Black Death: Causes And Impacts

The Black Death arrived on European shores in 1348; by 1350 the year it retreated, it had killed half of the region’s population. In 1362 1368 and 1381, it struck again.

There were many thoughts going through peoples head such as how did it start what spread it and how it kills people. Many people did not know what the causes of the spread of the dieses was but it was said that fleas and rats and spread the dieses it initially spread to humans near the black sea and then outwards to the rest of Europe as a result of people fleeing to another country. In the time of the Black Death people did many weird things that they though would help them to not get the disease they would rub onions against their eyes, cutting up pigeons and rubbing it on their body, drink vinegar, eating crushed minerals and many more.

The Black Death is believed to have been the result of plague, an infectious fever caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. The disease was likely transmitted from rodents to humans by the bite of infected fleas.

This had a profound effect on European cities, as the disease ravaged whole areas. The second major impact of the Black Death was the economic loss or effect that resulted from the spread of the plague. As stated in the previous paragraph, the spread of the plague caused people to avoid crowded areas.

The Crusades were a series of religious wars between Christians and Muslims started primarily to secure control of holy sites considered sacred by both groups. In all, eight major Crusade expeditions occurred between 1096 and 1291. The bloody, violent and often ruthless conflicts propelled the status of European Christians, making them major players in the fight for land in the Middle East.

The eight major crusades

• Second crusades
• Third crusades
• Fourth crusades
• Fifth crusades
• Sixth crusades
• Seventh crusades
• Eighth crusades

On November 27, 1095, in Clermont, France, Pope Urban II called for a crusade to help the Byzantines and to free the city of Jerusalem. The official start date was set as August 15, 1096. Those armies that left before that time are considered part of the People’s Crusade.

The goal of The Crusades was to help fellow Christians of the Byzantine Empire repel attacking Seljuk Turks and recover the Christian Holy Land that was taken from the Christian Byzantines by Muslim forces in the years 638-641.

By 1350, the survivors of the plague began to realize their nightmare was ending. The immediate consequence of the Black Death was a massive reduction of the population; however, the plague also had many long-term effects. Many of the scholarly people of the time died.