Essay Questions for Thinking through Sources 11

1. Making comparisons: What similarities and differences can you identify in how people experienced and understood the plague, both between and within particular societies?
2. Religion and the plague: How might you assess the role of religion in shaping responses to the plague? In what ways might religion have been helpful? And how might it have exacerbated the suffering associated with the plague?
3. Reflecting on disasters: What can we learn about how humans react to natural disasters from studying the Black Death? What do these sources reveal about the extent to which humans are in control of their own lives and their own history? In what ways do larger impersonal forces shape our individual lives and our collective histories?