The Black Death полностью

The religious revival had therefore a strong element of the conservative. But this was only one strand in a complex which contained at least as much of the violently radical. The second half of the fourteenth century was marked in many countries by resentment at the wealth and complacency of the Church and fundamental questioning of its philosophy and its organization. In England it was the age of Wyclif and of Lollardy, a new and aggressive anti-clericalism to some extent made use of by ambitious men who envied the riches and influence of the Church, but drawing its strength from the discontent and disillusionment of the people at large. In Italy it was the great period of the Fraticelli, dissident Franciscans who believed that poverty was of the essence of Christ and that a rich church must be a bad one. These rebels, having been denounced as heretics by Pope John XXII thirty years before, now declared the Pope himself a heretic and rejected all sacraments except their own. All over Europe the co-fraternities, the confrèries, grew up, as it were, in the shadow of the great religious orders. In essence they were more movements of withdrawal than of protest; lay groups of simple idealists who sought refuge in their own society from a harsh and vicious world. But their very existence was an implied criticism of the system which they rejected and inevitably they began to evolve habits and strike attitudes inimical to the orthodox organizations from which they had evolved.

Once again, as so often in the history of the Black Death, one must remember that post hoc is not necessarily propter hoc. The second half of the fourteenth century was a time of spiritual unrest, of pertinent questioning of the values and of the conduct of the Church, of disrespect for established idols and a seeking for strange gods. Though the tempo of events would have been different, changes would have taken longer to bring about, resistance would have been more intense and reaction more immediate; in the long run things would have followed the same course, even though there had never been a plague. Dr Levett’s judgement has already been quoted:

‘The Black Death did not, in any strictly economic sense, cause the Peasants’ Revolt or the breakdown of villeinage, but it gave birth, in many cases, to a smouldering feeling of discontent, an inarticulate desire for change…’

Coulton has suggested that the passage would read as well if ‘theological’ were substituted for ‘economic’ and ‘Reformation’ for ‘Peasants’ Revolt’.^{517} The comment is a fair one. The Black Death did not cause the Reformation, it did not stimulate doubts about the doctrine of the Transubstantiation; but did it not cause a state of mind in which doctrines were more easily doubted and in which the Reformation was more immediately possible? Did it not break down certain barriers, psychological as well as physical, which otherwise might have impeded its advent? Wyclif was a child of the Black Death in the sense that he belonged to a generation which had suffered terribly and learned through its sufferings to doubt the premises on which its society was based. The Church which he attacked was a victim of the Black Death because of the legion of its most competent and dedicated officers who had perished and, still more, because of the honour and respect which it had forfeited in the minds of men. The Church continued as an immensely potent force in the second half of the fourteenth century but the unquestioned authority which it had been used to exercise over its members was never to be recovered. To this decay the Black Death made a signal contribution.

Matteo Villani, the Florentine historian, devoted a passage to the effects of the Black Death on those who were fortunate enough to survive it:^{518}

‘Those few discreet folk who remained alive,’ he wrote