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When the gap between the ideal and the real in a society becomes too wide, the system breaks down. The validity of this thesis can be shown through the political, economic, social, and intellectual forces which were present at the time of the late 14th and early 15th century. These forces included those such as the powerful Church, the Black Death, and the maltreatment of the peasant class. Economic difficulties were fully manifested by the start of the fourteenth century. Countries of northern Europe experiecned a considerable price inflation. The cost of grain, livestock, and dairy products rose sharply. “The Little Ice Age,” a period of sever weather, also made the situation more frightful, bringing torrential rains, and ruining crops everywhere. Poor harvests led to scarcity and starvation. Almost all of Europe suffered from terrible famines. At the time, the international character of trade meant that a disaster in one country could have serious implications elsewhere. This caused a widespread famine spaning all across Europe. These terrible famines lead to the malnourishment of the populations, which in turn created a ripe environment for the black death. Lack of personal hygiene lead to temporary ailments such as diarrhea and the common cold, which further weakened the body’s resistance to disease. The black death was transmitted both bubonically, and pneumonically. The primitive level of sanitation at the time provided ideal conditions for the spread of disease. The symptoms of the black death were obvious, beginning with a growth the size of an apple in various places of the body. If the buba, or the growth, had gone untreated, black spots appeared all across the body caused by bleeding beneath the skin. Lastly, when the victim began to cough violently and spit blood, this indicated that death was near. Described Georges Chastellain in a poem: “There is not a limb nor a form which doesnot smell of putrefaction...The face is discolored and pale, and the eyes veiled in the head, speech fails him, for the tongue cleaves to the palate, the pulse trembles and he pants.” The black death took the lives of millions in the years of the latter 14th century, as evident in the Estimated European Population from The Agrarian History of Western Europe.
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