Black Plague Research Paper

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At the end of the 14th century, the Black Plague spread through Europe like fire, at that time even sneezing on your daughter means killing her. This disease’s symptoms where described by Giovanni Boccaccio (author, poet and important Renaissance humanist that lived in Italy, Florence) in 1348, as "The first signs of the plague were lumps in the groin or armpits. After this, livid black spots appeared on the arms and thighs and other parts of the body. Few recovered. Almost all died within three days, usually without any fever.” a disease that only takes 3 days to kill a person spread in a very wide rage due to the lack of medical knowledge at that time. Leading the economy in Europe to fall since many people were dying and there were no one to plow the land and take care of the sheep, which means no more production leading many towns and cities to die in hunger. Then, with the rising need for manpower and the fall of economy, landlords were not able to pay all the peasants so they had to choose either loan the peasants land or free them. Because of that peasants are now either working on their own land or became free and went to towns and cities to search for better opportunities, it is also said that most of the peasants were …show more content…

The rise of big and strong universities like Bologna and Padua in Italy brought more opportunities to peasants, it is true that many universities only accepted talented and wealthy people from other lands but there were other universities that were only devoted to locals. Thus, some peasants were able to send their children for education. In addition, some people paid for talented kids’ education such as Niccolò da Uzzano (Politician, 1359 – 1431 in Florence) who wanted to encourage education of poor students.

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