The growing cities of the Middle Ages could be exciting places. However, many were dark, unsafe, and unhealthy. Streets were narrow, crooked, and filthy. There were no streetlights or police. Many people did not go out alone at night for fear of robbers. If people did go out, they often took servants along with them for protection and to carry lanterns or torches to light the way. Waste was dumped into open gutters. All in all, conditions were disgusting. This caused diseases to spread quickly through the crowded cities. B Beginning in 1347, one such disease, a terrible plague, swept through Europe. The disease was called the Black Death because of the darkened color of its victims’ faces after they died. The plague began in Asia and spread along busy trade routes. Trading ships carried the disease west to the Mediterranean. From the Mediterranean ports, the disease spread throughout most of Europe. Rats on the ships carried the disease. Fleas from the rats spread the disease to people.
C Once people became infected, the disease could be spread from person to person. People became infected as they came in contact with the sick. According to Jean de Venette, a friar who lived at the time, young people were more likely to die than old people. Those who got sick lasted only two or three days and then died suddenly. This happened in such great numbers that often those who lived could not keep up with burying the dead. The friar wrote, “Someone who was healthy one day could be dead and buried the next. . . . A healthy person who visited the sick hardly ever escaped death.”
D No one knows the exact number of plague deaths in Europe. Some guess that about 25 million people died in Europe from 1347 to 1351. This was about one third of the entire population. The death rate varied from place to place. Towns seemed to be harder hit than the countryside. Some entire villages and towns were wiped out. The plague affected the rich as well as the poor. Even the great and powerful, including royalty, were struck down. Throughout Europe, populations were devastated by, as the Welsh called it, “death coming into our midst like black smoke.”
E The Black Death greatly affected Europe. Relations between the upper classes and lower classes changed. Workers, now in short supply, demanded higher wages. In several European countries, peasants staged uprisings. There were emotional effects as well. In some areas, the theme of death appeared in poetry, sculpture, and painting. People’s faith was shaken. The church lost some of its power and importance. The Black Death took a greater toll on human life than any war or illness before that time. It was perhaps the greatest tragedy in all of European history.

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