According to historians of the disease, the Black Death originated in China. The disease remained relatively isolated to the Orient, but reached epidemic proportions as the Mongol empire began to expand westward and transmit the disease via land. Furthermore, the plague spread to areas along European mercantile trade routes, and the Black Death arrived in Europe via ships returning from these areas. Once the plague reached the European mainland, it ravaged populations and drove mortality rates to unprecedented proportions. Early healthcare means, mainly administered by family members, allowed the disease to take a larger foothold and infect large portions of the population. Moreover, the initial onslaught of the disease took a heavy toll on the Christian-centric countries, who remained steeped in their religious scruples and further dispersed the disease by contact with the dead during last rites and traditional burials.
The outbreak of the Black Death degraded, to a large degree, the societal stability of many of these European communities. As the plague rampaged populations, many citizens viewed its outbreak as the manifestation of God’s wrath for the sins of humanity and the sign of the apocalypse. People lost faith in the ability of the Church to respond to the crisis, essentially causing complete societal stagnation as the theocracy ruled with totality over much of the Christian world. Others turned to religious fanaticism (e.g. the Flagellants) and attempted to challenge the authority of the Church. Family stability degraded as people abandoned sick family members in an attempt to escape the disease. Furthermore, people searched for a root cause and incriminated history’s archetypal scapegoat: the Jews. Christian in plague areas committed pogroms against Jewish communities, either expelling them en masse or murdering them in droves; the atrocities perpetrated against Jews remain one of the most brutal legacies of the Black Death. However, not all of the societal responses were negative. Many city-states in Italy instituted urban reform measures, such as limitations on gambling and prostitution, in an attempt to atone for these since. Furthermore, many areas practiced quarantine measures and more modern burial practices (i.e. in caskets) in an attempt to mitigate the prevalence of human to human contact with the disease.