Francis Aidan Gasquet

The Black Death of 1348 and 1349 Francis Aidan Gasquet

This interesting monograph is practically a reprint of the author's Great Pestilence of 1348-1349, published in 1893. The title has been popularized; for the term Black Death", as applied to the pestilence in England, is no older than the nineteenth century; Since the publication of the original work, the cause of the transmission of bubonic plagues has been discovered, through observations in the plague-stricken districts of India, to be the rat-flea. In his preface to the second edition, the author accepts this discovery for the plague of 1348-1349. Dr. Gasquet has estimated the Black Death at its true value. Hitherto, historians have regarded this terrible epidemic as an isolated incident of Edward III's long and eventful reign, of less interest and far less importance than the French wars. Dr. Gasquet, on the other hand, treats it as the most important event of the Middle Ages, and a prime factor in the making of modern England. It was, as he remarks in his introduction, "a turning point in the national life. It formed the real close of the Mediaeval period and the beginning of our Modern Age."