The Positive Effects of the Black Death

Nothing is important than people’s lives. In that regard the Black Death that killed innumerable people was a calamity. However, there is no positive influence because of the Black Death? During this week, I collected research data about the positive impacts of the Black Death. After I read web pages, I found that the Black Death has been a blessing to the medieval people after the plague.

                 At first, the plague caused the collapse of a feudal society. The Middle age society was dependent on feudal system, so there was little movement among and between classes.  For nearly a thousand years, the feudal Europe was a class-ridden society which was dominated by feudal lords and Catholic churches. Furthermore, 90% of people was peasants, worked hard, and died young.  Population reduction caused the shortage of labor. The society based on a labor-intensive agriculture work was forced to be collapsed and the value of the labor increased significantly. Also, the severe shortage affected mechanization and the invention of printing by Gutenberg in 1445. Probably, if the Black Death had not happened, the feudal society have sustained for a long time. The development of Europe would be delayed.

Christ the Saviour in the Tree of Life                     Birth of Venus
            (The Middle Age)                                     ( Renaissance)

               Secondly, a wind of change was blowing through religion. The Middle age people were apt to entirely depend on religion. They clung to religion to cure the Black Death, but the Catholic churches were not totally in control of the disease. In addition, after people saw the death of priests, they started leaving the churches because they believed that the priests were representative of God, but the priests dead as same as normal people. The influence of religion on the society was played out and people started to have interested in human and nature. As a result, humanism began to germinate in people’s thought and this change led to Renaissance. 

                Of course, the development of society cannot be exchanged for the lives of people. However, it is an undeniable fact that the Black Death made positive changes of the medieval society. I think that most of historical events have two sides of the same coin. That can apply to individual, too. Sometimes, I only focused the bad events when something bad happened. There might have been better things because of a contretemps.  I trust that “Every cloud has a silver lining”.