Given all the innovative and groundbreaking work on the second plague pandemic recently published by humanities and sciences scholars alike, an updated textbook suitable for undergraduate survey courses is sorely needed. John Aberth has provided one with this “new history” of the disease in late medieval Europe. Aberth smartly comes at the subject with teachable subtopics that lend themselves to focused chapters: epidemiology, geographic spread, mortality, medical responses, environmental aspects, religious reactions, artistic impacts, the flagellant movement, the artificial poison conspiracy, social repercussions, economic effects, and, finally, lessons learned for the future. The chapters on the flagellant movement and plague-related artwork are especially appreciated, as they offer far broader and deeper discussions of the phenomena than have appeared in previous Black Death overviews. In an appendix, Aberth provides a succinct historiography of plague-deniers that can be used to teach important lessons about the use of evidence.
There are, nevertheless, several problems with the book about which anyone using it to teach, or to ground their own research, needs to be fully cognizant. The book's intended audience is unclear. There is a stark dissonance between pop-history-like chapter titles (e.g., “Bring Out Your Dead!”) and exceptionally detailed scientific discussions, including long technical descriptions of how Yersinia pestis blocks fleas from feeding (2–4) or of the various temperatures at which fleas can or cannot transmit plague (91–92). Aberth's use of strangely anachronistic terms, such as “non-overlapping magisteria” (111) and “proletariat” (220), is jarring; especially troubling is his tendency to use outdated terminology that has no place in twenty-first century scholarship: “Moorish” (67, 107) to describe Andalusi Muslims (the original Spanish moro is a slur). His tendency to quote directly and extensively from his secondary sources is inappropriate. While he incorporates Muslim reactions to and writing about plague, Aberth is unacceptably silent about Jewish experiences with the disease, despite the availability of scholarship on the topic.
Some of the purported facts that Aberth puts forth are downright puzzling. One, I assume, is an editorial error: Aberth's claim that the Black Death's origins can be traced along the Silk Road “in western China and Kurdistan” (13, 19) is geographically erroneous. His assertion that the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau was the original site of Y. pestis's polytomy (2, 13) may have been the agreed location when he initially wrote the book, but it had certainly shifted to Kyrgyzstan's Tian Shan mountains before the book went to press; given the significance of this argument, Aberth should have provided the updated information. His assertion that plague was always reintroduced into Europe misses the plentiful scholarship challenging that idea since 2014. His declaration that pneumonic plague “seems to have disappeared from Europe entirely” (245) by 1500 relies on assumptions made by historians decades ago, not on any accepted scientific evidence. His acceptance at face value of Gabriele de Mussis's contemporary claim that Mongols threw plagued corpses over the walls of Caffa is also astonishing, since the veracity of that claim has been disputed since the 1990s; recent research definitively disproves it. His assumption that the Peasants’ Revolt (in 1381) was a revolt by peasants has likewise been proven incorrect.
My final hesitations with this new history of the Black Death concern Aberth's preoccupation with poison. I am not convinced about the novelty of the “poison” theory that he attributes to Gentile da Foligno. More worrisome, though, is his argument that Jewish pogroms, which in some instances wiped out entire populations, took place not because the victims were Jewish, but because of a general and widespread acceptance of the artificial poison conspiracy (by which wells and other water supplies were poisoned deliberately). Aberth's reasoning is that because there were also non-Jewish people charged with, and executed for, this conspiracy, we cannot see these pogroms as being tied to growing antisemitism. However, this argument is tantamount to saying that the Holocaust wasn't about Jews because others were also killed, a clearly untenable claim. His own long and detailed discussion of the violence enacted against local Jewish communities, one after another, undermines his attempt to downplay the antisemitism of the era.
If used carefully, Aberth's The Black Death offers a useful teaching resource in a rapidly evolving field. Others are sure to follow.
