Black Plague

From Turtledove

The Black Plague, or The Black Death, was one of the deadliest pandemics in human history. In most timelines it began in Central Asia before sweeping through Europe, devastating the continent and killing a third of the population. In the years after the Plague, Europeans emerged stronger than before, and were forced to examine themselves spiritually, beginning the path to the Renaissance and Scientific Revolution.

[edit] Black Plague in In High Places

The Black Plague devastated Europe utterly, killing 80% of the continent's population. As a result, Europe was entirely unable to respond to the continued assaults of Muslim invaders, who captured the majority of southern Europe, leaving an isolated northern Christian Europe alienated by a powerful and dynamic Muslim world.

The scientific advances and theories of the Renaissance and beyond never happened, and inventors such as Gutenberg were never born. Authors such as Geoffrey Chaucer were killed in the Plague, stunting European culture and art. Europe remained backward and medieval well into the twenty-first century.

In addition, Catholicism drastically changed, becoming the Church of The Second Revelation, a belief system that preached the power of Henri, God's Second Son, who was martyred as a heretic by the Papacy. A resurgence of plague convinced Europeans of Henri's divinity, and a radically different version of Christianity developed in Europe as a result. Jacques was a faithful Christian of the Second Revelation.