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La peste negra 1346-1353: La historia completa
La Peste Negra fue un desastre de tal magnitud que no sólo sacudió los cimientos económicos y sociales del Viejo Mundo, sino que cambió el curso de la historia humana. El presente libro constituye la primera historia y valoración exhaustiva de su desarrollo y de la muerte y devastación que dejó tras de sí en todos los países por donde pasó. Los numerosos estudios locales sobre la Peste Negra publicados durante los últimos cuarenta años en diversos idiomas y en una multiplicidad de artículos han sido recopilados sistemáticamente y analizados a fondo por primera vez en esta obra, que expone con claridad y analiza en detalle las características médicas y epidemiológicas de la enfermedad, su origen geográfico, su difusión por Asia Menor, Oriente Medio, el norte de África y Europa, y la mortalidad sufrida en cada zona. El modo, ritmo y estacionalidad de la propagación, revelados mediante un examen atento de esos estudios, reflejan con exactitud los trabajos médicos actuales y los estudios clásicos sobre la epidemiología de la peste bubónica.
La extensa investigación de Benedictow permite ver con claridad que la verdadera tasa de mortalidad fue muy superior a la que se había pensado en el pasado. A la luz de sus descubrimientos, el análisis expuesto en la última parte del libro, donde se demuestra que la Peste Negra constituye una encrucijada de la historia, adquiere un nuevo significado.
«La Peste Negra (1346-1353) es una proeza de erudición inmensa y absolutamente increíble, el fruto de muchos años de trabajo paciente y una emocionante búsqueda de explicaciones de un fenómeno cruel que desafía casi toda descripción.» The Times Literary Supplement
La extensa investigación de Benedictow permite ver con claridad que la verdadera tasa de mortalidad fue muy superior a la que se había pensado en el pasado. A la luz de sus descubrimientos, el análisis expuesto en la última parte del libro, donde se demuestra que la Peste Negra constituye una encrucijada de la historia, adquiere un nuevo significado.
«La Peste Negra (1346-1353) es una proeza de erudición inmensa y absolutamente increíble, el fruto de muchos años de trabajo paciente y una emocionante búsqueda de explicaciones de un fenómeno cruel que desafía casi toda descripción.» The Times Literary Supplement
692 pages, Hardcover
First published July 1, 2004
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November 14, 2021
Not being a statistician nor academic medieval demographer, some might contend that I have no right to review this book, but I read it because I am an Asian art historian who is extremely interested and well-read in steppe history and by definition that includes the Black Death since it is the Mongols who have had the finger pointed at them for far too long as being the source of this scourge. If that has been your belief, then you owe it to yourself to have another think.
Professor Emeritus Ole Benedictor has obviously dedicated himself to locating just about every relevant document or statistic he could find to write this definitive historical survey of the Black Death (1346-1353), and then has amassed and cross-checked this mountain of on-site historical records with such relevant factors ranging from the life span of a rat flea to what literally happens in the gut of rat fleas that makes the regurgitated blood of their previous meal so deadly to its new victims, to the number of miles a sailing ship would cover on average in the 14th century, the size of households, the cultural and religious practices of the day, etc. Such research can only have been incredibly daunting and have consumed decades given the paucity of census materials in the 14th century, and the breadth of languages required to search through them. Next step was a careful examination for exaggeration and fantasy, weighed against common-sense data. For example, while a sudden increase in the writing of wills in a town would have shown a concern with the possibility of impending death, they only reflect the 'fear' and not necessarily a true 'death'. All this has been compiled into the 19 chapters dedicated to the spread of the Black Death in each relevant geography.
After identifying three possible plague foci from which the Black Death might have spread, Benedictow settles on the port of Kaffa on the Sea of Azov and not the Mongolian steppes, on the grounds that the alleged path of spread had been severely disrupted due to religious wars when the Kipchak Khanate converted to Islam in 1313, severing the trade links between China and Europe along the caravan routes ... making it "highly unlikely that plague could have been passed on by trade and travel from China [during this period]" (p. 49). Moreover, "there is no satisfactory evidence to the effect that this terrible disease started far away and caused havoc anywhere along the thousands of kilometres off the caravan route. The outbreak is narrowly and unambiguously associated with the area of the plague focus that stretches from the north-western shores of the Caspian Sea into southern Russia" (p. 51, which he says is supported by Russian sources). If true, this also debunks the statement that Genghis Khan was the first to use biological warfare (by catapulting plague victims' bodies into the opposing army's fort) as not only does the timing not work, but the "corpses of persons dead from plague are not contagious whatever the form of plague" (p. 53).
The facts come fast and thick, but by making the plague the actor in this history (akin to a military stategist), it is a page-turner. The plague doesn't just spread, it invades, it rages, it arrives in towns and settles in, it moves at a brisk pace or hesitates, and it is clever beyond belief. If only all historians had Professor Benedictow's gift of language in making an academic subject come alive. (To those reviewers who claim it wasn't well written, all I can say is you haven't read many history books authored by professors.)
The actual text does run to 403 pages, and it is dense reading as it is a thorough history of the bubonic plague (with surprisingly very few actual quotes from church registrars, diaries, and the like, so if you're looking for that sort of material, this is not the right book), so I confess my intention was not to read the entire text but only Part One ("What was the Black Death"), Part Three ("Patterns and Dynamics of the Black Death"), Part IV ("Mortality in the Black Death") and (Part Five) "The Black Death's Impact on History", dipping into Part Two--which was the country-by-country histories for those countries that interested me. In the end, however, I read virtually every page as the town-by-town spread of the disease in each country or territory was actually quite interesting, often highlighting little details that gave one increased insight into how the world was perceived by its victims, the range of human responses, the role that luck could play, etc. Yes, this meant there were repetitions that cause one to wonder if each of the country accounts may have been written as separate articles that were simply bundled into this volume (if so, a good copy editor should have nabbed them--for example, at the third mention of how parish registers worked, I said "Ok, already". "The rarity of medieval parish registers reflects the fact that there was no ecclesiastical obligation to keep parish registers of any sort and medieval registers of priestly services are really account books kept voluntarily by priests who wished to record their incomes..."[therefore were really] private account books, [so] their successors would normally not have any substantial interest in preserving them, and thus almost all such registers perished." (p. 121)
Finally, a spoiler alert for those who will be put off by the size or price, here is the summary of the Black Death's spread as proposed by Benedictow: 'In the Black Death's strategic approach to the conquest of Asia Minor, the Middle East, North Africa and Europe the combination of ship transport and metastatic leaps is most conspicuous. It starts with the ships that transported the Black Death from Kaffa [on the Sea of Azov] to Constantinople. From Constantinople, the Black Death sailed triumphantly all the way to Alexandria whence it launched its attacks on the Middle East and North Africa, although Tunis was also attacked by a metastatic leap by sea from Messina in Sicily that established a second plague front in North Africa. Other metastatic leaps from Kaffa or from Constantinople by ships carried the Black Death to Greece and to a substantial number of cities and towns on the Mediterranean Sea.... These urban centres were contaminated at this early point exactly because they were important nexuses in regional and international trade. They functioned as epidemic epicentres.... The epicentre that was recognized in Marseilles on 1 November 1347 appears to have been of particular significance along the coasts and for spread inland ... Mallorca at the end of December 1347 from which transportation by ship caused early contamination of commercial towns and cities on the Spanish mainland, the establishment of a southern Iberian plague front in the spring of 1348....[spreads across Europe].... In the sumer of 1349, plague was transported by ship from England or southeastern Norway to Elbing in Prussia...into north-eastern Germany...northern Italy, Austria and Switzerland...from the Hanseatic towns and cities" to the Baltic countries and Russia (pp. 227-8).
As to the ancestral homeland of the Black Death? The Biblical reference I Samuel 4-6 is cited as being perhaps the earliest account of plague, and "there are unquestionable references to plague ... in classical and Hellenistic Greek medicine" (p. 37), The distinctive buboes referred to by the Greek physicians settle those arguments, and after several pages, the author concludes: "Summing up, there can be no doubt that plague had been established for substantial periods both in North Africa and in the Middle East at least 1,700 years before the outbreak of the Black Death, and probably for almost 2,500 years. It is also clear that there were foci of long standing in southern parts of Africa and north of present-day Yemen" (p. 410). So it appears that Genghis/Chinggis Khan is off the hook.
Professor Emeritus Ole Benedictor has obviously dedicated himself to locating just about every relevant document or statistic he could find to write this definitive historical survey of the Black Death (1346-1353), and then has amassed and cross-checked this mountain of on-site historical records with such relevant factors ranging from the life span of a rat flea to what literally happens in the gut of rat fleas that makes the regurgitated blood of their previous meal so deadly to its new victims, to the number of miles a sailing ship would cover on average in the 14th century, the size of households, the cultural and religious practices of the day, etc. Such research can only have been incredibly daunting and have consumed decades given the paucity of census materials in the 14th century, and the breadth of languages required to search through them. Next step was a careful examination for exaggeration and fantasy, weighed against common-sense data. For example, while a sudden increase in the writing of wills in a town would have shown a concern with the possibility of impending death, they only reflect the 'fear' and not necessarily a true 'death'. All this has been compiled into the 19 chapters dedicated to the spread of the Black Death in each relevant geography.
After identifying three possible plague foci from which the Black Death might have spread, Benedictow settles on the port of Kaffa on the Sea of Azov and not the Mongolian steppes, on the grounds that the alleged path of spread had been severely disrupted due to religious wars when the Kipchak Khanate converted to Islam in 1313, severing the trade links between China and Europe along the caravan routes ... making it "highly unlikely that plague could have been passed on by trade and travel from China [during this period]" (p. 49). Moreover, "there is no satisfactory evidence to the effect that this terrible disease started far away and caused havoc anywhere along the thousands of kilometres off the caravan route. The outbreak is narrowly and unambiguously associated with the area of the plague focus that stretches from the north-western shores of the Caspian Sea into southern Russia" (p. 51, which he says is supported by Russian sources). If true, this also debunks the statement that Genghis Khan was the first to use biological warfare (by catapulting plague victims' bodies into the opposing army's fort) as not only does the timing not work, but the "corpses of persons dead from plague are not contagious whatever the form of plague" (p. 53).
The facts come fast and thick, but by making the plague the actor in this history (akin to a military stategist), it is a page-turner. The plague doesn't just spread, it invades, it rages, it arrives in towns and settles in, it moves at a brisk pace or hesitates, and it is clever beyond belief. If only all historians had Professor Benedictow's gift of language in making an academic subject come alive. (To those reviewers who claim it wasn't well written, all I can say is you haven't read many history books authored by professors.)
The actual text does run to 403 pages, and it is dense reading as it is a thorough history of the bubonic plague (with surprisingly very few actual quotes from church registrars, diaries, and the like, so if you're looking for that sort of material, this is not the right book), so I confess my intention was not to read the entire text but only Part One ("What was the Black Death"), Part Three ("Patterns and Dynamics of the Black Death"), Part IV ("Mortality in the Black Death") and (Part Five) "The Black Death's Impact on History", dipping into Part Two--which was the country-by-country histories for those countries that interested me. In the end, however, I read virtually every page as the town-by-town spread of the disease in each country or territory was actually quite interesting, often highlighting little details that gave one increased insight into how the world was perceived by its victims, the range of human responses, the role that luck could play, etc. Yes, this meant there were repetitions that cause one to wonder if each of the country accounts may have been written as separate articles that were simply bundled into this volume (if so, a good copy editor should have nabbed them--for example, at the third mention of how parish registers worked, I said "Ok, already". "The rarity of medieval parish registers reflects the fact that there was no ecclesiastical obligation to keep parish registers of any sort and medieval registers of priestly services are really account books kept voluntarily by priests who wished to record their incomes..."[therefore were really] private account books, [so] their successors would normally not have any substantial interest in preserving them, and thus almost all such registers perished." (p. 121)
Finally, a spoiler alert for those who will be put off by the size or price, here is the summary of the Black Death's spread as proposed by Benedictow: 'In the Black Death's strategic approach to the conquest of Asia Minor, the Middle East, North Africa and Europe the combination of ship transport and metastatic leaps is most conspicuous. It starts with the ships that transported the Black Death from Kaffa [on the Sea of Azov] to Constantinople. From Constantinople, the Black Death sailed triumphantly all the way to Alexandria whence it launched its attacks on the Middle East and North Africa, although Tunis was also attacked by a metastatic leap by sea from Messina in Sicily that established a second plague front in North Africa. Other metastatic leaps from Kaffa or from Constantinople by ships carried the Black Death to Greece and to a substantial number of cities and towns on the Mediterranean Sea.... These urban centres were contaminated at this early point exactly because they were important nexuses in regional and international trade. They functioned as epidemic epicentres.... The epicentre that was recognized in Marseilles on 1 November 1347 appears to have been of particular significance along the coasts and for spread inland ... Mallorca at the end of December 1347 from which transportation by ship caused early contamination of commercial towns and cities on the Spanish mainland, the establishment of a southern Iberian plague front in the spring of 1348....[spreads across Europe].... In the sumer of 1349, plague was transported by ship from England or southeastern Norway to Elbing in Prussia...into north-eastern Germany...northern Italy, Austria and Switzerland...from the Hanseatic towns and cities" to the Baltic countries and Russia (pp. 227-8).
As to the ancestral homeland of the Black Death? The Biblical reference I Samuel 4-6 is cited as being perhaps the earliest account of plague, and "there are unquestionable references to plague ... in classical and Hellenistic Greek medicine" (p. 37), The distinctive buboes referred to by the Greek physicians settle those arguments, and after several pages, the author concludes: "Summing up, there can be no doubt that plague had been established for substantial periods both in North Africa and in the Middle East at least 1,700 years before the outbreak of the Black Death, and probably for almost 2,500 years. It is also clear that there were foci of long standing in southern parts of Africa and north of present-day Yemen" (p. 410). So it appears that Genghis/Chinggis Khan is off the hook.
May 7, 2020
A long and detailed account of the 14th-century pandemic. The author tries (in the second half of the book) to reach some statistical conclusions, which exceed the consensus figures (he estimates that over a half of Europe's population died during the pandemic). He also makes a confident case for the plague being the accelerator of social change.
November 16, 2022
A formidable academic achievement, The Complete History of the Black Death is an exhaustive analysis of the plague's spread and mortality in medieval Europe that is highly valuable to scholars working on the history of infectious disease, but is not light reading material. Read my full review at https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2022...
October 20, 2020
Aviso a navegantes: este no es un libro de Historia, es un libro de demografía, que en algunos momentos puede resultar un tanto árido y reiterativo.
Eso sí, es una buena base para sustentar otros libros sobre la peste, que hablen de la sociedad (más allá de registros, censos y pagos de impuestos) y, sobre todo, es un esfuerzo casi titánico por reunir todos los datos demográficos existentes hasta la fecha para conocer por dónde se movió la peste, con qué vector y a cuánta gente exterminó.
Eso sí, es una buena base para sustentar otros libros sobre la peste, que hablen de la sociedad (más allá de registros, censos y pagos de impuestos) y, sobre todo, es un esfuerzo casi titánico por reunir todos los datos demográficos existentes hasta la fecha para conocer por dónde se movió la peste, con qué vector y a cuánta gente exterminó.
June 12, 2016
Si quieres estudiar la peste negra no puedes dejar de recurrir a este libro porque es el más completo que hay. Se centra mucho en la transmisión de la enfermedad y el cúmulo de circunstancias que se dan para que afecte a los humanos. También explica la dimensión social e histórica en la que transcurre la epidemia y cuenta el desarrollo de los avances científicos que llevaron a que podamos entender la epidemia hoy en día. Imprescindible si te interesa el tema.
May 26, 2010
Easily the best and most informative book on the black death i have read, Professor Benedictow offers up fascinating new interpretations of familiar material as well as new information on old subjects. This amounts to a dense and scholarly tome that might be less accessible than some books on the subject, but offers a much more accurate and detailed examination of the second plague pandemic than any other author. Closely examining every detail from the evolutionary biology of X. cheopsis (the rat flea believed most responsible for the spread of the disease) to the epidemiological intricacies of the three forms of plague, Benedictow then combines this with an exhaustive examination of the historical records and provides a week by week examination of the spread of the disease from Central Asia through all of Europe. His study soundly debunks many of the "plague denier" theories that have become popular, and even suggests that the impact of the plague on Europe may have been considerably worse than we have thought - in place of the traditional estimates of one-third to one-half of the population dying of plague, he posits (and offers convincing evidence for) a revised estimate of as much as sixty percent. All in all, Benedictow's work makes many works on the subject obsolete, like Philip Ziegler's classic The Black Death, Norman Cantor's problematic In the Wake of the Plague: the Black Death and the World it Made, and John Kelly's frothy The Great Mortality.
this book is probably not for casual scholars of plague or disease history - it is specialized, dense, and could be overwhelming in its detail, but for a readership willing to make the effort, it is far and away the most important new scholarship done in plague history since Michael Dols The Black Death in the Middle East. For a more accessible study that incorporates some of Benedictow's work, i would recommend either John Aberth's From the Brink of the Apocalypse: Confronting Famine, War, Plague, and Death in the Later Middle Ages (an excellent, but more general, study of crises in Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries) or The Black Death: The Great Mortality of 1348-1350, also by Professor Aberth.
this book is probably not for casual scholars of plague or disease history - it is specialized, dense, and could be overwhelming in its detail, but for a readership willing to make the effort, it is far and away the most important new scholarship done in plague history since Michael Dols The Black Death in the Middle East. For a more accessible study that incorporates some of Benedictow's work, i would recommend either John Aberth's From the Brink of the Apocalypse: Confronting Famine, War, Plague, and Death in the Later Middle Ages (an excellent, but more general, study of crises in Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries) or The Black Death: The Great Mortality of 1348-1350, also by Professor Aberth.
April 3, 2017
No es un libro que te leas por la diversión, la verdad. Seguramente sea el estudio más completo de la peste negra, tanto que te abruma con datos y más datos. Lo más interesante es la explicación inicial: qué es la peste, cómo se transmite, etc. El recorrido por países se hace muy pesado y a menudo se tira diez o quince páginas analizando una fuente medieval para extrapolar datos.
February 1, 2023
Var nok ikke heelt klar over hvor fagbok denne kom til å være når jeg startet på den, men fortsatt utrolig interresant bok. Det første kapittelet, hvor oppdagelsen av selve pestbakterien og dens spredning blir forklart er nok den delen jeg syntes var best. I de påfølgende kapitlene blir det mye stedsnavn, datoer, årstall og folketall, mye informasjon som er viktig for målene forfatteren har med de forskjellige kapitlene, men som fort sklir ut i ett hav av data man drukner helt i hvis man ikke følger med hele tiden, men kan ikke gjøre så mye annet enn å konkludere med at den definitvt lever opp til tittelen "the complete history".
October 5, 2017
This was by far the most comprehensively written book on the Plague (a.k.a. the Black Death) I've ever read. Without any epidemiologist backgrounds, my primary motivation for reading it was to seek answers to a few questions that have troubled me for a long time -- among them, did the Black Death ever reached Iceland? How come it ravaged Norway so quickly but moved so slow towards Sweden? Why were there some countries and areas spared from the plague? It was virtually impossible to acquire academic-standard answers from the Internet, and this book proved to be a right choice. There are many parts of the book that I did not bother understanding, as I've already obtained the answers for all my plague-related questions. The reference works in the book were also a great collection of primary sources that would otherwise be unknown to the common folks. I highly recommend reading this book if you have any particular questions regarding the Black Death, it should be able to clarify most doubts we have concerning that period of history.
February 14, 2021
There is no question this is a comprehensive account of the causality of the black death in 14th century, its spread and mortality. The array of sources the author reviewed and collated is impressive. However, unless one is invested into various arguments of how and where the black death spread, how to calculate mortality based on the sources available, and other very detailed points of facts - this book can be quite tedious to read. Ultimately the author argues that the black death spread almost in all of Europe, by rat fleas, a lot via water routes, but also via land routes, through multple ‘attacks’ and causing a mortality around 60%.... and this over 400 pages. What would have been a bit more interesting is expanding on the very last pages- the impact of the black death - the most deadly event in the last 1000 years in the West on society. That chapter was far too short...
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 5, 2008
So scholarly and dense that it takes awhile to sink in that the enormity of the carnage is so much worse than we've been taught before. My favorite book about the plague heretofore was Ziegler's classic The Black Death, but Benedictow reinterprets the same data and adds even more detail to the canon. The footnotes are as good as the text.
I did find it fairly repetitive in spots. Not because of the repetitive nature of the disease entering a village and killing most everyone, but because Benedictow does have a tendency to bludgeon the reader with facts he's concerned we might miss.
Still, an amazing piece of work.
I did find it fairly repetitive in spots. Not because of the repetitive nature of the disease entering a village and killing most everyone, but because Benedictow does have a tendency to bludgeon the reader with facts he's concerned we might miss.
Still, an amazing piece of work.
October 10, 2007
The Black Death 1346-1353 is the book to own if you are looking for the paragon of Black Death books and who isn’t? Others may have better anecdotes, interesting theories or weigh less physically, but this book lords over the rest. We’re talking a mile for mile account of the disease and its effects for every country in Europe. Fantastic. I’ve read many books on the plague in the last three years and none come close to the clarity and detail of The Black Death 1346-1353. It’s worth owning just for the footnotes. Accept no substitutes.
February 1, 2008
Black Death. Miasma. Spinoza.
February 14, 2023
Ole Benedictow's massive work of scholastic synthesis is full of both brilliant analysis and details that will put you to sleep. His explanation of the transmission of the Black Death was the best and most complete I've ever read, down to the process of blockage in the black rat flea's intestinal track, which creates superbacteraemia, wherein the level of pathogens in the blood easily overcomes the infection threshold to cross species. I have a better understanding now of why endemic plague occasionally makes the jump to humans, why the epidemics run the course that they do, and why human-to-human transmission is such a minor part of the disease.
Most of Benedictow's work focuses on tracing the geographical spread of the plague through the years 1346-1353. He has painstakingly looked at every single study of every possible locale, trying to determine precisely when the initial metastatic jump happened for each country. He has to rely on a lot of approximation as he calculates the span from incursion to full epidemic, but he convinced me that he is correct:
What I was most fascinated by was his use of sources. As an armchair historian and genealogist, I really appreciate the paucity of records for the 14th century, yet he uses everything from Italian catastos to English manorial records to clerical investiture lists to probate registers to religious donation lists to determine not only the pathway of the disease, but to estimate the mortality. Most of what I've read in the past holds to the old beliefs that plague mortality hovered around 30-40%. Benedictow argues that this vastly undercounts the true extent, and that the agricultural landless class is largely invisible in records. Not only were households enormously reduced between 1345 and 1360, but the per household numbers went down, and previously landless peasants moved into empty households, disguising the true extent of losses.
I read so much more than I could even synthesize in my brain, and often felt overwhelmed by details. He walked through the sources and statistics for every single region of Europe, North Africa, and the affected parts of the Middle East, and taken together it was like trying to drink from a firehose. Anyone wanting to know more about a specific area's experience with plague should definitely look to Benedictow's Complete History.
My main takeaways are these three points:
1 - Plague began in 1346 in Kaffa (just north of the Black Sea), then took moved clockwise around North Africa and Europe until it came full circle from the northwest through the Russian steppes back to the borders of the Mongol empire in 1353.
2 - Even though extant sources for the 14th century seem sparse, scholars can do amazing things with those records. My mind has been blown and a part of me wishes I were 22 years old beginning graduate school again so I could jump into the field of medieval demography.
3 - A more realistic estimate of plague mortality for Europe on the whole is above 60%. When you think about what a <1% fatality rate from Covid has done to our society and economy, one can only imagine experiencing the Black Death when over half of everyone you knew horrifically died in a matter of months. Societal changes in the 1300s have been underappreciated.
Reading The Black Death 1346-1353: The Complete History was a lot of work, and I didn't enjoy the whole process, but it was worth it. Mostly, I just wish I could retain more of what I learn!
Most of Benedictow's work focuses on tracing the geographical spread of the plague through the years 1346-1353. He has painstakingly looked at every single study of every possible locale, trying to determine precisely when the initial metastatic jump happened for each country. He has to rely on a lot of approximation as he calculates the span from incursion to full epidemic, but he convinced me that he is correct:
"The time horizon of these developments taken together is normally 12 days (epizootic) + 3 days (fasting rat fleas) + 0.5-1 days (before first infective transmission), 7 days (endemic), + 8 days (incubation and illness for the last endemic cases) + 8 days (incubation and illness for the early epidemic cases infected during the endemic phase ), in all 39 days, or 5.6 weeks."
What I was most fascinated by was his use of sources. As an armchair historian and genealogist, I really appreciate the paucity of records for the 14th century, yet he uses everything from Italian catastos to English manorial records to clerical investiture lists to probate registers to religious donation lists to determine not only the pathway of the disease, but to estimate the mortality. Most of what I've read in the past holds to the old beliefs that plague mortality hovered around 30-40%. Benedictow argues that this vastly undercounts the true extent, and that the agricultural landless class is largely invisible in records. Not only were households enormously reduced between 1345 and 1360, but the per household numbers went down, and previously landless peasants moved into empty households, disguising the true extent of losses.
I read so much more than I could even synthesize in my brain, and often felt overwhelmed by details. He walked through the sources and statistics for every single region of Europe, North Africa, and the affected parts of the Middle East, and taken together it was like trying to drink from a firehose. Anyone wanting to know more about a specific area's experience with plague should definitely look to Benedictow's Complete History.
My main takeaways are these three points:
1 - Plague began in 1346 in Kaffa (just north of the Black Sea), then took moved clockwise around North Africa and Europe until it came full circle from the northwest through the Russian steppes back to the borders of the Mongol empire in 1353.
2 - Even though extant sources for the 14th century seem sparse, scholars can do amazing things with those records. My mind has been blown and a part of me wishes I were 22 years old beginning graduate school again so I could jump into the field of medieval demography.
3 - A more realistic estimate of plague mortality for Europe on the whole is above 60%. When you think about what a <1% fatality rate from Covid has done to our society and economy, one can only imagine experiencing the Black Death when over half of everyone you knew horrifically died in a matter of months. Societal changes in the 1300s have been underappreciated.
Reading The Black Death 1346-1353: The Complete History was a lot of work, and I didn't enjoy the whole process, but it was worth it. Mostly, I just wish I could retain more of what I learn!
Read
February 3, 2022I picked this up at the library not knowing what to expect. I was sort of expecting the usual type of history book one finds in bookstores nowadays, but this is not it. It's a thoroughly researched, albeit mostly "dry" and academical look at the Black Death. There's a lot of painstakingly detailed analysis of movement patterns, average speed of spread and statistics with only few quotes and stories sprinkled in for flavour. I think the book is designed more for serious researchers rather than for the hobbyist history reader, as it doesn't seem it is meant to be read cover to cover. There's quite a lot of repetition between individual chapters so that the reader perusing this chapter or the other wouldn't miss out. All in all it's everything you could ask for in terms of Black Death analysis, but it is lacking in storytelling and excitement value.
Read
December 27, 2019We're defining "read" loosely in this case, as I was reading it for a paper I was writing. Read the intro and the conclusion, and skimmed the in between part. Ole Jorgen Benedictow certainly has done his research, and has some interesting theories/explanation/etc, and generally has very detailed information about the spread of the plague in general. I especially appreciated his conclusion, which was helpful in terms of implications of the plague on history and human development.
Definitely not easy reading, however, and I found that a lot of his theories, while interesting, were not especially widespread among the rest of the scientific community, or were simply a bit outdated. Once again. An interesting voice and perspective, however.
Definitely not easy reading, however, and I found that a lot of his theories, while interesting, were not especially widespread among the rest of the scientific community, or were simply a bit outdated. Once again. An interesting voice and perspective, however.
October 16, 2022
Impressive research about the deadliest disease ever recorded, the Black Death of Benedictow is the most complete history about the plague which brought devastation in Asia Minor, North Africa and Europe during the 14e century. The book explains us not only the origin and the global impact of the Black Death (a loss of 60% of the population), but also the impact on the social, economical and political situation of all the countries of this area. Benedictow demonstrates also brilliantly that these events were also a turning point in Middle Age history, bringing new dynamic powers and stimulating new trends and even the Renaissance.
After the Covid 19 shock, a lot of facts and ideas to think about!
After the Covid 19 shock, a lot of facts and ideas to think about!
June 21, 2020
An interesting read that I intentionally read during this time period of Sars-Cov 2 and the pandemic of 2020.
It helped me contextual how viruses start, spread, and the degree and magnitude to which they can affect society.
I appreciate history as it is a gateway to foresight to predicting on coming trends and patterns and cycles within our life.
It helped me contextual how viruses start, spread, and the degree and magnitude to which they can affect society.
I appreciate history as it is a gateway to foresight to predicting on coming trends and patterns and cycles within our life.
March 16, 2020
Casi una tesis doctoral. Un estudio muy completo pero muy árido.
May 15, 2024
One of the most confusing books I have ever read, the author contradicts himself and jumps all over the place making it very difficult to follow
July 8, 2025
I've seen Professor Benedictow's research cited so many times in other books. This should be considered the study that all other studies on the Medieval Bubonic Plague should be measured by. If you are looking for a book on that subject: consider this your standard. Read it before all others. Its epidemiology is very well-explained and Prof. Benedictow assesses the Plague region by region to paint an enormously helpful picture of that grim time in history.
July 28, 2012
Heavy. Interesting.
Read
September 27, 2015The definitive study.
Read
February 14, 2013A LOT to take in but definitely worth the effort.
May 4, 2016
Muy interesante y muy bien documentado aunque se me ha hecho pesadísimo de leer.
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