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The immediate effect of the Black Death was a precipitous drop in population. From 1348 to 1400, during which time there were several outbreaks of bubonic plague, Europe as a whole (east and west) witnessed a loss of between 22 and 28 million individuals out of a total population of some 73 to 74 million. In short, in a fifty-year period as many as one in three Europeans fell victim to the plague. In Florence the death rate was particularly high; in 1348 alone its population dropped from approximately 120,000 to some 40,000 souls, and losses were even greater in other parts of Tuscany. Italy as a whole probably lost one half its population in the latter half of the fourteenth century. Death became a dominant theme in the art of the period; new religious movements such as that of the flagellants, which placed particular emphasis upon repentance and the physical mortification of the body, attracted large popular followings; and there were outbreaks of hostility toward the poor and the Jews. At the same time, the plague appears to have influenced the direction of intellectual life. New universities--some, in response to the epidemics, with a special emphasis on the study of medicine--were established, certain traditional fields were deemphasized, and new ones, notably rhetoric, came to the fore, at least in Italy. In fact, the plagues may even have played a direct role in intensifying the growing sense that classical Latin was a language that required conscious imitation. Before the Black Death medieval academic Latin was organic, practical, and instilled in students at a very young age--in short, it was a living vernacular. The depletion of the ranks of university and Latin teachers and the disruption of the schools during the ravages of plague changed the equation. Suddenly Latin was a ''foreign'' language that needed to be mastered through the close study and imitation of ancient texts--a new linguistic attitude that would prove fundamental to the development of the Renaissance.

The social and economic consequences were equally decisive. In the short term, trade and industry were disrupted, family life was strained, and civility was frayed. But over the longer term, especially over the next few generations as recurrent visitations of the plague continued to restrict the population's recovery, the fortunes of the survivors varied. Although the situation differed from one part of Europe to another, the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries in general witnessed a fall in rents for traditional landlords (the nobility), new opportunities for merchants and financiers, a rise in wages for urban laborers, the erosion of servile bonds in the countryside, and in general new agricultural regimes that at times benefited and at other times led to the further exploitation of the peasantry. Cities especially needed new men in the crafts and the professions; this period was, as a result, one of relatively high social mobility. Once the economy began to stabilize under these new terms, the standard of living (at least in the cities) increased--one of the preconditions for the demand for luxury goods and commodities that fostered the material culture of Renaissance Europe. . .

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