Yersinia pestis. Who would have guessed that a tiny bacterium hitching a ride in a flea’s gut could turn the world upside down? Yet the Black Death, despite its horror, handed us a surprising legacy of progress. Below are the 10 good things we owe to that medieval catastrophe.
10 Good Things Uncovered
10. Healthier People
Human groups evolve when disease pushes them to adapt. Certain gene variants give some people a leg‑up in fighting infections, and those carriers tend to have more offspring. This natural selection—known as positive selection—keeps advantageous genes alive while discarding weaker ones.
Recent research shows that descendants of Europeans who survived the plague carry altered genes that boost disease resistance. This may explain why Europeans react differently to some illnesses and autoimmune disorders. In particular, a trio of immune‑system genes produces proteins that latch onto harmful bacteria, sparking a defensive response. Populations that escaped the Black Death lack these toll‑like receptor genes.
The pandemic acted as a massive laboratory, weeding out the frail. Analyses of skeletal remains from a London churchyard reveal that post‑plague individuals faced a markedly lower mortality risk at every age. Before the plague, only about 10 % expected to live beyond 70; after, that figure doubled to roughly 20 %. Coupled with better diets, this biological reshaping gave post‑plague Europeans longer, sturdier lives. As the old saying goes, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
9. The Perfume Industry
During the pestilence, physicians blamed poisonous vapors for the disease and turned to aromatic herbs as air purifiers. While perfume had existed before, the Black Death turned personal fumigants into a full‑blown craze.
Popular concoctions mixed orange zest with dry cloves, and people carried posies of fragrant flowers. Doctors wore nose bags stuffed with herbs and spices. Pomanders—sometimes called “amber apples”—were amber spheres infused with musk, aloes, camphor, and rosewater, hung around the neck. Aromatic waters such as the rosemary‑lavender‑alcohol blend known as Eau de la Reine de Hongrie (the “Queen of Hungary’s water”) foreshadowed Eau de Cologne, while simpler herbal scents catered to the less affluent.
Bathing fell out of favor because many believed it opened the pores to foul air. In the centuries that followed, dousing oneself in perfume to mask body odor replaced bathing altogether, evolving from a protective measure into a fashionable social custom among the elite.
8. Hospitals
Before the Black Death, hospitals were essentially isolation wards where the sick were kept away to protect the healthy. A critically ill patient entering a medieval hospital was deemed hopeless; the institution’s main role was to dispose of the patient’s belongings and say a Mass for his soul. Healing was secondary to spiritual care, and hospitals functioned more as charitable almshouses than medical centers.
Monks and nuns staffed these facilities, offering herbal concoctions and prayers rather than systematic treatment. They also served as shelters for widows, orphans, travelers, and the destitute, which is why “hospitality” shares the same Latin root as “hospital.”
The massive outbreak forced a dramatic shift. Overwhelmed by sheer numbers, hospitals could no longer act as multi‑purpose waystations; they had to concentrate on caring for the sick and dying. This crisis spurred a new, more scientific approach to medicine: failed medieval remedies were scrutinized, anatomy and surgery entered university curricula, and medicine transformed from a text‑bound philosophy into an observational, practical science.
Professional physicians became central to hospital operations, leading to specialized wards for different ailments and laying the groundwork for modern medical institutions.
7. Sex Comedies
In medieval Europe, the Church castigated secular amusement as the devil’s work, yet the Black Death highlighted the therapeutic power of laughter. Biblical wisdom even notes that “a merry heart does good like medicine.” Advocates argued that Christians needed a respite from spiritual strain, and comedy could recharge a weary soul.
The plague amplified this view. Tracts circulated during the crisis prescribed a regimen of fleeing anger, abandoning sick locales, and surrounding oneself with cheerful companions—physicians even claimed that laughter could cure disease.
Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron (1352), written while sheltering from the plague, is considered the first truly entertaining work of European literature. Its 100 tales, narrated by a group of men and women, brim with love, misadventure, and bawdy humor. Boccaccio’s unabashed sexual jokes appealed to all classes; the stories often blended religion and sex, using implication rather than explicitness to avoid offending the more conservative audience. One tale features a monk persuading a beautiful girl that pleasing God involves letting him place his “devil” in her “hell.”
The Decameron birthed modern fiction. Its focus on everyday people inspired Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, and centuries later, writers like James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway drew from its structure and spirit.
6. More Functional Homes
The shortage of skilled artisans after the plague pushed architects toward simpler, more functional designs. English churches, for example, transitioned from the ornate Decorated Gothic to the sleeker Perpendicular Gothic, emphasizing vertical lines, larger windows, and greater opportunities for stained‑glass artistry.
Domestic architecture also evolved. Pre‑plague homes typically featured a single great hall with an open hearth, where families lived communally and entertained guests. Poorer dwellings—timber frames with wattle‑and‑daub walls and thatched roofs—provided little protection against vermin.
By the late 14th and early 15th centuries, these halls were subdivided with partition walls at one or both ends, creating private chambers separate from servants, animals, and street grime. Upper sections often became parlors or solariums, and elite residences, like Bodiam Castle, even boasted private latrines. The use of rush‑covered floors—breeding grounds for pests—was replaced with carpets and rugs, making homes more luxurious and comfortable.
5. Predominance Of English
You’re reading this in English rather than Latin because the Black Death reshaped language use across Europe. The massive loss of literate monks who copied manuscripts spurred a demand for a more efficient way to reproduce books, paving the way for the printing press and an explosion of printed material.
Fearing long, plague‑riddled journeys, scholars founded local universities, increasing the overall number of higher‑education institutions. With many Latin‑speaking professors dead, universities turned to teachers from lower schools who lacked fluency in Latin. These educators naturally used the vernacular, accelerating the spread of native languages. Boccaccio wrote the Decameron in Italian, making his work accessible to a broader audience, while medical and practical texts became available in local tongues.
In England, English was declared the official language of the courts in 1362, and by 1385 it dominated school instruction. As Britain expanded its empire, English spread worldwide, becoming today’s lingua franca.
4. End Of Feudalism
Feudalism—where serfs owed labor and loyalty to lords in exchange for land—was upended by the Black Death. The massive loss of peasant labor left fields fallow and crops unharvested, forcing landowners to compete for workers.
Surviving peasants leveraged this scarcity, demanding higher, cash‑based wages and better treatment, effectively dictating the terms of their employment for the first time. This shift weakened the traditional power of lords over serfs.
In response, monarchs and nobles attempted to restore the old order. England’s 1350 Statute of Laborers tried to cap wages, and the 1381 Poll Tax sparked the Peasants’ Revolt. Yet the demographic and economic changes were irreversible; serfs transitioned to independent laborers, creating new avenues for social mobility and planting the seeds of modern individualism.
3. The Middle Class
Freedom from feudal obligations opened horizons for ambitious peasants, who flocked to growing towns to practice trades and crafts. The most successful among them amassed wealth, forming a new middle class.
With cash‑based economies taking hold, competition among individual manufacturers began to erode the guild system’s monopoly over production and pricing. This nascent capitalism spurred trade with the East, bringing exotic goods and ideas that enriched European culture.
The burgeoning middle class also became patrons of the arts, science, and philosophy. Their financial support fueled an explosion of creativity that blossomed into the Renaissance, reshaping European intellectual life.
2. Freedom Of Thought
The Catholic Church once dominated every facet of medieval existence, but the Black Death exposed its limitations. As clergy perished alongside the populace and offered no answers to the catastrophe, the Church’s authority waned, prompting many to question doctrine and seek personal spirituality.
One manifestation was the Flagellant movement, where people roamed Europe whipping themselves to atone for sin. Intellectuals, such as England’s John Wycliffe, began voicing dissent against ecclesiastical abuses, a sentiment that would later fuel Martin Luther’s Reformation and, eventually, the Enlightenment’s skepticism toward divine authority.
Thus, the plague opened the floodgates of freethinking, laying the groundwork for centuries of philosophical and scientific inquiry.
1. Humanism
The staggering death toll forced survivors to reevaluate humanity’s worth. Confronted with mortality, people turned inward, celebrating the present life’s beauty rather than fixating on an afterlife. This shift ignited a love for the arts, physical sciences, and human‑centric knowledge.
Petrarch (1304‑1374) championed a new anthropology that saw humans as rational, inherently good, and capable of independent thought—rejecting the doctrine of Original Sin. He emphasized human dignity over religious penitence.
Urban middle‑class patrons, now wielding political and economic power, looked back to Classical Greece and Rome for governance models. Their support encouraged artists and scholars to abandon medieval conventions, birthing a cultural rebirth—the Renaissance—that laid the foundation for today’s secular, human‑focused society.
Larry is a freelance writer whose main interests are history and chess.