ABSTRACT
During the High Middle Ages, most parts of Western Europe benefited from relative stability compared to the disruption and insecurity of the previous age of migrations and invasions. The late medieval crises only intensified the efforts of national monarchies to centralize their power through the creation of royal bureaucracies, court systems, and armies that had begun during the High Middle Ages. Because of the developments, high medieval Europe featured a vigorous society that had steady population growth, rising prosperity, and a certain amount of social mobility. The Black Death created mass panic and hysteria, made worse by the inability of either secular or religious authorities to understand either its causes or whether there was any remedy. In 1976, the historian William H. McNeill published an extraordinarily original work of history, in which he outlined the impact of infectious disease on the history of human societies.
