HST6771 – Surviving an Apocalypse: Societal Resilience in the Age of the Black Death 2024/25

The Black Death was an unparalleled catastrophe – a plague pandemic that caused untold human suffering between 1347 and 1353, killing 50% of the population in the many regions it affected, with most communities abruptly devastated in the space of just six to nine months. What happens to societies when they suffer such unimaginable trauma? Do they shatter, abandoning the established norms of law, custom and religious devotion, or do they cling ever tighter to convention, hoping thereby to endure the raging tempest? With these questions in mind, this module assesses the Black Death’s immediate effects across a diverse range of settings and cultures, gauging the extent of societal resilience by interrogating an array of written source material – including personal letters and intimate chronicles, wills, judicial accounts and governmental records – as well as material culture and archaeological remains, all while seeking to understand how and why the medieval world survived this epochal cataclysm.