The Black Death

To what extent this recession was reflected in a drop in the population can only be guessed at. Famines on the scale which Europe had endured must at least have checked the hectic growth of the previous two centuries. The retreat from marginal lands which had already set in by 1320 or 1330 in Haute Provence, the Massif Central, Germany west of the Vistula and certain areas of England suggests that in these areas at least a decline must have begun long before the impact of the Black Death.^{56} But there is little or no evidence of serious depopulation and no reason to doubt that the hungry mouths in almost every major population centre of Europe must still have been far too numerous for the exiguous supply of food. This disproportion was aggravated by the turmoil to which wars and civil disorders reduced great areas of France, Spain and Italy. The direct cost in human lives may not have been enormous but the destruction of crops and houses and the disruption of the life of the countryside seriously reduced production at a time when a larger food supply was as necessary as ever.

At the middle of the fourteenth century, therefore, chronic over-population was rendering intolerable the existence of many, if not a majority of Europeans. It is tempting to take a step further and see the Black Death as nature’s answer to the problem of over-population, a Malthusian check to the over-exuberance of the preceding centuries. Reviewing a book by Georges Duby,^{57} Professor Postan remarked that he had ‘been especially gratified to read the passages in the book wherein the depression of the fourteenth century is represented as the consequence, perhaps even the nemesis, of the inordinate expansion of the preceding epoch’.^{58} Viewed in this light, the Black Death is the nemesis that met a population which bred too fast for too long without first providing itself with the resources needed for such extravagance. Slicher Van Bath attributed the high death rate of the Black Death largely to the prolonged malnutrition which was the consequence of over-rapid growth.^{59} If there had been no plague, the argument goes, then the population would, in the course of nature, have had to be reduced by other means.

But this line of reasoning should not be pushed too far. For one thing it is by no means universally accepted that medieval agriculture was incapable of supporting the population of the period. Certain authorities, indeed, claim that it could have fed many more without undue strain.^{60} If there was no need in nature for the population to be reduced, then the Malthusian argument obviously falls to the ground. And even if it were accepted that Europe’s population had outgrown its food supply by the middle of the fourteenth century it is still difficult to explain why the population should have continued to fall for a further fifty years or more. The check had worked, the hungry mouths were in the grave, even the most fanatic Malthusian would hardly have pleaded that the process should be continued.

Elizabeth Carpentier has summed up the controversy with her accustomed lucidity. ‘Was the Black Death,’ she asks, ‘an evil made necessary by inescapable evolution? Or was it a tragic accident at variance with the normal advance of events?’^{61} But to define a question satisfactorily is not necessarily to arrive at any answer; indeed, in medieval history, it sometimes seems that the more precisely a question is defined, the more certain it is that no answer will be forthcoming. Certainly in this case no clear-cut solution has been, or ever will be attained. All that can be said with confidence is that, in many parts of Europe, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the population had grown with unusual speed; that this growth was a factor of importance, though by no means the only factor, which led to general malnutrition; that malnutrition was a contributory reason for the high death rate of the plague years; and that, as a result of the plague, the population was reduced to more easily manageable proportions. This humble conclusion leaves open many impassioning problems of what was cause and what effect; what blind chance and what the inexorable march of nature. It should be of comfort to future generations of historians to know that such problems exist and sobering for us to reflect that, even though we may triumphantly close the dossier with a decisive answer, our sons and grandsons will quickly have it open once again.

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