Did the Black Death Reach the Kingdom of Poland in the Mid-Fourteenth Century?

Abstract

Abstract The Black Death is a turning point in late medieval European history. Recent studies have shown that even regions ostensibly not affected by it directly, or only marginally affected by it, suffered from profound demographic and economic consequences. The scale and geographical range of the plague in Central Europe, including the Kingdom of Poland, remains, however, a matter of dispute. Important to note in this regard is that the outbreak of the plague in Western Europe coincided with the reign of King Casimir of the Piast dynasty, which is associated with Poland’s extraordinarily successful modernization. Thus far, neither the primary sources documenting this era nor the palynological data that refer it can testify to the demographic and economic changes that would have ensued if an outbreak of the plague similar to the one that ravaged Western Europe had occurred in the Kingdom of Poland during the mid-fourteenth century.