Changes after the Plague in the 1300's?

Question

What significant changes occured after the cessation of the Plague in 1348? Particualry, what religious and political changes?

How rude Johnny! I am WELL past eight grade...more than 30 years past.

Answer 1

The Black Plague through Europeans into a Crisis of Faith. They began to question the Church more and it led to a cynicism of sorts that eventually led to Martin Luther in 1517.

Politically, it gave rise to a new class with new powers. It also shifted the balance of power from the nobility to the working class. With fewer serfs to work the land, they were able to begin to demand wages and with more land being up for grabs, the gentry class grew.

Answer 2

The consequences of this violent catastrophe were many. A cessation of wars and a sudden slump in trade immediately followed but were only of short duration. A more lasting and serious consequence was the drastic reduction of the amount of land under cultivation due to the deaths of so many labourers. This proved to be the ruin of many landowners. The shortage of labour compelled them to substitute wages or money rents in place of labour services in an effort to keep their tenants. There was also a general rise in wages for artisans and peasants. These changes brought a new fluidity to the hitherto rigid stratification of society. The psychological effects of the Black Death were reflected north of the Alps (not in Italy) by a preoccupation with death and the afterlife evinced in poetry, sculpture, and painting; the Roman Catholic church lost some of its monopoly over the salvation of souls as people turned to mysticism and sometimes to excesses.

Answer 3

The contemporary texts paint two different pictures. One is depressed and describes how people weren't having children, and how the world was declining; a recurring theme which was strongly entrentched in Historical thought by 1500. The other pictures is one of rebirth, these chroniclers recount stories about fruitful marriages producing numerous children and are hopefilled compared to their counterparts which talk about men and women rushing to marry for greedy reason, and have no children.

The biggest change is visable in the arts. Morbid depictions of dead and decaying corpses became frequent works of art. Society was scarred from the constant specter of death.

Oddly enough the poores members of European society benefitted the most, precisely because they so many serfs and peasents died. The sudden availabity of land and the need for workers drove the status of serfs and peasents slightly higher as lords began competing, in some cases, for workers. The availability of land also allowed luxury crops, like fruits, to be grown by peasents.

Despite benefits Europe was depopulated after the plague, in England numerous towns and villages were completely abandoned because no one survived the plauge. Much of the farmland laboriously opened from the wilderness return to its old form. The population of Europe wouldn't return to its pre plagued numbers until around 1680.

The plauge also weakened people's faith in the Catholic church. This weakening of faith occured for two reasons. The first reason is that many thought the plague was divine punishment, which the church had been unable to stop. The other may have had to do with the approach many bishops took, namely hiding in country estates like nearly every other noble; the nobility had a near monopoly on the position of bishops. Parish priests acted just like everyone else, some carried out their duties and died from the plague because of it, others hid out like many lay-persons did.

The plague did strike nobles as well. This destroyed some old ruling houses and paved the way for moderately wealthy people to rocket ot the top of the social ladder through marriage.

Answer 4

The Plague killed people, but left land and equipment intact. So after the Plague was over, workers were in very short supply, so wages shot through the roof...

Answer 5

This is really more of a library type question... I've written entire papers about this subject, and believe me, it's a litle more in-depth than what you can get on Yahoo! Answers.

Answer 6

Working on a 8th grade project?
Try looking it up on-line (not here), or grab a book.

Here is my 2 cents... people stopped dying, and bathed more.
http://www.johnnyshirts.net/