While the Joseph Byrne book you mentioned is certainly useful, many of its citations are actually from the the Early Modern period, and it usually summarizes a range of sources rather than quoting directly from specific primary sources. The widest selection of quoted primary sources can probably be found in The Black Death by Rosemary Horrox (1990), which can be viewed for free on the Internet Archive. It has excerpts from numerous chronicles and other documents from across Europe, most of which were written by people who survived the plague. In these can be found accounts of how the plague affected survivors economically, socially and emotionally.
One such chronicle, that of the Westminster monk John of Reading (died 1368/91), aptly summarizes what 'life' was like in those times:
And there was in those days death without sorrow, marriage without
affection, self-imposed penance, want without poverty, and flight
without escape. How many who fled from the face of the pestilence were
already infected and did not escape the slaughter.
For more from this source, see Chronica Johannis de Reading et anonymi Cantuariensis, 1346-1367 (which can also be accessed for free on the Internet Archive).
Looking at the many medieval accounts, Horrox highlights some interesting observations on the extent of the gloom to be found. For example,
To the chroniclers of Padua the plague was a devastation more final
than Noah’s Flood – when God had left some people alive to continue
the human race.
and, even more pessimistically,
in Kilkenny, John Clynn left blank pages at the end of his chronicle
‘in case anyone should still be alive in the future’
A translation of Clynn's chronicle, The Annals of Ireland, can also be accessed for free on the internet archive. Clynn died in 1349, probably from the plague.
In an overview of how chroniclers across Europe recorded the Black Death, Horrox notes that:
The very enormity of the disaster drove chroniclers to take refuge in
clichés: there were not enough living to bury the dead; whole families
died together; the priest was buried with the penitent he had
confessed a few hours earlier. The same comments appear in chronicle
after chronicle, and the result can seem curiously perfunctory, with
only the occasional vivid detail bringing the reality of the situation
before the reader, such as William Dene’s remark that the stench from
the mass graves was so appalling that people could hardly bear to go
past a churchyard.
Alongside these verbal clichés are the numerical ones. The most common
claim was that scarcely a tenth of the population survived the plague.
Other writers opted for one in five. A few, more modestly, suggested
that barely half or a third of mankind was left alive. It is easy to
dismiss such claims as meaningless exaggeration....But if the figures
are exaggerated, they are not meaningless. The chroniclers’ resort to
them is a measure of their horror and disbelief at the number of
deaths they saw around them.
There are many specific examples of how daily life was affected. For example, the monk Louis Heyligen (died 1361) on people’s daily diet in Avignon:
...sea fish are now not generally eaten, men holding that they have been
infected by the infected air. Moreover no kinds of spices are eaten or
handled, unless they have been in stock for a year...
Also mentioned are examples of food prices increasing but rents decreasing as the shortage of workers meant that the landlords had to bargain with labourers to get the work in the fields done, and even then much was left undone. There was even a shortage of priests in England, with many of the vacancies being filled as
a great crowd of men whose wives had died in the pestilence rushed
into priestly orders. Many of them were illiterate, no better than
laymen – for even if they could read, they did not understand what
Source: Chronicon Henrici Knighton vel Cnitthon monachi Leycestrensis, cited (and translated) in Horrox.
From Letters on Familiar Matters by the poet Francesco Petrarch (died 1374), we have an example of the emotional and social impact on this individual’s daily life:
Where are our dear friends now? Where are the beloved faces? Where are
the affectionate words, the relaxed and enjoyable conversations?....
We should make new friends – but how, when the human race is almost
wiped out; and why, when it looks to me as if the end of the world is
at hand?.... You see how our great band of friends has dwindled.
Some of the primary sources cited, often at length, by Horrox include:
- Gabriele de’ Mussis of Piacenza, Historia de Morbo, "the main
source for the arrival of the plague in Europe".
- Michele da Piazza's (attributed) Cronaca covers Sicily.
- Louis Heyligen's (aka Lodewijk Heyligen) letters from the Papal court at Avignon give an
account for that region, and also refers to a report from Bruges.
- Gilles li Muisis, who was 78 in 1349, wrote a chronicle which reports on the spread of the plague from India and 'pagan countries' and notes a rise in anti-semitism in regions such as Germany as Jews were blamed, for example, for poisening wells.. There are also more localized accounts of untended vineyards etc. He also notes the the very uneven death rates, ranging from 90% in some areas to 30% in others.
- Les Grandes Chroniques de France includes accounts of the plague in Paris and other regions.
and many more...
1 Not to be confused with another John of Reading who died in 1346 in Avignon.