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Plague Effects in Medieval Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Sylvia L. Thrupp
Sylvia L. Thrupp
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
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Extract

Professor Russell was the first historian to try to apply statistical methods to analysis of the effects of epidemic plague on the composition, not just on the total size, of medieval population. He argues now that general plagues differed from the type of the disease that became epidemic after the crop failures of 1315–1317, in sharply lowering the sex ratio and in greatly increasing the burden of child-rearing.

Type
Health and Economic Development
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 8 , Issue 4 , July 1966 , pp. 474 - 483
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1966

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References

1 Russell, J. C., British Medieval Population (Albuquerque, 1948)Google Scholar, ch. VIII–X.

2 The category includes the great nobility along with many lesser landowners and some of the wealthy city merchants who invested in land.

3 Russell, op. cit., pp. 149–154. The data in the returns still await checking against other local records; the returns may under-enumerate both the elderly and servants.

4 Mols, Roger, Introduction a la demographie historique (Louvain, 1954–56), vol. II, pp. 196–97Google Scholar, draws attention to this as regards the towns founded by Germans.

5 Power, Eileen, Medieval English Nunneries (Cambridge, 1922), pp. 31–38Google Scholar.

6 Ibid., pp. 4–7.

7 Mols, op. cit., pp. 197–208, surveys most of the evidence that is in print.

8 Beloch, Karl Julius, Bevölkerungsgeschichte ltaliens, Bd. 2 (Berlin, 1940), pp. 212–13Google Scholar.

9 Beltrami, Daniele, Storia della popolazione di Venezia dalla fine del secolo XVI alia caduta della republica (Padua, 1954), pp. 82, 85Google Scholar.

10 Goubert, Pierre, Beauvais et le Beauvaisis de 1600 à 1730 (Paris, 1960), p. 41Google Scholar.

11 Ibid., p. 39.

12 Beltrami, op. cit., p. 81.

13 Beloch, op. cit., pp. 143–45.

14 Russett, Bruce M. et al., World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators (New Haven and London, 1964), pp. 22–27Google Scholar.

15 A conversion of his ratios on p. 471 above.

16 This effect of the plague of 1630 in Florence and Venice is very similar although the mortality in Venice was far higher.

17 Their occupation at the time of an accident, whether playing or at work, is given in accounts of miracles. Some boys were apprenticed at 7 or soon after.

18 This is described in accounts of miracles when a child who became unconscious had been presumed dead. It is described also in coroners' reports of fatal accidents.

19 Beltrami, op. cit., p. 97.

20 Ibid., pp. 91–94.

21 Ohlin, G., “Mortality, Marriage and Growth in Pre-Industrial Population”, Population Studies, vol. 14 (1961), pp. 190–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Charles E. Rosenberg, “Cholera in 19th-century Europe: A Tool for Social and Economic Analysis”, above, pp. 452–63.

23 For some account of contemporary plague treatises see Séraphine Guerchberg, “The Controversy over the Alleged Sowers of Black Death in the Contemporary Treatises on Plague” in Thrupp, Sylvia L., ed., Change in Medieval Society (New York, 1964), pp. 208–26Google Scholar (translated from the French in Revue des Etudes Juives, 1948).

24 For Florentine detail and more general bibliography see Ciasca, Raffaele, L'Arte dei Medici e Speziali nella storia e net commercio fiorentino (Florence, 1927)Google Scholar. There is no full study of the institution of public city physicians, which spread beyond Italy.

25 Carpentier, E., Une Ville devant la Peste: Orvieto et la Peste Noire de 1348 (Paris, 1962)Google Scholar, gives details and shows how much better Florence handled the first crisis than Orvieto.

26 See Ciasca, op. cit., pp. 291–95.

27 Chiappelli, A., “Medici e Chirurghi in Pistoia nel medio evo”, Bolletino Storico Pistoiese, VIII (1906), at p. 137, IX, at p. 198, X, at p. 1.Google Scholar

28 The letter, from Johannes Martinus de Garbatiis de Parma, and dated July, 1463, is printed by Foucard, C., in Espozione di Documenti Storici dall Vlll al XIX secolo di une speciale raccolta di altri spettanti alia medicina ed alia chirurgia dal XIV al XVIH secolo (Modena, 1882), pp. 9–10Google Scholar; there is a slightly different version of the text in the Archivio di Stato at Modena.

29 Illustrated in E. Carpentier op. cit.

30 Archivio communale, Modena, Provisioni, 1423–30, ff. 120, 132, 169–70; 1431–39, ff. 3, 165.

31 Popular histories of medicine often malign medieval sanitation. For some facts and better bibliography see my Merchant Class of Medieval London (Chicago, 1948 and Ann Arbor, 1962), pp. 136–139Google Scholar.

32 In Catalonia, when the poor attempted to escape, like the government officials and the rich, they were driven back: Nadal, J. and Giralt, E., La population catalane de 1553 à 1717 (Paris, 1960), p. 35Google Scholar.

33 By letter (see n. 28), the doctor requested one.

34 Noyes, E., The Story of Ferrara (London, 1904), p. 93Google Scholar.

35 Lopez, R. S. and Miskimin, H. A., “The Economic Depression of the Renaissance”, The Economic History Review, 2nd series, XIV (1962), pp. 397–407Google Scholar.

36 Thrupp, Sylvia L., “The Problem of Replacement-Rates in Late Medieval England”, The Economic History Review, 2nd series, XVIII (1965), pp. 101–119CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Merchant Class of Medieval London, pp. 203–4.

37 Herlihy, David, “Population, Plague and Social Change in Rural Pistoia, 1201–1430”, The Economic History Review, 2nd series, XVIII (1965), 225–44, at pp. 240–44Google Scholar.

38 Ramazzini, Bernardo, De Morbis Artificiorum, ed. with Latin text and translation, rom the revised and enlarged edition of 1713, by Wright, W. Cave (Chicago, 1940)Google Scholar, ch. 39 and passim.