Black Death Research Paper

1346 to 1350 were years of utter hell in the mid-14th century. These were the years of the great pestilence otherwise known as the Black Death. This horrible disease caused the deaths of nearly half of Europe’s population. It came in three forms, bubonic, septicaemic and pneumonic, all of which eventually lead to death. There were many supposed cures for the disease such as sweet smelling herbs and spices, lancing of the buboes and bleeding the poison out of the body. Sadly, not one of these “cures” could ever be named as effective. As well as there being many “cures”, there were also many “causes” for the Black Death. Again, none of these were actually proven causes. Because many people were anti-Semitic, one of the leading beliefs of the time was that the Jews had brought the plague by poisoning the wells, this blame impacted the Jews greatly.
Let’s start by identifying the Jews, who were they during this time period? And what was their life like prior to the plague setting out on its rampage of death? The Jewish people, as you already know, are a group that follow Judaism. At this time, Jews were distrusted because they were not Christian and they were moneylenders, this resulted in many rumours being spread about them, “Jews were not only blamed for the plague but also
When large numbers of people become extremely scared, it causes distrust and also prompts people to do drastic things that they wouldn’t normally do. Because the greater majority of people already distrusted the Jews, the plague only increased these feelings and people started to do horrible things to them such as crucify them, burn them alive and take their children and baptize them into Christianity against their parent’s will. The Jews were so scared of this that some even attempted their own drastic actions, “In some cities the Jews themselves set fire to their houses and cremated themselves” (Jacob von Konigshofen,