1. The church claimed that the reason the plague came about is that God's wrath was falling upon the people. The sins of the people were the cause of the plague. I would not be surprised if a major part of society believed this was the cause. By the church saying that sins were the cause of the plague and using examples, such as the Great Flood and Sodom and Gomorrah, you would think the church would see that mankind had not changed since those times and the same sins that were never taken out of the society. Instead of pointing fingers, the church should have made a bigger campaign for social reform and call upon people's souls to decide whether they wanted the plague to continue, or for it to stop. Also, it would be for the generations to come who would have to eventually face another wrath of God. Although I don't think this would ever realistically happen. People are always selfish and rarely looking out for the common good. I kind of agree with the people's attitudes of just letting people be because the wrath had already come down. I find it interesting that people, whether now or then, have that kind of dismissive attitude. In a way, I think I would have done the same thing. I would have thought rather than deprive myself of the forbidden things I enjoy, why not take advantage of what's going on and forget about the consequences. I wouldn't think about the consequences because they would already be occuring and there would be no reason to think about what's going to happen in the future for your misdeeds, because you are already paying for your misdeeds. Also, you figure you can be sinful because everyone else is and you feel if you try to do the right thing, it won't matter because the bad outweigh the good.
2. I think that the church has always played a big role in history, especially in Judeo-Christianity. I find the people to let an authority, like the chuch, tell you when/where/why/who/how. The church is notourious for using tactics to get people to try to get people to reform. For example, telling a child they are doing something bad doesn't exactly mean the child will obide by not doing it. However, if you tell a child not to do something or else they will get a spanking, they will usually obide by the rule. The church can do the same. They can tell the people that they should not do what they are doing or they will go to hell, and the people are more likely to pay attention.
I find this tactic common, however it is sad that this is what has to happen for people to obide by God's laws. I'm not sure that I would actually listen to the church if they told me this, because I don't listen to people when threatened or chastised. However, I feel like the church does the same thing throughout history. I don't find it wrong but don't find right either. I'm fairly indifferent to it being right or wrong.
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.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
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I know where you are coming from but i think it was Church that taught lot of manners to people to live in society as one. If everyone had started thinking of their selves individually, our world would have been different and hopefully we would not have been dealing these stupid things. But it didn’t happen and that’s why church plays a great role in shaping our behaviors’ and the social decisions we take. On the other way round, we would have been blaming individuality as the root cause of problem.
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