Cohn, Samuel K., 'The Black Death: End of a Paradigm', The American Historical Review 107 (2002), 703-738

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Quick Summary

Misplaced confidence in the medical profession following the Black Death paved the way to the Renaissance

  • Black Death was not the same disease as the rat-based bubonic plague of the nineteenth century
  • Western Europe quickly developed a natural immunity to the Black Death
  • Increased confidence in the medical profession led to the Renaissance
Key Conclusion

Cohn argues that the Black Death was not the same disease as the rat-based bubonic plague that Europeans encountered in the Orient and the subtropics in the nineteenth century. In fact, the two diseases were ‘radically different in their signs, symptoms and epidemiologies’ (p. 703). This has significant consequences for our understanding of how medieval society reacted to the Black Death. Cohn’s finding in this respect challenges the century-long assumptions of historians and scientists.

Content Overview

The key distinction between the Black Death and the nineteenth-century bubonic plague is that humans have no natural immunity to modern bubonic plague. By contrast, the populations of Western Europe quickly developed immunity to the pathogen of the Black Death after the initial outbreak of the disease in 1346-53. This is reflected by the sharply failing levels of mortality in subsequent outbreaks of the disease.

Further Findings

A cultural consequence of the declining mortality rate was increased confidence in the medieval medical profession. Although this confidence was ultimately misplaced – doctors couldn’t cure plague – it helps explain why the late-fourteenth and fifteenth centuries weren’t dominated by a culture of violence and pessimism. Instead, Cohn argues that people’s immunity to the Black Death helps explain the emergence of an ‘early Renaissance mentality’, and in particular, ‘why a new culture of secularism, state-building and “fame and glory” should have sprung forth in the midst of mass mortality’ (p. 738).

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