The Black Death had a devastating adverse effect of which of the following factors in medieval society?

The answer is the rise of the merchant class

The positions of scholars range from contending that the Black Death was a formative event in the history of Europe, bringing down the medieval period and ushering in the modern one, to arguing that the Black Death, though a disaster at the time, had less significant long-term effects, with European areas rebounding rather quickly and the Black Death being only one factor among many that shaped Europe’s progression from the medieval to the modern, with many degrees of difference in between. These debates have involved numerous aspects of European life, including state functions, religion, economies, art, intellectual life, psychological effects, medicine, and others.