Page 291 - Western Civilization A Brief History, Volume I To 1715 9th - Jackson J. Spielvogel

North
Sea
Durham York
Lancaster
Dublin
Leicester
Norwich London
Hamburg
Erfurt
Cologne
Nuremberg Strasbourg
Zurich Venice
Bristol
Calais
Paris Angers
Bordeaux
Liège
Atlantic Ocean
Seville
Genoa
Florence
Siena
Caffa
Black Sea
Constantinople
Avignon Marseilles Pisa Montpellier
Dubrovnik
Corsica Sardinia
Rome Naples
Messina
Sicily
Barcelona Valencia
500
250
MAP 11.1 Spread of the Black Death. The plague entered Europe by way of Sicily in 1347 and within three years had killed between one-quarter and one-half of the population. Outbreaks continued into the early eighteenth century, and the European population took two hundred years to return to the level it had reached before the Black Death.
Q Is there a general pattern between distance from Sicily and the elapsed time before a region was infected with the plague?
Minorca Majorca
Crete
Mediterranean
Sea
Cyprus
0 0
250
750 Kilometers 500 Miles
end of 1350, most of the flagellant movement had been destroyed.
An outbreak of virulent anti-Semitism also accom- panied the Black Death. Jews were accused of causing the plague by poisoning town wells. Although Jews were persecuted in Spain, the worst organized massacres, or pogroms, against this helpless minority were carried out in Germany; more than sixty major Jewish com- munities in Germany had been exterminated by 1351. Many Jews fled eastward to Russia and especially to Poland, where the king offered them protection. Eastern Europe became home to large Jewish communities.
The prevalence of death because of the plague and its recurrences affected people in profound ways. Some survivors apparently came to treat life as something cheap and transient. Violence and violent death appeared to be more common after the plague than before. Post-plague Europe also demonstrated a morbid preoccupation with death. In their sermons, priests reminded parishioners that each night’s sleep might be their last.
ART AND THE BLACK DEATH The Black Death made a visi- ble impact on art. For one thing, it wiped out entire
A Time of Troubles: Black Death and Social Crisis 253
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December 1347 June 1348 December 1348 June 1349 December 1349 June 1350 December 1350
Area partially or totally spared
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