Why was the Black Death called the Black Death?

Answer 1

Writers contemporary to the plague referred to the event as the "Great Mortality". Swedish and Danish chronicles of the 16th century described the events as "black" for the first time, not to describe the late-stage sign of the disease, in which the sufferer's skin would blacken due to subepidermal hemorrhages and the extremities would darken with gangrene, but more likely to refer to black in the sense of glum or dreadful and to denote the terribleness and gloom of the events.

Source: S. Barry and N. Gualde, "The Biggest Epidemic of History" (La plus grande épidémie de l'histoire), L'Histoire n°310, (2006), p. 38.

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Answer 2

Writers contemporary to the plague referred to the event as the "Great Mortality". Swedish and Danish chronicles of the 16th century described the events as "black" for the first time, not to describe the late-stage sign of the disease, in which the sufferer's skin would blacken due to subepidermal hemorrhages and the extremities would darken with gangrene, but more likely to refer to black in the sense of glum or dreadful and to denote the terribleness and gloom of the events.

Source: S. Barry and N. Gualde, "The Biggest Epidemic of History" (La plus grande épidémie de l'histoire), L'Histoire n°310, (2006), p. 38.

Answer 3

The Black Death struck Europe in 1348, however the term "Black Death" was not used until the 16th Century, when it was coined by Danish & Swedish chroniclers. "Black" is corresponded with 'terrible' and 'dreadful,' and since the plague was terrible and dreadful (Black) and killed lots of people (Death), it came to be known as the Black Death.

Answer 4

The Black Death is a specific outbreak of the Bubonic Plague. Between 1347 and 1352, it killed nearly a third of Europe's population, with the death toll going to three quarters of the people in some areas. At the time, it was called the Great Pestilence. It came to be called the Black Death much later, by writers who used the term black to indicate its misery.

Answer 5

The plague was called the Black Death for two possible reasons.

It was a bad death, and thus "black."

The victims developed black buboes before death and quickly turned black after death.

Answer 6

There are three types of plague, bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic. The reason the plague is nick named as the black death is because one of the symptoms of septicemic plague, gangrene which is caused by the destruction and or blockage of blood vessels from a blood infection. Then tissues will die from this and eventually turns black (occuring usually where the vessels are smaller such as your hands, fingers, feet, toes, and nose). The blackening of the skin is what gave this nickname.

Answer 7

When people caught the Bubonic Plague, their skin turned black as they were dying.

Answer 8

because people turned black