Constantinople and Cairo and soon leaving the port cities for the hinterlands. In early
1348 the citizens of Pisa and Genoa, fierce rivals on the seas, were being felled
without distinction by the disease. Early spring of the same year saw the Black Death
at Florence; two months later it had hit Dorset in England. Dormant during the
winter, it revived the next spring to infect French ports and countryside, moving on
swiftly to Germany. By 1351 it was at Moscow, where it stopped for a time, only to
recur in ten- to twelve-year cycles throughout the fourteenth century. (Only the
attack of 1346–1353 is called the Black Death.) The disease continued to strike,
though at longer intervals, until the eighteenth century. Typical was the experience of
Esteve Beyneyc, a well-to-do burgher at Limoges (in southern France), who in 1426
drew up a grim list of his children’s and wife’s recent deaths:
Mathivot, my son, was born Sunday evening the 16th day of the month
of August in the year 1424. And Mathieu de Julien held him [over the
baptismal font as godfather]. And his godmother was Valeria, my niece..
.. And he went to Paradise Friday morning, the 30th day of the month
of August in the year 1426. And there was in that year great mortality.
And at that same time my wife, his mother—may God pardon her—died
there, and many [other] people. Valeria, my daughter, was born on
Friday the 16th day of the month of June in the year 1424. And my son
Guilhoumot held her [over the baptismal font]. And she went to Paradise
on Wednesday, the 24th day of the month of July in the year 1426. And
there was then great mortality.^2
The effect on Europe’s population was immediate and devastating. At Paris, by
no means the city hardest hit, about half the population died, mainly children and
poor people. In eastern Normandy, perhaps 70 to 80 per cent of the population
succumbed. At Bologna, even the most robust—men able to bear arms—were
reduced by 35 per cent in the course of 1348. Demographic recovery across Europe
began only in the second half of the fifteenth century.
Deaths, especially of the poor, led to acute labor shortages in both town and
country. In 1351, King Edward III (r.1327–1377) of England issued the Statute of
Laborers, forbidding workers to take pay higher than pre-plague wages and fining
employers who offered more. Similar laws were promulgated—and flouted—
elsewhere. In the countryside, landlords needed to keep their profits up even as their
