The Plague not only had a profound impact on European demographics throughout the early modern period, but also influenced religious, cultural, and social developments of the era.  Plague population loss affected labor markets and wages, marriage patterns, religious and social anxieties, views of ecclesiastical authority, and a host of other cultural and social factors.  While the fourteenth-century arrival of the plague led to intense population decline, the plague continued to emerge with significant outbreaks throughout the early modern period, and the population losses from the early waves of plague did not recover until the mid-sixteenth century.