The Bubonic Plague can be known as different things it is often referred to as the Black Death. Furthermore, this name is caused by the infestations of rats upon Middle Aged Europe. These rats carried disease ridden fleas that preyed on humans as their next host, the symptoms of this deadly epidemic was exceptionally lethal in killing magnitudes of people in just one day. The symptoms were gruesome, a person developed high fevers, chills, diarrhea, and vomiting, but most of the time the persons ends up dying a painful death. Eventually, in a course of 3-7 days, the tissues began to bleed and appeared black on the skin, hence giving it the name “The Black Death”. The Bubonic plague or “Black Death” originated in China and spread throughout Europe killing hundreds of thousands of people in its wake. It was one of the most devastating diseases in human history. The plague killed more than a 1/3’s of Europe’s population before it disappeared in the 14th century. The Catholic Church was also greatly affected as many looked for the church to help and to heal those stricken with the disease. Also, there was widespread persecution of Jews and foreign minorities, as they were blamed …show more content…
Out of this affliction comes the slaughter on an entire religion, race, and the decline of sympathy in people. The Christians involved in these attacks, “rather than struggling for concrete goals or redressing specific political, economic or social grievances, [instead] targeted forces outside political and economic hierarchies to resolve anxieties, fears and anger.” The outsiders in European society, such as the Arabs, lepers, beggars, and Jews, were easy targets for Christians looking for a group to blame. European Christian’s main objective was to cleanse their social structure in order to save hierarchy from the effects of the plague. Often Jews were the focal point of hatred among European Christian’s due to their status as moneylenders but the hatred was there ever since start of the Middle Ages, the plague just exploited many immoral actions against them. The increased animosity targeted against the Jews sometimes made attacks even more violent. In Strasbourg on February 14, 1349, before the plague had reached the city, two thousand Jews stripped of their clothing and killed. Their attackers removed their clothes before their murder in an attempt to find any gold they were hiding.158 Events such as this expose the disdain and hatred for the Jewish