The Black Death

Philip Ziegler THE BLACK DEATH Second Edition With a historiography by Colin Platt

TO BILLY AND PIERRE

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

When this history was published in 1969 I remarked in my preface that, though there might be controversy over some of its consequences, all at least would agree that the Black Death was of the greatest economic and social importance as well as hideously dramatic in its progression. I therefore found it surprising that, with the exception of Dr Coulton’s somewhat whimsical monograph of 1929, there had been no general study of the subject since Cardinal Gasquet wrote The Great Pestilence in 1893. In the meantime much new information had come to light and many of the dogmas accepted in the nineteenth century had been disproved or qualified.

I understood then, and perhaps see still more clearly now, the considerations which inhibited the academic historian from embarking on such a labour. Any general study must be either superficial or unwieldy: the first distasteful to the author, the second to the publisher and public. No one, too, can be expert in every aspect of this vast panorama and the spectacle of rival historians, each established in his fortress of specialized knowledge, waiting to destroy the unwary trespasser, is calculated to discourage even the most intrepid.

In Professor Elton’s kindly if contemptuous phrase, I was, and still am, an amateur and came to my task ‘in a happy spirit of untrained enterprise’. I had read massively but laid no claim to the title of medievalist. This, I hope, may excuse me for having rushed in where an angel or even a Professor of Medieval History would fear to tread. (To quote Professor Elton again – the angels may perhaps be forgiven if, rather than tread themselves in those treacherous paths, they prefer to bide their time and tread upon the fools instead.) This book contains virtually no original research. It is an attempt to synthesize in a single readable but reasonably comprehensive volume the records of the contemporary chroniclers and the works of later historians, in particular the great flood of Ph.D. theses and other specialist monographs, each treating some tiny aspect of this enormous subject.

There have been many more such studies since 1969. Colin Pratt, Professor of History at the University of Southampton and himself author of King Death, a vivid portrait of the Black Death and its aftermath in late mediaeval England, has kindly added an annexe summarizing these later contributions. I have made certain changes in my text to reflect the work of these recent researchers. On the whole, however, I feel that the thrust of my narrative is still valid and that its main conclusions are not in question. The most important change of emphasis has been away from the view widely held in the 1960s that the Black Death accelerated and modified existing social and economic trends rather than initiated new ones. Research generally tends to qualify or erode the certainties of earlier historians; it is noteworthy that, in the case of the Black Death, its effect is to express still more emphatically the dramatic results which this catastrophic plague had for the lives of those whom it afflicted.

I went on to suggest that if my book should chance to provoke some academic historian – no doubt incensed by its inadequacy – into engaging in a major work of scholarship, then it would have served a useful purpose. Unsurprisingly perhaps, no such historian has risen to this challenge. This book remains today, as it was in 1969, the only twentieth century study of the Black Death which aspires to cover every significant contribution made by students of the period and yet to provide a narrative that is accessible to the layman.

On the whole the professional medievalists treated my foray into their territory with generosity. Their tendency was to treat me not so much as a candidate for demolition as a useful tool with which to assault offending rivals. ‘Mr Ziegler describes himself as an amateur,’ ran one line of argument. ‘So indeed he is; but compared with Professor X of Y University he seems a real professional…’. Whether their charity would have endured if I had ventured for a second time into their field, I rather doubt. I did not put their forbearance to the test, but prudently retreated to the nineteenth and twentieth century where I feel rather more at home.

One feature of my book which came in for some criticism was the chapter in which I tried to recapture the impact of the plague in an imaginary medieval village. Such frivolity, it was suggested, was out of place in a book which had any pretensions to scholarship. Historical fiction was historical fiction and evermore would be so.