5107–5111 AM · 1347 CE — 1351 CE · world history
The Black Death
Plague kills between a third and half of Europe's population in four years.
In four years, from 5107 to 5111, Europe loses between a third and a half of its people. The disease arrives on trading ships from the Black Sea at Messina and crosses the continent in three years. Whole villages die with no one left to bury the dead or bring in the harvest. Labour shortages raised wages and weakened serfdom, but panic sought scapegoats: well-poisoning accusations and massacres of Jewish communities followed.
Sources
Documents of the period
- documents and chronicles of the period — the town chronicles of mortality; Boccaccio on the plague in Florence
Scholarship
- studies in European history — the estimates that a third to a half died; plague DNA from medieval burials
Basis: documents and evidence.