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.
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 as the disaster wore on.
Continue to Page Two: God's Wrath and the Devil's Triumph