Source A – A 15th century woodcut of people burning Jews as a response to the Black Death

What can you learn from Source A about what people thought was to blame for the Black Death?

This is a common question on most GCSE History courses.  It tests your understanding of inference.  Inference or inferring something from a source means you need to be able to understand a source and then come up with an idea of your own about what you can learn from it.

Look at this source: Source A – A 15th century woodcut of people burning Jews as a response to the Black Death

Now write down a list of all the things you can see.

Your list might include:

City walls, rich men, knights, people being burned, a man setting fire to the people with a torch.

Now read the caption; you can learn from this that the people being burned were Jewish and it was a response to the Black Dearth.

Why might Jews be burned because of the Black Death?  It is possible that people believed it was the Jews fault.  Why might they think this?

Now try to write an 8 to 10 line paragraph answering the question at the top of the post.