How did the Bubonic Plague make the Italian Renaissance possible?

The Black Death (1347-1350) was a pandemic that devastated the populations of Europe and Asia. The plague was an unprecedented human tragedy in Italy. It not only shook Italian society but transformed it. The Black Death marked an end of an era in Italy, its impact was profound, and it resulted in wide-ranging social, economic, cultural and religious changes. These changes, directly and indirectly, led to the emergence of the Renaissance, one of the greatest epochs for art, architecture, and literature in human history.

The Impact of the Plague of Italy

To Black Death spread to Italy from modern-day Russia. Genoese merchants spread the plague while fleeing a Mongol attack on their trading post in Crimea. The plague was carried and spread by the fleas that lived on the Black Rat and brought to Italy on the Genoese ships. The population of Italy was ill prepared for the spread of the disease. There had been a series of famine and food shortages in the region, and the population was weak and vulnerable to disease, and furthermore, the population did not have any natural resistance to the disease. Italy was the most urbanized society in Europe, Milan, Rome, Florence, and other Italian centers among the largest on the continent.

Social Mobility

The plague disrupted society to an unprecedented state. It overturned the existing social structure. Previous, to the outbreak of the plague, Italy was a rigid and stratified society. The Black Death changed everything. Increasingly, because of the demographic disaster caused by the plague were able to take advantage of the opportunities caused by the high death rate. In the period after the Black Death, an unprecedented amount of social mobility took place. Laborers became merchants and merchants become members of the nobility. No longer was a person's destiny to be fixed by their birth.

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However, as social mobility became more widespread because of the Black Death, many people, came to believe that a person's merits or abilities were what mattered and not one's birth. This led to a growing individualism in Italian society. This, in turn, encouraged people to strive and to develop their talents and achieve excellence or virtue. The belief in the individual was central to the Renaissance and it inspired many of the greatest artists, architects, sculptures and writers, the world have ever seen to create peerless works.

Michelangelo's sculpture of David in Florence

○ Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch - The Garden of Earthly Delights

'Sapere aude'