When Disease Makes History Epidemics and Great Historical Turn ing Points

Edited by Pekka Hämäläinen

~ YLIOPISTOPAINO ~ HE L SLNK I UNI V ! ftSLTY P ltE S S

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Helsinki 2006

Pathogens, Peoples, and the Paths of History Pnkka Hämäläinen l

Conlinental Asymmetry of the Origins of Human lnfectious Di seases

Jared Diamond and Cia i re Panosian 17

A Revolutionary Contagion: Smallpax and the Reshaping of the North American West, 1779-82 lli7abeth A. Fenn 45

Yellow Fever, Empire, and Revolution: The Politica llmpacts of lnfectious Disease in the Caribbean Region, 1640-1900 J.R. MeNeiii 81

New Worlds, New Diseases, Challenged Ancients: French Disease and the Crisis of Medical Theory in the Renaissance l i mo Joutsivuo 113

The Forgotten Plague: The Black Death in Sweden Janken Myrdall41

Dirty Water, People on the Move: C holera Asiatica and the Shrinking of Time and Space du ring the Nineteenth Century Holger Weiss 187

The Forgotten Plague: The Black Death in Sweden

Janken Myrdal

The words "Black Death" have an aminous ring even today, 650 years after the catastrophe. The phrase "Black Death" is rather recent, but is generally accepted in Europe as the term for the epidemic that haunted Europe between 1346 and 1353.

In English this expression was not introduced until the early nineteenth century, in French and Dutch in the eighteenth, in German in the seventeenth, but it was used in the Scandinavian

languages in the sixteenth century.1 The earliest known use is Swedish around 1520. The expression "Svarta Döden" ("Black Death") is mentioned in two different manuscripts, by a monk in

Rome and by a bishop at home in Sweden who were in contact with each other. Then it is mentioned by other Swedish authors in the 1540s, and slightly afterwards in Danish. Probably the expression originally was a transiatio n of Latin "pestis artra"

or "mors artra", where Latin "ater" is black, but also sinister or

aminous in Swedish as in many other languages.

Paradoxically Swedish at present does not use the expression

the "Black Death" but the "Great Death", "Digerdöden" ("Di­

ger", huge or great, and "döden", death).2 Through the Middle

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Ages and for centuries after the epidemic all over Europe it was

known as the "Great Mortaliry" in Latin as in other languages, and it really deserved its name.

The modern scientific literature is enormous, and the plague is recognised as a turning point in late medieval European history. Summaries presenred in recent years, especially by Samuel Cohn and Ole ]0rgen Benedictow, have tended torevise upwards the extent of the mortality.3 In his description of the diffusion of the

epidemic the Norwegian historian Benedictow has shown that

most of the regions that earlier research showed as spared by the plague (for instance the Low Countries, Poland and Bohemia) actually were affected by the epidemic. For the Middle East

and Northern Africa we know for certain that the plague hit as

hard as in Europe, through Michael Dols' investigations.4 An

interesting fact is that the population in the Middle East mainly stabiiised on a new and lower leve], instead of starting to increase again in the late fifteenth and during the sixteenth century, as in Europe.

Whether or not the Black Death ravaged, and indeed origi­

nated in, Central and Eastern Asia, is a matter of scholarly de­bate.5 If it did not, then this raises an interesting and unexplained parallel demographic development all over Eurasia, where in the fourteenth century there was down turn in China as weil as in

Europe.6 We have to await detailed research on pandernies in Asia before a definite conclusion can be drawn.

In this essay, I will present the sources for the Black Death

and subsequent plagues in Sweden and try to put this region in a European context. I am also going to discuss how the catastrophe turned into a crisis that triggered socio-economic changes.7 A problem is the paucity of sources for this peripheral regirue of medieval Europe, hut this weakness also contains a potential: it is possible to search out and study every source that gives evidence

of epidemics. For countries with abundant sources, for exarupie

Italy or France, such an encompassing study would probably need to involve a group of scholars- or have to be restricted to

a smaller region. The structure of the essay is not chronological with an

analysis of the causes, course and consequences of the Black Death. Instead, I start with a critical view of the Swedish sources and then attempt to give thorough description of Late Medieval plagues in a single region. The frequency of plague in Medieval

Sweden is discussed and compared with the rest of Europe. This is followed by a discussion about mortality based on the most recent European evidence and related to the Swedish example. The discussion about the nature of the disease, plague or not, is

also touched upon. These steps are necessary before I can enter

the controversial discussion about the eauses for the Black Death (and subsequent plagues). The last part of the artide is devoted to the aftermath: the effects that the plague sequence had on society

and economy, again focussed on Sweden which has relevance for

interpreting change at a European level.

Sources for Cultural History

Often the Black Death is described as a single outbreak. In reality a series of epidemics that started in the middle of the fourteenth century and continued through the fifteenth century. The later

outbreaks of pestilence mainly had a lower mortality and tended

to be local, covering a region or a couple of towns. The last epidemics of importance in Europe struck in the early eighteenth

century. It has been assumed that the plague did not hit Sweden very

hard, and Finland is thought of as region totally spared from the epidemic. The only part of Northern Europe that was ravaged was Norway. The hypothesis that Sweden was spared is most

pronounced among Swedish historians, and it is a part of the

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- - -

idea about Sweden as a special case in Europe, in this and other

respects.8 I have used a variety of sources to identify Late Medi­eval plagues as there is no decisiveon the plague. The idea is not to select the best source and exdude others. In political history, a single source might be useful to identify the exact date for a battle

or the persons invalved in negotiations. Then the goal is to find

the source dosest to the event, without too much bias. For social

history matters are different. The whole population is invalved

in the processesthat shape social history, and these processes are thus mirrored in many different sources. This pluralistic method demands that these sources must be studied separately as they all pose different critical problems. These problems will often

tend to balance each other when independent sources are used,

and there for the course of event will be illustrared from different aspects.

A Plurality of Sources

Charters and letters. M any documents, charters and letters from the Middle Ages are summarised by Swedish historians under the term "diplom". Nearly 40,000 are known from the area that covers contemporary Sweden including southern Sweden, then a part of Denmark, and parts of western Sweden, then belong­

ing to Norway, and also including Finland which was a part of

Medieval Sweden. These "diplom" have recently been registered in a database, the "Svenskt diplomatariums huvudkartotek"

(General Index of Medieval Swedish Charters and Letters) at

the Riksarkivet (the Swedish National Archives). A number of

documents are only preserved in later copies, sarnerimes in an abbreviated form.

The use of wills as a sign of epidemics is not unusual in

European research. What I have done is to count both the total

number of charters and letters annually (Fig. 1) and the number

~- -~...,~~-- ""~- ~ -- .._. __ --=-

of wills annually (Fig. 2). Then I have calculated the relative

number of wills, and identified peak-years with at least double

the average of the period (normally two surrannding decades). As peaks eaused by epidemics I have selected of those where we have an indication in at least one other of independent source

(Table 1).

450 .::;~=~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 400

350

300

250

200

150

100

50

o ... !WI-• 1250 1280 1310 1340 1370 1400 1430 1460 1490 1520

Fig. 1. Total number of charters and letters from the area that is modern Sweden

and Finland, 1250-1520, registered in the "General Index of Medieval Swedish

Charters and Letters". Source: Myrdal2003.

The series of surviving Swedish shorter documents starts in the late twelfth century and is connected with. the Europeanisatian and feudalisation of the Swedish society. Before 1250 (Fig. l) the number of documents per year is seldom more than half a dozen.

After a rather steep increase in the 1340s the number of docu­ments is more or less eonstant around 150-200 per year until the

late fifteenth century. There is only a slight clip after 1350. This can be campared with Norway where the number drops to less

than half after the Black Death as a result of a general slow down

of civil and legal activity. One reason for the difference between Sweden and Norway in this respect is that a new nationallaw

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146

was established in Sweden in 134 7 requiring that property-docu­ments be drawn up for everyland transaction in Swedish. This resulted in a massive change from Latin to Swedish as the main language in the documents, and documents came to be used in a more diversified way and by more middle dass people, such as

parish priests. In Norway, letters and charters in the vernacular

had been the main form for many decades. This extended use of shorter documents in Sweden starting just before the Black Death made up for loss of people and decrease of activity.

During the fifteenth century a slow decrease in the number

of shorter documents followed, mainly as the result of a gradual

multiplying of other sources where such information could be spared, such as court rolls and accounts. The increase of charters and letters in the early sixteenth century is connected with the

growing influence of the proto-state, as most are official docu­ments.

30

25~~ 20 ~ 15

10

5

o 1250 1280 1310 1340 1370 1400 1430 1460 1490 1520

Fig. 2. Wills mentioned in the "General Index of Medieval Swedish Charters and

Letters". Source: Myrdal 2003.

With the renewal of juridical scholarship in Italy in the eleventh century the practice of writing wills spread in Europe. Italy and France led the way, and by the twelfth and thirteenth

century the practice was established all over Europe. Seandinavia was a lateearner with a general spread of wills from the mid

thirteenth century.9 This was not only eaused by changed juridi­cal processes, but also by new Christian beliefs, and especially by the introduction of the doctrine of purgatory as an important

element of Catholic religious faith. 10

In Sweden the number of surviving wills reached a first peak around 1300, and a very important cause was the debate about

the right to dona te landed property to the church. Religious insti­tutions all had reason to commit ideas and injunctions to written documents which often ended up in court.n With a stabilisa tian of the practice of making donations the impetus to write down what a donor wished tended to decrease. From around 1340 the number of wills reached a plateau, with the plague years as exceptions, until the mid fifteenth century. Thereafter the number of wills in solitary documents decreased bu t for different

reasons. I have excluded the first and the last period from my investi­

gation (before 1340 and after 1500) because of special circum­

stances during these periods - too many wills in the beginning, and too many documents at the end. From ca. 1340 to 1500

the relative number of wills per year can be calculated as an indication of a probable increase in mortality, among those who had wills drawn up for them.

However there are certain uncertainties in this database. One

uncertainty comes from the fact that different persons conducted the registration. A more serious problem is that wills could be registered several times and also many years after they were issued

-and then certainly not in connectionwith a specific individual's date of death or fear of death. A will could, of course, also in its first version be drawn up when a person was in full health and

Iong before he or she expected to die.

I have therefore, as a control, warked with the period 1340-

75. Every single document has been read closely (the documents have been published in a critical edition for this period.) I have

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148

included donations to religious institutions, normally to be ef­fected after the decease of the donor, as weil as wills. The reason isthat wills often are difficult to separate from other donations, and wills only including relatives could be drawn up because of other reasons than a threatening death. Donations to religious institutions are nearly always connected with a fear of death and payment for prayers to shorten the time in purgatory. (l have

excluded a number of categories, for instance gifts connected with an entry into a monastery, which obviously is not connected with fear of death.)

Several of the donors, especially during epidemics, mentioned

explicitlythat they were sick (but mentally well). This is the most

certain sign of disease, and therefore I have included a separate

graph forthem in the diagram. As donations could be made just

because offear some of them probably were written because of the rumour of an approaching plague rather than due to the presence of plague. Duringa severe epidemic it could have been difficult to find someone to write a document for a dying person, especially in a society such as Sweden where, campared to many

other countries in Europe there was a relatively small number of people able to write.

Another critical point about sources needs to be made for this specific period. From the mid 1370s Sweden experienced religions excitement connected with the translatlon of the re­mains of Saint Bridget from Rome to Sweden. She died in Rome

in 1373 and was canonised in the 1390s. (She is even today the

only saint from Scandinavia.) Many donations were given to

the combined nunnery and monastery that she had founded. The increase of donations in the years 1374-75 are gifts to this specific project. Other peaks in the table are all connected with plagues: 1350, 1359-60, and 1369. (None of these donations

during peak periods are from Finland, but the documents from Finland are few.)

35

30

25

:u 20 .<> E "' 15 z

-Donors

·--•--- Donors, sick 10

5

o 1341 1346 1351 1356 1361 1366 1371

Y ear

Fig. 3. Donations to religious institutions 1341-75. Source: Myrdal2003.

Individual documents. Epidemics are often mentioned in

charters/letters, because of different reasons: persons dying

in a specific epidemic; measures being taken to hold back the

pestilence. An interesting fact is that the Great Mortality (the

Black Death) regularly was used as a dating reference until the mid fifteenth century in charters/letters and also in land registers

(cartularies). Often it was mentioned in conflicts over land,

where it could be stated that someone owned a property already before the Great Mortality. Old men came forward to tellwhat they remembered or what their fathers (or others from the older

generation) used to say. Tombstones. A source of some importance, hut not very often

used in European plague research, is tombstones with dating. For most of Sweden they are rather rare hut can at !east be counted in hundreds. We can see a concentration to 1350, especially in Uppsala, the archiepiscopal town in mid-Sweden, and also for some other epidemics. The island of Gotland in the Baltic has rather many more tombstones with dating, and the peak is 1350 marking a four-fold increase campared with earlier years. An interesting fact both for Gotland and the rest of Sweden is

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150

that tombstones nearly ceased to appear in the late fourteenth

century. This is paralleled by the decline in other investments as no churches were built.

Death registers. An important source is different registers of

dead people kept by religious institutions, such as dioceses and

monasteries, or guilds and other fraternities. Such institutions noticed the death of members and donors - often because they

wanted to remember the day when prayers should be said for

that person. From the time of the Black Death two such registers are preserved, one from Lund in southern Sweden (then part of Denmark) and the other from the island of Gotland. Both indicate high mortality. From later periods a number of such registers cover most of the fifteenth century, all from specific

regions and nearly all of them indicating epidemics. Tax registers. Only one tax register of the kind often used

in other countries survives from Medieval Sweden, from the capita! Stockholm in the 1460s.ln the epidemic of 1464 the total

mortality among male taxpayers was more than 15 percent and there was a higher mortality among the poor than the rich. That the wealthy bad a lower mortality is a general pattern for the plague in Europe (see below). In the next year, 1465 the plague ravaged other parts of the country, something that can be seen from other sources.

Tax registers: Peter's pence. In England, Seandinavia and in

some East European countries a specific fee to the papacy was

paid, called Peter's pence. From the early fourteenth century until

the early fifteenth century a series of surviving registers detail

the total amount of Peter's pence from the Swedish dioceses paid

to the Holy See. In principle every household paid, and when

critical corrections are made from sources some conclusions can be drawn about changes in the relative number of households.

After 1350 payment fellon average to half of what it previously

had been, partly as a result of general disorder after the plague,

although fee payment fell further lower leve! during the following

decades. The records from the two largest dioceses show pay­

ments for several decades and indicate a further fall in the early 1360s, and a third drop after 1369. This is followed by a period of stable payments and even a slow increase, but in the mid-

141 Os there is another fall as a result of further epidemics. 12

Miracles. More than 600 miracles have been recorded in Sweden during the Middle Ages, claims of supernatural assist­ance received after praying to saintsand holy images. Recorded miracles are concentrared in certain periods: 1270-1311, 1374-90, 1401-24, and 14 70-77,13 and manyrelate to periods of major epidemics. The description of the symptoms of the disease is usually brief but sometimes details are provided. An interesting

fact is that even if only one fourth of miraculous healings from sickness cancern children, nearly all of the plague-miracles are about children. From this source it appears that young people

were more vulnerable to the plague than adults. This higher mortality among children during later plagues is also contirmed from other countries, for which see below.

Annals and chronicles. The High Middle Ages in Sweden are described in a series of annals, with short notices year by year. Eight cover the fourteenth century and are preserved in

copies written from the late fourteenth century to the mid fif­teenth century. (I have excluded some later manuscripts.) They all mention the Black Death. They also give different pieces of

information, and only two of them have notices taken directly from each other. Besides the Great Mortality they also mention animal disease during the great plague, and the seeond plague in 1359-60, which was called the "Child-plague" (in Sweden as in

many other countries).

The only extant descriptions of the Black Death from the Nordie countries are in two leelandie chronicles. In a farnous

story it is recorded how a ship brought the plague to Bergen

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152

in 1349. (Iceland itself was probably spared this time because of the interruption of trade.) From Norway and Denmark very few annals and chronicles have survived that cover the period although various contemporary documents do mention the Black Death.

The fifteenth century is described in a series of Swedish chronicles, most in verse and written as political propaganda and debate. Most major plagues are mentioned in these chronicles, and also some more local plagues (for instance the Stockholm­plague of 1451).

Prosopography. An interesting method is to follow single

persons in different sources, and reconstruct their "life-stories" ' and thereby try to identify when they died. This method could be

used for regions where we have few sources. (If data are collected about many people this method only demands at !east two proofs to every "life-story" to identify an increase in the numbers of dying personsduringa specific period.) I have used this method for northern Sweden, but mainly to study upper social echelons of Sweden's population. Among the nobility that I have studied are those who belonged to the King's council, and among the priesthood bishops, archdeacons and canons. The higher nobil­ity and the senior clergy came off much better than the rest of the population during the Black Death. No bishops died in the Black Death, and among senior clerics and the higher no bility the mortality was only 10-20 percent. Similar low mortality during the Black Death (and later) among the upper classes can be found in other parts of Europe, for which see below.

The Late Medieval Plague Sequence

The assumption, using the pluralistic method, is that the more devastating and encompassing the plague, the more diverse the sources where indications of this plague can be found. Another

assumption is that the more pronounced it is in the most impor­tant sources, the more devastating it must have been. A third as­sumption is that an increase in the relative number of willsis the best indication, but this must be supported by other evidence.

The main critical problem with the sources used in Table l is that their diversification varies over time, especially when a lang time sequence is studied. The late fifteenth century has a gradually increasing number of different sources, but in the last three decades of the fourteenth century activity in the whole society seemed to have reached a low water mark, with rather fewer different sources. I have not used indirect sources, such as deserted farms, but I will return to them when discussing the effects of epidemics. Further critical point is that not all these epidemics were outbreaks of plague. For instance we know that the "English Sweat" assaulted parts of Europe in the middle of the 1480s (and also later), and could have struck Sweden as one of the epidemics in late fifteenth century.

In Table l there is a considerable coincidence between the

indication of an epidemic in the relative number of wills, and

indications of the same epidemics in several different other sources. I have marked with an asterisk those I consicler to be the major epidemics. Same of the others ma y also have affected large areas of northern Europe, for instance the outbreaks of

1472-74 and 1484. For two years (1445 and 1478) with many wills (in these

two cases about double the average of the relative number) I

have not found any indication of epidemics in any other source. These years are thus not included in Table J, as my assumption is that the relative increase in the number of registered wills was probably eaused by factors other than high mortality resulting from epidemics.

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154

Table 1. Plagues/epidemics in Sweden in 1350-1500, registered in at least two different sou;·ces.

Pl;tgu~:-ye~~ A }l: c ]) l Ji 1 ,._ 1.350 lO( x x x: x '* 1359.1360 XX x .x ~ JJ68- U 69 l

1

XX x 2 x x "'

l

1374-1377 r~ 11 x .. " •'l

H89 x' x u

1404-1405 " ~~· x ;

·'! . ~:· "·· ~ ~ Hl3 x l( x x , 1420·1421 x x x ~ 1439-144{1

r H~· " \'l~

;,, x x x ru. Lil ~ i~l ~- ..... , f . " 145} "l ~. )l l ~.u !i ... ··-'Ii

·: ~ . lt~lll ··'""'. ~ 14 .~S ....

x ·r. l j;....:·, i '' Jl x:_ .. uj } ...

~ 1464~1465 . ': ~ x "' x ' X x

1412-1474 x i'Uj

"' x 11;84 J( "· .. fr.'P x 11•:·'1" • 1495 " ,·_!.!'' x x ~

Legend:

A. Wills/donations relative total number of charters & letters

xx = strong indication in wills/donations

B. lndividual and contemporary brief documents

C. Tombstones

D. Death registers

E. Tax registers

F. Miracles

G. Annals and chronicles

Comment: Major plagues marked with an asterisk*

Source: Myrdal 2003.

,, ~

r. F :

' ~ 'jll r

" pn .. ~\.

.~~:HIIJh 'if

l( . l )f

x

" "'-' ,;:n ,• .. ~ "~m n:, 1( 1~1

Il fl

x

'lo ;:~

Drawing on different sources the following Late Medieval disease­panorama can be sketched: 1350-70 Sweden was devastated by

three very severe plagues, the first one outstanding as a cataclysm; 1370-1410 no major plagues hit the country; 1410-40 a new

G

x 1>l

x

x x

x

x. x

x

il

x

wave with severe plagues hit the country, but not as devastat­

ing as the first three; 1440-1500 apattern was established with

one plague every decade, but these were probably became less

virulent.

From the early sixteenth century we know of a couple of

small plagues, mainly wreaking havoc on towns around the Baltic Sea (mentioned in single charters/letters and in no other sources: 1500, 1504, 1508, and 1510). I have registered wills

and documents up to 1520, but, as I have already mentioned, the

relation becomes more unreliable in the early sixteenth century, and the number of wills is not sufficient enough to pinpoint a single year with a marked increase.

My description of the plague-sequence for Sweden is somewhat different from the catalogue presented for the Nor­die countries by Jean-Nod Biraben in his imposing work on plagues in Europe.14 His work written in the mid-1970s is the still unsurpassed general outline of European epidemics over the centuries, but Biraben's catalogue should be taken for what it is -a compilation of notices in the available scientific literature. He has not been able to discuss and examine critically all sources.

For Norway and Denmark we lack a thorough investigation of the Late Medieval epidemics that came after the Black Death.15 In leeland the epidemics of 1402-03 and 1495 are weil known.

Liibeck and the surrounding region in Northern Germany has been studied by Jurgen Hartwig Ibs, who used a method similar to mine, combining wills with other sources. The plague years

that he presents are as follows (epidemic years not recorded in wills are in brackets): 1350, 1358, 1367, 1376, (1388), (1396), 1406, (1420), (1433), (1438), 1451, 1464, 1483-84, and (1504-06). The first hard plagues were followed by a period with less devastating epidemics, and then in the fifteenth century again

some severe epidemics, but the tendency is that they became less

virulent.16

155 ii

i ~

f ii "' ., §<.

~ s·

[ !!:

156

For England the most often quoted sequence is the one presented and discussed by John Hatcher. He does not use the increase in the number of wills, but a combination of other sources. His series is, after the 1348-49 and 1360-61 epidemics: 1379-83, 1389-93, 1400, 1405-07, 1413, 1420, 1427, 1433-34, 1438-39, 1457-58, 1463-64, 1467, 1471, 1479-80, and 1485Y He does not try to separate more devastating and encompassing plagues from those of lesser importance.

Biraben presenred a catalogue over the different "places" that the plague hit every year all over Europe, Northern Africa and the Middle East. A "place" could be a town or a whole country, for exarupie Iceland. His catalogue was based on the state of re­search in the middle of the 1970s, and the quality of this research varied considerably from region to region, as did the quality of the sources. Caution is therefore required when using Biraben's numbers. 18 I have tried to overcome some of the problems by counting on Biraben's five regions in northwest, north and central Europe, which have on average a similar number of sources for each year (l/ England/Scot!and!Ireland; 2/ Belgium!fhe Nether­lands/Luxembourg; 3/ Gerrnanyt Austria/Bohemia/Switzerland/·

' 4/ Polandffhe Baltic countries; 5/ Norway/Sweden!Denmark/Fin-land/Iceland). The plague was nearly endemic, with evidence for this samewhere every year. To identify major epidemics I have used the following criteria: those that were recorded in at !east three regions, and in at !east mo re t han six "places".

After the Black Death, new heights followed in the early

1360s and the 1370s. These were the three big outbreaks rolling over Europe during a quaeter of a century, the first one from the south to the north 1348-52, the seeond one from the centre spreading out over Europe 1359-64 and the third 1369-74 from the north to the west and south.

After a lesser outbreak in the first years of the 1380s the plague-activity decreased for a generation. During the fifteenth

century the identified sequence of major plagues is: 1401-02, 1419-21, 1427 (not in the British Isles and the Low Countries), 1437-39, 1450-52, 1464-65, 1472-74, 1482, 1484, 1487 (con­centrated in the Low Countries), 1493-96.19 Mostofthese major epidemics registered by Biraben are confirmed by thorough re­search for some regions, mentioned above, which gives supports to a cautious use of Biraben's catalogue.

Both France and Italy have, in Biraben's catalogue, evidence from more places on the average per year than northern and middle Europe, which makes a direct comparison difficult. For France a further problem is that the numbers that Biraben provides tend to increase during the Later Middle Ages, and this cannot be explained with a more intense plague-activity. These two countries follow central Europe until the mid fifteenth century, hut then, according to Biraben's catalogue, especially Italy develops apattern of its own.

From the countries with rich source materials we also have a wonderful series of wills from a number of towns, often quoted in the literature. In Florence, Siena and other places of central Italy, after 1348, 1363 and 1374 the following have been regis­tered in wills and death registers up to the mid fifteenth century:

1383, 1390 (weak), 1400, 1411, 1417, 1423-24, 1430, 1438,

and 1450.20 In Lyon, based on wills, we find 1348, 1361 and a smaller outbreak in 13 72, and then the following epidemics: 1382, 1392, 1400, 1411, 1419, and 1499-1500.21 But such sequences of major plagues must be confirmed from evidence from a number of sources, and as the plague-sequence in any region had a direct influence on politics and the economy over several years I hope that more research will be carried through

on regional sequences. As I do not have enough knowledge about the present state

of research for the rest of the Mediterranean, nor for Eastern Europe, I have left these !arge regions aside.22

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158

The disease panorama sketched for Sweden seems to be con­

gruent at least for the rest of the northwest, north and central Europe and perhaps also for larger parts of Europe. Most inter­esting is that after the first devastating two and a half decades we see a relative decrease of plague-activity. This seems to point at same kind of immunity among the surviving population.

Mortality

Earlier research assumed that the plague in 1346-53 killed about one third of the population in Europe.23 Today we know that the mortality in man y regions probably was as high as 50-60 percent. Benedictow has made the best compilation of the most detailed sources we have for Europe. From a number of manars, hamlets and villages (and also same towns) in northern Spain, central

Italy, southeast France and from several regions in southern England, surviving household registers from just before and after the plague show that these places experienced a 45-55 percent

registered decrease in the number of households.24 Benedictow

points out that certain factors tend to raise this percentage w hen total mortality is being measured, for instance that same of the

registers were made a couple of years after the plague and thus

also indicate a recovery with new households. Another factor is

that children probably succumbed more than taxpaying grown

up males. Benedictow assumes an overall decrease around 60 percent.25

One of the most important multipliers that Benedictow uses is

"supermortality" among the poor, which can be proved in several cases. It is also possible to show that the wealthiest had a much lower mortality than people in general.26 An explanation of the higher mortality among the lowest social strata of the population

isthat they livedin less hygienic conditions with greater exposure

to rats, and that their physiological resistance to disease was im-

- - --------

paired by malnutrition. As the population before the Black Death consisted of a very high percentage of landless and poor people, probably as much as half the population in many regions, this "supermortality" had consequences both for the high mortality

and for the spread of the disease. The !arge number of poor and

landless also meant that the gaps in settlement at first could be

easily filled with land-hungry young men and women. In many

regions deserted farms did not become a pronounced problem until after the seeond and third devastating plague.

Can this very high mortality be verified for other parts of

Europe? Starting with Sweden the only similar record of rural

households is for a parish on the east coast of middle Sweden in 1312 and again in 1413 where the decrease between these two years was 65 percent. Similar sources from other parishes

throughout Europe tend to show a similar decline, hut we have to use other evidence to get a clean and precise picture about

what happened immediately after the Black Death. A source specific for Seandinavia is Peter's pence, as men­

tioned above, which showed a general decrease around 50 percent during the plague years, and a further decrease with 10-20 percent during the following two plagues. For Sweden the increase of donations during the Black Death and the following epidemics are four times the average, hut six for sick donators (see diagram 3). Denmark and Norway had similar increases in donations during the plague years 1349 and 1350.27 Other evidence, for example from tombstones and death registers, point

in a similar direction, with increases of 4-6 times the average in Sweden as in Denmark. The exception is a 15-fold increase in an

extant death register for the island of Gotland. Change in the number of wills (or bequests to religious

institutions) is the most commonly used indicator for the rest of Europe. Massima Livi-Bacci has even dared to estimate the increase in mortality from such sources. For a number of towns

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in Tuscany a great increase occurred roughly every ninth year

between 1350 and 1450, and the average represenred a six-fold increase over the normal number. Presurning a normal mortal­ity of three percent per year and a similar birth rate, a six-fold

increase earresponds to "a net loss of 15 percent".28 However

normally only the richer members of the population left wills,

and thus, with a higher mortality among the poor, wills as a

source inevitably tend to underestimate total mortality especially in regions with low levels of literacy.

Recently Samuel Chon has made a very ambitious overview of different collections of wills in Europe, to prove high mortal­ity during the Black Death, which can be supplemented with same other sources. Different authors sarnerimes give different

numbers, but that is natural in statistical research using medieval

sources, as one always has to make a number of adjustments before coming to an overall total (as the basis for comparison).

The most extensive material published is from six towns in central Italy: Arezzo, Assisi, Florence, Perugia, Pisa, and Siena.

The total increase for all of themin 1348 was slightly more than

20-fold (compared with the average for twenty previous years), with large differences between single towns.29 In France the best investigation is from Lyon and its surrounding countryside, where the increase in 1348 was nearly 20-fold.30 In a part of

Paris a 20-fold increase for 1348 is registered.31 In northeastern France Besan~on bad a 7- to 10-fold increase,32 and Tournai in the Low Countries bad a 9- to 10-fold increase in 1349.33 In a

part of London it was 15- to 17-fold.34 In Liibeck the increase was six-fold or 20-fold during the Black Death, depending on the basis for comparison.35 Benedictow also presents some death registers from the Low Countries and England with increases around 20 timesthe average.36

The difference between France, Italy and England with 10- to 20-fold increases, campared with Seandinavia with around 5-fold

increases, could have been eaused by the decreasing lerhality of the plague when it continued northwards. The explanation could also bethatthere were relatively more literate middle dass people outside Scandinavia, and that many Swedish wills were written by parish priests. During the following two big epidemics the increase in Sweden continued to be around five-fold, whereas

in France and Italy mortality fell steeply.37

Perhaps the plague was samewhat more devastating in the south and west of Europe, the regions from where we have the most detailed registration of population-loss during the plague­years. But even in the Nordie countries probably about half the population died, as Peter's pence both in Sweden and Norway

immediately fell to a level of half the former amount. Further­

more the relative increase in donations was nearly as high in

the following two epidemics. The time of death from 1348-74 was certainly as devastating in the North as in other parts of

Europe.

Which Disease?

Another issue that has been brought up for discussion is was "the

plague" the plague? Most schalars believe it was eaused by the bacteria Yersina pestis, the disease today called bubonic plague, which starts as an epizooti c among rodents. The first vierims were

black rats, rodents that lived near humans all over Europe. When

the rats starred to die, their fleas turned to humans. lt was a web

of rat households (living in human households) all over Europe that were infected (often by fleas transporred by humans), which shaped the pulse of the disease. Usually the epidemic slowed down during the winter, since fleas were not active during that

part of the year. The disease could stay for months in the same

region, and even for two subsequent summer-autumn seasons. It was spread along the trade routes, faster over the Mediterranean,

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the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, and at a slower pace inland through the Continent.

A few scholars question this interpretation and suggest that, for instance, anthrax spreading from diseased cattle could have played a role during the Late Medieval epidemics and especially

during the Great Mortality.38 Recently Samuel Cohn has energeti­cally argued that some other disease, not identified, eaused the catastrophe. Benedictow has argued that due to its vindeuce it was the bubonic plague and notbing else. Probably this discus­sion cannot be solved solelywith historical sources, and we have to wait for the definite answer until natural scientists with new methods can prove which disease ravaged the Continent. We have three alternatives: the bubonic plague, a different kind of plague or a totally different disease.

One argument against the bubonic plague is the high overall mortality. But the bubonic plague is a highly lethal disease, and the disease affected societies with many poor. A seeond argu­ment is that normally the bubonic plague did not cause higher mortality among the poor. A conference report of 1983 argued

that nutrition influenced levels of infection from disease. For

"plague" this was a "minimal" influence, while for diseases such as tuberculosis i t was a "definite influence" .39 Benedictow's answer is that the poor lived in such impoverished circumstances,

dirty and starving, that they had minimal resistance to any sick­ness.40 A third argument is that people who have had the bubonic plague normall y do not get any immunity, but the Late Medieval disease pattern clearly shows that a decreasing proportion of the population died in following diseases. Furthermore, later epidernics harvesred more victims among children than among adults. Cohn gives a sample of evidences, and his conclusion is that this indicates some kind of immunity among adults.41

Cohn's detailed study of the periodicity of plague shows that in the Medi terraneau Europe the epidemics struck in the summer

but further north in the late summer and during the autumn. Sweden perfectly fits this pattern as all epidemics I have identi­fied reached their peaks during the autumn. As I understand it, this periodicity cannot be held as a strong argument against the disease being the bubonic plague with the flea as vector, rather it supports this assumption. A reason, besides the flea being less active during the winter, for why the plague struck in the autumn in the north is that people at that time of the year spent more time indoors.

An argument in support of the bubonic plague as the disease is that medieval descriptions of the disease often mention boils in the groins or in the armpits as a typical sign. Cohn gives a Iong list of such descriptions from miraculous cures du.ring Late Medi­eval epidemics.42 To this list I can add a pair of descriptions from Sweden. The Black Friar Gregorius in Stockholm composed a collection of miracles which were claimed by people who prayed to the image of Jesus Christ in the monastery-church. Gregorius started with an excuse as he had been so slow in recording the miracles in a proper way and some of the earliest ones ha d been

lost. The reason why he at last wrote them down was a promise

he had given when, in 1421, he was struck by the great plague that "ravaged Stockholm, Sweden and the world". In the account

of hispainshe described suffering from "those boils in the groin, which often cause the death in such plague", bu t after h e ha d given his promise the boils burst and he was healed. He also told about a whole family living north of Stockholm where the father and seven of his children during the very same plague had got "boils in the belly, which eauses death". The mother tended them, and after prayers the father and one daughter were brought back to Iife. Later they went on a pilgrimage to Stockholm, wrote Gregorius, and gave one pound of wax to the monastery.43

A puzzle is why people in the Middle Ages did not observe and comment on a mortality among rats before or in connection

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with the epidemics. The most likely answer isthat most rats died

unseen, in the walls and under the floors of human dwellings.44

Even if rats are not mentioned in the chronicles, or in other sources, a bad smell is often taken as a sign of the plague. In a

fifteenth century medical book from Sweden, written by a local practitioner, the smell is described as similar to that of earrian used in hunting- the smell of rotten meat.45

Even if the question is still open, I am inclined to support the

traditional interpretation; the bubonic plague ravaged in Europe during the Great Mortality, and many times thereafter.

eauses behind the Black Death

Most historians admit that this catastrophe must be explained in a multi-eausal way, but the emphasis of different eauses has varied, and the debate has been fruitful, with thesis and anti-thesis resulting in synthesis trying to cover the different arguments.46

This debate has also been a part of a discussion about the Late Medieval Crisis. In the 1940s historians started to realise that the

period from about 1350-1500 was characterised by a marked

demographic recession, and it was obvious that the Black Death

played a major role. During the 1960s and 1970s the dominant explanation was Malthusian, or connected with Malthusian inter­

pretations. The leading English medievalist M. M. Pastan wrote

in 1972 that even if the plague itself had a main responsibility for

the following slump, the stagnation had already started, and the

plague tended to aggravate the crisis and delay recoveryY Other

leading historians had similar opinions. For instance the French

annales historianEmmanuelLe Roy Ladurie explained that the field of action for the plague was an overpopulated countryside and an undernourished population, while the Marxist historian

Guy Bois, in his book on Normandy, argued that the decline had

lang since begun and that the pandernie merely accelerated it.48

Already in the 1970s there was opposition to this view. For

instance the English medievalist John Hatcher wrote in 1974

that there is "no reason to suspect that susceptibility to plague is enhanced by malnutrition" .49 The medical conclusion, mentioned

above, that there was no connection between malnutrition and

the bubonic plague, had a definite impact on research on the

Black Death. For example, David Herlihy, a leading expert on

medieval demography, changed sides and started to emphasise the importance of the plague as a prime mover.50 Anotherline of

criticism came from British historians who proved that the agri­

culturat expansion continued up to the Middle of the fourteenth century in parts of southern England. 51 The new interpretation stated that the plague was an exogenous factor. New diseases could emerge and change history (as the recent AIDS-epidemic

reminds us). This sketch of the discussion does not justify the camplex­

ity of the arguments, and especially in France the Malthusian

explanation is still of importance, as is also the social aspect of malnutrition.52 New and more detailed studies on mortality referred to above, seem to give same support to a Malthusian explanation as we now realise that people living in poor and dirty circumstances had a supermortality campared with the

upper classes. And other endogenous factors such as elimate and

famine should not be forgotten. 53

We have to include in this explanation that agricultural

expansion could continne in same regions, perhaps just because

of the availability of cheap labour. The overcrowded countryside also explains why recultivation started immediately after the Black Death. Many landless waited for a chance. Had not the plague struck again it would not have taken many decades for

the population to reach its former level. But the plague struck again several times and this indicates that the exogenans explana­tion, about a new and very lethal disease is also correct. We have

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to contain both explanations to understand the extent of the catastrophe.

Another factor of major importance was communications. During the general expansion of the economy from 1000-1200,

regular trade networks had been established in Europe and also

over Eurasia and Africa, and it was along these trade routes that

the plague spread.54 If the disease was the bubonic plague and

it followed ships' rats or fleas in textiles, it could have travelied

as fast as any traveller at the time. But it would always be more or less hidden (hut for a few cases) before it broke out in a new place as the rat population took the first blow. I doubt whether it is possible to show the spread of the Black Death in detail with

arrows on a map of Europe. For northern Europe, the slender data makes this next to impossible. The first evidence from Swe­

den is a single case from the spring of 1350 on Gotland in the Baltic. {It was connected with pogroms against traveliers accused of working for Jews -a sign of rumours and fear.) But the real outbreak ca me in the late summer and early autumn.

Norway was ravaged in 1349 and probably again in 1350; perhaps also parts of the northern coast of Denmark were af­

fected in 1349, for instance the province of Halland {now in Sweden). For Liibeck, on the border of southern Denmark and the most importallt southern Baltic seaport, we know for sure

that the plague peaked in July to September 1350.55 For Sweden and Denmark the number of cases per month and region never reached more than four or five, even if different sources are com­

bined. In mid-Jutland the plague struck bardest in August to Sep­tember, in inland southern Sweden (Småland) in September, and along the Baltic coast (Gotland and Uppland) from September to October. Strangely enough the peak in Scania and Zeeland, in

southern Seandina via, came in October. Thus the plague seemed

to have reacl1ed its high point later in 1350 in parts of southern

Seandinavia (including present day southern Sweden), than in

mid Sweden. But the number of cases does not allow for any firm conclusion, and there are cases in this southern region from August. The cases where the donor declares himself as sick are all from September-October in Sweden including Scania. 56

The disease could have spread over the Baltic Sea on boat as did manylater plague-epidemics in the sixteenili and seventeenth

centuries in this region, or perhaps it advanced slowly along the

inland routes- or both ways. 57 What we can be sure of isthat a dense trade-network developed during the High Middle Ages in the North and all over Europe facilitated the spread, and that the disease spread along these routes.

A set of factors explains why the plague came and why the mortality was shockingly high. But explaining why the catas­

trophe struck is just one part of the historical explanation; as interesting is how society reacted to the challenge. In the last part of this essay I am going to discuss the main economic and social consequenses of the Black Death in Sweden.5s

Consequences - Agri culture

Indirect sources cannot be used to identify specific epidem­ics, instead they reveal reactions to the catastrophe, and how society starred to change. The European discussion about the

consequences of the Black Death is enormous, but I am going to

focus my attention on Sweden and use a number of sources of evidence in my analysis. I concentrate on changes in agriculture,

and especially those traits that can be measured - though trying not to fall in the trap that the measurable is the explainable.

Deserted farms are an important and weil known consequence ·

of the demographic crisis all over Europe, including the Nordie countries. The cartularies kept by the Swedish archdiocese are preserved from the decades after the plague and they give several cases of redarnation of farms, especially on the fertile plains

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around Uppsala. This was a part of a general restructuring of

settlement where farmers left low-productive farmlands when better deserted farms became available. A document from north­ern Sweden about tithe-payment from the 1390s tells us that

the poor had mainly disappeared; the reasons were both high mortality among them and that the number of landless declined as more farms became available. Furthermore the whole manorial organisation changed as many small cottages were merged into larger farms. The proportion of deserted farms campared with the number of farms cultivated before the plague does not reflect mortality but also a restructuring of society.

An ambitious research project started in the Nordie countries in the 1960s with the goal to reconstruct the extent of desertion.

The participants could not agree on methodology and thus totally different methods were used for Norway and for Sweden. The Norwegian method gave rather high desertion quotas and the

Swedish method gave those that were too low. The campari­

son presenred in a map in the summary volume is thus more a picture of the spread of different research methods employed in

the 1970s than of the desertion frequency in the Late Middle

Ages.59 One has to remould especially the Swedish material to reach some conclusions.

Neady all of the desertion occurred after 1350 and before around 1430-40. In Sweden the decline was on the average around 40-50 percent (perhaps more), and the quota was higher

in the woodlands and lower on the fertile plains. In Norway the

desertion frequency was generally much higher with an average over 60 percent, while the mountainous areas of inland Norway were nearly depopulated. ( Denmark had rather !arge villages and the desertion frequency for single farms is difficult to estimate, hut it seems to have been generally lower than in Sweden, except

in Jutland.) This uneven spread of desertion reflects a general

tendency towards concentration, a retreat to the centre. An in-

teresting fact is that urban areas, mirring districts, and coastal

distriers where fisbing was of importance, fared better than the average. Besides rnaving to the plains people rnaved to places and

regions where there was non-agraria n production. The low-water mark came in the mid fifteenth century. From

about the 1460s signs of redarnation of farmland became more pronounced in Sweden, and the plague in this decade seems to

have eaused only a slight halt to early recovery which then con­

tinued. In the early sixteenth century recovery turned into a fast

expansion, with 0,6-0,7 percent yearly increase of the number

of farms, which is a dramatic change campared with the Middle

A ges. The recovery partly consisred of redarnation of deserted

farmlands, but to a !arge extent it was directed further out in the woodlands. Large tracts of land that ha d not been cultivated even under the peak period in the High Middle Ages were now cleared. Many of the new farms were thus on the margins, espe­cially in the southern part of northern Sweden where there was dyrrarnie change during the sixteenth century. This pulse, with

first a contraction back to the centre, and then an expansion further out in the margins (even if the population had not reached the pre-plague level), must be understood against the background

of changes in landholding and agricultural technique. I have studied all the surviving medieval land registers and

cartularies from Sweden to investigate how the deserted farms were used. (There are not many, hut the most important series,

belonging to a monastery, record a thousand farms half a dozen times during most of the fifteenth century). Some of the farms adjoined other farms and their arable land became parts of larger fields. But most often the deserted fields were used as pasture or hay meadows. Significant is that deserted farms turned to pasture

continued to appear in the cartularies although no rent was paid. Such registers normally noticed income derived from land for

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which rent was paid. The reason why these farms were recorded, even as pastures under specific tenants, is that this was a way to maintain property rights.

During the turmoil after the Great Mortality, "ancient usage"

gradually became a more important form of entitlement to land. In the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries many fields quietly went over to new owners, often to peasants living in the neighbourhood. When order was eventually established, much of the deserted landed property had been incorporated into neigh­bouring farms. This process obliterated all the small cottages clustered around the manars. These small cottages characterised the High Medieval estates but not the Late Medieval estates.

One of the most important structural changes that Sweden -as man y other parts of Europe- went through in the formative period 1000-1300 was strengthened property right to land in a feudalised legal structure. After the period of restructuring ownership to specific p lots of land, which came during a century of crisis between 1350 and 1450, the legally based strong right to land functioned as a force which pressed the new redarnations further out to the margins. Deserted farms had become meadows and pastures of existing farms and the process was irreversible.

The more extensive use of land which this use of uninhab­ited (but not abandoned) farmland irnplied was connected with changes in technology. If the High Middle Ages saw several innovations that increased land productivity, time was now ripe for innovations that mainly affected productivity of labour. The bottleneck of the work year, especially in the N orthem countries, was the harvest. Grain and !arge amounts of ha y ha d to be taken

in during a short time. This problem was aggravated by increased meadowlands and numbers of cattle on the average farm during the Late Middle Ages. Both the scythe and the rake changed forms

with a longer blade for the scythe and a more steady construction for the rake. Also other implements changed, such as the sickle,

which got a longer blade and a different handle. New implements and methods made it possible for a smaller population to uphold the open landscape. This also explains another peculiarity. In paleo-ecological studies, mainly with pollen-analysis, the Late Medieval crisis has been very bard to detect. The landscape was kept more or less as open throughout the crisis as before.

Changed technology also has another implication. Higher labour productivity in agriculture made it possible to transfer resources from agriculture to other seetars of society. During the last part of the Middle Ages this meant that trade and industry thrived. An explosion of different innovations came in metal­lurgy, transport, and information with print and cheaper paper. The industrialised centre of Europe (mainly the Low Countries) started to produce cheaper cloth on alarger scale, and mass pro­ductian was also to be seen in other manufactures. For example, Sweden produced cheaper pottery and also more hut simpler bone-combs (important for hygiene) with can be found from this period in archaeological excavations.

If farms on average became larger and labour producriv­ity increased then this helped to raise the standard of living for ordinary peasants. This socio-economic improvement seems to have been largely reflected in the consumptian of non-agrarian products, which also explains why towns and mining districts could escape a deep demographic down turn. Secondary produc­tion was a small but increasing part of output, and the gradual increase of towns and of industry was connected with a parallel

increase in trade in products such as oxen and grain. However

this description is valid only for the last part of the crisis, the positive reconstruction of the society, which was the transition in to the expansive sixteenth century.

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Consequences- Society

When one turns to a set of other indicators, a less rosy picture

emerges. Again I am going to look for measurable variables, realising that explanation of social change needs qualitative description.

Prices and rents went down. In Sweden the price of land fell by half in the decade after 1350 and stabiiised slightly under that during the next decade. Rent is a little more difficult to calculate as land rent consisted of different items besides grain and money. But the rent fell steeply during the decades after the plagues. A growing productian per farm household and a decreasing rent ought to have paved the way for an increase in peasant living

standards. But it was not that simple.

The higher strata of society, and especially the higher nobility,

tried to compensate for diminishing incomes. Many terrant farms were abandoned and less rent was paid for those still occupied. The need for compensation was augmenred by the fact that the

highest strata survived the plagues better. Their Iife style, with

tournaments and expensive weddings, was also an imperative; it was not only luxury but the way they defined themselves for others.

The compensation was taken out by extra-legal and illegal

methods -and i t was taken out not only on the peasants hut also on parts of the petty nobility. New taxes, warfare and plundering were among these methods. The years following the plague was

the time of the "Raubritter", the German word of the time for

the plundering nobility. The French historian Guy Bois has in an excellent way and with good source material described this proc­ess of campensatory exploitation in Late Medieval Normandy.60

But we can find the same tendency all over Europe, not the !east in the North. In Sweden the decades after the plague was a period

of prolonged civil war, lawlessness and German occupation of

large tracts of the country. Surviving letters tell us about how

the higher nobility and their knights paid their debts at home in Germany with booty from the war in Sweden. Several written sources describe this period as a time of hardship for the peasants and petty nobility. Taxes were raised, first irregularly, and then established on a higher level. (Later the reaction would be !arge peasant risings.)

An interesting and measurable source, often used as an in­

direct indication of crisis, is building activity. Resources spent on the buildings of churches or houses are always a result of a

personal decision. They are thus not a simple reflection of the

level of economic activity in society, as available resources could be invested inta projects other than buildings.61

Information about cathedrals, churches and monasteries (in­

cluding nunneries) has been extracted from the widespread litera­ture on art history, archaeology and also history. All this building

activity came to an immediate stop after 1350. Cathedrals (for instance in Uppsala) were left half finished. Building activity in all the hundreds of parish churches stopped. With one exception the

same was the case with monasteries. The exception was the new monastery founded for Saint Bridget which was connected with more intense religious interest after the plagues. Not until the early fifteenth century did building activity start aga in on alarger

scale. Roofs in parish churches were covered with vaults, the vaults were painted, and the cathedra! in Uppsala was finished. This activity began around the 1430s but the breakthrough came

in the 1450s. (A forerunner ca. 1400 was that after a total stop

for decades, many churches started to make small investments by buying sculptures and other items of furniture.)

Building activity on farmhouses has been reconstructed with the help of timber from a large number of medieval log cabins from Middle and North Sweden. They have been dated by us­

ing dendrochronological methods, measuring tree rings, from

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a number of surviving houses dating from the thirteenth and

early fourteenth centuries. Between the 1350s and the 1460s

little timber for houses was cut down in these parts of Sweden. (This also is an indirect sign of crisis in northern Sweden, from

where we have fewer written sources.) One problem in using these sources is that timber from log houses can be reused in new constructions and the houses can easily be taken down and moved. If many empty houses existed, there was no need to cut new timber. The new activity, cutting timber in the woods from

the 1460s, was thus also connected with the ongoing recovery, which started to fill the countryside again with farms.

Fortresses and rnanor houses built and inhabited by the nobility followed another curve. Recently a catalogue listing all

these medieval Swedish buildings has been published, and this

indicates the leve! of construction at the time.62 This can be sup­plemented by similar catalogues for Finland, and for those areas of modern Sweden that belonged to Denmark and Norway in

the Middle Ages.63 The pattern that appears is remarkable. After an increase in building activity in this seetar - as in all other

seetars-during the centuries before the Black Death something strange occurs after the plague. Building activity on fortresses and eastles increased after the plague and this cont.inues apace until the late fourteenth century. Then activity petered out during the first decades of that century, to be taken up again at the end of the century. Many of the military buildings from the late

fourteenth century were erected during the civil war and the

general disintegration of the society, and several of them were

demolished and rebuilt. When the lang period of peasant risings - combined with a civil war of a new character - started in the 1430s, many of them were destroyed and not rebuilt.

The increase in fortress building was part of the increased

resources spent on military activity which also-as always dur­

ing wartimes - eaused damage to the rest of the economy and

sociallife. This process started when plague eaused depopulation,

disorder and social chaos. Societies' first reaction to catastrophe was dysfunctional and delayed recovery. The social structure was challenged. The dominant dass tried to maintain a social structure that was top heavy on a declining productian base. A

vicious circle had been released. The change in one factor eaused a reaction to another factor which rnaved the whole system in the direction of the primary change. Decreasing resources eaused conflicts that further diminished the resource base.

But eventually counter forces were released. A stronger state started to evolve around the kingdom in order to arrest the social disaster that had developed. This was often based in legalistic ideologies and also sought a social base partly outside

the nobility. The following centuries would see this strong state, balancing and controlling the social conflicts, in full bloom. This strong state, and its ambitions, was also connected with a more

developed social and geographical division of labour, controlling,

protecting and taxing trade. Another important process was protests from below with

an intensified social struggle over resources. Peasants tried in

different ways to resist the pressure put on them. Much of this resistance was small scale and on a daily base, such as flight or tax evasion. Sametimes the resistance developed inta violence which grew inta national risings. The Late Middle Ages was not only a time of crisis; it was also a time of frequent, and also

sometimes !arge, peasant revolts. The emerging strong state apparatus and the growing resist­

ance from below, tagether with economic disaster, were among

the prerequisites for a new structure to emerge. More resources

were left in peasant hands and the plunder period came to an

end. The restructuring phase of the crisis could gradually start to develop. This description of the phases of the crisis is valid not only for Sweden hut also for large parts of Europe.

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Conclusion and Questions

The eauses of the Black Death are biological but the extent of the catastrophe is also explained by overpopulation and by rather intensive trade. Several plagues followed and devastated Europe during the decades after the mid fourteenth century. New plagues came in the following century, but gradually less devastating.

The first reaction for the social structure (in Sweden) was gen­

erally dysfunctional, where the upper strata of the society tried to maintain their leve! of conspicuous consumptian and military power. After decades of a plundering economy counter-forces were released and new social structures emerged which allowed a reallocation of resources. A seeond and reconstructive phase

of the crises started in the early fifteenth century. Farms had

become on the average larger as fields and meadows had been merged together. Farmland was kept in use with labour saving

methods and innovations. Productian per capita increased and this gave an input to the whole society. Secondary productian in manufacture and trade came to be a more dynamic seetar of

society, and this led to a new and expansive economy in the Early

Modern period. More of the totalland area was gradually drawn inta human production.

This process had other aspects and also laoked different in other parts of Europe. The epidemics hit the Middle East and

North Africa as hard as Europe. But in these parts of the world no recovery came in following centuries. And if China was not

ravaged by the plague, why did the demographic waves in both

ends of Eurasia follow each other? This pandernie needs to be studied both at a local and an international leve! to understand its full complexities.

Nates

The campact edition of the Oxford English dictionary 1971, s. v. "Death: 8b: Black Death"; the first evidence in English is from

1823.

The word has its roots in old Teutonic. See Hellström 1966, s.v.

"diger".

Recently published broad studies are: Cohn 2002; Benedictow 2004. Cohn questions the traditional identification of the disease as plague, but I am not totally convinced. Benedictow tries to identify exactly when and where the epidemic spread to a specific region, but I am less optimistic about the possibilities of reconstructing the exact diffusion of this disease. The arrows on his map must in many cases be taken as educated guesses. Surprisingly, Benedictow does not refer

to or discuss Cohn's book.

Sources for this region have been thoroughly presented and re­

searched by Dols 1977.

Benedictow (2004, 42-49) believes not. Many others argue for a paraHel plague epidemic in the eastern part of Eurasia. See, for ex­ample, McNeil1976, 142-43; Dols 1977, 38-42; Audouin-Rouzeau 2003, 17-18. DK Atlas of world history presents a generally accepted worldwide map of the spread of the plague, including the outbreak in China in the 1330s and its possible start in Burma before 1320. Black 1999, 72-73.

McEvedy & Jones 1978, 345-46. This historical atlas of world population also takes up similarities in societal development be­tween Europe and China: "events at opposite ends of the Eurasian land mass have an astonishing synchronicity ... the two curves rose, overshot and fell back in approximate unison".

This artide is mainly based on Myrdal2003, which analyzes plagues and settlement desertion in Sweden, but has no English summary.

See, for example, Nordberg 1995, 164.

ChiHoleau 1984, 147-48; Cohn 1992, 11-13; Cappon 1994, 43; Wask6 1996, 23-25.

177

178

lo LeGoff 1984, 326.

11 Kulturhistoriskt lexikon för nordisk medeltid 1956-78, s.v. "testa­mente"; Lexikon des Mittealters, s.v. "testament".

12 This source has been used to estimate the population of Seandinavia and Poland in the fourteenth century, hut met with some criticism. For debate concerning Seandinavia in general and Sweden in par­ticular, see Kulturhistorisk lexikon för nordisk medeltid 1956-78, s.v. "Peterspenning"; Myrdal 2003. For Poland, see Lexikon des Mittelalters 1999, s. v. "Bevölkerung C. Osteuropa". Here I am not interesred in estimating the total population but in relative demo­graphic change, which I consicler a safer arithmetical operation.

13 For a complete catalogue of Swedish miracles, see Myrdal & Bäärn­hielm 1994. Only Swedish saints, with shrines in the country, and posthurnous miracles have been included in the catalogue.

14 Biraben (1975-76, 363-36, 415-17) mentions the following epidemics in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland: 1349-50, 1360, 1371, 1402, 1413, 1421, 1427, 1439-42, 1451, 1484, 1493, 1495, 1501, 1503, and 1508.

15 Older research that analyzed only a limited number of sources offers the following sequence for Norway (with a question mark for some of the epidemics mentioned by Benedictow): 1360, 1370-71, 1379, 1391-92, 1420, 1446-47, 1438-39?, 1452, 1465-72?, 1479-80?, 1500. See, for example, Benedictow 2002, 102. This sequence does not distinguish the more devastating epidemics from lesser outbreaks. For Finland, Kallioinen 1998 is a preliminary study, hut prosopography could probably be used to study the epidemics in this part of Europe. For a comprehensive study of the Black Death in Denmark, see Ulsig 1991; for Norway, see Benedictow 2002.

16 Ibs 1994. Ibs presents staristics for wills only for years close to epidemics. Cohn (2002, 183) has worked with the wills of Lubeck, hut does not mention Ibs.

17 Hatcher 1977, 17-18, 57-59. See also Shrewsbury 1971, 126-56. Both emphasize that other diseases besides plague affected popula­tions.

18 Dupaquire's longue duree analysis for the period between 1350 and 1800 shows a decrease in the late seventeenth century, before plagues nearly disappeared in the early eighteenth century. Dupaquire 1997, 241.

19 Biraben 1975-76. For general pestilence-pattern in the post-medieval era, see Eckert, 1996. For the Netherlands, especially after 1450, see Noordengraaf & Valk 1996.

2o Cohn 2002, 188, 193-96.

21 Lorcin 1974, 526. I have included years with more than 50 testa­ments. Up to 1450 we have indications of pestilence in willsin the Low Countries town of Tournai (1382, 1400 and 1419) and in Besan~on in north-eastern France (1387, 1400, 1420 and 1440). Cohn 2002, 198-99.

22 Biraben's evidence forthese regions is meagre, hut Dols 1977 pro­vides a good list for Middle East.

23 See, for example, Lexikon des Mittelalters 1999, s. v. "Pest A Westen".

24 Benedictow (2004, 276-78, 293-99, 303-05, 315-29, 339) offers the following estimates of decrease: Navarra and Catalonia in northern Spain, ca. 40-70 percent; Tuscany in Italy 45-55 percent; Provence and Savoy in Southeast France 40-55 percent; Belgium 23 percent; England 40-60 percent (many examples). See also Cohn 2002, 148.

25 Benedictow 2004, 383.

26 Benedictow 2004. For higher mortality among the poor in a town in France, see p. 335; for landless men in England, see pp. 363-75; for lower mortality among bishops and magnates, see pp. 264-66, 343. This low mortality among the top strata of the population is weil known. See for example: McFarlane 1973; Harrisen 2000, 320; Dyer 2002,271. Cohn (2002, 50, 127,204-205, 209-10) also emphasises this feature.

27 The Swedish numbers are based on Myrdal 2003. Norway had a fourfold increase of donations (Benedictow 2004, 154 ), hut a nearly six-fold in wills (Myrdal2003, 120-21). For Denmark the increase of donations was five timesthe average 1350. Benedictow 2004, 166.

179

28 Livi-Bacci 2000, 81. 42 Cohn (2002, 253-54) argues that different numbers of bo ils or their

29 The single towns: Arezzo 17-fold, Aissi 25-fold, Florence 20-fold, position on the body indicate some other disease but my interpreta-

Perugia 30-fold, Pisa 3-fold, Siena 17-fold. My calculations are based tion of these rather vague descriptions is not in tune with his.

on tables of the number of testators in Cohn 1992, 77-78. Cohn 43 HL O and HL 65 in the catalogue in Myrdal & Bäärnhielm 1994. (2002, 201) gives the increase for all cities.

44 This problem has been treared by Persson (2001, 67-69), in her 30 Lorcin 1974,210-16. The plague was more devastating in the town book about pestilence in ear! y eighteenth century Scania, Sweden. She

than in the countryside. gives the explanation I follow. Bodil Persson is educated as medical

31 Biraben 1975-76, 171-73. Cohn (2002, 90) gives a 45-fold increase doctar and then got a doctoral degree in history, a not uncommon combination for schalars doing medical history; even if most medical

for the time-period June-March 1348-49, as compared to an average doctars does not go so far as to also take a doctorare in history. But

y ear. even with her knowledge and excellent source material produced by

32 Benedictow 2004, 106. Biraben (1975-76, 171) and Cohn (2002, the strong Swedish state of the time, she is hesitating on settJing the 203) give different figures. ways the plague spread.

33 Cohn (2002, 153, 203) gives different figures. 45 Myrdal 2003, 52-53.

34 Cohn 2002, 203; Benedictow 2004, 136. Biraben (1975-76, 171) 46 For a historiography of the Late Medieval Crisis, see Hybel 1989. talks a bo ut a l 0-fold i nerease instead. His description is steered by anti-Malthusian tendency.

180 35 Ibs 1994 gives the four surrounding years as a basis for comparison. 47 Pastan 1975, 39-43. 181

For 1350 the increase is 5.5-fold, for 1358 2.8-fold and for 1367 48 Ladurie 1976, 13; Bois 1984, 53. Bois (2000) stresses the importance if 5.7-fold; here one year is missing, namely 1360. Benedictow (2004, 6'

of epidemics, but mainly advocates interpretationshe presenred 25 ;o

197) campares the "pre-plague period" with the number 1350, and ~ years before. .,

gets a much higher increase, and also explains that the increase f starred already 1349. 49 Hatcher 1977, 72. if

"" 36 Benedictow 2004, 114,204-206, 349. 50 See Cohn's introduction to Herlihy 1997, 4, 85. This book was ~

o

published after David Herlihy had died and it consists of his lectures. ~ :r

37 For instance in the six Italian towns it diminished from 20-fold to a ;;·

15-fold, and again to a 5-fold, and in Lyon from a nearly 20-fold, Often a schalar in his leeture is more outspoken and testing different l hypothesis, and probably this can be taken into account when we

to around 10-fold, and then only around the double in the early talk of Herlihy's changed position, but on the other hand, Cohn as

1370s. his pupil, ought to know.

38 See Cantor 2002, 15-16, 66, 171. One argument is that epidemics 51 See especially artides by Bruce Campbell, summarized in Campbell

hit leeland where the black rat was not known in the Middle Ages. 2000, but several others had the same opinion. See, for example,

39 Rotberg & Rabb 1985, 308. Campare to Livi-Bacci 1991. artides in Before the Black Death, edited by Campbell 1991.

40 Benedictow 2004, 262-63. 52 See, for example, Blockmans & Dubois 1997.

41 Cohn 2002,47, 72, 131, 212-13.

182

53 See Jordan 1996, 185-86, suggesring thar the famines of the early fourteenth century reduced resistance to diseases among the poor, as rhey had grown up a generation later.

54 McNeill (1976, 145-46) emphasises the importance of the Mongol Empire, and the nerwork of caravanserais established over Central Asia.

55 Cohn 2002, 182. In Hamburg the plague peaked in J une to August. Ibs 1994.

56 Myrdal 2003, 26, 59-64, 50-151; Benedictow 2004, 167-77. The cases are a combination of tombstones, death registers and wills. Single cases are spread out from August to December in different regions, but a single will, where the donor is not sick, is not a sure sign of the outbreak of the plague.

57 In Myrdal2003, I suggest the first alternative, bu t Benedictow 2003 argues for the second.

58 This description is based on Myrdal2003, and also on my overview of agriculture and society during the Middle Ages in Myrda\1999.

59 Gissel et al. 1981, 102. Unfortunately this map has been used in in­ternational literature as a sign of Late Medieval population decrease. See, for example, Sogner & Turpeinen 1997, 397.

60 Bois 1984.

61 Myrdal 1999, 159-62; Myrdal2003, 212-16.

62 Loven 1996.

63 Myrdal 1999.

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Dirty Water, People on the Move: Cho/era Asiatica and the Shrinking of Time and Space during the Nineteenth Century

Holger Weiss

Cholera asiatica was the first pandernie of the global age. Before

the ear ly nineteenth century, outbreaks of eholera epidemics were confined to the Indian subcontinent with occasional outbreaks in southeastern Asia and southern China. Before, during and

after the nineteenth century pandemics, the spread of eholera

was linked to people on the move: pilgrims, merchants and armies. With the "revolution" in transport through the steam engine, which resulted in the shrinking of time, the acceleration of speed and the mass-movement of individuals, eholera spread

like wildfire across the globe. However, the spread of eholera was not only linked to technical progress but to the dark side of urbanization and the age of imperialism. Poor hygiene and sanita­tion conditions in the cities promoted its spread. The quality of drinking water was crucial, but despite John Snow's research in London in 1849, the cause of the disease was not known to Western scientists before Robert Koch's investigations in Egypt and India during the 1880s.

187