Black Death .

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Black Death .
I

INTRODUCTION

Black Death, outbreak of bubonic plague that struck Europe and the Mediterranean area from 1347 through 1351. It was the first of a cycle of European plague
epidemics that continued until the early 18th century. The last major outbreak of plague in Europe was in Marseilles in 1722. These plagues had been preceded by a
cycle of ancient plagues between the 6th and 8th centuries AD; they were followed by another cycle of modern, but less deadly, plagues that began in the late 19th
century and continued in the 20th century. The term "Black Death" was not used to refer to the plagues of 1347 through 1351 until much later; contemporaries usually
referred to it as the Pestilence, or the Great Mortality.
Plague is a bacterial infection that can take more than one form. Victims of bubonic plague usually suffer from high fevers and swellings under the armpits or in the
groin. Unless treated with modern antibiotics, usually 60 percent of the infected will die, often within the first five days. Other forms of plague include pneumonic plague
and septicemic plague (see Plague). The disease is carried by a variety of rodents--rats, marmots, and prairie dogs, among others. It can pass into a human population
when fleas carrying infected rodent blood attach themselves to a human host.

II

ORIGINS OF THE BLACK DEATH

Scientists and historians are still unsure about the origins of plague. Medieval European writers believed that it began in China, which they considered to be a land of
almost magical happenings. Chroniclers wrote that it began with earthquakes, fire falling from the sky, and plagues of vermin. Like medieval travel literature, these
accounts are based on a number of myths about life in areas outside of Europe. It now seems most probable that infected rodents migrated from the Middle East into
southern Russia, the region between the Black and Caspian seas. Plague was then spread west along trade routes. There were epidemics among the Tartars in southern
Russia in 1346. Plague was passed from them to colonies of Italians living in towns along the Black Sea. Merchants probably carried the disease from there to Alexandria
in Egypt in 1347; it then moved to Damascus and Libya in 1348, and Upper Egypt in 1349. Venetian and Genoese sailors are known to have brought the plague to
Europe.
Plague moved quickly along the major trade routes. From Pisa, where it had arrived early in 1348, it traveled to Florence and then on to Rome and Bologna; from
Venice it moved into southern Germany and Austria; and from Genoa it crossed the Tyrhennian Sea to Barcelona in Spain and Marseilles in France. It continued through
the towns of southern France, reaching Paris by early June 1348. From there the contagion spread to England by late June 1348 and the Low Countries by the summer
of 1349.
Parts of Europe were initially spared the epidemic. Milan was almost unique among the major Italian towns. The lord of the city closed the gates to travelers coming
from plague areas, and few people died. Many parts of Germany and eastern Europe also escaped the epidemic in 1348 through 1351. Probably because of their
relative isolation, Bohemia, Poland, and central Germany experienced no plague before the 1360s and 1370s.

III

BELIEFS ABOUT THE CAUSES OF PLAGUE

Contemporary doctors and theologians agreed that the epidemic had both religious and physical causes. The first and most important was God's judgment on a sinful
humanity; the second was a lack of balance in the body's humors, or fluids. As with earthquakes, floods, and fires, medieval Christians assumed illness was a call to
repentance. In response, some Christians, known as flagellants, began to ritually beat themselves as penance for their own and for others' sins. Although groups of
flagellants had existed since the 10th century, the outbreak of the plague radically increased their numbers.
These new groups of flagellants appeared first in Hungary and Germany and then spread throughout the rest of northern Europe. They held processions through towns
that lasted for as long as 33 days, each day representing one year in the life of Jesus Christ. These processions varied in size from just a handful of people to perhaps
thousands in the largest processions. Flagellants traveled as a group and were led by a cleric. They went from town to town and at each stop, after a short sermon by
the leader, the penitents would whip or flog themselves before moving on to the next town. Town officials were suspicious of these religious enthusiasts; towns in
southern France and the Low Countries eventually closed their gates to these people, and the groups were forced to disband. During later plagues individuals did travel
to local shrines and invoke the help of saints who they believed could aid the sick, but fewer people were involved than in the flagellants' processions.
Medieval physicians inherited their medical ideas from the Greeks and Romans, who believed that health involved a balance of bodily humors. Imbalance caused by
emotional, dietary, or external factors like noxious odors could result in sickness or even death. Contemporary writers associated plague with the influence of planets
and stars, or with earthquakes, which were thought to cause the release of noxious gases from the center of the earth. Physicians thus suggested that individuals eat
moderately and avoid anything that could upset the body's delicate balance. Governments regulated trades thought to produce dangerous odors or potentially corrupt
matter.

IV

PREVENTATIVE MEASURES

The epidemics that occurred late in the 14th and 15th centuries were not as virulent as the first plagues. Contemporaries began to see patterns and to sense what they
might do to limit the impact of plague. It was clear that plague was most likely to arise in summer or early autumn. Further, after initially striking everyone, observers
noticed that plague most often settled in the poorest, most crowded neighborhoods. Thus when Italian Girolamo Fracastoro first explained the theory of contagious
disease, he assumed it was the poor who spread the disease. It was clear that flight or avoiding contact with the sick was the best defense. Those who could moved
from infected towns to country villages or towns away from the contagion. Families often hired special servants to watch their sick even as the rest of the family moved
away. Or in other cases a single member of a large family might agree to take care of purchasing food and all other public activities. This had the effect of reducing the
impact of plague on the well-to-do, those most likely to be able to isolate themselves; and in turn it reinforced the idea that the poor were morally and physically
predisposed to sickness.
Some of the most effective measures taken against plague were the quarantines first used in 15th-century Italy. By the 16th century, quarantines were common
throughout Europe. It was in response to plague that urban governments, first in Italy and then in other parts of Europe, developed systems of public health services to
deal with epidemics. Towns began by simply investigating any suspicious illnesses or deaths; some created special plague hospitals to hold the ill; and almost all
restricted movements of people during times of plague. Travelers were expected to carry certificates of health indicating that they had not been exposed to epidemic
disease. By the 16th century it was virtually impossible to move out of areas under quarantine.
Beginning in the late 17th century, governments created a medical boundary, or cordon sanitaire, between Europe and the areas to the east from which epidemics
came. Ships traveling west from the Ottoman Empire were forced to wait in quarantine before passengers and cargo could be unloaded. The Holy Roman Empire
created a similarly effective medical border along the Danube River and elsewhere on its border with the Ottoman Empire to the east. Those who attempted to evade
medical quarantine were shot. The cordon sanitaire seems to have been effective. While bubonic plague continued to affect the areas of the eastern Mediterranean, it

disappeared in the West.

V

DISAPPEARANCE OF PLAGUE

Plague became less common in Europe after the 1530s. The last plague in England was in 1665, the last in Western Europe in 1722. Numerous theories have been
offered to explain the disappearance of plague. It has been argued that black rats, the primary carriers of plague, may have been replaced by larger brown rats that do
not carry the infection. A second theory suggests that increased immunity among the rodents that carried the disease or changes in the disease itself broke the cycle of
transmission. The most likely explanation, however, is human intervention. Although it wasn't until the 19th century that doctors understood how germs could cause
disease, Europeans recognized by the 16th century that plague was contagious and could be carried from one area to another.

VI

EFFECTS OF THE PLAGUE

The Black Death and the other epidemics of bubonic plague had many consequences. One was a series of vicious attacks on Jews, lepers, and outsiders who were
accused of deliberately poisoning the water or the air. The attacks began in the south of France, but were most dramatic in parts of Switzerland and Germany--areas
with a long history of attacks on local Jewish communities. Massacres in Bern were typical of this pattern: After weeks of fearful tension, Jews were rounded up and
burned or drowned in marshes. Sometimes there were attacks on Jews even where there was no plague. The Pope, the leader of the Catholic church, and most public
officials condemned the massacres and tried to stop them. In the face of mob fury, however, they were often unsuccessful. Persecutions only ended when the deaths
from the plague began to decline. There were occasional local persecutions during later plagues, but never with the violence of those that occurred from 1348 through
1351.
Contemporary chroniclers of the Black Death called the epidemic "a horrible and cruel thing." It seemed to them that the towns of Europe were nearly deserted in the
aftermath of the plague. Overall, European population declined by about one-third. In many European cities population may have declined by up to 50 percent or more.
Bremen in Germany lost almost 7,000 of its 12,000 inhabitants. The prosperous city of Florence, Italy, may have lost 40,000 of its nearly 90,000 inhabitants. Nearby
Siena probably lost two-thirds of its urban population. Paris, the largest city north of the Alps, lost more than 50,000 of its 180,000 inhabitants. Most major cities were
quickly forced to create mass graveyards where the dead could be buried. Many towns and villages lost almost all of their populations, and some eventually disappeared
altogether. Larger towns declined drastically, as their workforces and merchant classes either died or fled. The initial population losses could have been quickly made up,
but new epidemics prevented a return to the high population levels of the period before 1348. European population only began to grow again in the last decades of the
15th century.
The plagues also brought economic changes. The death of so many people concentrated wealth in the hands of survivors. In many cases those workers who remained
alive could earn up to five times what they had earned before the plague. In the towns, plague had the effect of consolidating wealth somewhat, especially among the
middle class. As plague destroyed people and not possessions, the drop in population was accompanied by a corresponding rise in per capita wealth. Large increases in
spending in the towns at this time are well documented. Profits, however, for landlords and merchants declined as they found themselves having to pay higher wages
and getting less when they sold their products.
Governments were forced to adjust to the social disruption caused by plague. First local governments, and then in the case of England, the monarchy, attempted to
regulate the movement and price of foodstuffs as well as wages paid to laborers. The English Statute of Laborers of 1351 tried to hold wages at preplague levels.
Similar statutes were passed in various parts of France, Germany, and Italy.
Landlords tried to collect higher fees from tenant farmers as a way to increase declining incomes. Unrest among the peasants was one of the major causes of the
English Peasants' Revolt of 1381. The English rebels objected to high payments to landowners and legal limitations on the rights of some peasants. Economic and
political unrest occurred in most parts of Europe during the second half of the 14th century.
The Black Death also had an effect on the arts. In Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron, a group of young people fleeing the plague take refuge in a house outside of
Florence where they entertain each other with colorful and irreverent stories. While these stories are often seen as a rejection of traditional medieval values, Boccaccio
himself was critical of those who abandoned relatives and friends in the face of the plague. Like the artists of the day, Boccaccio continued to hold traditional social and
religious values. The primary impact of the Black Death on painting and sculpture was the willingness of the newly rich to invest in religious art for churches and
chapels. These contributions were often made in gratitude for being spared the plague, or with the hope of preventing future infection. As was natural, much of the art
and literature in the years immediately following the Black Death dealt with death.
Plague brought few changes in religious life or to medical practices. Europeans continued to visit religious shrines. Saints like St. Roch, who was thought to protect
against plague, were especially popular. It was common to paint images of St. Roch, or other famous plague saints, protecting individuals from arrows symbolizing the
pestilence. Finally, although Europeans often complained that physicians were of little help against the plague, traditional medical ideas and practices did not change. In
fact, the same ideas about humors, contagion, and quarantine were also at first used to fight cholera when that disease appeared in Europe in the 1830s.

Contributed By:
Duane J. Osheim
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