From One Mortality Regime to Another? Mortality Crises in Late Medieval Haarlem, Holland, in Perspective

This article employs a large database of 10,360 deaths taken from registrations of graves dug and church bells tolled at Haarlem between the years 1412 and 1547—one of the largest samples and longest series of mortality evidence ever produced for medieval Holland—and systematically compares findings with a seventeenth-century burial register for the same city. It concludes that we should put aside any lingering notion that late medieval Holland was very lightly affected by epidemic diseases: in fact, in Haarlem, these mortality crises were more severe than those seen in the seventeenth century... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Curtis, Daniel
Dokumenttyp: Artikel
Erscheinungsdatum: 2021
Reihe/Periodikum: Curtis , D 2021 , ' From One Mortality Regime to Another? Mortality Crises in Late Medieval Haarlem, Holland, in Perspective ' , Speculum , vol. 96 , no. 1 , pp. 127-155 . https://doi.org/10.1086/711641
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-26727155
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
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Link(s) : https://pure.eur.nl/en/publications/349383ca-329f-4152-97cd-5181c65e3ac7

This article employs a large database of 10,360 deaths taken from registrations of graves dug and church bells tolled at Haarlem between the years 1412 and 1547—one of the largest samples and longest series of mortality evidence ever produced for medieval Holland—and systematically compares findings with a seventeenth-century burial register for the same city. It concludes that we should put aside any lingering notion that late medieval Holland was very lightly affected by epidemic diseases: in fact, in Haarlem, these mortality crises were more severe than those seen in the seventeenth century. The data also reveal not one overarching “medieval mortality regime” but distinct changes between fewer but more severe spikes in the first half of the fifteenth century, and higher frequency of smaller spikes later on—especially in the period 1480–1530—with the number of mortality crises damping down after 1530. These mortality crises tended to produce more adult female victims than male, supporting recent findings from elsewhere in the late medieval Low Countries.