The most lethal pandemic in recorded history — and the catastrophe that revealed what medieval European civilization was built on, and what it wasn't
Between 1347 and 1351, the Black Death killed between thirty and sixty percent of Europe's population. In four years. It arrived at Sicily in October 1347 and reached Iceland by 1402. What it revealed about the civilization it struck — its institutions, its theology, its social order — was as consequential as the killing.