The Black Death: What We Know Now

Phylogenetic Tree of Yersinia pestis, the Black Death Bacillus: 
adapted Monica H. Green for The Medieval Globe (2014), by permission of Cui et al. (2013).

The European Union Center recently introduced a new virtual lecture series, "Living through the Plague: Lessons from Medieval Europe." Carol Symes, Associate Professor of History at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, kicked off the series with a lecture on the Black Death and the research that emerged over the past decade that challenged some longstanding beliefs about how the plague began and spread.

Dr. Symes began her presentation with an account of the environmental and social conditions of fourteenth-century Europe. Following a period of agricultural prosperity that was ushered in by the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age set in. Resultant crop failures led to seven years of famine. Meanwhile, active trade routes allowed for the plague bacterium to move into Europe. 

Up until a decade ago, the study of the causes of the Black Death had come to a half, Dr. Symes noted. Scholars grappled with four main questions. Did the plague only affect Europe? Were rats to blame? Was it mostly the fourteenth century? And do scholars only have documentary sources at their disposal? 

Research on the plague took off again with the 2011 discovery of a Black Death cemetery in London, which allowed for the reconstruction of the genome of Yersenia pestis, the plague bacterium. In 2015, a team of Chinese researchers published the bacterium’s family tree, which is shown in the image above. New answers to the four aforementioned questions have emerged, as Dr. Symes discussed in her presentation. Watch the recording of the full lecture, moderated by EU Center Associate Director Jonathan Larson, below. Don't miss the next lecture in this series, "Reading Contagion through Boccaccio's Decameron," which will be given by Eleonora Stoppino, Associate Professor of Italian, on Wednesday, April 15 at 4pm.

Posted in: Black Death,Carol Symes,Medieval Europe,Plague