The plague was a highly lethal disease caused by a strain of bacteria called Yersinia pestis. The bacterium that the plague came from is usually confined to a type of flea and the rats that the flea feeds on. Different weather patterns were one of the causes of the plague bacteria to infect humans in the early 1300s. Environment conditions can cause the flea to infect humans with the bacteria, and spread suddenly over a large area (Jordan 90).

The Yersinia pestis flea usually occupied a certain kind of environment that is found in southern Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, and east Africa (Jordan 90). The fleas mostly fed on the ground-dwelling rodents of central Asia and the common black rat

The Black Death reached Constantinople by 1347. At that time, Constantinople’s population was between one hundred thousand and two hundred fifty thousand. “One observer of the plague in Constantinople, a trader from Venice, claimed that ninety percent of the people died (Corzine 29).”

Others blamed the Jews in their communities and performed vicious attacks on them called pogroms (Jordan 91). One thing that aroused the people’s suspicion about the Jews was the fact that they drew their water from country springs instead of city wells like everyone else. The Jews did this because of their rules of cleanliness, but people suspected them of poisoning the city wells (Biel 40-41) “The rights of Jews were severely restricted in medieval Europe—they were spurned as outsiders in a universally Christian society” (Corzine 70). “In Basel, Switzerland, Jews were rounded up, forced into buildings, and burned alive” (Biel 41). In Germany the persecutions were even more horrifying as hundreds of Jews were burned at the stake. Even though most of the people blamed the Jews, many of the educated people put down the massacre and pointed out that the Jews were dying from the plague along with everyone else. The only safe place for the Jews was in the churches of Europe where the Pope promised their safety (Biel 41).

The other form of the plague called the pneumonic form spreads through the air like a common cold after attacking the lungs. It is one hundred percent deadly and kills every victim that is infected (Jordan 90).

The depopulation of Europe had a lasting effect on the economical lives of the people. Specialized products were developed because the market for staple goods went down to almost nothing. Trade had begun to prosper in the East and West two hundred years before the Black Death hit England (Bagley 159). Abandoned villages and death in cities brought about the need for new workers and led to increased wages (Jordan 91). A lack of workers caused some landowners to be forced to rent out their entire estates. Other landowners changed from producing grain to other types of agriculture that needed less labor such as cattle and sheep farming. “This changed marketing and trading practices, and moreover, it affected the traditional pattern of feudalism (Jordan 92).”

The Black Death spread to France by January 1948 (Jordan 90). It hit in Marseilles, which was France’s main seaport on the Mediterranean. By the summer of 1348, the plague had already infected most of southern France, including the city of Paris (Corzine 41). Trade had carried the plague north to Paris in less than four months after its initial attack. During the following winter, eight hundred people were said to be dying there each day (Jordan 90).

Florence was one of Italy’s most prosperous and beautiful cities. By the time the plague hit Florence in 1347, the city had already been weakened by a famine that had crippled most of Italy. “The plague seemed to diminish during that winter, but in the spring of 1348 it struck Florence again with a renewed fury” (Corzine 33). Florence had approximately eight thousand citizens and about four thousand died immediately after the plague struck the town (Corzine 33).

The Black Death made people even more aware of the need for salvation, but after the Black Death people

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