School of Critical Studies

Thursday, 20 May 2021, 14:00-15:00
Samuel Cohn
University of Glasgow

Abstract

My talk will begin with new findings from a large ERC grant at the Bocconi University, Milan, led by the demographic/economic historian Guido Alfani. His project found that the longest period when the gap between rich and poor narrowed followed the Black Death of 1348 and endured until around 1475 and longer in some places. However, Alfani and his many collaborators in Holland, Spain, England, France, and the Middle East have spent few words on this Black Death century. Instead, they have concentrated on the monotonic rise in economic inequality that raced across Europe and the Middle East until the eve of the Frist World War, regardless of economic growth or stagnation, levels of urbanization, or types of political regime. Yet these historians and social scientists have rarely peered beyond economic factors.

My work, instead, is analysing consequences beyond economics and is finding paradoxical developments in the political and cultural spheres. First, just as economic inequality was declining after the Black Death with labourers (skilled and unskilled) prospering, artisans and petty shopkeepers were losing their guild privileges and powers within representative assemblies, such as Florence’s Councils of the Comune and the Popolo.

The major part of my talk, however, will concentrate on another post-Black-Death paradox. Just when the gap between rich and poor was narrowing and with real wages reaching previously unknown heights, artisans and shopkeepers were losing their prerogatives to commission works of art in parish churches, monastic houses, and hospitals to commemorate themselves before God and neighbours. From my samples in Tuscany and Umbria, they had disappeared as patrons even in rural parishes by the third decade of the fifteenth century. The talk will explore these paradoxes and will present hypotheses. 

The Post Black Death Century

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First published: 20 May 2023