The Black Death: A Personal History [Paperback]

John Hatcher (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 9, 2009

In this fresh approach to the history of the Black Death, John Hatcher, a world-renowned scholar of the Middle Ages, recreates everyday life in a mid-fourteenth century rural English village. By focusing on the experiences of ordinary villagers as they lived—and died—during the Black Death (1345–50 AD), Hatcher vividly places the reader directly into those tumultuous years and describes in fascinating detail the day-to-day existence of people struggling with the tragic effects of the plague. Dramatic scenes portray how contemporaries must have experienced and thought about the momentous events—and how they tried to make sense of it all.

Editorial Reviews

Review

 Bookviews.com, July 2009
“This book uses a bit of fiction, mixing it with [Hatcher’s] vast knowledge to illuminate that catastrophe.”

Curled Up with a Good Book
“This book screams ‘docudrama.’ One wonders if it will be made into a TV mini-series, so vivid is its novelistic story line yet accurate its information…What Hatcher has done, and done well, is to tell the tale of the Black Plague that swept through Europe in the 14th century from the viewpoint of a single English village.”

Cleveland Plain Dealer, 8/7/09
“The core of the story -- the plague’s effect on the lives of everyday people-- is as true as can be surmised, nearly 700 years later.”

History in Review, 10/19/09
“Will enthrall both historians and fans of historical fiction…Provides a fascinating and unique glimpse into what life was like in rural, mediaeval England, during the 1345-1350 plague outbreak…An informative and entertaining book to read on the Black Death and, more important, on how it affected the common people.”
Metapsychology Online Reviews, 3/19/10
“The psychological turmoil for those living through the plague’s visitation and the terror, grief and horror such an experience engendered, are vividly brought to life in John Hatcher’s magisterial ‘personal history’…A fascinating and absorbing ‘literary docudrama’…of the profound effects of a calamitous and unfathomable event on both the individual and collective psyche…It is for his deliberately novel (and novelistic) approach that the author is to be particularly commended…Provides an admirable insight into how the majority of society struggled to make sense of a world turned upside down…Likely to appeal not only to historians of the Middle Ages and of medicine, but also to those interested in how individuals and communities alike cope with, respond to, and in many cases survive, catastrophic circumstances.”

About the Author

John Hatcher, a leading expert in medieval and early modern social and economic history, is Professor of Economic and Social History and Chairman of the History Faculty at the University of Cambridge.

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press; Reprint edition (June 9, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0306817926
• ISBN-13: 978-0306817922
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #436,465 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars When God thunders, "I'll show YOU!", October 20, 2009

By 

Joseph Haschka (Glendale, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: The Black Death: A Personal History (Paperback)

"Surely He shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence ... He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under His wings shalt thou trust: His truth shall be thy sword and buckler ... Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day ... Nor for the pestilence that walketh in the darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday ... A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come on nigh thee." - From Psalm 91, the comfort of Master John, as quoted in THE BLACK DEATH

With THE BLACK DEATH, author John Hatcher has made an intelligent and clever approach at describing what it was perhaps like for the Average John Q Citizen to experience the pandemic outbreak of the Black Death, the "plague" caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, which came out of Central Asia and peaked in Europe in 1348-50, wiping out 30-60% of the population.

In the Preface, Hatcher explains the conundrum he faced. While he didn't want to compose yet another historical survey of the plague's progress across Europe - so many of such already exist - he also didn't want to create a completely fictional historical novel. Rather, to pen a narrative of the common man's personal experience with the disease - about which encounter there's virtually no contemporary description - John went to the public records as a starting point. In this case, they were the manorial court and accounts roles of the village of Walsham le Willows in west Suffolk, England, which are notably complete for the years in question. From these documents, the author populates the Walsham of his "docudrama" with people that really lived and engaged in the routine (and faithfully recorded) activities of life - marriages, births, deaths, petty crimes, personal legal squabbles, local elections, manorial court sessions, crop harvest yields, goods' prices, etc. - to thus paint a picture of the community's environment from 1345 to 1350, i.e. before, during, and after the Black Death struck in the Spring of 1349. Fictional dialogue between the characters, otherwise kept to a minimum, is inserted to flesh out the narrative and is based on reasonable supposition and what is known of the customs of the time.

Walsham's records have one glaring omission; there is nowhere recorded the name of the village priest. Out of necessity, then, Hatcher introduces his only completely fictional character, John Bradfield ("Master John"), God's shepherd for the parish of St. Mary's Church. As envisioned by the author, John is a learned, compassionate, honest, unworldly, wise, and pious cleric who assiduously cares for the spiritual well-being of his flock to the point, during the worst of the plague, of exhaustion; he becomes the hero of the piece. In that respect, the Walsham of THE BLACK DEATH was lucky indeed.

For those readers living in a western society where the various levels of government refrain from sponsorship of any organized religion, the importance of the Catholic Church to the everyday lives of the English commoners, as depicted in THE BLACK DEATH, may be a revelation. The central government, at this time the monarchy headed by Edward III, played virtually no role in attempts, beyond exhortations to the realm's various bishops to urge the faithful to increased prayer and penance against a background of more sermons, Masses, and powerful indulgences, to explain or protect its subjects from the pestilence as it marched inexorably across mainland Europe towards their island bastion. Master John, then, found himself at the pointy end of the only defense then believed able to potentially deflect God's wrath. The fact that the Church failed - indeed, could not but fail - does not detract from the fact that it tried. For those front-line clerics of the same honesty, competency, and dedication as Master John - and many such certainly existed (and died with the disease) - posthumous honor is due.

From an amateur historian's perspective, the second substantial lesson of the book is the change in the foundation of medieval society, i.e. the relationship of the villeins to their manorial masters, which the depopulation by disease precipitated. The surviving rustics got uppity in their demands for better wages and benefits - something they could pull off because of the resultant labor shortage - and their world was never the same again (much to the distress of the affluent Church and the landed nobility).

The volume includes a 27-page section of bibliography-based Notes and a 16-page collection of photographs of elements of paintings and illustrated manuscripts, all which support the nature of the society and environment which the author means to re-create.

Any casual or serious student of psychology, English history, and/or the effects of a universally devastating disease on societal structure should find THE BLACK DEATH convincing and absolutely fascinating. John Hatcher admirably achieved what he set out to do, and I think his book one of the best I've read all year.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting approach, but not a winner, January 10, 2011

By 

Danny - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Black Death: A Personal History (Paperback)

When I bought this book, I had high hopes for this books claim to be a new way to discover history. However, after reading the introduction, was already disappointed by the amount of fiction is a supposed non-fiction historical book. I felt that Hatcher's chapters on the actual experience of the Black Death from the differing family perspectives were fantastic, but the rest of his novel was far from. He over focuses on the his made up character, Master John whose dialog mostly consists of sermons and the roll of a 14th Century priest. Most of the time this book takes place in the second person, only viewing the situation from externally, not allowing the reader the opportunity to attempt to connect with the characters. Hatcher also chose to postpone the actual onslaught of disease for over half the book and once kicked in, lasted only about 25 pages (definitely not what I expected from the greatest natural killer of humanity in recorded history). I feel that the idea surrounding this book would fare much better in the hands of Showtime or HBO in a series that can fully capture the power of the Black Death.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Great Mortality, January 22, 2011

By 

Linda Pagliuco "katknit" (CT, United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Black Death: A Personal History (Paperback)

The Black Death, AKA the bubonic and/or pneumonic plague, has been characterized as the greatest disaster in human history, killing 50% of the population throughout the Middle East and Europe. While factual chronicles abound, Cambridge historian John Hatcher has now endeavored to bring his readers a more immediate sense of what it must have been like to experience the cataclysm first hand. Hatcher chose to focus on the English village of Walsham, which was struck by plague in 1349, describing what probably happened from the arrival of the earliest rumors that the pestilence was coming, to its aftermath in a world turned on its head. Part documentary study and part fiction, The Black Death recreates the event as seen through the eyes of the village priest, the two manorial landlords, and the peasants who had kept the manor running from "time out of mind."

With scrupulous attention to detail, Hatcher describes the fearsome months before the arrival of the pestilence, when villagers could scarcely credit the stories that filtered into Walsham about the dreadful disease. In the mind of the Church, which exerted enormous influence over the populace, God was punishing mankind for their sins, and there was no remedy but to beg God for forgiveness and deliverance. Itinerant preachers and quacks swept in, bringing with them preventatives, cures, and spiritual exhortation. What was puzzling to all was the question of why God would punish the innocent along with the guilty, and many experienced a severe crisis of faith, to which they responded in various ways. Their fears multiplied along with reports that the plague was coming nearer and nearer. When, finally, the first villagers took ill, death swept in with a vengeance, creating a cruel, hellish atmosphere that persisted for months. When the scourge finally ran its course, Walsham had lost half of its 1500 inhabitants. The final third of the book deals with its after-effects, as people struggled to pick up the threads of their lives in the face of overwhelming shortages of food and labor, and the breakdown of the practical traditions and rituals that served as the foundation of manorial life. In the turmoil can be seen the roots of the labor/management conflict that continues today.

Readers looking for a historical novel will not find it in The Black Death, which focuses upon fact at the expense of depth of character. Yet it goes a long way toward helping modern readers understand what life was like during that fearsome era. Included are 44 illustrations that are tied to specific portions of the text. Unfortunately, there is some textual redundancy, but that's a small price to pay for the accuracy with which the topic is covered. The Black Death succeeds in making real people of the victims of the plague, individuals whose deaths were horrendous and whose lives were changed forever.