My observation after reading this article point me to the following two wrong hypothesis;
1. The Church was the most powerful organization in that time in whole Europe. They were also the most richest organization too. Every historical facts will prove that. I believe that church took the chance to deceive the ignorant mass people by their religious feelings. People believed church more than than anything. Moreover, church took this chance to increase it's power and wealth more by deceiving them. Still, Prostitution, rape , murder and other crimes happen everyday.We can not blame anyone without us for that. As an example, a doctor can use a scissors to save a life where as a murderer use that for killing life. We can not blame scissors here. We must have to blame the user behind it. God never plays a role here. The church tool their stunts only to increase more power and wealth in that time which is completely illogical.
2. Astrology and astronomy have nothing to do with this black plague. People believe zodiac signs when they feel helpless. People were helpless in that time. They did not know whom to blame. Astrologers and academicians of that took that chance to deceive the helpless mass people. Astrology and astronomers do not have anything to do with plague. So, it was a complete false logic to say that it was the result of triple conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars on March.
Background Reading
In October 1347, Italian ships on the Black Sea en route to and from China dock in Messina, Sicily -- their crews are dead or dying. Whatever is killing them quickly spreads ashore. Within a month, it passes through Sicily and moves back out over water. By January 1348, it has penetrated France via Marseille and North Africa via Tunis, and by July 1348, it spreads through France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Eastern Hungary, and Southern England. This is all the more amazing given that at this time it took a person one to three months to travel from London to Rome. The plague died out in the winters and was resurrected in the springs. At the end of 1349, it had spread throughout the British Isles and Scandinavia and continued to move east.
The death toll was massive -- the "official" figure is one-third of Europe dead between 1348 and 1351, when it temporarily abated, but keep in mind that in some towns the death toll was 90 percent -- in others 10 percent. Further, the poor and anyone else living in close quarters (monks, for instance) died at a higher rate. Many monasteries were completely wiped out, but the death rates among the nobility and the nobility of the church were very low. Understandably, people wanted to know why this was happening to them. Here are the four prominent hypotheses of the day:
The claim of academics and physicians: The plague was the result of a triple conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars on March 20, 1345.
The Roman Catholic Church's claim: God's wrath -- it was a punishment for the people's sins.
The claim of the mayors and town-controlling nobles: Poor sanitation. Dumping waste in the streets leads to sickness (a revolutionary claim at the time -- no one actually knew this to be true).
The claim of the masses (i.e., everyone else): The Jews are poisoning the wells.
Here is the "evidence" used by each group, respectively, to support its claim:
Medicine at the time was based on astrology and astronomy. Most physical sickness was attributed to poor alignment of the stars. The conjunction had happened, and it was a rare celestial event. Other events had been tied to celestial causes. Many were waiting to see what the triple conjunction would cause, and when the Black Plague occurred, they felt that they had found out.
The Church said, "Look around." Plunder, looting, rape, prostitution, war, and drinking were everywhere. God's wrath had shown itself in destructive ways before -- the people of Noah's time were hit with a flood, and the people of Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed.
The sanitation workers were among the first to die, and other diseases were suspected to be related to poor sanitation.
Christians tortured "confessions" out of Jews. The Jews were believed to be "jealous" of the Christians (because, it was thought, the Jews knew "in their hearts" that they were damned). The lepers had been blamed for poisoning the wells and causing the typhus outbreak in 1320 (after the Black Plague, it was believed that the Jews set them up to it).
Here are some problems people at the time saw with the evidence:
Nobody but the academics and physicians believed their explanation!
If God's wrath already has descended, there's no reason to change one's behavior. The attitude was roughly, "If we're already doomed, why alter our behavior?"
Later sanitation workers appeared to be immune (unknown to the people, they'd been exposed and had developed a resistance). If it really was poor sanitation, why weren't they still dying? In fact, this immunity among sanitation workers caused many people to think the sanitation workers had magical powers. People followed them on their street-cleaning routes, trying to absorb some of the immunity. Others, more desperate, actually applied waste to themselves, thinking that it would keep the disease away.
So many Jews died too (Why would any community poison itself?). The other problem is that the plague was present in areas where no Jews lived.
Friday, February 20, 2009
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I agree with you on the second one, what does a triple conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars have to do with the plague? The main point here is that these planets are millions of light years away. The plague was just used as an excuse to make believers out of people.
ReplyDeleteI agree with both statements. I do think that the population was lost and scared and they wanted some kind of explanation to make sense of what was happening to their families and friends. In these kinds of extreme conditions it becomes easier to manipulate the people, so the church used that as their tool to gain more power.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with your second point. During this time period medical science was intertwined with astrology and the cosmos. It wasn't until centuries later that there was a movement away from astrology to actual medicine as we know it today. In fact bacteria wasn't discovered until 1683 by Anthony van Leeuwenhoek. Medicine at this time was a lot of smoke and mirrors. Using the cosmos as an explanation was the best they could do.
ReplyDeleteI do agree that physicians stance on the reasons for the plague were irrelevant. I feel that they were respected and feared and people felt they had no choice but to listen because that was their authority on what was right and wrong.
ReplyDelete