The Black Death was a plague pandemic that originated in Eurasia, swept across the Mediterranean world, and raced through much of Europe between 1346 and 1353. Benedictow fills a gap in the scholarly literature on the Black Death by assessing the plague’s epidemiology for all of Europe and reassessing mortality rates.

The Black Death’s devastating impact on populations in Europe, Western Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa provided “eternal notoriety as the greatest-ever demographic disaster” (3). The disease’s high mortality rate gave rise to the name “Black Death,” a reference to the ruin that the pandemic wrought, rather than to any of its physical symptoms. Many medieval people believed the plague was divine punishment, while physicians drew on classical medical knowledge that suggested disease was the result of miasma, or toxic air. Others, such as the faculty at the University of Paris, used astrological observations to explain the plague’s appearance. Although plague outbreaks occurred before and after the Black Death, no episode was as devastating as that of the mid-14th century. Europeans recognized this pattern, and physicians typically called it pestilence. Previous plague studies have focused on the demographic changes the Black Death caused, as well as its socio-economic, religious, political, and cultural impacts.