A century of shocks
The fourteenth century is often described as a time of crisis in Europe, and the Black Death sits at its center. But the plague did not strike a calm, stable world. It arrived in a society that had already faced serious troubles, and it was followed by more. Looking at the century as a whole helps explain why the plague years felt, to many people, like a period of continuous strain.
This article takes the wide view. It does not retell how the disease spread or what it did to wages, which have their own articles, but asks what the era looked like.
Before the plague: hunger and war
Europe’s population had grown for a few centuries before 1300, and by the early fourteenth century many regions were densely settled. Historians think this may have left little margin for error. In the years around 1315 to 1317, a run of bad weather and poor harvests led to widespread hunger in northern Europe, a famine that is usually cited as the worst of the period. Livestock disease added to the strain. A harvest failure was always dangerous for medieval households, and this one is remembered as especially severe. The exact death toll is unclear.
War was also a feature of the age. In the 1330s the long conflict later called the Hundred Years’ War began between England and France. The English victory at Crecy in 1346 came only a year before the plague reached Italy, a reminder that fighting and epidemic overlapped. Under Edward III, English kings were deeply engaged in campaigning, and the demands of war affected taxes and labor at home.
The plague years
The first wave of the epidemic, from 1347 to 1351, is the part everyone remembers. In the following decades the disease returned repeatedly. Some outbreaks were local and some were widespread, and for a century or more, any given town could expect plague to reappear. This changed the feeling of life. Death was a common presence, and awareness of mortality shaped religion, art and everyday behavior.
It is hard to put a number on how many people the plague killed, and the estimates vary by region. A careful reading of the evidence suggests that the loss was very large, though it was uneven. Anyone who gives a single precise number for “Europe” is going beyond what the sources allow.
Fourteenth-century life reshaped
Work and land. Scarcity of labor changed bargaining power in many places, and landlords adjusted. Some villages shrank or disappeared. For peasants who survived, life could improve in some respects, though plague, taxes and war continued to threaten them.
Towns and trade. Urban life continued and often rebounded through migration. Merchants and craftspeople adapted, and some markets contracted while others grew. The century also saw continuing rivalry among trading cities.
Religion. The Church faced both an upsurge of devotion and criticism. In 1378 the Western Schism began, with rival claimants to the papacy, which damaged the Church’s prestige. Historians do not claim that the plague caused the schism, but the two belong to the same unsettled period.
Unrest. Tension appeared in several places. In England, the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 is the best known rural uprising, while risings occurred in parts of France, Flanders and Italy in the same general period. Their causes were varied, and the plague is only one thread among taxes, war and labor regulation.
Culture and learning. Writers of the age include Chaucer, who lived through the later decades of the century and whose work depicts a changing English society, though his best-known writings do not primarily concern the plague. In Italy, Boccaccio set the frame story of his Decameron in a Florence stricken by plague. Painting and sculpture increasingly dealt with themes of death, judgment and penance, although art historians caution against attributing every change to the epidemic.
Climate and environment
Some scholars point out that climate in the fourteenth century was becoming more variable, with a cooler trend setting in toward the end of the medieval warm period. This may have contributed to harvest problems. The link between climate and the plague, and the size of the climate shifts themselves, are subjects of research and debate, so these ideas should be taken as possibilities rather than settled facts.
The sense of an age
Many writers have portrayed the plague years as a time of gloom, but historians caution against too bleak a picture. People continued to marry, trade, build and celebrate. Cathedrals were completed, universities continued to teach, and local life went on. At the same time, there is plenty of evidence for fear, grief and disruption. The fair description is a society under strain that adapted in many ways.
Where the period ends
There is no clear end date for this era. The first wave subsided in the early 1350s, but plague outbreaks continued through the following centuries. Population recovery in many areas took until the late fifteenth or sixteenth century, depending on the place. Historians therefore often treat the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as a long aftermath, rather than a sharply bounded period. The details of dates and numbers vary by region, and readers should treat round figures as approximations.