Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/565

 THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR 515 times those stricken by the plague vomited blood and sometimes they became delirious. The majority died within from one to three days. This terrible plague probably came from the East by the trade routes across Asia and was spread over the Mediterranean by Italian merchants from a trading station on the Black Sea. It was essentially the same as the bubonic plague which still exists in the Orient, and in Europe it frequently cropped out again dur- ing the remainder of the Middle Ages and early modern times. It has often been said that the Black Death carried off from one third to one half of the population. If such esti- mates are anywhere near correct, it must have Estimate of been an almost inestimable calamity for civili- wrought 7 zation and for society. Individuals would lose by it their relatives and friends and have no one to lean upon or to help them or to start them in the world. There would be countless widows and orphans. Homes would be broken up and entire families, some of them the noblest in the land, would be blotted out. Agriculture would cease on the man- ors for lack of tenants and laborers or for lack of lords and overseers. In the towns in many gilds there would be no master-workmen left to hand on the knowledge of their crafts to apprentices. Trade would diminish greatly in bulk and everything would be upon a smaller scale. Mon- asteries would have hardly enough monks left to maintain them; schools would cease and the Church and learning suffer. Many artists and authors would have perished, and with so greatly reduced a population there would be little demand for new ecclesiastical and municipal edifices. The difficulty would be to keep in repair those which al- ready existed. And society would be too busy in readjusting itself to the changed conditions to spare much time for works of art or of literature. There is a temptation to con- nect with this destructive pestilence the close of the great creative period of Gothic architecture, the decline of the romance and fabliau and other types of medieval literature, the stagnation of scholasticism and theology in the later