In several manners, the first one is economic as feudalistic serfdom required large masses of hungry peasant laborers to cultivate their lands. Because there were so many laborers landlords and employers could easily ban, kill or fire an employee or apprentice since they knew that they would quickly find a hungry replacement who would accept the horrible working and living conditions in order to avoid starvation. When so much of the poor population died, the surviving landlords and employers needed working hands to toil their fields and manufacture their products and because poor workers were scarce, they had to offer them higher salaries and better working and living conditions since they would not be able to replace them and would end up losing their lands and/or businesses. Furthermore, the fact that also rich and powerful people were dying numerously, showed poor people that death was the ultimate equalizer and that although they had more power than poor people, they were also vulnerable. There is also the fact that feudalism was also very much based on religion, since monarchs and the high clergy considered that their power was given to them by God they indoctrinated poor people to believe that the natural order was that they remain at the very bottom of the social ladder while the rich got richer. Furthermore, the Church taught people that before the Second Coming of Jesus Christ the Apocalypse would occur. However, after the apocalypse that was Black Death there was no Second Coming, Christ did not come and therefore illiterate but smart people started to question religious dogma which was inextricably linked to social dogma.
