Skip to main content

Secondary sourceBook1500

Liber pestilentialis

1500

Title woodcut of a printed plague-medicine book, showing how advice for treating plague reached a wider readership through print.

Shows how medical responses to plague, sparked by the Black Death, continued to develop and spread through print long after 1348.

Ask The Black Death about this sourceView the original(opens in new tab)
Title page of a woodcut-illustrated early printed book. Gothic black-letter text at top reads Liber pestilentialis de venenis epidimie, Das buch der vergift der pestiletz. Below, a woodcut scene shows a man at a lectern reading a book, with several men in period dress and a tiled floor, beside an arched window and a shelf with books and a flask.
Title woodcut, Liber pestilentialis, printed 1500.

About this source

What it is

This is the title page of a printed plague-medicine book, illustrated with a woodcut. The woodcut shows a man reading at a lectern, surrounded by other men in period dress, in a room with an arched window and a shelf of books and a flask.

Why it matters

This book was part of a wave of printed medical advice that followed earlier outbreaks of plague in Europe. It shows how knowledge about the disease, and ideas (right or wrong) about how to treat it, spread once printing made books cheaper and more common.

Look closer

  • What does the scene in the woodcut suggest about who read medical books like this?
  • Why might a printed book reach more people than a handwritten manuscript?
  • What does the title tell you about what the author believed caused plague?

This book is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of The Black Death on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

More The Black Death sources

Meet the AI The Black Death →
Book

Secondary source

The Decameron

Giovanni Boccaccio · 1351

Document

Primary source

Statute of Labourers 1351

1351

Illuminated manuscript page with a gold-background miniature showing barefoot penitents in white robes and dark hats, hands clasped, processing past a figure carrying a crucifix and a banner. Below, two columns of Latin text in black ink with red initials.Painting

Primary source

Depiction of the Flagellant Processions

Pierart dou Tielt · c. 1350

Medieval illuminated manuscript page with a painted scene of men with helmets and a figure holding a flag near a tower, while figures are burned at a stake among flames on the right. Latin text in columns surrounds the image.Painting

Primary source

Execution of Jews

c. 1350

A nearly black book cover with an embossed decorative pattern of scrolls, leaves, and flowers in a symmetrical design. The image is very dark, with faint highlights on the raised ornaments.Book

Primary source

The Annals of Ireland by Friar John Clyn

John Clyn · 1348-1349

Ready when you are

Start chatting with The Black Death now.

20 messages free · No credit card · Available in 50+ languages.

Trial Humy for freeGet a quote for institutions