The Black Death

Some of the social effects of the Black Death could be seen as positive. Peasants were the ones that benefited the most from this. Before the plague, they had been confined to the land owned by their lord. Many suffered extreme poverty and malnutrition due to overpopulation and shortage of resources. After the devastation from the plague, the peasants were free to move to other properties and look for better working conditions and higher wages. Landowners on the other hand faced a shortage of labor and started providing incentives like free housing, tools and farmland to their workers. Archaeological evidence proves that before the Black Death, many peasants used clay pots for cooking. However, in the years following the plague, they started using more expensive metal utensils.

 

Attempts to pass laws to freeze wages to pre-plague levels were ignored by employers who faced labor shortage. Europeans faced yet another challenge. When followed, these laws led to peasant revolts which made it extremely difficult to enforce them. The plague claimed lives of entire families, which meant that entire family lines were wiped out with no heirs. Their wealth, that had taken generations to build was now taken up by distant relatives. Attempts were also made to create a distinction between the social classes. In 1363, England's Parliament passed laws forbidding non-aristocrats from wearing certain types of clothing. Well-off commoners were restricted to wearing lambskin and laborers were only allowed to wear cat or rabbit fur. Only the noble class could wear saber. As with the laws to freeze wages, these laws also proved impossible to enforce.

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The Catholic Church in Europe also suffered as a result of the plague. Distrust in God and the church grew as people realized that religion could not do anything to stop the the suffering and the spread of disease. In fact, the death of a large numbers of priests caused church services to cease in many areas. Jewish populations did not do so well either. In many places they were accused of secretly poisoning the water due to their lower mortality rates than Christians (historians attribute this to better hygiene). Thousands of Jews were slaughtered in European communities, even though Jews themselves had suffered from the plague. This led many Jews to flee east to Poland and Russia, where they remained in large numbers until the  twentieth century.

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