Customer Reviews

The Black Death (Sutton Illustrated History Paperbacks)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Ziegler's The Black Death was the only book I could find after a television documentary piqued my interest in the subject. I was worried the book would be too scholarly but, to my surprise, I found the writing style very pleasant and engaging. It is one of the best books I have read all year.

Originally published in 1969, Ziegler gathered sources on the plague from the period to more recent examinations to try to create the most accurate picture possible of what it was like in Medieval Europe during 1348-1350 and the effects the Black Death had on Europe. Ziegler admits in his preface that he did not conduct any original research but he does critique the works of others, especially Thorold Rogers' theory that the Black Plague caused the Peasant's Revolt of 1381 (p. 188). He includes a chapter each on Italy, France, and Germany; the latter of which saw the emergence of the Flagellant movement and persecution of the Jews based on suspicions similar to those used in Nazi Germany. England is covered the most with 5 chapters and a 6th on Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. Ziegler demonstrates the fear of the people right from the beginning when the plague entered Europe through Sicily. The patriarch of Catania wished to bring relics to nearby, plague-ridden Messina only to have the Catanians protest against the idea. In compromise, the patriarch dipped the relics in water and brought the water to the suffering neighbors (p. 28).

Ziegler describes what Medieval life was like in sometimes witty style: "The medieval house might have been built to specifications approved by a rodent council" (p. 199). Period ideas on how to prevent infection are also interesting, including a elixir made of gold and quicksilver: "At least the high price of gold ensured that not many invalids could afford to be poisoned by such medicine" (p. 55). The chapter on the fictitious villages I also found to be very well-done and a nice change of pace from the somewhat statistically-driven prose.

Two things I wish were in this book are a better map and more information on what the plague sufferer went through besides the obvious symptoms like boils. A map is included but it is inadequate as it does not list all (or even a small percentage of) the villages mentioned. Still, the book is well-written AND scholarly. Ziegler is very careful to qualify statements, avoid generalizations, and fairly critique all statistics given about the plague. My copy also has numerous illustrations and a color section on period plague-related art. It is made very evident the horror of the Black Death through such statements as: "Peterborough, another of those low-lying areas which were so remarkably well treated by the plague, [had a mortality] level notably below the average at a mere 27%" (p. 138).

Ziegler's "The Black Death" is obviously intended to be a popularized account of the infamous bubonic plague that swept Europe in the late 1300s. Unfortunately, the book suffers from the worst of both worlds. It is too full of statistics and academic arguments to be an easily readable book, and yet has nothing new to offer that would make it interesting to the academic. There is nothing wrong with writing a book based only on previously published sources, but Ziegler does not do a good job of integrating these sources together. He discusses the relative merits of this method of computing the number of dead and that method of computing the number of dead; this discussion takes pages. One gets the feeling that a good editor was needed, to go through the book with a red pen and make Ziegler cut these pages of boring exposition down to mere paragraphs. Unfortunately, one also gets the feeling that these pages were left in because without them, the book would be exceedingly slender.

A few other complaints: an entire chapter was devoted to a fictional village. Why? Ziegler writes that it is to provide a look at what an average village would suffer, but surely some village, somewhere in England, was thoroughly enough documented that Ziegler did not have to resort to fiction. (I would be much less disapproving if the writing in this chapter had been better.)

The book is also overly concerned with documenting the progress of the plague: first it went here, where it killed X number of people, then it went here, where it killed Y number of people. As with the pages of tedious discussion about academic theories, this leaves one with the overall feeling that this book was written, not out of any abiding interest in the subject, but because he thought it would sell. Ziegler discusses (very briefly) medieval treatments of the plague, as well as its symptoms. What I was hoping for as I read that section was that Ziegler would then explain why those treatments did not work, and what the current treatment for bubonic plague is. Unfortunately, Ziegler didn't seem to have much interest in the plague as a disease: just on its progression through and impact on the middle ages.

Connie Willis' "Doomsday Book," while fiction, is much more readable, and (to my admittedly inexpert eyes) just as well-researched as "The Black Death." Certainly I learned little new about the bubonic plague from "The Black Death" that I did not already know from reading other (nonfiction) books on the middle ages.

This was an interesting excursion by Mr. Ziegler into the Medieval Era, not usually thought of as his milieu. He acknowledges right up front that he has not done any original research, but has merely brought the material of others together and drawn some conclusions. But, in such a controversial field as this, drawing intelligent conclusions is no mean feat.

Mr. Ziegler starts off the book giving the big picture, showing the Tartars attacking a Genoese trading post in Asia. The Tartar forces are stricken down by the plague and, using some creative tactics, start catapulting some diseased corpses into the Genoese compound. The Genoese quickly get the message and escape by sea back to Europe. The rest, as they say, is history.....

The author has a few chapters where he gives an overview of what happened in Italy, Germany and France. In Germany, in an eerie precursor of things to come centuries later, the Jews are blamed for the calamity and are accused of spreading the plague by poisoning wells. Attacks on Jews, along with the epidemic, spread from town to town.

The great majority of the book deals with what happened in England. I don't know if this was Mr. Ziegler's preference or if he felt that the best documentation pertained mostly to the British Isles. He discusses how many people died in various areas of the country; what happened to wage levels and to prices; how the established Church and the various mendicant orders were affected; etc. The author presents all sides of the issues and draws, at least to me, reasonable conclusions.

With the exception of a couple of chapters midway through the book, where the repetitive statistics put me into a stupor, the book is lively and well-written. One especially good chapter deals with what it would have been like to live in a village before and after it was ravaged by the plague. This chapter helps to put the statistics into human terms, as was Mr. Ziegler's intent.

I would have liked some more material on the other countries, and this is what prevents me from giving the book 5 stars. But, still, Mr. Ziegler has done a very good job. This is a fine book.

The Black Death is a fairly academic book that seeks to give a comprehensive overview of the plague that ravaged Europe around 1348 (the book only briefly refers to other epedemics that also occurred during the rest of the 14th century). Zeigler points out in his 1997 preface (the book originally being written in 1969) that the book contains "virtually no original research." His goal was to organize, analyze, and present all the various research work, studies, and articles on the Black Death into one complete volume, since apparently there existed no such work at the time.

For the general reader (meaning somebody who, like me, is not a historian or researching to Black Death; presumably such people already know of this book and would not be interested in my review of it), the book is a bit on the dry academic side, but it is still a quite enjoyable read. Zeigler starts with the origins of the disease, and traces it through Italy, France, Spain, England, and the rest of Europe. There is a heavy emphasis on England, which gets about as much space in the book as the rest of Europe combined, apparently because there is much more surviving evidence and information about the plague from England than anywhere else. The result is that the middle of the book seems to bog down in monotonous details about number of deaths in individual towns, counties, etc. that are probably of little interest to most readers.

But there is much more to enjoy. In my case, I know little about the Middle Ages beyond what I learned in grade school; thus I greatly enjoyed the sections on things such as the state of medical knowledge, the Flagellants, the persecution of the Jews, hygeine conditions in London, and other asides that were relevant to the situation at hand.

The last 50 or so pages are also quite interesting, in which Zeigler discusses debate among historians over such issues as the total population of Europe at the time, the death toll from the plague, and the social, economic, agriculture, artistic, and religious effects of the plague, especially in the 50 years afterwards. Again, for some readers, it may seem a dry listing of numbers and facts. But it also shows exactly how historians work to piece together a complete picture of history based on the limited evidence available, and how such evidence can be interpreted in different ways. Zeigler does not put forth any new theories himself, but is willing to give cite the ideas of opposed historians in an effort to show a balanced picture and possibly draw some conclusions from them. In some cases where it is simply impossible for us to truly ever know the real answer (such as exactly what portion of the population died in the plague) Zeigler is willing to hazard some guesses, but also to admit that we really don't know.

There is one major flaw: a 30-page chapter in the book in which Zeigler invents a fictional historical village and narrates the arrival of the plague. In his preface, Zeigler says that he received a lot of criticism for this chapter from those who claimed it had no place in scholarly writing. Zeigler defends the chapter, saying that "statistics and facts alone, however striking, could noconvey the horror that afflicted Europe in the mid-fourteenth century." I agree with him on this point, and I thought the chapter was a good idea, until I actually read it. In my opinion, his fictional writing is so bland and devoid of emotion, that he failed in his attempt to give life to the horrors of the plague and their effect on the average man.

Overall though, I definitely recommend this book to anybody with an interest in European history.

This book was actually one of the sources I used for a history paper which I submitted to my grade eleven history teacher. I was amazed at how Mr. Ziegler presents his material. The book is very well written and keeps you in line with all events described. The Black Death truly was the worst natural and man-made disaster in history. Claiming approx. a third of Europe, it led to great changes in Europe itself and left a mark in the people themselves. Ziegler also describes the Black Death from country to country, and the bulk of the book is devoted to England. I have noticed that almost all historians of Medieval Europe have used Ziegler's book (first published in 1969), and I can now see why! If there is one book on the Black Death that you want to read, let it be this one!

I bought this book after reading several others on the period because a friend with a background in medieval history said this is widely considered "the book" on the black death. While it's definitely better than some of the other ones out there, it's by no means the best.

The book starts out strongly, with descriptions of what the plague is and some general observations on the state of life in Europe during the early 14th century. Ziegler does an excellent job of describing the physical symptoms and characteristics of the plague and the sources for what we do and don't know about the pandemic that would later come to be known as the black death and which struck Europe from 1348-1350 with diastrous results. He describes the effects of the plague in Italy, France and Germany, before moving on to England, the country from which we have the most surviving contemporary accounts and archeological evidence. Ziegler does a good job of describing the leading theories of the day, medical practices, hygiene, and the social effects of the black death, including the persecution of the jews and the religious movement of the flagellents.

When the book turns to England, however, it begins to fall apart. I should start out by saying that I am impressed with the amount of work Ziegler has done to try to analyze the actual number of deaths during the pandemic. As Ziegler points out, contemporary accounts wildly overstated or overestimated numbers (a common problem with medieval accounts generally), in some cases, stating numbers of deaths that exceeded the total population of the city about which the contemporary chronicler was writing. He presents evidence of known numbers that might be useful in calculating the number of dead, e.g., number of clerical benefices filled during the period, deaths recorded in the manorial rolls, etc., and various arguments that have been made for extrapolating numbers of deaths in the population at large from what is known. As he traces the plague's path through England, however, he repeats this analysis for every major city and some minor ones as well. Unless you are specifically interested in how many people died in York versus how many died in Bath, etc., the repitition becomes tiresome, and even if you are looking for the effect of plague on a particular region, not all are covered.

I have to agree with the other reviewers that the fictional chapter on two imaginary villages is a low point in the book. Ziegler, himself, must have realized how dry his account was getting and tried to impart the horror of the plague on the people who lived through it by creating these fictional places and giving us a story about what the inhabitants might have gone through. The problem is that Ziegler just doesn't write fiction very well. In any event, he didn't need to write it as fiction, he could have written supposition about the people who really lived through it, and it would have carried the same impact. He finishes up with a summary of the remainder of the 14th century and how the plague affected the economy and social structure of Europe, including its contribution to the peasant's revolt of 1381 in England, and whether the plague led to the downfall of the feudal system.

A much more moving and well-written account of the black death can be found in a chapter of Barbara Tuchman's book "The Calamitous Fourteenth Century," which contains bascially the same information as this book, including a significant number of the same first-hand quotations. You really feel the human impact of the plague after reading Tuchman. With Ziedler, however, you get a great deal of information about the black death, including a detailed analysis of the plague's origin and routes into the various countries. Just be prepared for a read that gets increasingly dryer and harder to stay with. You will, however, walk away with a lot of knowledge about the black death, so this book definitely fulfills its purpose, even it doesn't do it as elegantly or movingly as one might like.

For anyone interested in the life and politics of the 14th. Century, Philip Ziegler's book is essential reading. Its construction takes the reader from the very origins of the Great Plague and its sweep across Europe in 1348. Medical knowledge and remedies of the period are described, the ghastly flagellants and persecution of the Jews, all remedies designed to avert the inevitable. Ziegler details the arrival of the disease in the West of England and its deadly and remorseless progress throughout England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland.

His research is prodigious and local to the areas discussed and occasionally interspersed with literature from the age, some of which is extraordinarily moving. The information gleaned from his research is fairly presented; where a margin for error is possible, it is noted with the relevant explanation.

The social and economic consequences of The Great Plague are still a matter of dispute amongst historians. Ziegler tackles this thorny discussion. Firstly the roots of the Peasant's Revolt of 1381 are given an airing, then the conclusions drawn from the highly elective statistics drawn from different parts of the country from various historians. For the reader, this is vexatious, when it is clear to anyone else not engaged in "scoring points" local outcomes were the result of "horses for courses". The single common factor is scarcity of labour raising wages to an unprecedented degree and enabling a mobility of labour hitherto unavailable in a quasi-feudal society. More striking for this reader perhaps, is the fact given the circumstances, it took nearly 600 years for the demands of the Peasants' Revolt to be met in full.

As to whether the plagues of 1348 and 1361 and subsequent outbreaks 1368-9, 1371, 1375, 1390 and 1405 created a watershed in British history, is surely a superfluous question by any historian, but one apparently constantly raised. From a population believed to be between 3.7 and 4.6 million of which it's estimated up to 50%, 20-30% of those in the first two plagues died, it would be a miracle if life, political or otherwise, remained the same. Given those remaining were walking, talking human beings, they doubtless had other pressing concerns, enhanced or exacerbated by the dearth of population. Politics never die with people.

As Ziegler avers the vacuum left in education provided scope for new ideas and doctrines; written vernacular English was one eventual outcome; the legal redistribution of land was a major issue; old skills were forever lost and new ones invented.

The hierarchy of the established church did not emerge with much credit. Taking care of themselves and their possessions during the crisis did not endear them to the population at large. Post plague, being the major landowners, attempting to reimpose pre-plague wages and feudal conditions more strictly than any other freeholders probably laid the first paving slabs on the path to majority acceptance of Henry VIII's Reformation.

In England, anti-clericalism manifested itself in Wyclif and Lollardy. A crisis of faith with social repercussions, comparisons of which are drawn with the social climate after the Great War of 1914-18. There is obviously a case to be made for the fact that whilst times and circumstances change, people don't.

Philip Ziegler has written a seminal, thought provoking work and at the same time treated his fellow historians equitably and courteously. A real achievement.

For a deep look into the social aspects of the bubonic plague
of the 14th century, this book is it. This is not a medical treastise on the plague - there are enough books on the science
of the disease. I wanted to explore the social ramifications
of this disease and compare it with the Flu epidenmic of 1918,
and this book does explore how the black death affected people in the 14th century socially and economically. Good book.

This is the only book I have read on the plague, but I felt that it gave a very complete and comprehensive view. I believe that if you really wish to trace the plague with some accuracy you will need a map of Europe you can write on (I have to see every detail) because unless you are particularly good with geography you will not have a very good idea of how and where the plague traveled. I mention this because the book describes how the plague spread very well, in good detail and this is perhaps the best aspect of the entire book. Zeigler is also good about not overstating the effects of the plague, as many would be tempted to do for sheer entertainment value. I believe Zeigler really tries to present the most accurate picture possible of it. This is done particularly well later in the book where a sort of story is told, putting the reader in a medieval village because the author realizes that statistics cannot portray the real effects of the plague. Other information is throughout the book, such as long term effects of the plague on society, the three different types of plague that there were and some of the beliefs and important people of the time.

My one reservation about the book is that some parts do drag along where the plague in England is described in such detail, with statistics about town after town. If I had a very large map of England and knew where he was discussing or perhaps I needed this information for reference it would be helpful, but for just a reader like myself it was just a little too much. Fortunately this only lasts for a chapter or two. Overall its a great book and introduction to this time in history.

I have no doubt that this book was originally outlined as a historical thesis, as its general readability [outside of the final chapters] is very poor. Yes, there is factual data amongst the 288 pages, and it does manage to paint a picture of what occurred in Europe at the time, although it is seemingly repetitive. One does not really get a sense of the disastrous effects of the Black Death upon society until the final chapter, and even then the true harm is left to the reader to imagine.
If the point of this book was just to look at the historical event from a statistical/scientific point of view, then this book might have been abridged to an extended magazine article.
Interesting, but a bit too pedantic.