Severity and Selectivity of the Black Death and Recurring Plague in the Southern Netherlands (1349-1450)

The Black Death is the textbook villain when it comes to the study of historical diseases and to the general public it remains a thought-provoking subject. To illustrate, in 2016 almost three million viewers accessed the English Wikipedia’s Black Death page, compared to present-day Ebola which only had around one million. Despite the wide drawing power of the Black Death, some of its most basic characteristics are still debated in academic circles. The focus of this paper will be on the severity of the Black Death and recurring plague outbreaks in the Southern Netherlands. More specifically it... Mehr ...