The effects of the Black Death were many and varied. Trade suffered for a time, and wars were temporarily abandoned. Many laborers died, which devastated families through lost means of survival and caused personal suffering; landowners who used laborers as tenant farmers were also affected. The labor shortage caused landowners to substitute wages or money rents in place of labor services in an effort to keep their tenants, which benefited those surviving tenants. Wages for artisans and other workers also increased. Art in the wake of the Black Death became more preoccupied with mortality and the afterlife. Antisemitism greatly intensified throughout Europe, as Jews were blamed for the spread of the Black Death, and many Jews were killed by mobs or burned at the stake en masse.
