What Actually Happened

Now that you’ve finished your plague exercise and guessed at what possibly could happen, let’s take a look at what did happen.

First, religious belief survived. Medieval people accepted that God was punishing them for their sinful lives, but they also believed strongly that God would protect and rebuild the earth. So they picked up their plows and went back to the fields and continued to build lives the best way they knew how.

Second, the religious beliefs that did survive went through changes. Many of those who survived never doubted God, but they did begin to doubt the church and what its leaders said. For the first time in larger numbers, people were beginning to look to scientific observation and note-taking for answers instead of relying solely on the interpretation of the church leaders. Some of the church’s locked-down power over people’s daily lives began to fall away. Survivors didn’t accept authority the same way they had three years earlier.

Third, supply caught up to demand for the first time in recorded history. Before the plague, there were many people and many of them were hungry and wanted farmable land. Now there were only half as many people and the food and land were up for grabs. That caused a huge change in the whole social structure. Lords and ladies who didn’t know how to farm their own land were suddenly alone standing in their jeweled finery in the middle of their unplanted fields. The few serfs or peasants they could find to work for them knew that and demanded higher wages to perform the labor. Peasants who suddenly were making money were able to buy their own land. No longer were they stuck working someone else’s farm for nothing in return and giving it all away to feed the people of the manor. They were able to buy their own land and their own protection. Feudalism died because anyone could become a landowner.

Fourth, with fewer people to do the work, labor-saving devices had to be invented. At one time there were many hands available to harvest grain, grind wheat, spin wool, copy books and protect lands. Now only a few people were around, so they put their minds into coming up with new devices and technologies that would do the work for them. That gave rise to innovations such as Gutenberg’s printing press that literally changed the world.

Finally, there were huge changes in the overall psychological mindset of the people. You can see it in the art from this time. Use an Internet search engine to find any pictures of “La Danse Macabre.” It means “the death dance” and refers, some think, to the twitching and mindless movements of people in the last stages of the bubonic plague. Skeletons and other representations of unavoidable death were common in the period’s art. People didn’t accept life as guaranteed. They no longer accepted their “assigned” place in life according to birth. They questioned everything and looked with new and more skeptical eyes at the world and authority figures around them. A rebirth was about to begin. It was called the Renaissance.