A History of the Most Catastrophic Plague Through Contemporary Accounts and How Humans Reacted
Hailed by the New York Times as "unusually interesting both as history and sociological study," The Black Death: A Chronicle of the Plague traces the ebb and flow of European pandemics over the course of centuries through translations of contemporary accounts. Originally published in 1926 and now in paperback for the first time, Nohl's volume is unique for its geographical and historical scope as well as its combination of detailed accounts and overarching contemporary views of the history of the plague in Europe, a disease that claimed nearly 40 million people during the fourteenth century alone. With current concerns about pandemics, The Black Death provides lessons on how humans reacted to and survived catastrophic loss of life to disease.
Contents
Preface
1. The Aspect of the Plague
2. The Precursors of the Plague
3. The Medical Profession and the Plague
4. Plague Remedies
5. Administrative Precautions
6. Attitude of the Church
7. The Diabolical Element of the Plague
8. Persecutions of the Jews
9. The Erotic Element of the Plague
10. The Flagellants
11. Choreomania and Children's Pilgrimages
12. Life Victorious
Bibliography
Geographical Index
Index of Persons
Throughout the fourteenth century AD/eighth century H, waves of plague swept out of Central Asia and decimated populations from China to Iceland. So devastating was the Black Death across the Old World that some historians have compared its effects to those of a nuclear holocaust. As countries began to recover from the plague during the following century, sharp contrasts arose between the East, where societies slumped into long-term economic and social decline, and the West, where technological and social innovation set the stage for Europe's dominance into the twentieth century. Why were there such opposite outcomes from the same catastrophic event?
In contrast to previous studies that have looked to differences between Islam and Christianity for the solution to the puzzle, this pioneering work proposes that a country's system of landholding primarily determined how successfully it recovered from the calamity of the Black Death. Stuart Borsch compares the specific cases of Egypt and England, countries whose economies were based in agriculture and whose pre-plague levels of total and agrarian gross domestic product were roughly equivalent. Undertaking a thorough analysis of medieval economic data, he cogently explains why Egypt's centralized and urban landholding system was unable to adapt to massive depopulation, while England's localized and rural landholding system had fully recovered by the year 1500.
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