The 'light touch' of the Black Death in the Southern Netherlands: an urban trick?

ABSTRACT: Although the fanciful notion that the Black Death bypassed the Low Countries has long been rejected, nevertheless a persistent view remains that the Low Countries experienced only a 'light touch' of the plague when placed in a broader European perspective, and recovered quickly and fully. However, in this article an array of dispersed sources for the Southern Netherlands together with a new mortmain accounts database for Hainaut show that the Black Death was severe, perhaps no less severe than other parts of western Europe; that serious plagues continued throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; and that the Black Death and recurring plagues spread over vast territories-including the countryside. The previous conception of a 'light touch' of plague in the Low Countries was created

SUBMITTER: Roosen J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6472643 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature