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Were it not for the great plague the Black Death which hit Europe in the mid 14th century, would we have seen the great Renaissance in Europe over the next few hundred years? Discuss and explain, I'm curious to see what other people think.
It is easy enough to figure out which consequences of the Black Death could have been contributing factors to the Renaissance, but difficult to access whether they truly contributed and if so, how much.
One would be the psychological/cultural argument.....the unprecedented calamity caused a fundamental change in the way people saw their lives, enhancing the value of life on earth and shifting the emphasis away from the supposed afterlife. That god would permit such a large scale horror generated skepticism about traditional religious beliefs, opening minds to explore dogma prohibited areas.
The other would be the socio-economic argument. The loss of a third or more of the population of Europe created a great scarcity of available labor, making labor more valuable, allowing lower class persons who previously enjoyed no leverage in the feudal societies to rise in worth, and leading to a major shift in class control of economic prosperity. It was the foundation for the rise of a middle class. As economic power became more widespread, a leveling impulse was created where nobility no longer enjoyed a monopoly because now there were non nobles with economic clout.
That leveling impulse blossomed with the Enlightenment philosophers who began calling for end to all special class privileges.
So, as noted...that is how it could have been a factor. I'm not sure how one would go about establishing an absolute connection.
It is easy enough to figure out which consequences of the Black Death could have been contributing factors to the Renaissance, but difficult to access whether they truly contributed and if so, how much.
One would be the psychological/cultural argument.....the unprecedented calamity caused a fundamental change in the way people saw their lives, enhancing the value of life on earth and shifting the emphasis away from the supposed afterlife. That god would permit such a large scale horror generated skepticism about traditional religious beliefs, opening minds to explore dogma prohibited areas.
The other would be the socio-economic argument. The loss of a third or more of the population of Europe created a great scarcity of available labor, making labor more valuable, allowing lower class persons who previously enjoyed no leverage in the feudal societies to rise in worth, and leading to a major shift in class control of economic prosperity. It was the foundation for the rise of a middle class. As economic power became more widespread, a leveling impulse was created where nobility no longer enjoyed a monopoly because now there were non nobles with economic clout.
That leveling impulse blossomed with the Enlightenment philosophers who began calling for end to all special class privileges.
So, as noted...that is how it could have been a factor. I'm not sure how one would go about establishing an absolute connection.
Very good response. Everything is spot on. I just wonder if Europe would have advanced as fast as it did during the Renaissance Period had the Black Death never occurred. What would have spooled them into a different belief structure, given birth to a rising middle class, and made the luxury fruits and vegetables of Italy so much more readily available? Prior to the Black Death Europe was always short in supply of where its demand was, after the Black Death they had an excess of everything, making many farmers land owners, greatly stripping the nobility of their power over the poor and peasantry.
How much longer could Europe have limped on through the old Feudal system and two class lifestyle? At 1347 they were at the height of the Medieval Ages, things were starting to change and improve, not really their standard of living, but advances were being made. The Black Death did revolutionize European medicine, no longer was everything theoretical based on scripture and long lost practices with no proven success. Through the Black Death doctors and physicians experimented with various remedies, taking note of how successful they could become. In so many ways Europe owes many of its largest leaps to the death of nearly 40% of its population. I just can't help but wonder if the Renaissance still would have happened or how much more slowly Europe would have progressed without the Black Death.
Traditional explanation for the Renaissance is the fall of Constantinople which caused an influx of intellectuals to Italy who begin to teach again the Classics. Makes sense to me as enlightenment traveled slowly and countries on the fringes- Spain and England did not experience a similar creative period until much later.
I'm in general agreement with the proposition that the temporary improvement in living conditions after the Black Death fueled the desire for a better life that drives all of human progress, but even had the Black Death never occurred, the Middle Ages, stagnant though they were, represented an improvement over the depths of the Dark Ages (500-800 C. E.); historical records from those times are even sketchier. And some other force would eventually have disturbed the "societal equilibrium".
Couple of other "what if's?". Arabic culture is acknowledged to have flowered in the years after the fall of Rome, but the rise of Islam and its absolutes would have put a damper on that. And historian Stanley Karnow has suggested that the stronger organization of religion in Spain and Portugal after the restoration of the monarchy (in the early Sixteenth Century, about one Spaniard in ten was a member of a religious order), gave the Iberians the "inside track" in the colonization of the New World.
That's not true. All things are linked in history. One event sends the world careening in a certain direction, and the Black Plague was one of the biggest events of all.
The Black Plague essentially tore a hole in the established Medieval order. Because roughly one person in three died in Europe (Sources vary. Some say one in four, but that's still a staggering percentage) there were huge shortages of workers, which in turn caused convulsions in society.
To me the best popular history of the time is A Distant Mirror by Tuchman. She really captured the widespread changes in Western European society during the period.
As an answer to the original question, the Renaissance or some form of it would have occurred. But perhaps more slowly.
You clearly don't know your history. The Black Death is credited as one of the major global forces that helped reshape common thinking and practices in Europe, ushering in the Renaissance Age.
^^^I was never taught that and well am fairly well read. Can you cite a source?
I don't mean to be rude, but you can't be that "fairly well read" if you didn't realize that one of the largest contributing factors to the Renaissance was the Bubonic Plague of the 14th Century. It's pretty well covered, even in high school history books. That event happening is the reason why I posed this question in this thread.
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