The Fifteenth Century, Volume Ⅻ: Society in an Age of Plague

摘要

The papers contained in this volume explore the plague -its nature, effects and contemporary responses to it- in England, northern France and Italy in the later middle ages and Renaissance. Carole Rawcliffe provides a useful introduction to the collection which locates its chapters in their wider historiographical context. In what is likely to be the most cited article here, Jim Bolton surveys recent archaeological and scientific work on the identity of the disease that caused the Black Death. In the past, the differences between the medieval pandemic and modern occurrences of bubonic plague led a number of scientists and historians to doubt whether they were all the same disease. Bolton shows that DNA evidence from medieval and early modern plague victims does seem to have proved that Yersinia Pestis, the pathogen which causes bubonic plague, was responsible for the Black Death, albeit in the form of a different strain from that found in modern plague outbreaks. However, he also emphasizes the contrasts between medieval and modern plague outbreaks, particularly in their mortality rates and rapidity of transmission, and argues that the medieval disease may have been spread by human fleas or lice rather than by the vector of the rat flea. This article should be read widely and challenges a number of preconceptions about the plague, including its supposedly higher urban mortality rates. In another important article on the epidemiology of the plague, Samuel Cohn accepts that the medieval plague was caused by Yersinia Pestis but, as in his previous work, focuses on the differences between medieval and modern plague outbreaks, contrasting their mortality rates, seasonality, frequency, links with famine, development of immunity, ages of their victims, symptoms and the speed with which they spread. However, unlike Bolton, he doubts whether human fleas or lice were effective vectors of the plague and instead proposes contaminated food and water as its mode of transmission.