The Black Death undoubtedly represented one of the most devastating plagues hit Europe from 1347 to 1350. Although the Yersinia pestis was identified as the pathogen responsible of causing deaths to more than 25 million people worldwide, hypothesis about the real carriers are not homogenous. Specialists suggest that the plague started in China and rapidly was disseminated to the rest of the globe by means of rat-fleas, but this is unconfirmed. Significant changes suffered Europe by the action of Black Death such as drastic reduction of population, political persecution and culturally decline of trust in Church and doctors. Too much has been written about this disease but a couple of years ago, Samuel Cohn wrote this seminal book respecting to the role of Black Death in the early Renaissance Europe. Far away of considering there is a connection between this disease and bubonic plague, Cohn convincingly argues that the discrepancies of symptoms in victims as well as the lack of specific seasonality, the rat-fleas were not the reasons for Black Death in 1347-1352. Interesting findings and conclusion may be done if one pay attention to Cohn's argument. At some extent, he examines in depth hundred of testimonies, chronicles and plague tracts. The nine chapters that forms this valuable book not only gives an all-encompassed framework to understand why clinical discourse equaled Black Death to other types similar-minded plagues, but also the influence of this disease in modern Europe. Carefully, the first chapters present the primary differences in the signs, speed of contagion and symptoms surfaced in 1347 and successive plagues. Black Death whipped more specific professions, most of them in contact with dead, such as doctors, priests, grave-diggers, and soldiers. This speaks of a rapid type of contagion contact by contact that has nothing to do with rat-fleas migration. By the way, Cohn widely showed how this terrible plague appeared not only in winter but also in summer with the same degree of mortality. Last but not least, archive across Europe, deeply examined by Cohn, suggest other alternatives aimed to assume many children and women died suddenly after the black-death outbreak. This resulted in a serious shock for Catholic Church and peasants, which even centuries later led to scientist and doctors to erroneous conclusions. Since the condition of life in Europe from early to late Medieval Times persisted, this was not strange how the environmental factors of these plagues were alike. This seems to create a fallacy that Science recently discovered. What ever the case may be, this impressive work, authored by Cohn, realizes that the culture and psychology of Europeans changed forever post the great pestilence. Certainly, disease and culture are inextricably intertwined. The medieval science had no remedies to cure this kind of disease. Medicine and politics faced a serious criticism in diverse points of Europe. The future of progeny and children were some of the aspects that concerned science and medicine. If the disaster caused by black deaths caused serious panic in population, doctors envisaged that four reasons were behind, the configuration of planets, monstrous events in East, earthquakes around the world and of course God. These reports based on so-called objective impressions paved the ways for the advent of a religious explanation of the plague. Quakes and other natural disasters were the token of the great pestilence. Respecting to this, Cohn adds, what science fails to see is precisely the “etiology” of plague but from that moment onwards Europe conceived the needs to use secular techniques to predict and prevent a similar event. The Renaissance as a forcefully movement that changed the teo-centric view of the world resulted from the aftermaths of black-pestilence. With the passing of decades, doctors developed most innovative methods to understand plague and disease, avoiding (even if the faith was enrooted in the social imaginary) in ill-based conclusions. The style of life in cities, crowding, war, famine, corruption of food, trade and other new factors set the pace to super-natural assumptions as the primary reasons of plagues. The Great pestilence not only modified substantially the demographic conditions of Europe but also the world of ideas. The authority of church is being replaced by a gradual secularized view of politics based on more refined methodologies of medicine that engender the needs of discovering. The belief that something should be done along plague, paved the pathways for the advent of “observation” as a new technique of scientific investigation towards the current microbiology. Whether today scientists know Y. pestis was the pathogen responsible of Black Death, it is unfortunately, Cohn acknowledges, modern historians did not bother in studying the connection between secularization and the great pestilence.
Although Cohn overtly does not accept this explanation, this was exactly the thesis we held in other previous essays respecting to the connection of evilness and progeny death, even a manifestation of God's rage because of humankind sins. Following this argument, the surface of witchcrafts, inquisition and Black Death was not duly studied by specialized literature. Basically, there is ample evidence that reveals the connection of children deaths and witchcrafts, well-documented by Karlsen (1987) in New England, the USA. Although the work of inquisition stated many years before Black Death (twelfth century) to fight heretics, a parallel runs with the great pestilence and the process of resiliency throughout Europe. Some explanations singled out the fact that children's death caused by disease was an act of demon. If the witches were accused to have direct or carnal contact with devil, the accusations were effective once a child died or fell deadly in sickness. The Medieval Witchcraft evidenced an alternative explanation for the economical incongruence of society. Witches were rich or pour women unable to leave inheritance. In a patriarchal order, based on the monopoly of male's authority, rich women, infertile or without sons, represented a serious glitch for the system. One might speculate that if a rich woman, after all, was a serious challenge for patriarchy, a rich woman without sons was a real threat. The witchcraft, as institution, not only solved the problem but allowed the circulation of properties. What is important to discuss here, beyond this argument, is the historical connection, recently discovered by Korstanje, between evilness and children's death in earlier studies. After analyzing several texts and myths, Korstanje (2011) says one of the aspects that traumatizes societies, is the extermination of progeny. This happens because the circulation of goods that founded the economic circuits of labor is temporarily broken. The involved society will no survive if the future workers are not in condition to occupy their role in the productive chain. In this vein, the fertility and ability to give birth sane workers is an important cultural value imposed on woman's mind. Precisely, the evilness, demon or devil exhibits the prerogative of death, in those who are not prepared to die. By exerting violence on the agents that cause the problem, in this vein the witches, the society recovers the order and gains further stability. The demographic problems that Black Death left, this is a point ignored by Cohn, prompted the advent of inquisition in daily life of Europe. Underpinned in the preposition that the carriers of Y. pestis are unknown to date, the sense of evilness gave a response to what today remains a mystery. Our thesis is that the modern construction of Lucifer and Devil, in medieval times, was a secondary effect of this disease. As the modern secularized science now devoted considerable efforts not only to expand the life of progeny and people in general, the influence of demon declined only to the extent of conforming a simple cultural entertainment.
