Presented by Dr. Bruce Janacek, Professor of History, North Central College; Executive Director, Sixteenth Century Society & Conference

While the figures are elusive, the mortality rate for CoVID-19 is being estimated at its worst at 4%. That's an extraordinarily high number in the early twenty-first century. The mortality rate of what nineteenth-century historians coined, "the Black Death," the plague or pestilence that coursed through Western civilization from 1348 to 1352, is estimated to be 40-45%. While to some extent the plague touched all levels of society, wealthier peoples could afford to flee infected areas. Trade and the economy came to a standstill. Civil order collapsed when "Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die!" was literally the way some saw their lot. Bodies were buried in common graves without receiving last rites or a funeral blessing. Worship practices were disrupted or even abandoned. Accused of poisoning the wells of Christians, pogroms were instituted that led to the annihilation of numerous Jewish communities in various regions of the Holy Roman Empire. Understanding the causes and effects of the Black Death, a turning point in Western civilization, will help us to understand our own experience with the coronavirus more fully.