Impact of the Bubonic Plague on Renaissance Europe

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The Renaissance was a time period that started around 1300s C.E. and lasted to the 1500s and began in Italy and over time spread to Europe (Frey 316). The Renaissance was known for adopting new ideas, the study of humanism, breathtaking art, and the era of deadly diseases that spread rapidly from one person to another and killed people within days. Although the Renaissance consisted of discovering new and exciting topics, a major outbreak had occurred. This outbreak was known as the Bubonic Plague or the “Black Death” which had arrived in Europe in 1348 (Woodville). The Bubonic Plague impacted Europe and Europeans negatively economically, politically, and socially. To begin the Bubonic Plague affected Europe economically by impacting trade …show more content…

The Bubonic plague did not affect the lower classes as much because they consisted of peasants which there was a large quantity of, and when people from the lower class usually died they had enough people to fill their job. Lower classes still had freedoms when the plague was around, and better pay that was driving the revolts (Whipps). When the plague first struck about a quarter and a half of Europe's population had decreased because everybody had died, this caused jobs to open up and for other people to find a job and move there way up the social ranks (Frey 57). Moving up the social ranks was a difficult task, but while the population decreased people's jobs had changed power to go to different people easier than ever at this point. Wendy Frey cited “There was a shift in power from nobles to the common people” (57). This caused people to either move up in the social class or to move down because people do not need them any more because they are not that important anymore. Also a lot of serfs that owned farmland depended on their manors, but because of the plague they could not depend on them anymore so they tried to sell their land or most of the serfs that owned the farmland ran away (Dunn 18). This happened to almost every single farmer, and the effect of this caused not enough food to be grown and people in Europe now did not have enough food to eat. Europeans were affected by the Bubonic Plague negatively in a political way by job, rank, and social

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