The Black Death by Robert S. Gottfried
“Much of the old corporate cooperation and camaraderie were swept away, replaced in many cases by a strong strain of individualism. In some places, this would develop in constructive ways: witness the humanism of late-fourteenth and fifteen-century Italy, or the pietism and mysticism of the Rhineland and the Netherlands at about the same time. But, in the decade after the Black Death, individualism generally was directed towards self aggrandizement and the pursuit of leisure and pleasure. The collective institutions and the old communality—both rural and urban—so characteristic of the twelfth and thirteen centuries, were shattered. Old social, religious, and even familial bonds were relaxed. Restoring these bonds was the challenge that faced the people of the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.”
—Robert S. Gottfried, 1983
