Philip Ziegler follows the course of the black plague as it swept from Asia into Italy and then into the rest of Europe. When first published in 1969, this study was described by the Guardian as "…as exciting and readable an account as you could wish.' This new edition of the major study on the subject is illustrated by over seventy contemporary black and white illustrations and eight pages of color.A series of natural disasters in the furthest reaches of the Orient during the third of the fourteenth century heralded what was, for the population of Europe, the most devastating period of death and destruction in its history. By the autumn of 1347 the Black Death had reached the shores of the eastern Mediterranean, and the years that followed were to witness a horrifying and apparently relentless epidemic.One third of England's population died between the years 1347 and 1350, and over one thousand villages were deserted, never to be repopulated. In towns and cities the cemeteries were unable to provide space for all the dead, and violence and crime spiraled. Travel became dangerous and interruption of food and other supplies across the country added hunger and deprivation to the problems of people already overwhelmed by the threat of the vilest of deaths. In the countryside the population was halved in places, and as land became plentiful, landowners' profits fell and the government tried in vain to fix labourers' wages and prices, peasant unrest accelerated and the manorial system disintegrated, culminating eventually in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. Throughout Europe whole societies were disrupted; racial tensions built as a direct result of the plague, and persecution of Jews began in earnest throughout the continent. The social and economic consequences of the period were to reach far into the following century.
TO BILLY AND PIERRE
When this history was published in 1969 I remarked in my preface that, though there might be controversy over some of its consequences, all at least would agree that the Black Death was of the greatest economic and social importance as well as hideously dramatic in its progression. I therefore found it surprising that, with the exception of Dr Coulton’s somewhat whimsical monograph of 1929, there had been no general study of the subject since Cardinal Gasquet wrote
I understood then, and perhaps see still more clearly now, the considerations which inhibited the academic historian from embarking on such a labour. Any general study must be either superficial or unwieldy: the first distasteful to the author, the second to the publisher and public. No one, too, can be expert in every aspect of this vast panorama and the spectacle of rival historians, each established in his fortress of specialized knowledge, waiting to destroy the unwary trespasser, is calculated to discourage even the most intrepid.
In Professor Elton’s kindly if contemptuous phrase, I was, and still am, an amateur and came to my task ‘in a happy spirit of untrained enterprise’. I had read massively but laid no claim to the title of medievalist. This, I hope, may excuse me for having rushed in where an angel or even a Professor of Medieval History would fear to tread. (To quote Professor Elton again – the angels may perhaps be forgiven if, rather than tread themselves in those treacherous paths, they prefer to bide their time and tread upon the fools instead.) This book contains virtually no original research. It is an attempt to synthesize in a single readable but reasonably comprehensive volume the records of the contemporary chroniclers and the works of later historians, in particular the great flood of Ph.D. theses and other specialist monographs, each treating some tiny aspect of this enormous subject.
There have been many more such studies since 1969. Colin Pratt, Professor of History at the University of Southampton and himself author of
I went on to suggest that if my book should chance to provoke some academic historian – no doubt incensed by its inadequacy – into engaging in a major work of scholarship, then it would have served a useful purpose. Unsurprisingly perhaps, no such historian has risen to this challenge. This book remains today, as it was in 1969, the only twentieth century study of the Black Death which aspires to cover every significant contribution made by students of the period and yet to provide a narrative that is accessible to the layman.
On the whole the professional medievalists treated my foray into their territory with generosity. Their tendency was to treat me not so much as a candidate for demolition as a useful tool with which to assault offending rivals. ‘Mr Ziegler describes himself as an amateur,’ ran one line of argument. ‘So indeed he is; but compared with Professor X of Y University he seems a real professional…’. Whether their charity would have endured if I had ventured for a second time into their field, I rather doubt. I did not put their forbearance to the test, but prudently retreated to the nineteenth and twentieth century where I feel rather more at home.
One feature of my book which came in for some criticism was the chapter in which I tried to recapture the impact of the plague in an imaginary medieval village. Such frivolity, it was suggested, was out of place in a book which had any pretensions to scholarship. Historical fiction was historical fiction and evermore would be so.
