Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages

by Dan Jones

This attitude—of despising the poor except insofar as they occasionally reminded one of Jesus—was entirely typical in the hierarchical, aristocrat-led societies of the late Middle Ages. Yet in the teeth of a pandemic it was also dangerous. The Black Death’s harrying of the western world was more than just a financial inconvenience to be solved by legislation. It brought about an immediate and drastic rearrangement of European demography— which meant power lurched suddenly toward ordinary people. As a consequence, the second half of the fourteenth century saw a sudden rise in violent large-scale popular uprisings against established authorities. They began just as the first wave of the Black Death was beginning to wane, and continued until the end of the “calamitous” fourteenth century.