So were finally coming down on the last few weeks of the semester and this course; I know it feels like I am repeating myself when I say that I have thrown a lot of information at you, but the truth is that I have. So this final week I am going to take this week's blog and just rehash all the evidence I have presented and answer any questions if you have any.
The first week of this blog I gave a historical background of the Black Death and discussed how it spread, why it spread, and the societal changes that the spread caused. One of the most important things to remember from the first week was that the plague caused much social unrest. The Feudal System depended upon class constructs; death affected not only the poor but the rich as well thus hastening the decline of the system.
The second week of the blog I focused on art before the Black Death. I felt that it's important and necessary to look at illustrated manuscripts before the Black Death to be able to compare it to manuscripts after that Black Death in order to see if a change in society was represented in these manuscripts. For this week, the idea that I wanted my readers to focus on and take away from my blog was that virtually of art before the peak of the Black Death was painted in this style. According to Medrano-Cabral the "Medieval artist strove for realism; churches and monasteries were covered in inscriptions, paintings and sculptures that portrayed biblical scenes or saints." Death in this time was not to be feared but rather revered as the natural passage between ones time on earth and their future in the afterlife. When the plague began to spread across Europe, that attitude quickly changed.
The second week of the blog I focused on art before the Black Death. I felt that it's important and necessary to look at illustrated manuscripts before the Black Death to be able to compare it to manuscripts after that Black Death in order to see if a change in society was represented in these manuscripts. For this week, the idea that I wanted my readers to focus on and take away from my blog was that virtually of art before the peak of the Black Death was painted in this style. According to Medrano-Cabral the "Medieval artist strove for realism; churches and monasteries were covered in inscriptions, paintings and sculptures that portrayed biblical scenes or saints." Death in this time was not to be feared but rather revered as the natural passage between ones time on earth and their future in the afterlife. When the plague began to spread across Europe, that attitude quickly changed.
From this point on in the blog I start to look at the changes in the manuscripts and try to relate these changes with the changes in society. A few of the most important ideas to remember from these weeks include the change in the manuscript itself. Before the Black Death really took hold in Europe, illustrated manuscripts lacked the harsher reality. One of the examples I left for these week's was Duccio's Crucifixion.
"Marked by crowded, paranoid compositions, ugly, menacing faces, bright colors and increased violence, Black Death art is unbalanced and uneasy. In Duccio’s Crucifixion, we can see the fierce conspiratorial expressions in the crowd as they point up to Christ, whose side is spurting blood. Mary falls against a group of women, including Mary Magdalene, ready to faint."
I took one week and went away from the manuscripts themselves and offered statistical evidence of the Black Death to see if it compares with the changes in the manuscript. "Analyses were done using a sample of 337 individuals excavated from the East Smithfield cemetery in London, which contains only individuals who died during the Black Death in London in 1349–1350. The age patterns from East Smithfield were compared to a sample of 207 individuals who died from non-epidemic causes of mortality. Ages were estimated using the method of transition analysis, and age-specific mortality was evaluated using a hazards model. The results indicate that the risk of mortality during the Black Death increased with adult age, and therefore that age had an effect on risk of death during the epidemic. The age patterns in the Black Death cemetery were similar to those from the non-epidemic mortality sample. The results from this study are consistent with previous findings suggesting that despite the devastating nature of the Black Death, the 14th-century disease had general patterns of selectivity that were similar to those associated with normal medieval mortality."
I concluded that these findings had no affect on what had previously been discussed about the changes in society and their affect on the illustrated manuscripts. Although I was a bit disappointed that this information didn't lend to my study; however, I did find it necessary to look into other aspects of the Black Death and try to draw a few more conclusions.
I concluded that these findings had no affect on what had previously been discussed about the changes in society and their affect on the illustrated manuscripts. Although I was a bit disappointed that this information didn't lend to my study; however, I did find it necessary to look into other aspects of the Black Death and try to draw a few more conclusions.
After a few more weeks of discussing illustrated manuscripts and their importance and impact on society, I displayed a video that basically concluded what I had been saying for the last few weeks. If you have any questions over any of the information I have presented over the course of this semester, don't hesitate to ask. This week's entry was kind of shallow and didn't present any new information but I felt that it was necessary to tie up any loose ends.
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