night, and all were thrown in ... ditches and covered with earth. And as soon as those ditches were filled, more were dug. And I, Agnolo di Tura ... buried my five children with my own hands ... And so many died that all believed it was the end of the world.
  Boccaccio wrote:
  How many valiant men, how many fair ladies, breakfast with their kinfolk and the same night supped with their ancestors in the next world! The condition of the people was pitiable to behold. They sickened by the thousands daily, and died unattended and without help. Many died in the open street, others dying in their houses, made it known by the stench of their rotting bodies. Consecrated churchyards did not suffice for the burial of the vast multitude of bodies, which were heaped by the hundreds in vast trenches, like goods in a ship's hold and covered with a little earth.
caption: Danse Macabre from the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493).
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