The black plague, bubonic plague or black death was a pandemic of plague that ravaged Europe during the fourteenth century and was transmitted by fleas transported by rats. It is believed that the epidemic emerged in Central Asia, from where it passed to Italian cities with great maritime activity such as Genoa, and from there to all of Europe. The Black Death ended with more than a third of the European population and some 45 million people worldwide.
The great loss of population brought economic changes based on the increase of social mobility according to the depopulation, this eroded the obligations of the peasants (already weakened) to remain in their traditional lands. The plague caused a contraction of the cultivated area in Europe, which brought down the agrarian production. This fall reached 40% in the northern part of Italy, in the period between 1340 and 1370.
