| Paper 308-b | 'Et post in Flandriam?': The Black Death in the County of Flanders (1349-1350) - A Critical Approach of the Existent Research and Some New Perspectives
(Language: English)
Jan Vandeburie, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds
Index terms: Demography, Economics - General, Local History, Medicine |
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| Abstract | Paper -a:
This study contributes to a recent emphasis on sources and on local and regional studies in order to determine whether England's peasantry indeed endured a 'crisis of the early 14th century'. Paucity of direct evidence for the peasantry's prosperity necessitates the focus here on peasants' experiences in a handful of East Anglian villages during the 14th century and on gauging the peasantry's material circumstance through indirect indices: size of peasant holdings, the land market, pauperage, peasants' expropriation of one another's property, encroachments on seigneurial resources, flaunting of manorial monopolies, overburdening of common resources, indebtedness, and access to markets.
Paper -b:
Since the article by Van Werveke in 1950, it was generally assumed that the county of Flanders was mainly spared from the Black Death. This assumption was based among others upon the absence of direct sources that mention the disease in the region. However, since the 1950s, new research was done that showed it was possible to find proof of an impact of the epidemic in the county of Flanders by studying mainly economic and demographic sources that point indirect to a greater mortality than earlier assumed. Still, the results showed a much lower mortality-rate than expected for a region with intense interregional contacts. In our research, we revised the research of sources in earlier studies and we attempted to add and examine new sources of different sorts and from different places in the research-area if possible. The resulting figures show us we can compare the impact of the epidemic in the county of Flanders with the average mortality-rates in countries as Italy, Spain, and France, countries which are known to have had a severe impact of the Black Death.
Paper -c:
Late medieval concern for the dead focused heavily on, but was not limited to, the fate of the soul. The exempla tales of late medieval England and France manifest society's concern over the welfare of dead bodies. What shape did this anxiety take and what can the evidence tell us about its sources? This paper will examine the stories preachers told their flock about the physical remains of the dead. It aims to show that these tales not only reflected the anxieties of their intended audience, but also served as an instructive tool for the Church to relay its own ideas about the proper disposal of corpses.
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