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Black Death

 

 

 

 

Bibliographies

 

Note: The only print bibliography I found was done was done by Campbell in 1931 & reprinted in 1966. Thus, it is drastically out of date. The online bibliographies listed below are very good. Most of these online sources are for academic courses being taught on the Black Death.

 

 

The Black Death and the Peasants' Revolt in England

http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~histweb/medhist/given/blackdeath/reading.html

University of St. Andrews, Scotland: Professor Chris Given-Wilson

 

This bibliography is one of the best and most well-organized bibliographies I have found. Topics include:

  • Source books
  • Plague, mortality, and population
  • General works on the economy
  • Black Death and government
  • Family, women and society
  • Church, education, welfare and art
  • 1381 Rising

This reading list also includes journal articles, as well as books. By clicking on the Return to Index link at the bottom of the page, you will find other resources for his class (including some useful Web sites).

 

 

Black Death: Catastrophe & Response in Late Medieval Europe. A Basic Bibliography

New College of Florida: Carrie Benes

http://faculty.ncf.edu/benes/deathbib.html

 

Sections include:

  • Primary sources
  • Secondary sources (general)
  • Social and cultural history
  • Epidemiology and disease history
  • Fiction
  • Films

Most of the resources are books, with a few scattered journal articles. There is a short listing of films and fiction books dealing with the Black Death.

 

 

Black Death: Select Bibliography

St. Michael's College: History 345, Professor Dameron

http://academics.smcvt.edu/gdameron/bibliography_blackdeath_2005.htm

 

This bibliography includes a large listing of secondary sources.

 

 

Campbell, Anna Montgomery. The Black Death and Men of Learning. New York: AMS Press, 1966 (reprint of the 1931 ed).

 

 

Economy & Society After the Black Death

University of Warwick, United Kingdom: Department of History

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/undergrad/modules/hi127/programme/economy/

 

A short, general reading list of resources on the Black Death. It includes both books and journal articles.

 

 

 

Black Death in England

 

 

Notes:

 

 

Economic Effects

 

*Bolton, J. L. The Medieval English Economy, 1150-1500. London: Dent, 1985.

 

 

*Bridbury, A. R. Economic Growth : England in the Later Middle Ages. Brighton: Harvester, 1975.

 

 

*---. The English Economy from Bede to the Reformation. Woodbridge: Boydell, 1992.

 

 

Britnell, R. H. The Commercialization of English Society, 1000-1500. 2nd ed. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996.

 

 

*Dyer, Christopher. Making a Living in the Middle Ages: The People of Britain 850-1520. New Haven ; London: Yale University Press, 2002.

 

 

*---. Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages: Social Change in England c.1200-1520. Rev. ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

 

 

*Hatcher, John. Plague, Population, and the English Economy, 1348-1530. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1977.

 

 

Miller, Edward, and John Hatcher. Medieval England: Rural Society and Economic Change, 1086- 1348. Repr, with corrections ed. London: Longman, 1980.

 

 

---. Medieval England: Towns, Commerce and Crafts, 1086-1348. London: Longman, 1995.

 

 

*Poos, Lawrence R. A Rural Society After the Black Death: Essex 1350-1525. Vol. 18. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

 

 

*Postan, M. M. The Medieval Economy and Society: An Economic History of Britain in the Middle Ages. New ed. Vol. 1. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993.

 

 

General works on the Plague in England

 

Ormrod, W. M., and P. G. Lindley. The Black Death in England. Donington, Lincolnshire England: Shaun Tyas, 2003.

 

 

*Platt, Colin. King Death: The Black Death and its Aftermath in Late-Medieval England. London: UCL Press, 1996.

 

 

Shrewsbury, John Findlay Drew. A History of Bubonic Plague in the British Isles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970.

 

 

 

General Works

(secondary sources)

 

Note: Besides talking about the disease itself, these works discuss topics such as population, mortality, and economy.

 

*Biraben, Jean Noël. Les Hommes Et La Peste En France Et Dans Les Pays Européens Et Méditerranéens. Vol. 35-36. Paris: Mouton, 1975.

 

 

Bowsky, William M. The Black Death: A Turning Point in History?. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971.

 

 

*Campbell, Bruce M. S. Before the Black Death: Studies in the "Crisis" of the Early Fourteenth Century. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991.

 

 

*Cantor, Norman F. In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World it Made. New York: Free Press, 2001.

A description by the publisher is available at: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/simon031/00053555.html

 

 

Coulton, G. G. The Black Death. New York: J. Cape & H. Smith, 1930.

 

 

Dols, Michael W. The Black Death in the Middle East. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977.

 

 

*Gottfried, Robert. The Black Death: Natural and Human Disaster in Medieval Europe. New York: Free Press; Collier Macmillan, 1983.

 

 

*Herlihy, David, and Samuel Kline Cohn. The Black Death and the Transformation of the West. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997.

 

 

*Horrox, Rosemary. The Black Death. New York, NY: Manchester University Press; Distributed exclusively in the USA and Canada by St. Martin's Press, 1994.

 

 

McNeill, William Hardy. Plagues and Peoples. New York: Anchor Books, 1989.

Publisher is available at: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/random043/89027689.html

 

 

Newman, Francis. Social Unrest in the Late Middle Ages: Papers of the Fifteenth Annual Conference of the Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies. Vol. 39. State University of New York at Binghamton. Binghamton, N.Y: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1986.

 

 

*Pounds, Norman John Greville. An Economic History of Medieval Europe. 2nd ed. London ; New York: Longman, 1994.

 

 

Twigg, Graham. The Black Death: A Biological Reappraisal. London: Batsford Academic and Educational, 1984.

 

 

Williman, Daniel. The Black Death: The Impact of the Fourteenth-Century Plague: Papers of the Eleventh Annual Conference of the Center for Medieval & Early Renaissance Studies. Vol. 13. State University of New York at Binghamton, N.Y.: Center for Medieval & Early Renaissance Studies, 1982.

 

 

Ziegler, Philip. The Black Death. Pbk. ed. Phoenix Mill, Gloucestershire: Sutton Pub., 1997.

 

 

 

Maps

Note: Most maps will allow you to enlarge them by clicking on them.

 

AB Longman Publishers

Instructor Resources section of Civilization in the West textbook (Kishlansky, Geary, & O'Brien)

Main page of maps & other instructional resources regarding events of historical significance (mostly from ancient to early modern times): http://wps.ablongman.com/long_kishlansky_cw_5/0,6472,268318-,00.html

Map showing the Spread of the Black Death:

http://wps.ablongman.com/wps/media/objects/262/268312/art/figures/KISH_10_225.gif

 

This site show a color-coded map indicating the spread of the plague according to the time-period (rrows indicate the path it travelled). Revolts are also indicated on the map.

 

 

Concordia University (Canada)

http://alcor.concordia.ca/~shannon/201Lec06images_files/image004.jpg

 

A useful map showing the spread of the Black Death chronologically (by year). The color scheme for this map seems easier to discern than the Longman map. It also indicates areas who had uprisings/revolts, as well as areas spared by the plague.

 

 

Norton Literature Online

http://www.wwnorton.com/literature/images/maps/world2_1.jpg

 

A detailed map that is very useful since it shows both Asia (where the disease came from) and Europe. Also of great importance is the juxtaposition of trade routes with the path the plague travelled.

 

 

University of Calgary (Canada)

Spread of the Black Death: http://www.ucalgary.ca/HIST/tutor/imagemid/blackdeath.gif

 

Probably the most confusing (to me anyway) of the maps listed in this section. The colors run together (they're all shades of green) and the red trade routes are all over the place.

 

 

Medical Aspects

 

Amundsen, Darrel. Medicine, Society, and Faith in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.

 

 

Bagliani, Agostino and Francesco Santi. The Regulation of Evil : Social and Cultural Attitudes to Epidemics in the Late Middle Ages. Firenze : Sismel, 1998.

 

A few articles are in English, but most are in French or Italian. Here are the article topics in English:

  • Black death and golden remedies. Some remarks on alchemy and the plague / Chiara Crisciani
  • Plague and social attitudes in Renaissance Florence / David McNeil

 

 

Cipolla, Carlo. Public Health and the Medical Profession in the Renaissance. New York: Cambridge UP, 1976.

 

 

Conrad, Lawrence, Michael Neve, Vivian Nutton, Roy Porter, Andrew Wear. The Western Medical Tradition: 800 BC-1800 AD. Written by members of the Academic Unit of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

See these chapters for relevant topics:

3 : Medicine in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, by Vivian Nutton -- Page 71
4 : Arab-Islamic medical tradition, by Lawrence I. Conrad -- Page 93
5 : Medicine in Medieval Western Europe, 1000-1500, by Vivian Nutton -- Page 139
6 : Medicine in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1700, by Andrew Wear -- Page 215

 

 

French, R. K. (Roger Kenneth). Medicine Before Science: The Rational and Learned Doctor from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

 

 

---. Medicine from the Black Death to the French Disease. Brookfield, VT.: Ashgate Pub., 1998.

 

Table of Contents taken from the UF Libraries Catalog:

Introduction : the "long fifteenth century" of medical history / Roger French --  Jewish treatises on the Black Death (1350-1500) : a preliminary study / Ron Barkai --  Mater medicinarum : English physicians and the alchemical elixir in the fifteenth century / Michela Pereira --  Fascinating women : the evil eye in medical scholasticism / Fernando Salmón and Montserrat Cabré -- Medicine at the German universities, 1348-1500 : a preliminary sketch / Vivian Nutton --  Stones, bones and hernias : surgical specialists in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italy / Katherine Park --  Treatment of hernia in the later middle ages : surgical correction and social construction / Michael R. McVaugh --  Thomas Fayreford : an English fifteenth-century medical practitioner / Peter Murray Jones --  Death of a medieval text : the Articella and the early press / Jon Arrizabalaga --  Epidemics and state medicine in fifteenth-century Milan / Ann G. Carmichael --  Coping with the French disease : university practitioners' strategies and tactics in the transition from the fifteenth to the sixteenth century / Roger French and Jon Arrizabalaga --  Anatomical rationality / Roger French.

 

 

Getz, Faye Marie. Medicine in the English Middle Ages. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998.

 

 

Gottfried, Robert. Doctors & Medicine in Medieval England, 1340-1530. Princeton, N.J.:  Princeton University Press,  1986.

 

 

Grmek, Mirko (editor) and Antony Shugaar (translator). Western Medical Thought from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. Cambridge, Ma.:  Harvard University Press, 1998.

 

 

---. Epidemic Disease in Fifteenth Century England: The Medical Response and the Demographic Consequences. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1978.

 

 

Henderson, John. The Black Death in Florence: Medical and Communal Responses. In Death in Towns: Urban responses to the dying and the dead, 100-1600. Edited by Stephen Bassett. New York, NY:  Leicester University Press:  Distributed in the USA by St. Martin's Press,  1995.

 

 

Hunt, Tony. Popular Medicine in Thirteenth-Century England: Introductions & Texts. Cambridge; Wolfeboro, N.H., USA: D.S. Brewer, 1990.

 

 

Lindemann, Mary. Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

 

 

Park, Katherine. Doctors and Medicine in Early Renaissance Florence. Princeton, N.J.:  Princeton University Press,  1985.

 

 

Rawcliffe, Carole. Medicine & Society in Later Medieval England. Stroud, Gloucestershire: A. Sutton, 1995.

 

 

Rawcliffe, Carole. Sources for the History of Medicine in Medieval England. Kalamazoo, MI : Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 1995.

 

 

Rubin, Stanley. Medieval English Medicine. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1974.

 

 

Siriasi, Nancy. Medieval & Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice. Chicago:  University of Chicago Press,  1990.

 

 

Talbot, C. H. (Charles H.) Medicine in Medieval England. London, Oldbourne, 1967.

 

 

Talbot, C. H. (Charles H.) and E.A. Hammond. The Medical Practitioners in Medieval England: A Biographical Register. London, Wellcome Historical Medical Library, 1965.

 

 

 

Web Resources

 

Note: For links to PDF journal articles dealing with the scientific/biological/technical aspects of the Black Death, you may want to examine this site:

http://www.scholiast.org/history/hi-bdth.html

These freely available journal articles are listed in the section for Online Source Material and most appear to be from European journals. Skip the links section (most of them are dead).

 

 

*CDC Plague Homepage

Center for Disease Control: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/plague/

 

A site with good, medical oriented information regarding the plague in the modern era. Use the links on the left hand side of the page to navigate to other plague pages. Especially informative are the Fact Sheet & Diagnosis sections. The Scientific Literature seciton contains useful journal articles, reports, and books (mostly of a medical/technical nature) on the plague.

 

 

*Plague and Public Health in Renaissance Europe

University of Virginia: Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities
http://www.iath.virginia.edu/osheim/intro.html

 

Excerpt take from their Web site:

"This project involves the creation of a hypertext archive of narratives, medical consilia, governmental records, religious and spiritual writings and images documenting the arrival, impact and response to the problem of epidemic disease in Western Europe between 1348 and 1530. When completed researchers will be able to follow themes and issues geographically across Europe in any given time period or chronologically from the first cases of bubonic plague in 1348 to the early sixteenth century."

The following sections are available:

  • Introduction
  • Florence, 1348
  • Pistoia, 1348
  • Lucca, 1348

Note: Although the above listed information is available, the site has not been modified since 1994. So don't expect any new information to be added.

 

 

*World Health Organization: Plague

http://www.who.int/csr/disease/plague/en/

 

Although this site is more oriented to modern day (like the CDC site), it provides some useful medical/scientific information on the plague. Click on the WHO Fact Sheet (at the bottom of the page) to get a page of basic information on the plague.

 

 

Reference Works

 

*Gendler, Paul. Encyclopedia of the Renaissance. 6 vol.   New York: Scribner's published in association with the Renaissance Society of America, 1999.
UF
Library West, Reference (Non-Circulating)       CB361 .E52 1999

 

See the main entry under Plague in volume 5 (p. 47-51). Also examine the index under plague to find specific topics addressed (economics, demography, etc).

 

 

*Jordan, William Chester.   Dictionary of the Middle Ages: Supplement 1.   Charles Scribner's Sons.   2003.
UF
Library West, Reference (Non-Circulating)           D114 .D5 1982

 

 

Kohn, George. Encyclopedia of Plague & Pestilence. New York: Facts on File, 1995.

 

 

*Strayer, Joseph ed.   Dictionary of the Middle Ages.   13 vol.   New York: Scribner.   1982.
UF
Library West, Reference (Non-Circulating), v.1-13                           D114 .D5 1982

 

See volume 2, pp. 257-267 for the main entry under Black Death.

 

 

 

Renaissance

 

Note: For more books relating to the Renaissance, see also the Medical heading in this section.

Note: for medical responses to the plague, see the entriesunder the category for Medical Aspects

 

 

*Cohn, Samuel Kline. The Black Death Transformed: Disease and Culture in Early Renaissance Europe. London; New York: Arnold; Co-published in the USA by Oxford University Press, 2002.

 

 

*---. The Cult of Remembrance and the Black Death: Six Renaissance Cities in Central Italy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.

Publisher is available at: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/jhu051/91045267.html

 

 

*Gendler, Paul. Encyclopedia of the Renaissance. 6 vol.   New York: Scribner's published in association with the Renaissance Society of America, 1999.
UF
Library West, Reference (Non-Circulating)       CB361 .E52 1999

 

See the main entry under Plague in volume 5 (p. 47-51). Also examine the index under plague to find specific topics addressed (economics, demography, etc).

 

 

Herlihy, David. Medieval and Renaissance Pistoia: The Social History of an Italian Town, 1200-1430.
New Haven, Yale University Press, 1967.

 

 

*Plague & Public Health in Renaissance Europe

http://www.iath.virginia.edu/osheim/intro.html

 

Excerpt take from their Web site:

"This project involves the creation of a hypertext archive of narratives, medical consilia, governmental records, religious and spiritual writings and images documenting the arrival, impact and response to the problem of epidemic disease in Western Europe between 1348 and 1530. When completed researchers will be able to follow themes and issues geographically across Europe in any given time period or chronologically from the first cases of bubonic plague in 1348 to the early sixteenth century."

The following sections are available:

  • Introduction
  • Florence, 1348
  • Pistoia, 1348
  • Lucca, 1348

Note: Although the above listed information is available, the site has not been modified since 1994. So don't expect any new information to be added.

 

 

Web Sites

 

Note: See also the Bibliography section for useful online bibliographies from academic courses covering the Black Death.

 

 

Black Death: Bubonic Plague

Wide Open Doors.net: Improving Education Through Instructional Media

http://www.themiddleages.net/plague.html

 

Some useful information on the plague. The main page gives a basic introduction to the Black Death and includes links to these topics (located on the same site):

  • Black Death Spreads
  • Boubonic Plague: Will it Ever End?
  • I Saw the Black Death
  • The Medieval Miracles of Healing -- Medical Science
  • The Plague: an account from Boccaccio's The Decameron

To find, and navigate to these topics, go to the links in the 'for more information' section (located towards the bottom of the page).

 

 

Black Death: An Interactive Journey to the 14th Century

Discovery Channel Tutorial (Requires Flash 6 & high speed connection recommended)

http://media.dsc.discovery.com/anthology/momentsintime/blackdeath/blackdeath.html

 

Note: Overall, this site is very simple. It is probably best for a middle or possibly a high school student, since the information presented is very short.

 

This tutorial is a tour of plague stricken Europe & Middle East. Viewers are provided with an interactive map where you can click on major cities and get some basic information on the plagues impact (like mortality rates). Even better for younger viewers, each location has an audio clip narration from a personality that talks about what it was like to be there during the plague. To hear the audio clips, click on the "a chronicler" link (the silhouette of a person's head) at the top, left-hand side of the map. Links in the top, right-hand side bring up information windows on the following topics:

  • Origins
  • Pestilence
  • Aftermath

Click on the Close Panel link (top right) to return to the map.

 

 

Black Death: 1347-1350

http://www.insecta-inspecta.com/fleas/bdeath/bdeath.html

 

A very basic site that is better suited to younger readers. But still contains some good information.

 

 

*Middle Ages: Black Death

Boise State University: Professor Skip Knox

Main Site: http://history.boisestate.edu/westciv/medieval/

Black Death section: http://history.boisestate.edu/westciv/plague/

 

A Web site containing many popular topics regarding the Middle Ages for his History of Western Civilization class.

 

 

*Plague & Public Health in Renaissance Europe

http://www.iath.virginia.edu/osheim/intro.html

 

Excerpt take from their Web site:

"This project involves the creation of a hypertext archive of narratives, medical consilia, governmental records, religious and spiritual writings and images documenting the arrival, impact and response to the problem of epidemic disease in Western Europe between 1348 and 1530. When completed researchers will be able to follow themes and issues geographically across Europe in any given time period or chronologically from the first cases of bubonic plague in 1348 to the early sixteenth century."

The following sections are available:

  • Introduction
  • Florence, 1348
  • Pistoia, 1348
  • Lucca, 1348

Note: Although the above listed information is available, the site has not been modified since 1994. So don't expect any new information to be added.

 

 

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