Black Death and Its Impact on Western

¶ … Black Death and its impact on Western Civilization

Black Death and Religion

The Black Death adversely impacted the reputation of the Catholic Church since its own adherents (including clergy) were ill and dying and the Church proved impotent to cure them. This feeling of disillusionment towards the church was reinforced by oen of the theories of its transmission that speculated that it was disseminated through the air by way of "miasma' (otherwise known as " bad air). The fact that the Church could not annihilate this bad air, caused distrust in the powers of the Church. As a result, people went to either extreme. They either flagellated themselves (e.g. The religious group called the Flagellants who traveled from town to town whipping themselves in imitation of Jesus' Crucifixion) and burned and killed others (such as Jews) to atone for their sins, or they indulged in excesses of hedonism. The general feeling was that the world was coming to an end.

The Church suffered in other ways too. Due to its practice of caring for the morally ill and of monasteries sheltering fatally ill people, many of the clergy themselves became ill and died. This caused a shortage of clergymen and after the Black Death resulted in an ignorant and unskilled group of clergy taking its place (Bryne, 36). This laity, barely equipped for the Service, indulged in corrupt practices further destructing the reputation of the Church. Eventually, the people were to become so disillusioned with Catholicism that the Reformation took its place.

Impact on economy

National turmoil and economy often have a rebounding effect one upon the other, and here it was no different.

With the mass of people dying and death, seemingly, unavoidable, property was more or less free and money lost its importance. Anarchy was the rule of the day with peasant and poor plundering from wealthy, and laborers demanding exorbitant wages since demand for laborers was high. Various economic theorists posit the Black Death to be the start of capitalism (Perry 179).

Monarchs' outlawed large-scale fishing, condemned black market speculation, regulated price on grain, and prohibited export of foodstuffs. Their measures were often ineffective. Many European countries meanwhile underwent recession and England almost starved both because it was unable to buy grain from abroad (from France due to its prohibition), and was unable to produce sufficient quantity of its own due to labor shortage. Grain was pirated and looted and later sold on the black market for speculation. War between England and Scotland exacerbated inflation and economic historians, such as Braudel, assume that the Black Death signaled the pitch of the recession that had been growing throughout the 14th and 15th centuries (Byrne, 86).

The Black Death also resulted in a mobility of laborers with competition for work encouraging their request for higher wages and better working conditions. Government and authorities (such as the Ordinance of Laborers (1349) and the Statute of Laborers (1351)) tried to institute wage controls ensuring that workers receive the same wages that they had before the Black Death but demand for labor was so great that landowners were compelled to capitulate to laborers demands. The ordinance also failed in restricting the movement of laborers. This sudden freedom resulted in the birth of capitalism with competition and industry of man and its power being amplified and eventually, in first the Renaissance and then the reformation. Laborers struck their own wages and often sought temporary jobs in favor of more permanent ones. Many of them also became more independent by leaving their masters and making their own way in the world.

Impact on social classes

It changed the social structure of European classes in that it caused an upheaval with many of the individuals of the upper classes dying and with migration of the lower classes. Also too, members of the lower class become enormously wealthy taking over services (such as doctoring) that others were reluctant to do, or demanding higher wages and profiting from the anarchy of the Black Death.

Social classes were also unmoored by the great flux of social upheaval that occurred throughout Europe with approximately "one quarter to one third of the European population" (Perry 189) fleeing the towns and cities for the countryside. Many of the lords and upper classes also became poor due to failure of their crops and farmlands and due to their being compelled to pay exorbitant wages for labor (Perry 189-190).

Looting occurred on a frequent basis all of which resulted in a new middle class being formed called the "nouveaux riche." These took advantage of the Black Death and collapse of much of the upper class by building up their fortunes through pillaging and opportunism (Sherman 263).

Impact on Art

The suffering of the Black Death was represented in the morbidity and pessimism as well as gloomy illustrations that filled the art of that time. Death and allusion to the next world were common features. The image of dancing skeletons on the graves of corpses in the picture of 'Danse Macabre" (unknown artist) is just one of the pieces of art common in that period that illustrated the universality of death ((Byrne, 124).

Architecture became affected too where there was either a revival of Greco-Roman style which reverted to the style of antiquity, or there was exaggeration of the Gothic style. Medical Churches of the late period boasted high vertical structures causing viewers to lookup to the heavens, whilst other sculptors absorbed themselves in intricate Gothic detail delineating the suffering and passion that was caused by the havoc and tragedy around them. Religious context of the churches was ideally placed to serve as background design for this emotion. Art was also beginning to show individual styles and a movement from religion to industry of man. Realism was epitomized in both literature and architecture with images of corpses, sorrowing and worldly suffering emerging. This culminated in the realism of such painters such as Jon Van Eyck (*.