The Black Death and the Transformation of the West

by David Herlihy, Samuel K. Cohn Jr.

In this small book David Herlihy makes subtle and subversive inquiries that challenge historical thinking about the Black Death. Looking beyond the view of the plague as unmitigated catastrophe, Herlihy finds evidence for its role in the advent of new population controls, the establishment of universities, the spread of Christianity, the dissemination of vernacular cultures, and even the rise of nationalism. This book, which displays a distinguished scholar's masterly synthesis of diverse materials, reveals that the Black Death can be considered the cornerstone of the transformation of Europe.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Medieval, European History, Science, Medieval History, Medical

128 pages, Hardcover

First published September 28, 1997

About the author

See also his son, David V. Herlihy, for works on the history of cycling.

David Herlihy (May 8, 1930 – February 15, 1991) was an American historian who wrote on medieval and renaissance life. He was married to historian Patricia Herlihy. Particular topics of his included domestic life, especially the roles of women, and the changing structure of the family. He studied for his bachelors at the University of San Francisco, received a doctoral degree from Yale University and taught at Bryn Mawr College, Wisconsin, Harvard and Brown.

His study of the Florentine and Pistoiese Catasto of 1427 is one of the first statistical surveys to use computers to analyze large amounts of data. The resulting book examines statistical patterns in tax-collecting surveys to find indications of social trends.

The University of San Francisco history department named their annual award for the best student-written history paper the David Herlihy Prize, and Brown University has established a David Herlihy University Professorship.

Reviews

[dianne b. · Rating 3 out of 5]

History. Look there. We never change.
This book, published posthumously from David Herlihy's lecture notes, provoked my conscience.
What do I remember most from medical school’s study of microscopic pathogens? How Yersinia Pestis looks under the microscope, yes, but mostly Ignaz Semmelweis, who fought for women’s lives when he recognized that postpartum deaths were being caused by doctors examining new mothers sequentially without washing their hands - thus spreading the bacteria that caused fatal puerperal fever from one to the next.
Doctors, offended at the very idea! that they could be the vectors of disease, mocked him into a nervous breakdown. He died, after being beaten by a guard in the asylum at the age of 47.

He was trolled to death in 1865.

700 years ago it was clear why people of color are dying now at a much higher rate than white people in the USA. Then:
“..burdensome taxes in the countryside heaped on those least able to pay, and poor living standards for the mass of the population - that formed the crucible from which pestilence, even if delayed, would emerge by the mid-fourteenth century to change the ecology of Europe.”

As of yesterday every single COVID death in the city of St. Louis (known for the murder of Michael Brown, Jr.) has been African American.

Herlihy posits that the plague in the 14th century uprooted the theories of Malthus that populations are only controlled by “positive” controls - famines, wars, and yes, epidemics - and brought to Europe “preventative” controls such as waiting to procreate until one had the resources to marry and support a family - and uses data to show this argument’s validity. After the plague the size of a family correlated with the amount of land they owned, for instance.

“It broke the Malthusian deadlock that medieval growth had created and which might have impeded further growth in different forms. It guaranteed that in the generations after 1348 Europe would not simply continue the pattern of society and culture of the 13th century. It assured that the Middle Ages would be the middle, not the final, phase in Western development.”

Could we do this now? And not “simply continue the patterns” that put all life on this planet in mortal danger? Can we use this disaster to slow the climate apocalypse, for instance?

“In considering the effect of the epidemics upon the economy, it is necessary to distinguish between short-term and long-term repercussions. The chief short-term repercussion was shock. And shock in turn broke the continuities of economic life and disrupted established routines of work and service.”

Again, as in feudal Europe, we live in a time of insanely inequitable economic distribution. Now, however, it is much more severe than 700 years ago. Then 8 people did not own more than 6+ billion other people combined. It is beyond the time to disrupt “established routines of work and service” and demand basic human rights for everyone.

Almost angrily, a contemporaneous (oligarch?) of 14th century Florence, Matteo Villani, was among those who complained about the
“extravagant tastes for food and attire which the lower social orders now manifested” and remarked,
“The common people, by reason of the abundance and superfluidity that they found, would no longer work at their accustomed trades. They wanted the dearest and most delicate foods...while children and common women clad themselves in all the fair and costly garments of the illustrious…”

Imagine that. Humans demanding the same quality of food and clothing as the higher “social orders”. Simply outrageous. They should go back to “grazing on grass and vile herbs like cattle” (a description of how people lived during the famines preceding the Black Death) perhaps?

The one-third of the population of Europe that remained after the plague of the 1300’s was so scant that women were even allowed to testify as witnesses. Well, since they didn’t have testicles, I guess they were allowed to ovari-fy.

The similarities of that time with this suggest we really haven’t evolved much as a species. Why does any unknown require a scapegoat? Trump wants to blame the Chinese! The World Health Organization! Wait, he’ll find others.
The 14th C plague was (of course) blamed on Jews, and the poor were the receptacles. Interestingly, in the footnotes was:
“.. Jews, Indians, the French, and lepers as “the Other” sought out for blame with the spread of syphilis..”
Right.
I blame Henry VIII; I mean look at Mary Tudor’s head - congenital syphilis for sure... but i digress.

Interestingly:
“In Moslem countries...Nor did the Black Death set off bitter factional rivalries in the East between Moslem neighbors or foster hatred of aliens and waves of anti-Semitic pogroms as it did in numerous localities throughout western Europe.”

It is up to us, now, to decide what we do with this, our crisis, our plague.
Herlihy tells us that:
“..the decline also stimulated efforts at reform and renewal. In other words, the decline was never so deep as to stifle awareness of decline.”
The high cost of labor resulting from 2/3rds or more of the workforce dying
“promised big rewards to the inventors of labor saving devices. Chiefly, for this reason, the late Middle Ages were a period of impressive technological achievement.”

Will we, now, allow those Owners of the Wealth who replace humans with robotic innovation to become even more wealthy ? Or will we demand what is possible - sustainable prosperity for us all?

Will we settle for a world where Trump demands meat-packers back to work in contaminated facilities, without any regard to their health? No demands for their protection or safety at all? Just give Donald Jackass Trump his cheeseburger!

Or can we make another world? It took the plague to change feudalism. Will we see our food lines and lost housing and say....anything?

Mother Earth Pachamama is giving us a Time Out,
"go to your corner and think about what you have (and have not) done."
Will we decide that change, that resistance, that One Love, that a future - is impossible?

[Adam Marischuk · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting use of sources, bold conclusions and unfortunately wrong

This short book is actually three chapters:

1) Bubonic Plague: Historical Epidemiology and the Medical Problems
2) The New Economic and Demographic System
3) Modes of Thought and Feeling

In the first chapter Herlihy attempts to trace the cause(s) of the plague back through the Chinese epidemic in 1894 to the Medieval plagues of 1347-8. He questions the main culprit Yersinia Pestis and proposes, based on descriptive evidence from the victims, either tuberculosis, anthrax or Yersinia pseudo-tuberculosis.

Then he moves on to a Malthusian description of Medieval life prior to the plague and noted that European health was greatly diminished by a series of famines prior to the outbreak. Herlihy concludes that the plague was not a "Malthusian reckoning or crisis, but a deadlock" (p. 38). What he means by deadlock is unclear, for surely the famines, wars and finally the plague seems to have been more than a deadlock.

In the second chapter, he attempts to paint a balanced picture of the mid fourteenth century but ends up in self-contradiction. The Medieval world was both stagnant and dynamic, pre and post plague:

"The economy was saturated; nearly all available resources were committed to the effort of producing food...to support packed communities...the civilization of the central Middle Ages, might have maintained itself for the indefinite future. That did not happen; an exogenous factor, the Black Death broke the Malthusian deadlock." (p.39)

"Frequently too, the policy of factor substitution involved technological innovation, the development of entirely new tools and machines. High labor costs promise big rewards to the inventors of labor-saving devices. Chiefly for this reason, the late Middle Ages were a period of impressive technological achievement." (p. 49) What these advances were is not clear and Lynn White's and Jean Gimple's works not that most, if not all technological developments occured prior to the plague, resulting in growing populations, urbanization and the necessary criteria and conditions for something like the plague to occur.

The final chapter, on thought and feeling, again vacillates between between conclusions. Herlihy notes that St. Francis calls death 'sister' but then after the plague death is transformed into "the ravishing monster, the master of the dance" (p. 63). But the surviving danse macabres (such as Hrastovlje) seem to confirm a continuity more than a transformation.

Similarly, "Many spontaneous religious movements arose in the aftermath or even in anticipation of epidemics." (p. 66) If someone could explain what is meant by that line I would be eternally grateful. The medieval world was constantly seeing new religious movements, from the Cathars, Bogomils, Waldensians and Fraticelli to the Franciscans and Dominicans, Carthusians, Trappists and Cluniacs. The worlds prior to the plague was dynamic. Did the plague influence Europe, certainly.

Herlihy is right on the decline in University studies, the rise in nomenalism, the rise of nationalism, the development of medicine but his connection to the plague is weak or left understated. And the discussion on the rise of religious names on page 76 is just odd. The rise in Christian names likely has as much to do with religious reasons as the current popularity of Christian names in our ever more secular western society.

[Lauren Albert · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very odd book because the introduction lays out (and argues with) the book before we've read it. Since this is an exceptionally short book (maybe 60 pages without the back material and the intro) I figure it was probably an effort to make the book longer. I think it would have been better served by a concluding chapter by the author of the introduction.

Nothing Herlihy writes seemed so radical as to cause the dragging out of old lectures and putting together of a book. But the book is pretty old. I found the comparison between AIDS and the plague poor since the plague didn't seem to target out groups, especially culturally scorned groups like gays and drug users. Since he was writing during the days when this was still common (before people realized that anyone could get AIDS) it seems strange.

[Leonard · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Herlihy’s revisionist work, The Black Death and the Transformation of the West, would have inevitably been cached away and forgotten; a fate that most miscellaneous intellectual writings face when their authors pass away. Luckily for historians, Herlihy’s work, consisting of three unpublished essays about the Black Death, has survived intact and in many ways has been improved upon by Professor Samuel K. Cohn’s authoritative analysis. As Cohn’s extremely helpful, albeit critical introduction explains, Herlihy’s perception of the Black Death and its direct effect on the development of Western civilization was shaped by the ever-shifting environment of modern intellectual thought and his own personal observations. In this, Herlihy’s The Black Death and the Transformation of the West, reflects the historiographical truth that was captured by a fellow medievalist: “the knowledge of the present bears even more immediately upon the understanding of the past.” (Bloch, 45)

During the 1960’s, Herlihy’s conclusions regarding the Black Death implemented a “modified Malthusian framework,” that mirrored Marxist interpretations of the Middle Ages (Herlihy, 2). However, 20 years later, his own observations of modern diseases and, more specifically, modern society’s attitude towards the sick, changed his historical perspective on the Black Death. The growth of the AIDS pandemic during the 1980’s, a disease that defied socio-economic boundaries, and also, like the Black Death, defied an exact origin, shaped Herlihy’s historical interpretation of medieval epidemics. The fact that the “mysterious” origin of AIDS could not be accurately “pinned” to class structure, or a broad Malthusian model, forced Herlihy to question the accepted biological and historical interpretations of the Black Plague (Herlihy, 5)

As Cohn argues, AIDS proved to Herlihy that a disease can mysteriously develop and spread uncontrollably throughout the world. Herlihy’s first essay provides a fascinating analysis of the historiography of the disease, and even goes as far as to suggest that the Black Death was not caused by the bubonic or pneumatic plague. Herlihy flirts with the controversial theory developed by British Zoologists, Graham Twigg, which states that the plagues that devastated Western Europe were the caused by anthrax. He however, cautions that perhaps “different diseases” worked “synergistically to produce staggering mortalities” (Herlihy, 30). Herlihy opened the door for new ideas. There still remains a heated debate among scholars about what disease or diseases characterize the Black Death.

In the latter two essays, Herlihy modifies his initial theory that stated the Black Death was the manifestation of classical Malthusian crises. He instead argues that the miraculous development of the Black Death merely broke what he termed the “Malthusian deadlock”, which “paralyzed social movement and improvement” (Herlihy, 38). The short-term economic effect of the medieval epidemics, Herlihy argues, was “shock” (Herlihy, 40). But the long-term effects of the disease which was largely a function of massive depopulation, led to an increase in farm ownership and employment, a raise in wages, and lowering in rent; which all contributed to an improving the standard of living for many (Herlihy, 57). As Cohn explains, Herlihy was additionally influenced by finding “parallels” that linked the Black Death and AIDS to the creation of harsh divisions between the infected and unaffected. As Herlihy explains the plague disrupted common daily practices and rituals, and in general “incited a new tension between the living and the dead.” (Herlihy, 62) Herlihy asserts that, “Like AIDS victims today, the sick had become the enemy” (Herlihy, 62). The Black Death, argues Herlihy, also made the average person question medical expertise. The AIDS epidemic, from what Herlihy has observed, also created a “crises of confidence in expert opinion,” which has led to parents demanding infected students taken out of school and in general, contact with infected limited (Herlihy, 69).

The modern AIDS epidemic had a transformative effect on Herlihy’s analysis of the Black Death which occurred more than six centuries earlier. Its enigmatic origin, and its ability to thrust a society into a divisive panic, in which the average person questions the medical expertise of the time, has provided interesting parallels. Thus, The Black Death and the Transformation of the West, despite its mere 110 pages, provides audiences with a complex analysis of the Black Death and important lessons in historiography.

[Stephen Morrissey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Herlihy's lectures on the Black Death offer a brief but fascinating look into the biological history of the pestilence, the reasons why it struck Europe so lethally, and how the pestilence fundamentally transformed Western Civilization and led to the emergence of a more technologically-advanced and enlightened era.

Readers would do well to follow up John Kelly's "The Great Mortality" by reading Herlihy's lectures, which offer a more academic, though still accessible, take on the Black Death.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having read so many "end of the world" scifi books and having watched so many zombie apocalypse type movies, it was interesting and somewhat humbling to read about a very real apocalypse. Presented in three lectures that examined different aspects of the plague, it definitely makes you wonder how civilization would transform if another event of this magnitude occurred today.

[Megan Ferguson · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting read with some unique views on the quintessential plague.

[Ericka Clou · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting competing theories about why the bubonic plague (possibly a different virus or numerous viruses) took so many lives and how and why it changed society. The end regarding religious growth was super dull.

[Debbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book completely changed the way I thought about the Black Death. Cohn basically argues that the Black Death was not, in fact, what we think of now as the Bubonic Plague, but he is wise enough not to try to say exactly what it was (a few years prior, another historian had tried to argue that it was anthrax, and was shot down pretty hard).

Cohn presents a good case that the disease that we "know" was spread by fleas on rats (and trust me, almost everyone I talk about the Black Death with "knows" this one thing) was actually something else. Using epidemiological data from a turn-of-the-century outbreak of plague in India as well as records from the Middle Ages (burials, wills, tax records), he demonstrates that the death rates, periods and locations of highest mortality, and general weather data are inconsistent with the plague.

Read Zigler, read Gottfried, they both hew to the rat-flea line, but Cohn makes a convincing new case.

[Nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

E.H. Carr in his book "What Is History" suggested that every written history can tell the reader about two different subjects: the one the author was writing about (in this case the Black Death in Europe) and the concerns of the author's time and place (in this case the AIDS crisis in America). Read through that lens, this is a fascinating work. It's also got a sick academic burn, when Herlihy refers to another historian's work as "rich in theory but not in data". Oooooooooooooh!

But this is just a lightly-edited collection of a few lectures, with an overlong introduction slipped in the front by a different author. It was worth a read, but it isn't worth paying a full book price for just a few dozen pages of actual content. Check it out from the library if the subject interests you.

[Jael · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had to read this book for a course, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect.
The author takes quite a different view on the plague than most experts. He says that the Black Death wasn't the bubonic plague. He points to the social mobility that occurred because of the plague. And, he says that, due to naming records, Christianity grew.
While many of his claims are dubious and not exactly sound, they did make me think. The most interesting part for me was the introduction, where a student of the author analyzed the book. By reading that first, and then going through the book, I was able to read critically, and not blindly accept (or angrily reject) all the claims the author made.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this book during the COVID pandemic was really intriguing. The conclusions he draws - the increase demands for more pay and benefits from workers in the face of company/ gov't refusal; innovation in technology and industry; changes to family structure and societal composition; the increase of religious and/or nationalistic / regional identity and fervor - eerily reflect what's happening today.

[Alexis Kaelin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A perfect summer read on the beach...seriously.

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is no question that the century-long rampage of the epidemic that is called the Black Death changed Europe forever. Entire villages were wiped out and an estimated 30 to 60 percent of the total population died. Massive areas of land were left untilled, and herds of domestic animals wandered free. There is still some debate as to the actual disease, some epidemiologists have questioned whether the disease was solely carried by fleas that fed on rats.
Herlihy raises that issue and also points out that at the time when the plague hit, Europe was suffering from a food shortage. The tillage methods used at the time had led to soil exhaustion, with declining productivity and there was little additional land available for food production. Herlihy also uses naming records to argue that there was not an outbreak of deep religiosity, for the percentage of children being given biblical first names remained quite low.
With a shortage of workers, there was a dramatic drop in economic productivity, and since it took approximately 200 years for the size of the European population to reach pre-epidemic levels, there was pressure to invent new labor saving machinery. Herlihy argues as most historians do that the shortage of labor led to extensive advances in technology. With the remaining humans having greater power over their work, there were also significant changes in the social and political order.
As it generally does, humanity recovered from the mass death due to illness, when it did so many positive forces were set in motion. Many of those changes are explained in this book.

[Kevin Fitzpatrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brief yet entertaining exploration of differing elements of the history of the "Black Death" in Medieval Europe, David Herlihy's "The Black Death and the Transformation of the West" is an essential read for all those who are even remotely interested in the conflagration that was the spread of the plague during these periods. Additionally, while not, due to its slim size, comprehensive in any complete manner, Dr. Herlihy's effort does touch upon most important aspects of the question behind this transformative event: was the plague 'bubonic' in nature, or was it actually anthrax? was Europe thoroughly Christianized at the time, or was Christianization only completed as a result of the plague itself? how did Medicine react to this challenge? how did it affect the philosophical dispute between the followers of Scholasticism and the followers of the Nominalists? These, and many more, are all addressed by the good doctor in a conversational yet thorough manner, adding insight upon insight to this important time in European history. A good read!

[Roy · Rating 2 out of 5]

A relatively lousy book. Three lectures posthumously turned into a book and moderately saved by the endnotes and introduction questioning their validity.

The lectures are poorly sourced, rather bold, and with some very dodgy claims. The first on the nature of the plague is not completely terrible, but shows a terrible unfamiliarity with medical thinking even in the 1980s and a sloppy use of sources. The second shows an almost complete misunderstanding of Malthusian theory, and the third, after completely ignoring the historiography of medicine, attributes the rise of nominalism to the plague while failing to not Ockham died before it came.

The only redeeming features is this editing and intro by Samuel Cohn which calls about a third of the most blatant problems. I assume the brevity of the work explains it continuing publication.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent triplet of essays regarding the Black Death. Less enjoyable than Defoe's "Journal of the Plague Year", which while fictionalized, has the benefit of drawing vividly from first hand accounts of the 1666 plague.

The Herlihy essays suffer from a labored analogy with the AIDS epidemic, marking its mid-1990s inception and limiting its argument. The AIDS epidemic could hardly be said to be transformational in the same way. Ultimately this preoccupation renders the final work unnecessarily political and therefore lacking in sufficient seriousness to recommend it.

It does provide thoughtful jumping off points to consider both Boccaccio's Decameron as a plague narrative and the expansion of late-medieval Christianity, post-plague.

[Dylan George · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very short, though interesting read. Herlihy falls into the trap of commenting on the "good" things that came about in the aftermath of the bubonic plague. While I agree with his argument that an almost malthusian deadlock had emerged in medieval Europe, positive changes could have been made absent the plague and the death of half of the continent.

Some interesting points here that tie back into the western view of death and also pointing to ways in which the effects of this plague paved the way for the development of nationalism, protestantism, and capitalism. All three of these forces are dependent on one another and I don't believe could have emerged or taken hold the way they have without the other two.

[Joel Everett · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very timely book to read that deals with the economic and cultural effects of the Black Death. Published posthumously, and during the early stages of the AIDs epidemic during the 1980s, it has been quite relevant to the current political climate of today from the scapegoating of various groups of people to a general distrust in the established institutions, experts, and loss of community along with rampant inflation. There truly is nothing new under the sun; although outdated as far as current scholarship, the overall salient points seem to be right on target. History may not repeat exactly, but it certainly rhymes.

[Mary Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this for a paper on the plague and tbh I was underwhelmed. Herlihy did a good job of familiarizing me with the broad strokes of plague discourse, but his arguments frequently felt flimsy and dubious to me. He has an interesting idea in tracing the religiosity of the common people through the names they give their children, tracking this against the rise of the plague, but spends all of three pages on this. If you are looking for info on the plague and the way it impacted life, I would recommend you check out either Paul Slack or Sheila Barker. Herlihy was fine, but you can do better.

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very concise and engaging examination of the economic, social, political, and religious effects of the Black Death. Herlihy hints at parallels between these effects in the late middle ages and the AIDS crisis that was ongoing when the book was published, but the links between the two are hinted at rather than fully explicated. Herlihy does a good job of demonstrating the lasting effects that this profound crisis had on Europe, many of which are still felt today.

[Ion · Rating 3 out of 5]

Scholarly work, Herlihy's main argument is that during the plague of 1348-1349, or The Black Death, Europe was in a Malthusian deadlock, a land in a demographic and economic situation which paralyzed its capacity to improve and that the plague itself was a catalyst for economic and social change.
There are also some other interesting facts about social implications of the plague.
Good read.

[Pauline Mountain · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was excellent scholarship in readable essays. The author examines the plague of 1348, Europe's first, through the lens of the changes it brought, how society was re-imagined in light of what amounted to a population crash. It was fascinating, given that we're now living through a pandemic every bit as deadly as the first plague in Europe.

[Megan Gillahan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very informative and quick read, separated into three essays each tackling the different effects of the plague on Europe. A good introduction to the subject.

[Heidi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fascinating read for James and I.
It challenged everything we know about The Plague so far.

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

Useful.

[Charles Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great history

[Alice · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5 stars

[Umair Khurshid · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was my first book on Black Death or as he suggest Black Death(s) and I found it really well written. You can read the whole thing in a day or two. It makes me want to read more on the topic.

[Alice · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had to read this book for class. I liked the book don’t get me wrong, but I just didn’t really agree with him towards the end.