The Black Death

Europe’s population had reached a state of critical mass by the middle of the 13th century. In the most populated areas, demand for resources began to outstrip the supply, and a series of famines in the late 13th and early 14th centuries ensured that even the most basic of staples were either impossible to come by or radically more expensive than they had ever been. Modern historians disagree on the inevitability of the plague, but many 14th century Europeans grew certain that the plague was a judgment permitted by God as punishment for moral corruption.

Even as the plague was widely considered divine wrath, some sought to clarify how it had come about by worldly means. Astrology proved to be a particularly popular source of explanation, with many seeking answers in the stars and planets, but this provided no true consolation: “the Black Death descended on a people who were drilled by their theological and their scientific training into a reaction of apathy and fatalistic resignation” (26).

In October of 1347, a number of Genoese galleys brought the plague to Sicily before being forcibly driven from the port at Messina by irate citizens. The neighboring city of Catania took in many of the sick, but quickly realized the vast scale of the illness and attempted to quarantine themselves .The two cities—Catania and Messina—quarreled over ownership of the relics of St. Agatha, hoping to guard against illness with spiritual power. Messina’s request that the bishop order relics to be displaced from their home in Catania was ultimately thwarted.

Very soon, the plague swept over Sicily, doing especial damage to the western provinces, and from Sicily it spread throughout Italy. Evidence reveals that the plague followed the main trade routes, carried by rats, fleas, and infected sailors. The three great epicenters of the plague in southern Europe were Sicily, Genoa, and Venice. Florence was also hit hard, but due to its wealth and higher standard of living, it managed the spread and damage of the disease relatively well.

Governments attempted to handle the novel circumstances as best they could. Strict measures of quarantine were introduced, as were stringent practices of burial and care for the dead. Cities banned immigrants and travelers, and at times individual citizens took matters into their own hands, barricading themselves inside their own homes to shield their households. Imports were tightly controlled, food markets were under surveillance, and even attendance at funerals was limited to remove as much exposure to the dead and dying as possible. The cities of Orvieto and Siena fared poorly, with Orvieto losing approximately 50% of its population, and Siena suffering damage that changed the economic and political structure of the city for generations. One year after the plague appeared in Sicily, Italy was past the worst of it, though minor outbreaks would still occur in the coming years.

Just months after its arrival in Italy, the plague began to ravage the French countryside—Marseilles suffered particularly devastating casualties, with cities such as Montpellier, Narbonne, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Avignon, and Lyons following in quick succession. At the time, the papacy had taken up residence in Avignon—an infamous period known as the ”Avignon Captivity”—so the pope himself called for numerous religious ceremonies in addition to adopting many different practical means for caring for the sick and dying.

Medical science began in earnest with the Ancient Greek physician Hippocrates, whose work on epidemiology was of paramount importance. Hippocrates was the first to conceive of illness as “an orderly process calling on each occasion for examination of symptoms, diagnosis of malady and prescription of cure” (48). He was limited, however, by his ability to gather the requisite data for continued analysis. Nearly half a millennium later, the 2nd century physician Galen of Pergamos actually set epidemiology back by erroneous theories of personal constitution and temperament. Relying on Galen’s theories, medieval medical science could not advance or flourish.

While despair gripped the majority of the populace wherever the plague arose, certain remedies emerged as useful, even if the reasoning behind them was flawed. One prevailing theory was that plague came from infected air. This meant avoiding coastlands due to their proximity to ports—a policy that probably helped prevent spread via trade ships. In individual homes, the air was often richly scented with anything aromatic to cleanse it of impurities. On the whole, however, the average citizen could hardly hope to keep up with the many possible cures, which often contradicted each other. Suggested preventative measures included diet, exercise, gemstones, bleeding, and specific cooking techniques—all mostly useless and impractical.

Germany is a curious case for the study of the plague not because it somehow escaped the pandemic, but because of two rather striking social responses to it: “the pilgrimages of the Flagellants and the persecution of the Jews” (64).

The practice of self-scourging, or whipping oneself, was widely known and accepted. During the plague emerged the Brotherhood of the Flagellants, a popular and imaginatively powerful movement that originated in Eastern Europe. The group traveled from town to town, processing while stripping off their outer garments and flogging themselves in penance for sin. Would-be members needed permission from their spouse, a complete confession of all sins, and the ability to pay their own way during the pilgrimage. The Flagellants were a lay movement, barring members of the institutional clergy from joining. As time went on, some branches of the movement shifted from a penitential mission to claiming supernatural and miraculous powers. As members died of the plague during the group’s travels, newer members were recruited, diluting the original piety of the Flagellants and attracting people who were more interested in the spectacle of the procession. Eventually the movement ran afoul of the Church—Pope Clement banned the pilgrimages under threat of excommunication—and eventually diminished in popularity among common people as well.

The Flagellants were one indicator of how desperate some were to alleviate the suffering of the plague, willing to undergo self-torture. However, just as many people wanted to someone else to blame for the outpouring of God’s wrath. A popular scapegoat was Europe’s Jewish population, which made up the majority of the money-lending class—forced into this profession because they were legally barred from most others. Blamed for being debt-collectors and subject to a wide variety of antisemitic prejudices, Jewish Europeans became “so hated in European society that almost anything might have served to provoke catastrophe” (73). The Black Death created a perfect storm that boiled over into persecution, causing Jews to be accused of infecting everyone with the plague, with malicious slander claiming they were “poisoning the wells of Christian communities” (74).

In 1348 and 1349, the persecution of Jews turned into massacres, with atrocities committed across the continent. Rulers in Europe did their best to defuse these attacks, with Pope Clement VI speaking out and condemning the mass murders, but they went largely unheeded. When the Black Death abated in 1351, so did the attacks on the Jewish community.

As with the principal locations already examined, the Black Death passed through the rest of Europe with similar results, “anyone observing its effects in Italy and France could have predicted, with a fair degree of success, what would happen as it ravaged Germany and England” (81). Eventually the plague swept north into the Nordic countries, taking over Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, and made its way all the west into Spain as well, though the western coast of Spain was not as deeply affected as the rest of the country and continent. Certain areas of Europe escaped the worst of the plague—Bohemia, Poland, the Low Countries—while other areas were struck with uncommon ferocity—Florence, Avignon, Vienna.