Introduction

The Kingdom of Bohemia was part of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. On the eve of the Black Death, it comprised the regions of Bohemia and Moravia, representing roughly the territory of the present-day Czech Republic, and Upper and Lower Silesia (which today belong to Poland), and, in addition, two small areas in the west that gave it a sort of long territorial nose protruding into Germany almost all the way to Nuremberg.

At the time, it was a quite prosperous country with the city of Prague at its administrative and political centre. The relative prosperity was not least derived from a large mining industry, especially silver mines. In the high Middle Ages and still into the fourteenth century, there was a steady stream of German settlers who contributed to a rapid growth in agricultural and urban production. This stimulated the growth of towns and the integration of the country in an elementary market economy that was among the most advanced in Central and Eastern Europe at the time of the Black Death.

In the words of Hoensch: ‘there was a rapid development of a dense network of new towns. Older settlements situated, e.g., at crossroads, fords and other strategically important places and secured by fortifications grew briskly as places of trade and craft production.’ By the time of the Black Death, the Kingdom had been successfully integrated in the European networks of long-distance trade. This view is confirmed by Pounds who, in his standard work on European economic history in the Middle Ages, underscores the economically developed character of these countries: ‘Bohemia, Moravia and Austria […] were relatively developed. They tended to approximate the Western European model.’ In the countryside, the peasantry would have to acquire necessities they could not produce themselves, like salt for preservation of meat and butter for later consumption, and iron for tools. This need could only be met by a relatively fine-meshed commercial network in which small traders would play a major part.

The population of the Kingdom of Bohemia has been estimated at 1.5 million in around 1300, of which about one-sixth were Germans. In the following decades, Lower Silesia and the two small areas in the west were added to the Kingdom.

Introduction

In the first edition of this book, the analysis of the historical sources concluded that the original outbreak of the Black Death occurred in the lands of the then Khanate of the Golden Horde. The homeland of the Black Death was the same area where, according to recent paleobiological research, the Y. pestis lineage of bubonic plague apparently developed. It was also shown that the purported evidence of local plague mortality found on gravestones in the Nestorian cemetery at Issyk Kul (Yssykköl) in present-day north-western Kirghizstan (near China’s western border) was erroneous. It did not support the presence of the Black Death, allegedly on a westwards movement from China to Europe. In recent years, this historical analysis has been independently corroborated by paleobiological studies, which have been briefly presented in the preceding chapter and show that, on the contrary, plague contagion of the Black Death spread eastwards and eventually reached China 300 years later.

The Golden Horde was established shortly before 1250 as the north-western khanate of the recently established Mongol Empire. Around 1260, the Mongol Empire broke up into several successor states or khanates, in the west into the Ilkhanate in Persia and the Khanate of the Golden Horde. The main area of the Golden Horde stretched from the southern Urals to the R. Danube on the western shores of the Black Sea in present-day Romania; in the south-west it bordered on the Black Sea; and from its eastern corner, consistently bordering on the Ilkhanate, the southern border ran eastwards along the Caucasus about to Baku on the western side of the Caspian Sea and, continuing on the eastern side of that sea, the border ran south-eastwards about to the present-day city of Urgench, south-west of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan, where it turned sharply northwards. From the southern border, the territory of the Golden Horde stretched roughly 2,000 km northwards.

Introduction

The French studies of the mortality in the Black Death have the same strongly lopsided territorial character as the Italian. With one exception they relate to southern or south-eastern France, the exception being a town on the south-central plateau of Forez that can be considered adjacent to the areas of the other data. Provence and the County of Savoy are covered by a surprising number of good or at least fairly good data. This means that we have at best good data for roughly 6–7% of France’s territory of today; in addition, extant sources allow good mortality estimates for three quite large urban centres west and north of Langue-doc. In all, good mortality estimates are available for around 10% of France, and probably a roughly corresponding proportion of France’s population. Clearly, these estimates provide valuable information on the ravages of the Black Death in three French regions containing large populations, vital urban centres and a productive agriculture that can be considered quite representative of urban and rural France at the time. The extant sources underlying these mortality estimates are unselected by humans and the historical work on them is inspired by scholarly curiosity and quest for knowledge. The available mortality data can, therefore, be said to be indicative of the population mortality of France, also because they agree with mortality rates in other countries, not only in Southern Europe or Mediterranean regions but also, for instance, in England.

Mortality in Provence in the Black Death

Baratier’s study on the historical demography of Provence is still the centrepiece of information on the demographic impact of the Black Death and later plague epidemics in this region. The source used to estimate mortality rates in the Black Death is a type of fiscal register called hearths d’albergue (‘feux d’albergue’), which was intended to record the whole population according to hearths/households, including the poor and destitute. Only the generally tax-exempted clerical and noble classes were left out as a matter of principle – social elites that constituted around 8% of the Provençal population. It seems that the parish priests and the regular clergy of monks suffered much the same mortality rates as the general population.

Introduction

Although the Black Death started and ended in Russia, knowledge about these events is practically non-existent among scholars and accounts may, in some cases, be said to assume a spurious character. This is still the situation despite the fact that a useful source-based account was given in the first edition of this book. In this chapter, the history of the Black Death in Russia is written de novo on the basis of a complete gathering together of the sources and a heavy input of medievalist source-criticism, Russian linguistics, and analytical knowledge of plague disease and epidemiology.

Russia or Россия is a latinized form of Old Russian (Old East Slavic) Rusj or Русь, the people were called Russians or Rusi (Руси). From the tenth century the term related to the state or ‘Land of the Rusj’, later known as Kievan Rusj according to its political, religious and administrative centre in Kiev (today Kyjiv/Київ) in the Ukraine. From the twelfth century, Rusj and its people were usually known in Western Europe by the latinized names of Ruthenia or Ruthenians. In the Middle Ages, the nationalities now called Russians, Belorussians and Ukrainians and their respective languages had not yet evolved. Peoples of all branches of the present-day Eastern Slavs were then known as Russians or Rusi, and this historical usage will be followed here in order to avoid anachronisms.

There was no unified Russian state at the time of the Black Death. The terms Russian and Russia refer, therefore, to the territories that came to be dominated by the emerging Russian state, later Imperial Russia, and were settled by peoples speaking the contemporary versions of the eastern Slavic languages. The use of the terms Russia and Russian in this book refers to distant history, not to modern politics and recent state formation.

At the time of the Black Death, Russian territories were divided into several principalities and two city states inspired by the Hanseatic free cities: the city state of Novgorod, which possessed a large territory and was called Great [Velikiy] Novgorod, and the city state of Pskov. In the years 1237–40, the Mongol armies devastated the Principality of Kiev and established the Mongol Khanate of the Golden Horde in southern Russia (see above, Chapter 10).

Introduction

Plague has been intensively studied. These efforts have produced a vast amount of microbial, medical and epidemiological research. Most of it is synthesized in outstanding standard works on plague. Here, only the outline and central findings of this research can be presented and updated. This presentation is amply footnoted to permit and encourage further reading.

Lethal doses of plague bacteria

The basic conditions of plague mortality must be considered. This study can usefully begin with the number of plague bacteria which, transmitted to humans, will constitute a lethal (mortal) dose because it clears the ground for other basic questions relating to sources of infection and mechanisms of epidemic transmission. Infectious doses of bacteria are designated ID, lethal doses LD, for, for instance, 50% of an infected normal population LD50.

For evident ethical reasons, experiments cannot be performed on humans to ascertain LDs of plague infection. Because monkeys have proven unsuitable, important clues must be based on rodent studies, and, unfortunately, these are few. Importantly, 90% of black rats (Rattus rattus) survived primary subcutaneous inoculation with 5,550 plague bacteria (= LD10), LD50 would obviously require a substantially higher infectious dose. The LD50 of a species of California ground squirrels that generally is considered highly susceptible to plague, is 6,070 bacteria. These data have limited relevance for the question of LD50 for human beings, except indicating the minimum infection that could result in this mortality rate. Humans are, apparently, quite susceptible but not highly susceptible to plague infection. This is also reflected in the fact that 20% of plague diseased in normal populations in early developing countries and in historical societies survived (Benedictow 1992/1993/1996: 146–9). Arguably, the use of ~6000 Y. pestis as indication of LD50 for a normal population in developing countries or in historical societies is a cautious choice of analytical tool.

The size of blood meals ingested by fleas and by lice

This clarification of LDs of plague infection for humans immediately raises questions relating to humans and rats as sources of infection with plague bacteria.

• 1. It is often mechanically and arbitrarily assumed that (black) rats and humans function about equally as sources of infection of feeding ectoparasites.

Introduction

Medieval Sweden’s territory did not include the present-day Swedish regions of Scania, Halland and Blekinge, which were conquered from Denmark in the mid-1600s, nor the counties of Bohuslän, Jämtland and Härjedalen, which were conquered from Norway at the same time, in all 74,000 km2. The vast northern parts of Sweden had some quite obscure territorial delimitations and were extremely thinly populated. Sweden did not enjoy the warming effects of the Gulf Stream, as Denmark and especially Norway did, and the winters were generally much colder. The northern parts were unsuitable for agriculture, mostly settled by people subsisting from animal husbandry in combination with hunting and gathering. The overwhelming majority of the population lived south of the region of Medelpad (south of the present-day county of Västernorrland), within a territory of 185,000 km2.

The size of Sweden’s population on the eve of the Black Death is not known. In order to throw a glimmer of light into the reign of demographic darkness, it could be useful to make an estimate based on a reasonable assumption of comprehensive social and economic similarity between Norway and Sweden. Around 1330, population growth had tapered off and an overall stationary population size had developed, called the high medieval population maximum, which still prevailed on the eve of the Black Death. At the time, Norwegian parishes contained on the average c. 62.5 households. If this correlation of average number of households within parishes is tentatively applied on contemporary Sweden which at the time contained about 1,750 parishes, the following estimate can be made: 1,750 parishes multiplied by 62,5 households produce a total national number of 105,000 households. Assuming a stationary population and multiplied by an average household size of 4.5 persons, this suggests a population of 492,000 persons. In addition, there were some small social categories of people living outside the parish system, fleeting underclasses in the towns, indigents and vagabonds, hunter-gatherers, and so on. Thus, a population size of roughly 500,000 persons can possibly be discerned. The tentative nature of this estimate must be underscored. It is significant that the estimate accords with the relative political and military strength between the Scandinavian countries at the time and, in a more general perspective, appears realistic.

Mortality of the Black Death in the Kingdom of Navarre

Some good estimates of mortality in the Black Death come from the Kingdom of Navarre in north-eastern Spain. They are based on two types of registers of royal income organized according to the main administrative divisions of Navarre into five merindads.

One type of register records the special tax called ‘monedaje’, a name that refers to the fact that it was levied to finance the launching of new coinage when a new king had acceded to the throne. These registers are particularly valuable because, with the usual reservation in respect of underenumeration, they comprise also the poor and destitute classes, both those who paid reduced amounts and those who were too destitute to pay anything at all. Monedajes were levied both in 1330 and 1350 but, unfortunately, the records of the monedaje of 1330 are extant only for the Ribera area of the merindad of Estella in central-western Navarre. For this reason, comparison of the registers in order to estimate the mortality caused by the Black Death can only be performed for this area.

The other type of register that can be used for demographic analysis records the annual collection of rents from the royal estates in Navarre and is basically a cadastral type of material. The royal system of rent collection had two main forms but only the one called ‘pechas capitales’, which was collected according to households (pechas) registered by the name of the householders (capitales), can be considered for possible demographic usefulness. The system of pechas capitales was mostly used in the highlands in the Pyrenean regions, in the merindads of Pamplona (Montañas) and Sangüesa. The use of these cadastral registers in demographic studies is problematic because they register only the households in the villages that held royal land in the form of tenancies, whether large or small, and paid rents accordingly. They leave out the large segments of the rural population that cultivated the lands of other seigneurs; they leave out the exempted class of gentry (hidalgoes) and the freeholders (francos) who did not owe rents; and most seriously, unlike the monedajes, they leave out the countryside’s proletarian classes, those who did not pay rent because they held no or insignificant amounts of land and could not bear any tax assessment.

Introduction: the neglect and distortion of the history of the Black Death in Poland

Communist authorities and ideological watchdogs prevented serious research on the Black Death and the following plague epidemics, suspecting (correctly) that this study could establish disturbing alternative demographic views to Marxist orthodoxy on important historical developments in the late Middle Ages. The late-medieval crisis was, for all practical purposes, unknown when Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin formulated Communist orthodoxy, and quite generally historical demography was in an emergent stage of development. Historical demographic perspectives and Malthusian theory have been disregarded and discarded by almost all Marxists, not only by politicians but also by scholars working on the basis of Marxist theory with various later dogmatic additions and adaptations. Those who saw things differently had to espouse such notions or ideas if they wished to stay alive and in their academic positions. For this reason, the study of the Black Death, later plague epidemics and historical demography more generally have been neglected in the Communist period, and that was also the case in Poland.

Because Poland’s plague history has been neglected and exposed to myths, the central data on Poland’s plague history after the Black Death to 1500 are presented below in an Appendix.

Main geographical and administrative features and tentative population estimates

The borders of the medieval Kingdom of Poland were very different from those of our days. After some tumultuous and tragic centuries, a sovereign Poland (re-)emerged after the First World War. However, the end of the Second World War caused comprehensive redrawing of borders and large-scale movements and resettlements of nationalities. At the time of the Black Death, Poland comprised a smallish landlocked territory stretching south-eastwards from the border on Prussia and the then State of the Order of the Teutonic Knights in the north in the direction of Moldova, and from the borders with the eastern German regions of Brandenburg and Silesia into the west to the borders of present-day Ukraine. Because there have been comprehensive border changes in this part of Eastern Europe, some aspects of the Black Death’s spread within the present-day territory of Poland have been commented on in connection with the discussion of its history in Prussia and the Baltic countries.

The name of the Black Death

In the years 1346–1353, a terrible disease swept over Western Asia, the Middle East, northern Africa and Europe, causing catastrophic losses of population everywhere, both in the countryside and in towns and cities. In Florence, the great Renaissance author Francesco Petrarch wrote, dumfounded, to a friend: ‘O happy posterity, who will not experience such abysmal woe and will look upon our testimony as a fable.’ It wrought such havoc among the populations that it earned, it seems, eternal notoriety as the greatest-ever demographic disaster. Because it was far more mortal and terrible than anything people had heard or read about, the memory of the disaster entered folklore and the writings of the learned alike. Thus, Petrarch erred in his belief that posterity would shrug off the accounts of the havoc it wrought as tall stories.

Many centuries later, Europeans began to call it the Black Death, a name that since has become the usual frightening name of this epic epidemic. The reason for this is probably a misunderstanding, a mistranslation of the Latin expression atra mors, in which atra may mean both terrible and black. It has nothing to do with clinical symptoms or features, as persons seeking a rational explanation for this graphic term often believe.

However, Simon of Couvin (Simon de Covino), a contemporary Montpellier-trained physician and astrologer working in Paris, wrote an account in Latin classical verse of this disastrous epidemic, where he calls it ‘mors nigra’, literally the Black Death. He does not suggest that the diseased developed black colouring of any part of the body. He characterizes the disease clinically by stating that ‘burning pain is thence [from the intestines] often born in the groin’, evidently referring to the usual femoral–inguinal location of buboes and their extreme painfulness. However, no contemporary came up with a similar graphic name or was inspired by Simon of Couvin’s use, and it remained an isolated case in the late Middle Ages, and much later. It should be seen as an individual poetic inspiration of a metaphor to characterize a disastrous and gruesome disease. The name ‘Black Death’ emerged episodically in the seventeenth century and slowly gained more frequent usage; in English historiography it was used for the first time in 1823, in Spanish historiography in 1833.

Introduction

Up to now, scholars have generally assumed, at best on quite flimsy grounds, that one-fourth or one-third of Europe’s population perished in the Black Death – if these assumptions are based on anything at all. These declarations are regularly presented without references to evidence on mortality and have a clear character of being taken out of thin air. The large number of new local studies published in the last four decades of the previous century have provided, together with a trickle of previous data, a completely new opportunity for assessing the demographic effects of the Black Death by regular synthesis of mortality data obtained by application of historical demography. As the first scholar to do so, the present author took on the task of gathering together and demographically examining and developing all these mortality data. It turned out to be about 190 demographic studies in total, all from Europe. This work produced remarkable and even startling results, as unexpected to this author as to others, which were presented in the first edition of this book.

In the twenty years since the manuscript to the first edition was written, much new evidence on mortality rates caused by the Black Death has been published or found in peripheral local studies, which has expanded the evidence for synthesis considerably. The present author had also had the opportunity to contribute. The number of demographic studies has now expanded to about 300. All these new studies have considerably strengthened the empirical basis for synthesis and, as it has turned out, have strengthened the tenability and realism of the estimates in the first edition while also confirming the view that the estimate of a general mortality rate in the Black Death of 60% was cautious and on the low side.

However, these mortality data are also characterized by comprehensive limitations. Only in the case of England has it been possible to establish an approximate national mortality rate on a demographically sound basis, albeit for rural England where, after all, the huge majority of the English population lived.

Introduction: some aspects of the social scene in the Scandinavian countries with epidemiological relevance

The two terms ‘the Scandinavian countries’ and ‘the Nordic countries’ are not identical. The concept of Nordic countries includes Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland and Finland, while the Scandinavian countries do not include the two last-mentioned countries. Politically, Finland was at the time a part of the Kingdom of Sweden. Below, in Chapter 32, ‘Some Countries or Regions that Escaped the Black Death’, it is made clear that the Black Death did not arrive in Iceland or Finland, evidently for reasons of tiny populations and very little contact abroad. Plague never reached Iceland, and did not reach Finland until the end of the 1400s. The history of the Black Death in the Nordic countries is the history of the Black Death in the Scandinavian countries. The history of the Black Death in the Scandinavian countries will be presented in chronological order but the temporal outline in Denmark and Sweden is very much the same and interchangeable.

The Scandinavian countries cover together roughly 850,000 km2, and constitute quite a large part of Europe, about the size of the territories of Italy, France and England taken together, but had only a tiny fraction of the population, something of the order of 1.6 million (a guestimate), or 5% of the population in these three countries, around 33 million. This raises interesting questions of the Black Death’s (plague’s) epidemiology and mortality rates as a function of territory, settlement and population density.

At the mid-1600s, Sweden made substantial and permanent territorial conquests, especially from Denmark, which lost the regions of Halland, Scania and Blekinge, present-day southern Sweden, containing around one-third of Denmark’s population. Norway ceded four counties to Sweden, which contained about one-eighth or 12.5% of its population. Thus, the modern territories of the Nordic countries differ from the medieval, as does the relative size of the populations, Sweden’s having been much enlarged and Denmark’s much diminished. This will make necessary some awkward explanations meant to be helpful to readers in connection with the accounts of the spread of the Black Death.

At the time of the Black Death, Bohuslen, Jemtland and Herjedalen, which covered about 55,000 km2, belonged to the state of Norway.

Types of merchant ships and basic sailing conditions

Ships played a crucial part in the early dissemination of the Black Death. Their construction, size, sailing rates, the sea lanes, and network of supporting seaports and local harbours were central conditions. In those times, there were no weather forecasts and lighthouses were exquisitely rare. Although many ships, such as the ones built by the Vikings, were suitable for medium-distance blue water navigation, ships sailed coastwise when possible for obvious safety reasons. In the absence of lighthouses, ships moving coastwise would anchor for the night at suitable places and wait for daylight. This greatly extended the time of voyages. It also exposed ships to pirates and military predatory action by local powers, so merchant ships usually sailed in convoys.

There were two main types of commercial ships – galleys that mainly were propelled by rowers, and sailing ships. Sailing ships were also of two main types – the commercial long-distance bulk carriers, generally called roundships (nefs), such as cogs, and smaller sailing ships or boats carrying commodities in a more local pattern of trade. In the first phase of spread of plague, Italian galleys played the main role and established primary epicentres of spread, from where commercial sailing ships and local skippers and tradesmen (unwittingly) took over the spread of plague with transportation of contaminated goods or provisions. Also fishing boats have been shown to play a part.

The crucial role of Italian long-distance trade with galleys in the early spread of the Black Death

Galleys were unique ships. They were mainly propelled not by sail and wind but by oarsmen, usually about 150 of them, and had total crews of up to 200 men. They enjoyed additional moving power from two (triangular) lateen sails, which could be used with favourable tail winds, but human strength was by far the primary method of propulsion. Galleys were slender ships built for speed and high manoeuvrability. The freeboard (the height of the railing to the surface of water) had to be low to allow the rowers to work efficiently but reduced seaworthiness in relation to blue water sailing, which was quite generally avoided.

In this book, the term the Black Death is used to signify the huge wave of plague epidemics that ravaged Europe, Asia Minor, the Middle East and North Africa in the years 1346–1353. Previous studies of the Black Death have mostly concentrated on the cultural, psychological and religious effects of the Black Death, and also in relation to a specific country. The central reason for this imbalance is that little was known on the spread of the Black Death in a wider perspective, and only few demographic studies on mortality were available before 1960. From about this time, many new studies on the local spread and mortality of the Black Death were published in many countries, which can be pieced together in a synthetical and holistic account. Taken together, they provide a completely new opportunity to identify the territorial spread of the Black Death in Asia Minor, the Arab world and Europe, to identify its epidemiological characteristics and make inferences on the mechanisms of transmission and dissemination. Even more importantly, it has become possible to realistically assess the level and social structures of mortality caused by this vast plague epidemic, which is highly relevant to questions of historical impact.

The main objectives of this book are to perform a complete study of the territorial spread, epidemiology and mortality of the Black Death according to all available sources and studies, and to lay the foundation for more useful discussions of its historical impact. It is in these respects that this book’s ambitious goal is to be a complete history of that epic epidemic. (It should not be misunderstood to imply its final history.)

Surprisingly, these many fine studies had not been gathered together, collated, discussed and synthesized before, not even at the national level of analysis and synthesis. Ziegler’s 1969 book on the Black Death in the British Isles is, in my opinion, still the best general study of the Black Death. Biraben gives a valuable but brief overview of the Black Death’s spread across Europe in his 1975 study, which, however, leaves much still to be said on the subject, while his discussion of mortality is really confined to some aspects of its French history.