From 1347 to 1352 a new disease ravaged Europe with a ferocious vengeance "Historians later called this calamitous disease the Black Death." The Black Death may have originated in the east and traveled across the Black Sea to Western Europe. “A Byzantine scholar Nikephoros Gregoras called the Black Death a “pestilential disease.” Symptoms of the Black Death included bleeding ulcers, tumorous growths on the thighs and arm, acute fever, and ultimately a horrible death. The disease originated in Manchuria (Asia) and traveled along the Silk Road carried by fleas that lived on the backs of rats. Once the disease made its way across the Black Sea, it spread to the “Middle East, North Africa and finally Europe.” The Death Star reappeared every ten to twelve years during the fourteenth