In October 1347, Italian ships on the Black Sea 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.
Thanks for the interesting post, Kijafa. I have a different view of the church's postion in this case. At this time, the church was generally a supreme governing influence over most of Europe. The Catholic Church's position in the ruling class required it to express official opinions about everything from the tribulations of plagues to exuberant thanks to their creator for a high yielding crop.
ReplyDeleteIt would be more than 100 years before the Catholic Church's most famous dissenter, Martin Luther, started the rift that became the Protestant movement. So, at the time of the Plague, the Catholic Church was largely looked upon as an infallible institution.
I quite agree with your statement that the Catholic Church made people to believe that the plague was God's wrath. The church tried to persuade people to change their life style in order to calm God. As the result, God would stop further spreading of the disease. In addition, based on the assumption offered by the story God was selective, because the death rate among “the nobility and the nobility of the church were very low.” It was a perfect argument in favor of the Catholic Church people that were thought to be sinless in “the eyes of God” at the time.
ReplyDeleteI agree the Catholic Church just tried to make believers out of even more people so they can become even more powerful. As we know, religion is always brought in when it comes to any type of natural disasters such as hurricanes and etc.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, KIJAFA. In those times, the Church used to scared the people so they would not commit sins. However, God does not punish us in that way. God lets us make our own mistakes and we have the freedom to do good or bad things, but God does not coma back to us with deadly masacres. The Church just wanted to create a more civilized society that follow the Church's rules and beliefs by scaring the masses.
ReplyDeleteKIJAFA FOWLER, I really don't agree with you because that time church has a superior power to control the community. Also, the church gave the explanation to the people to become civilize in the religious ways. Moreover, there wasn’t any educational institute except the church, so people used to go there to become literate. My understanding is the church only distinguishes between good and bad. Just imagine if the world is full of crimes such as rubbing, war and other bad things then will we be able to live? During the war not only the two groups of people dies but also a lot of innocent people die. Now if we can control our behavior may stops the deserter.
ReplyDeleteGood - not only the Church, but most religions use fear tactics to control the masses. As Karl Marx says, religion is the opiate of the masses because it sedates and governs behaviors.
ReplyDeleteIn the past they did not know about bacteria or airborne contagions - imagine what the average student will say about our primitive measures in just a few centuries!