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The Black Death & Medieval Epidemics

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The Black Death and other epidemics that shaped medieval society.

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When did the Black Death pandemic occur in Europe?

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  1. 1When did the Black Death pandemic occur in Europe?
    From 1346 to 1353
  2. 2How many people died from the Black Death?
    As many as 50 million people, perhaps 50% of Europe's 14th-century population
  3. 3What bacterium causes the plague?
    Yersinia pestis
  4. 4How is plague spread?
    By fleas and through the air
  5. 5What is the Black Death considered in terms of plague history?
    The beginning of the second plague pandemic
  6. 6When was the term 'Black Death' first used in English?
    First attested in 1755, translating Danish 'den sorte død', though the pandemic occurred in 1347-1353
  7. 7What did European writers contemporary with the plague call the disease in Latin?
    Pestis or pestilentia (pestilence), epidemia (epidemic), or mortalitas (mortality)
  8. 8What was the Black Death called in English before the 18th century?
    The 'pestilence' or 'great pestilence', 'the plague' or 'great death'
  9. 9Who discovered Yersinia pestis and when?
    Alexandre Yersin, a pupil of Louis Pasteur, during an epidemic of bubonic plague in Hong Kong in 1894
  10. 10Who established the mechanism of plague transmission in 1898?
    Paul-Louis Simond, who found it involves bites of fleas whose midguts had become obstructed by replicating Y. pestis
  11. 11When did genetic analysis suggest Yersinia pestis bacteria evolved?
    Approximately 7,000 years ago, at the beginning of the Neolithic
  12. 12When did flea-mediated strains of Y. pestis emerge?
    Around 3,800 years ago during the late Bronze Age
  13. 13What was the first plague pandemic?
    The Plague of Justinian (541–549 CE, with recurrences until 750)
  14. 14How was the Black Death reportedly first introduced to Europe?
    During the siege of the Genoese trading port of Kaffa in Crimea by the Golden Horde army of Jani Beg in 1347
  15. 15What did the Mongol army allegedly do at the siege of Kaffa?
    Catapulted infected corpses over the city walls to infect the inhabitants (early biological warfare)
  16. 16How did plague spread from Crimea to Europe?
    Most likely carried by fleas on black rats that travelled on Genoese ships through the Mediterranean Basin
  17. 17What form of plague likely caused the rapid inland spread?
    Pneumonic plague (person-to-person transmission), which spread faster than bubonic plague via rat fleas
  18. 18When and where was a sudden surge of Black Death deaths discovered in 2022?
    In what is today Kyrgyzstan in the late 1330s, nearly two decades before the Mongol conquests previously thought to be the cause
  19. 19What percentage of Europe's population is estimated to have died from the Black Death?
    30% to 60% of the European population
  20. 20When did the European population regain its 14th century level?
    Not until the 16th century
  21. 21Where did the plague first arrive in Europe in summer 1347?
    Constantinople
  22. 22When did plague arrive in Sicily?
    October 1347, carried by twelve Genoese galleys
  23. 23When did plague reach France, Spain, Portugal, and England?
    By June 1348
  24. 24When did plague spread through Germany, Scotland, and Scandinavia?
    From 1348 to 1350
  25. 25When did plague reach northern Russia and Moscow?
    It spread to northern Russia in 1352 and reached Moscow in 1353
  26. 26When did plague reach Alexandria, Egypt?
    By autumn 1347, transmitted by sea from Constantinople via a single merchant ship carrying slaves
  27. 27What happened to Cairo during the Black Death?
    By late summer 1348, more than a third of the 600,000 residents died; the Nile was choked with corpses
  28. 28How many times did plague recur in Cairo after 1348?
    More than fifty times over the following one and a half centuries
  29. 29What are the main symptoms of bubonic plague?
    Fever of 38–41°C, headaches, painful aching joints, nausea, vomiting, general malaise, and appearance of buboes (swollen lymph nodes) in groin, neck, and armpits
  30. 30What percentage of untreated bubonic plague victims die, and how quickly?
    80% of victims die within eight days if left untreated

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