The Black Death (1347-51) devastated European society. Writing four decades after the event, the English monk and chronicler, Thomas Walsingham, remarked that “so much wretchedness followed these ills that afterwards the world could never return to its former state.” This medieval commentary reflects a lived reality: a world turned upside down by mass fear, contagion and death.
Yet society recovered. Life continued despite the uncertainty. But it was not “business-as-usual” in the aftermath — the threat of plague remained.
The post-Black Death world had “not been made any better by its renewal.” The French monk, Guillaume de Nangis, lamented that men were more “miserly and grasping,” “greedy and quarrelsome” and involved in more “brawls,