The Black Death

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1969

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-6

Chapters 7-12

Chapters 13-17

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Themes

Living with Death

The author notes throughout the text the pervasive nature of medieval people’s contact with death even before the Black Death—something that is hard for modern readers in the developed world to imagine. We take for granted the idea that medicine is a scientific endeavor that understands pathways of disease, researches the functioning of the human body, and uses evidence-based approaches to find new means of curing disease and alleviating pain and suffering. Nursing homes, hospice care, and funeral home services remove evidence of death from daily life.

In the Middle Ages, however, death was highly visible. Dying mostly occurred at home, barring an accidental or untimely demise. Medicine was not a science, but more a combination of naturopathy, superstition, and anecdote, relying on incorrect theories of disease transmission and poorly developed comprehension of how the human body works. Poor standards of living kept populations in low states of health, allowing illness to have worse outcomes. All of this meant that even before the plague, “Death had always been a preoccupation of medieval man”; with the onslaught of the Black Death, “it became an obsession” (102). Death was ubiquitous, unpredictable, cruel, and unavoidable, leaving a devastated Europe in its wake.

The plague took the lives of a third of Europe’s population. Those left behind had to deal with the trauma of this unimaginable loss of parents, children, friends, and neighbors. “Though, as everywhere, the poor suffered most, there were quite enough deaths among the rich and powerful to show that nobody was immune” (124). As Ziegler demonstrates, the dramatic effect of this generational ruin reached far into the next few centuries, bringing social upheaval, religious transformation, and, eventually, a scientific revolution.

The Influence of the Church

The Catholic Church had an all-pervading influence on medieval society, especially in Europe. This institution was a cornerstone of the economy, one of the seats of political power through its massive land holdings, the arbiter of society’s moral framework through its spiritual teachings, and the leader in almost every scientific and humanitarian endeavor through its role in founding universities and hospitals. When the Black Death swept across Europe, then, it is no surprise that Europe’s population looked to the Church for guidance and succor.

The plague was quickly seen as divine wrath, which meant any response depended on the Church’s ability to purify whatever moral degradation had led to God’s punishment. In response, Church policy generally was to offer special prayers, masses, and other religious ceremonies to pray for mercy and deliverance. However, the reaction of Church’s officials varied by locality. As Ziegler points out, the unfortunate reality became that the “best of the clergy died, the worst survived” (212): Priests willing to endanger themselves for the sake of the faith and their flocks by staying at the bedside of the dying were at much higher risk of infection and death than those who avoided contact with their flock, and shirked their duties.

As a result, the Church survived the Black Death, but it lost some of its monopoly on faith in Europe. Lay-led ministries and itinerant sects and cults found popularity and influence with those who now saw the Catholic Church as a weak and ineffective force. This new interest in a less mediated relationship with the divine would eventually help usher in the Reformation.

Medicine in the Middle Ages

The medical practice of the Middle Ages, however, was an entirely different matter. The efforts of doctors in the face of a plague as deadly as the Black Death were “as futile as their approach was fatalistic” (51). The doctors and medical practitioners of the 14th century were entirely unable to staunch the bleeding of a community once the plague had arrived; the only thing that could be done once the community had been infected was to isolate everyone as quickly and thoroughly as possible, and simply wait for it to take its course, for better and for worse.

Medieval medicine still used the model of the four humors adopted by the Ancient Greek physician Hippocrates (3rd century BC) and his later colleague Galen (2nd century AD). While these intellectuals influenced the ethics and goals of medicine in many positive ways—modern doctors still take the Hippocratic Oath after graduating from medical school—their theories were guesswork at best. Operating under the idea that health depended on the balance of four humors, medieval doctors could not determine the cause of the plague, or how to avoided, mitigate, or cure it. “Given such handicaps it would have been miraculous if the medical profession had met the Black Death with anything much more useful than awe-struck despair” (51), and indeed, this was often all that physicians could offer.