workforce was decimated. They were obliged to strike bargains with enterprising
peasants, furnishing them, for example, with oxen and seed; or they turned their land
to new uses, such as pasturage. In the cities, the guilds and other professions
recruited new men, survivors of the plague. Able to marry and set up households at
younger ages, these nouveaux riches helped reconstitute the population. Although
many widows were now potentially the heads of households, deeply rooted customs
tended to push them either into new marriages (in northern Europe) or (in southern
Europe) into the house of some male relative, whether brother, son, or son-in-law.
The plague affected both desires and sentiments. Upward mobility in town and
country meant changes in consumption patterns, as formerly impoverished groups
found new wealth. They chose silk clothing over wool, beer over water. In Italy,
where a certain theoretical equality within the communes had restrained consumer
spending, cities passed newly toughened laws to restrict finery. In Florence in 1349,
for example, a year after the plague first struck there, the town crier roamed the city
shouting out new or renewed prohibitions: clothes could not be adorned with gold or
silver; capes could not be lined with fur; the wicks of funeral candles had to be made
of cotton; women could wear no more than two rings, only one of which could be set
with a precious stone; and so on. As always, such sumptuary legislation affected
women more than men.
Small wonder that eventually death became an obsession and a cult. A newly
intense interest in the macabre led to new artistic themes. Plate 8.1 shows one side of
a manuscript folio that illustrated the various people whom death would visit sooner
or later. In each of the four frames Death, personified by a corpse (outlined by its
coffin and covered with the lizards, snakes, worms, maggots, and frogs that were
consuming its flesh), confronts a living person. A pope is in the first box, an emperor
in the next, below left is a knight, below right a burgher. On the other side of the folio
page (not shown here) the corpses meet a young woman, a young man, an astrologer,
and a shepherd.
