Book #8

In the Wake of the Plague
Norman F. Cantor
 

I have a degree in history, and I read history books for fun.  Mostly, they are histories of the Middle Ages, which is a particular interest of mine.  Now, the 14th Century is also of particular interest, so it should not be surprising that I have read more than a few books on The Hundred Years War.  Now, to anyone who knows more than a tiny bit about the 14th Century, it should also not be surprising that I have read a few books on the Black Death, the monumental plague of the 14th Century.
 

Cantor's volume on the Plague is one of the more recent ones I have read, and I was suddenly taken by the desire to reread it.
 

For those who do not know, between December 1347 and December 1350, a plague of biblical proportions struck Europe.  The estimates put the total at between 10% and 40% of the population, which most historians reading the data at the high end of that scale.  Entire villages disappeared, only to be rediscovered in the 20th Century through aerial photography.
 

Many see the plague as a turning point in the Middle Ages, and estimates of it's effect go all the way from being a major contributor to the Italian Renaissance a century later, to being the catalyst for the Protestant Reformation.  It caused a major labor shortage and led to peasant revolts, higher wages, and the end of the feudal system.
 

Cantor does not offer many new insights.  He seems to have reached that stage as a historian where he is more interested in selling books than in new research into the middle ages.  That is okay, books written for sales are much easier to read than books written to gain tenure, though somewhat less informative.  He does bring up one thing that I had not read elsewhere, and that is that at present, many historians have come to the conclusion that the Black Death was more than just Bubonic Plague.  The evidence seems to point to more than one epidemic, with bubonic plague as the most obvious.  It is rather hard to ignore large black buboes (hence the name bubonic) in the groin and armpits, followed by death a few days later.  The problem is that the chronicles of the time also say that some people died overnight, which is inconsistent with bubonic plague, and the suggestion has been made that this was caused by anthrax or another cattle murrain.
 

This is an interesting read, and coming along recently (2001) it includes a lot of the recent research and scholarship on the subject.  It is a little light on the facts, but very strong on the latest theories and opinions on the causes and results of a major medieval event.