The Black Death and the Transformation of the West Book

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.