Some issues require scholars in both the humanities and sciences to fully understand. As a new journal sponsored by the Program in Medieval Studies reveals, the Black Death is one of those topics.
“Pandemic Disease in the Medieval World: Rethinking the Black Death” is the subject of a new journal, The Medieval Globe, created in hopes of fostering collaborative, interdisciplinary research into the period of history from about 500 to 1500 AD. Executive Editor Carol Symes, a professor of history and medieval studies at Illinois, says there could not be a better illustration of this endeavor than the journal’s examination of the bubonic plague.
The inaugural issue brings together scholars in the humanities and those in the sciences to consider the significance of recent discoveries regarding the plague and their relevance to today’s concerns about emerging infectious diseases.
The bubonic plague was one of the most devastating events in human history. It spread from Asia throughout the Mediterranean, North Africa, and Europe in the 14th century, within a decade killing between 40 to 60 percent of the people living in those areas.
The journal examines scientific breakthroughs of the past few years, including the 2011 sequencing of the plague pathogen genome entirely from historical remains, and the theory that a “big bang” of the organism that caused the Black Death pandemic occurred between the 12th and 14th centuries in an area that’s now part of China.
Articles consider how the infection might have spread, why it persisted, and why some populations seemed to have immunity while other regions were wiped out. It also includes an article detailing the excavation of a Jewish cemetery in Catalonia, which provided archaeological evidence of an uprising against Jews, who were being blamed for the outbreak of disease.
“This kind of research can only be done when humanists and scientists can talk to one another,” Symes says, adding the journal issue calls for more cooperation between those two groups of scholars to further the discussion on infectious diseases and how they can spread so quickly and remain active for so long.
Monica Green, a professor of history at Arizona State University, an expert in medieval medicine and health, and editor of the inaugural issue of The Medieval Globe, says the global significance of the plague was much greater than she had realized and reached far beyond Europe. Geneticists have compared the strain of the pathogen that caused the Black Death to those strains of plague still alive in the world today.
“The one that is closest genetically is in sub-Saharan Africa. The only way to explain that is this strain got to Africa at around the same time the Black Death got to Europe,” Green says. “Really, almost all of the Old World might be involved in the story we’re telling.”
Green says the lessons of Black Death are applicable today, in what we’ve seen in reactions to outbreaks such as Ebola and AIDS. The Black Death can teach us about looking for a cause without placing blame, and looking at the connections that inflame the spread of the disease.
Symes adds that the journal represents a new way of looking at medieval studies. Rather than focusing solely on Europe and its neighbors, it takes a global view of the Middle Ages and looks at connections to other parts of the world, including sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas.
In the future, The Medieval Globe editors plan similar issues devoted to topics such as medieval law, art, and other issues, possibly pilgrimage, race, maritime cultures and ports-of-call, piracy and crime, markets and consumerism, slavery, and entertainment.
The biannual journal can be found online.
