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The Great Mortality
Part Two: Living with Death
In Part One of The Great Mortality, we looked at the devastating plague of 14th-century Europe and its death toll. In Part Two I'd like to examine the toll the Black Death took in other ways.
As mentioned previously, one of the most unsettling aspects of living through this time of plague was the inability to know what caused the disease. This was not for lack of trying. King Philip VI of France requested that The University of Paris (its own population horribly depleted by the disease) investigate the causes. The result, known as the Paris Consilium, ascribed the plague to a combination of earthquakes and astrological forces. The ill-favored conjunctions of the planets not only triggered the pestilence itself, but brought on terrible storms that spread the noxious poisons released from the earth when the quakes hit.
But the average person knew little of astrological forces or sulfuric gases. The only thing he really understood was that his family and friends were dying, and that he could be next. He was more likely to believe the Scandinavian superstition of a Pest Maiden, or the rumored appearance of demonic dogs, or, most likely of all, that the plague was God's punishment for the multitudinous sins of man.
The Wages of Fear
Whatever the causes appeared to be, the most common reaction to the plague was fear. The medieval mind may have been taught to believe that life after death was better than life on earth, but no one really wanted to die, especially not in such a horrifying manner. And if indeed the plague was God's punishment, then it seemed unlikely that victims of the dread disease would ascend to Heaven.
People fled from the plague and each other in droves. Families split apart; brother deserted brother and parents abandoned children. Plague victims could not get magistrates or notaries to witness their wills. Many priests refused to visit the ill, and Pope Clement VI granted remission of sin to all who died of the plague because so many were unable to receive the last rites.
Harsh quarantine measures were taken in several areas. Those residents of Pistoia who had journeyed to neighboring towns where the disease had taken hold were forbidden to return home, and the town also ceased imports of wool and linen. Archbishop Visconti, ruler of Milan, ordered the first three houses where plague appeared to be walled up, entombing both the dead and the living. The village of Noseley, Leicestershire, was razed to prevent the spread of the plague to the manor house. In all these cases, the drastic measures succeeded in reducing the number of plague victims and slowing further spread of the disease.1
These incidents testify to the baseness of humanity in times of darkest trouble; but not everyone reacted in panic and abandoned their fellow man. When the cemeteries overflowed and no one was left to dig more graves, fathers buried children with their own hands. Doctors risked death to tend the sick, some dying at their patients' bedsides. The nuns of the municipal hospital in Paris tended the suffering ceaselessly, their numbers replenished with more sisters as they too succumbed to the plague.
Yet acts of kindness, charity and selflessness were lost in the overwhelming callousness that prevailed during the Black Death, and they were further obscured by the mass hysteria that broke out at as the disaster wore on.
God's Wrath and the Devil's Triumph
The common belief that God was punishing mankind for its sins led to an increase in sinful behavior. What was the use, many reasoned, in repenting when everyone died anyway? While life remained, didn't it make sense to live it to the full? For some this meant the kind of debauchery that would have made Caligula flinch.
Others reasoned far differently. Contrition was the only road to salvation, and penitential processions through the streets were one way of calling God's attention to the willingness of the participants to repent. Such processions went back centuries; The Procession of Saint Gregory, painted for Les Très Riche Heures, depicts the sixth-century pope leading penitents through the streets in what must have been a familiar sight in the fourteenth century. As was the custom in the middle ages, the subjects are represented in medieval dress, and in both the first and second panels we can see today what people might have seen during the Black Death.
In such a spirit of appeasing God arose the flagellants. These fanatics took public displays of penitence to the extreme. Groups of flagellants went from one town to another, parading through the streets and whipping themselves. Each group was organized and led by a Master, who governed them with all the authority of a king -- or pope. In fact, the governing authorities looked on the flagellants with disfavor, for they began to criticize the status quo and rail against the Church for its evident failure to follow God's law.
But neither the Catholic Church nor the secular authorities took any steps to control the flagellants until things went altogether too far.
The flagellants soon shifted their focus of wrath from the authorities to the most popular target of the medieval Christian: the Jew. Already rumors had begun that the Jews had brought about the plague by poisoning wells in a far-reaching conspiracy. Although the pope pointed out that Jews were dying as quickly as Christians, and that the plague spread where there were no Jews, logic had little effect. The mysterious disease had to have a cause, and those who suffered had to be avenged.
In a series of events that foreshadowed and almost rivaled the Holocaust of the 20th century, Jews were persecuted and killed by the thousands. The entire Jewish community of Basle was burned alive in a structure built expressly for the purpose. The 2,000 Jews of Strasbourg were taken to the burial ground where they were given a chance to convert; those who refused were tied to the stakes that awaited them and burned, as well, before the plague ever reached the city.
The flagellants instigated further persecutions, rushing to the Jewish quarter of any town they entered, gathering the discontented as they went, and screaming for revenge on the "well-poisoners." In this manner, thousands of Jews were murdered all across Belgium, Germany, Holland, and the Netherlands, and in some places decrees were issued barring Jews from settling there in the future. In Mainz, the Jews attempted to defend themselves, killing 200 of the mob that attacked them; but this only served to infuriate their persecutors and bring an even more terrible retribution upon them for killing Christians. It is believed a total of 6,000 Jews died before all was said and done in Mainz.
Many who tried to stop the persecution were overthrown from power and otherwise endangered themselves. But by October, 1349, the pope and other authorities were at last ready to stop the flagellants. Clement VI issued a bull calling for their dispersal and arrest; King Philip VI forbade public flagellation on pain of death; and the University of Paris publicly denied the flagellants' claim of "Divine inspiration." Local rulers could now confidently arrest and execute the fanatics, who fled, the groups disintegrating, and hid for fear of their lives.
But it was another ten years before the flagellants disappeared completely. And the scars wrought by their hysteria did not easily fade from the medieval psyche.
Please join me next time for the third and final part of The Great Mortality: Death's Aftermath.
Note
1A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman
The Great Mortality, Part Two: Living with Death is copyright © 1998-2003 Melissa Snell. Permission is granted to reproduce this article for personal or classroom use only, provided that the URL below is included. For reprint permission, please contact Melissa Snell.
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