The Black Death 1346-1353: The Complete History

Benedictow’s findings show that the Black Death moved mostly along sea routes of trade and highly traversed overland routes used by merchants and pilgrims. The grain trade was instrumental in spreading the disease because rat fleas could survive in the grain. The size of settlements impacted the time between the plague’s undetected arrival and the time when chronicle writers, who belonged to the elite social classes, recognized the outbreak. In towns and villages that time amounted to approximately 5.5 to 6 weeks, while in cities—which had populations between 10,000 and 100,000 people—it was about 7 weeks but could be even longer in Europe’s most populous urban centers. Plague struck the poor first, and elite writers did not generally observe the plague’s appearance until it impacted them.

The plague spread from western Eurasia through Kaffa and then toward the Mediterranean world. It traveled southward via “land and along riverine commercial routes” (60). Additionally, it moved over land from one coastal urban center to another through Asia Minor and into the Middle East. By the summer of 1347, it invaded two important and bustling ports along the coast of Asia Minor: Constantinople, where it arrived with Italians who were fleeing Kaffa, and Trebizond, where it came with “plague refugees” from the Black Sea region or Constantinople.