This source analysis covers Source Analysis Practice within The Black Death for GCSE History. Revise The Black Death in Medicine Through Time for GCSE History with 8 exam-style questions and 5 flashcards. This topic appears regularly enough that it should still be part of a steady revision cycle. It is section 9 of 14 in this topic. Use this source analysis to connect the idea to the wider topic before moving on to questions and flashcards.
Topic position
Section 9 of 14
Practice
8 questions
Recall
5 flashcards
📜 Source Analysis Practice
Applying NOP Analysis:
Nature: A chronicle — a written record of historical events composed by a monastic chronicler, combining eyewitness accounts, oral testimony, and earlier written sources into a narrative history.
Origin: Written by Henry Knighton, an Augustinian canon at Leicester Abbey, approximately forty years after the Black Death struck England. Knighton lived through the epidemic and compiled his chronicle using local records, survivor accounts, and earlier reports.
Purpose: To record the events of his lifetime for posterity. As a monk, Knighton interpreted events through a religious lens, seeing the plague as God's judgement on humanity.
Grade 9 Model Paragraph:
This source is useful for an enquiry into the impact of the Black Death because it provides a near-contemporary account of the epidemic's arrival and scale. Knighton's claim that "scarcely a tenth survived" in some localities is consistent with modern estimates that 30-50% of England's population died, suggesting the chronicle captures the genuine devastation. However, its utility is limited by Knighton's religious perspective — as an Augustinian monk writing forty years after the events, he interpreted the plague as divine punishment for sin rather than investigating its real cause, which own knowledge tells us was Yersinia pestis carried by rat fleas. His framing reveals medieval assumptions but cannot tell us why the disease spread so rapidly or why quarantine was the only effective response.