The disease spread from the Mediterranean ports affecting Sicily in 1347 North Africa, mainland Italy, Spain, England, and France in 1348; Austria, Hungary, Switzerland, Germany, and the Low Countries in 1349; and Scandinavia and the Baltic lands in 1350. There were recurrences of the plague in 1361-63, 1369-71, 1374-75, 1390, and 1400.
The rate of mortality from the Black Death varied from place to place: whereas some districts, such as the duchy of Milan, Flanders, and Béarn, seem to have escaped comparatively lightly, others, such as Tuscany, Aragon, Catalonia, and Languedoc, were very hard hit. Towns, where the danger of contagion was greater, were more affected than the countryside; and within the towns the monastic communities provided the highest incidence of victims. Even the great and powerful, who were more capable of flight, were struck down: among royalty, Eleanor, queen of Peter IV of Aragon, and King Alfonso XI of Castile succumbed, and Joan, daughter of the English king Edward III, died at Bordeaux on the way to her wedding with Alfonso's son. Canterbury lost two successive archbishops, John de Stratford and Thomas Bradwardine; Petrarch lost not only Laura, who inspired so many of his poems, but also his patron, Giovanni Cardinal Colonna. The papal court at Avignon was reduced by one-fourth. Whole communities and families were sometimes annihilated.
One-third of Europe's population died in the epidemic. The population in England in 1400 was perhaps half what it had been 100 years earlier; in that country alone, the Black Death certainly caused the depopulation or total disappearance of about 1,000 villages. A rough estimate is that 25 million people in Europe died from plague during the Black Death. The population of western Europe did not again reach its pre-1348 level until the beginning of the 16th century.
The consequences of this violent catastrophe were many.