The evolution of population and settlement in the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages has similarities and differences with the rest of Western Europe. The differences arise from the process of territorial expansion and feudal colonization developed by the Christian kingdoms against Al-Andalus. That also determined diverse situations among the Christian kingdoms and regional contrasts within them. This chapter explores the evolution of population between approximately 1000 and 1500. The introduction offers a preliminary reflection on the sources and their possibilities and limits. In the second section, the patterns of population change and migration are discussed. Despite some methodological issues, some population figures and their evolution are offered for each area. This shows an evolution in which the late medieval crisis and, above all, the Black Death had a great impact, although uneven in the different kingdoms and territories. The study of rural and urban settlements is addressed in the third section, relating its characteristics and evolution to the social and economic structure in the different areas. Finally, the fourth section studies the population weight and the characteristics of the following urban socio-professional sectors: workers, artisans and merchants.

The second part of Volume Two starts with passages relating to the Black Death which ravaged the population in 1349. Knighton’s Chronicle records a series of facts about the impact of the plague. The Ordinance of Labourers, recorded in a Close Roll of 1349, states the new regulations governing the employment of rural and urban workers. These were aimed at curbing the increased power of workers now that many had died in the plague. The situation is seen from the perspective of the upper classes who needed servants but who did not wish to pay the higher wages demanded.

The Black Death of the fourteenth century reduced Europe’s population by about two-thirds between 1348 and 1420. Since endowments of land and capital remained unchanged, standard economic theory predicts rising real wages, falling rents of land and capital, and hence a drastic reduction of economic inequality. All of this occurred in most of western Europe. Elites eventually yielded, serfdom ended, landowners shifted from labor- to land-intensive production (grazing displaced planting), and labor-saving inventions abounded. In Europe east of the Elbe, by contrast, a formerly free peasantry was reduced to serfdom and landowners specialized increasingly in grain production, much of it for export. A plausible reason for the divergent responses is soil and climate: western Europe was mostly suitable for sedentary animal husbandry, eastern Europe was not; and the two were separated by a sharp dividing line that lay only slightly west of the Elbe. Data on Prussian landholdings suggest a strong correlation between low suitability for animal husbandry and the prevalence of serf-cultivated estates. Western elites could engage in factor substitution; eastern ones could not.

Mongol rule in Rus′ was profound, especially in the administration of taxes and tribute, which were adapted to the traditions of Rus′ian princely governance. The thirteenth century was a “dark age” when Rus′ was subjected to severe Mongol attacks and tribute was imposed under the supervision of basqaqs. The Rus′ian church, however, was exempted from paying tribute. Through the bestowal of a yarligh, the Mongols designated the rulers of Rus′ian principalities, including the grand prince of Vladimir, titular head of the Rus′. The fourteenth century saw the rise of Moscow, as its princes gradually monopolized the collection of the tribute. By the first quarter of the fifteenth century, Mongol rule had weakened as the effects of plague, civil wars within the Golden Horde, Tamerlane’s attacks, and the fracturing of the Golden Horde into separate khanates took their toll. By 1480 and the Battle of the Ugra River, Mongol rule was effectively over.

This chapter investigates the connection between officeholding and serfdom in light of new interpretations which have suggested that serfdom, rather than being a significant liability that the unfree fought hard to remove, was instead characterised by routine obligations and disappeared quickly after the Black Death. Through comparing lists of officers with records of landholding and personal status, it finds that both free and customary landholders served in office. It also demonstrates that serving in office was rarely resisted as an obligation and that while officials did help enforce some aspects of serfdom, they were no longer doing this by the mid-sixteenth century, and even before this only enforced limited aspects of personal unfreedom which likely did not disadvantage tenants in a meaningful way. These findings highlight that the division between unfree and free landholding was breaking down in the late Middle Ages, but also, more significantly, show that officials were not put-upon unfree servants. Communities of tenants were not forced to serve in office but recognised the utility of manorial structures for meeting their own objectives.

This chapter completes our examination of the long Plantagenet period, which culminated in the bloody War of the Roses. However, as the chapter title makes plain, the focus is on the impact that the deadly plague of this period had upon law and order. The chapter explores the different interpretations made of the importance of the Black Death and surveys developments of this period such as the origins of what we would today call employment law, significant increases in the effectiveness of the administration of justice chiefly through increased powers for justices of the peace and important developments in both law of obligations (exploring how actions on the case developed from the writ of trespass and how it further developed into the action on the case for assumpsit) and the criminal law (focusing on treason and murder).

Chapter 6 begins in the same geographical area as chapter 5, examining the changes in music and especially in musical notation in the fourteenth century that are termed the Ars Nova. The careers of the musicians Philippe de Vitry and Guillaume de Machaut - both encompassing roles in royal or noble administration, and ecclesiastical positions - contrast markedly with the lives of the thirteenth-century trouvères. New approaches to musical notation both responded to and facilitated greater rhythmic complexity in both Latin polyphony and vernacular song, and these elements were elaborated even further at the end of the century by composers of the Ars Subtilior. The technique of isorhythm offered a way for polyphonic pieces to be structured along primarily musical lines, and composers made the most of the opportunities it provided to create subtle and sophisticated forms. Against a backdrop of climate emergency and a great pandemic (the Black Death), political and religious upheaval in the form of the Hundred Years’ War and the Avignon papacy, musicians used satire and allegory to shine a critical light on their society and its leaders.

The most widespread evidence for parasite infection in medieval Europe is for species spread by poor sanitation, such as whipworm, roundworm, and the protozoa Entamoeba histolytica and Giardia duodenalis, likely related to the common use of human faeces as a crop fertilizer. The prevalence of infection by intestinal helminths has been shown to be at least a quarter to a third of the medieval population, with a broad north–south divide in the dominant types of parasite. While species spread by poor sanitation were present throughout the continent, in northern Europe where eating raw, smoked, dried, or pickled fish was common, fish tapeworm resulted. The use of dogs by farmers put them at risk of infection by Echinococcus granulosus as shown by calcified hydatid cysts. Human fleas and body lice helped spread the Black Death pandemic from the fourteenth century onwards. Medical practitioners thought intestinal worms were formed due to an excess of phlegm (one of the four bodily humours), while ectoparasites were formed due to putrefying humours, sweat, and grime. Delousing combs were widely used to remove head lice, while the wealthy in Italy applied mercury ointments to their hair.

Chapter 5 examines Boccaccio’s authorial defenses in the Decameron in the light of medieval medical and literary prescriptions for lovesickness, such as those in Ovid’s Ars Amatoria and Remedia Amoris, and Andreas Capellanus’ De amore (which Boccaccio has been credited with translating). Like these didactic works, the Decameron can also be seen as teaching both how to recover from an unhappy love affair and how to procure a new liaison, thus aggravating the very ills that it is said to cure. Indeed, the book is presented metaphorically as fighting fire with fire, redressing unrequited desire by offering female readers the solace of a personal relationship with its author. But Boccaccio also recognizes that it useless to try to prevent sexual desire, and the cure may do more harm than good. The chapter’s second half examines stories that seem to draw on the dialogues between lovers of different social statuses in De amore. The attempted seductions are all unsuccessful in Andreas’ hypothetical encounters, but the corresponding novelle tend to end happily and to model healthier, more productive human relationships.

Research has proliferated on several topics that have invited new methodological approaches: the rural setting, gendered relations between men and women, communal status of minorities (Christians and Jews), and religious diversity among Muslims, in particular among those who identified as Sufi mystics. New sources and revisionist interpretations of them continue to transform the field of Mamluk Studies. Yet in many instances, findings on these subjects are confined to discoveries of information on discrete conditions or isolated events that do not lend themselves to comprehensive analysis. They often depend on a single source or fragmentary data set, and require imaginative speculation to formulate hypotheses that apply to questions about their broader contexts in society. The chapter will outline the state of research on these subjects and their potential to open new lines of inquiry by highlighting examples that have influenced revisionist interpretations.

This chapter provides a historic survey of pandemic responses over the last 650 years from when the plague first became endemic in Europe after 1347. It will show how the role of the state – initially Italian city-states and then the British and other nation-states – changed radically in response. Superseding the appeal to divine intervention for help, governments became involved in protecting and controlling their citizens at the most minute level. Across Europe and elsewhere the full range of tools of pandemic control from surveillance, tracking, quarantine, border patrols and economic support for those unable to work have in fact existed for hundreds of years.

It will argue that it is commerce, trade and war that historically have enabled pandemics to spread – they are not random events, but substantially man-made occurrences. By 2020, we had, in our quest for ever-expanding global markets and trade, created the perfect breeding ground for a new pandemic disease to emerge as we increasingly disturbed the habitats of other species. And we had also provided it with the perfect conditions to spread with our increasingly connected world. COVID-19 was always a matter of ‘when’ not ‘if’.

The Black Death first reduced England’s population by nearly one half then prevented demographic recovery. Volatility characterised the 1350s and 1360s, due to extreme weather conditions, poor harvests, contracting output, disrupted markets, labour shortages and a high turnover of people. Towns struggled to assimilate the influx of migrants. The availability of land on favourable terms, and of well-paid employment, greatly benefited the lower orders of society, but caused consternation to the ruling elite.The government responded with a wave of legislation to regulate labour mobility, prices and wages, so as to impose upon workers the discipline of manual labour deemed essential to the common profit. By the 1380s equilibrium had replaced the volatility. The economy had contracted, and shifted from arable production to pastoral and manufactured products. Towns were smaller, but their residents tended to be wealthier. The attitude of the authorities to labour had become more realistic and less idealistic, emphasising its noble qualities rather than denouncing its vices.

What is ‘heresy’? One answer would be, ‘that which orthodoxy condemns as such’; though we may also wish to consider when conscious dissent invites such a condemnation. The main ‘heresy’ in late medieval England was that usually termed Lollardy, understood to be inspired by the radical theological thought of John Wyclif (1328-1384), which among other things emphasised the overwhelmingly importance of Scripture, and of lay access to Scripture, through vernacular translation. Orthodox repression of heresy began in the late fourteenth century and developed in various ways in the fifteenth. There are small traces of these much wider battles in Chaucer’s oeuvre, but it would be very hard to say quite how he saw them. We might instead see the fluidity of attitude toward aspects of religion in Chaucer as a sign of his times. ‘Dissent’ can encompass more than that which is solidly decried as heresy, and ‘orthodoxy’ can turn out to be more than one mode of religious thought and expression.