The Black Death

Introduction

By the year 1346, Europe was beginning to see a decline in the period known as the High Middle Ages. Populations were on the wane and famine had helped to reduce them. Several Italian banks had gone under, and with them the dreams of enterprising traders and town-builders. And the Papacy had been headquartered at Avignon for more than 30 years.

The Hundred Years’ War was under way and in 1346 the English scored a significant victory at the Battle of Crécy. Spain was in the midst of turmoil: there was armed rebellion in Aragon and Christian Castile was engaged in a conflict with Moorish Granada. Trade had not long before opened up with eastern societies through Mongol territory (the Khanate of the Golden Horde), and the Italian cities of Genoa and Venice profited most significantly from new markets and new products. These new trade routes, unfortunately, would be instrumental in bringing to Europe from the far reaches of Asia the worst epidemic of plague Christendom had ever known.

Definition

The Black Death was an epidemic which spread across almost all of Europe in the years 1347-1353. The plague believed has killed over a third of the entire population. It has been described as the worst natural disaster in European history and is responsible for changing the course of that history to a great degree. There Black Death or also known as the Great Mortality or the Plague or the Pestilence, was a trans-continental disease which swept Europe and killed millions during the fourteenth century.

Traditionally, the disease that most scholars believe struck Europe was “Plague.” It was best known as bubonic plague – for the “buboes” (lumps) that formed on the victims’ bodies – caused by the bacterium Yersinia Pestis that scientists found in samples taken from French plague pits where bodies were buried – Plague also took pneumonic and septicemic forms. Other diseases have been postulated by scientists, and some scholars believe that there was a pandemic of several diseases, but currently the theory of Plague still holds among most historians.

Point of Origin

It may never be possible to identify the point of origin of the fourteenth-century plague with any precision. The disease had been endemic in several locations in Asia for centuries, flaring up occasionally and setting off the severe sixth-century pandemic. At any one of these sites an outbreak could have occurred that initiated the Black Death. One such location is Lake Issyk-Kul in central Asia, where archaeological excavations have revealed an unusually high death rate for the years 1338 and 1339. Memorial stones attribute the deaths to plague, leading some scholars to conclude that the pestilence could have originated there and then spread east to China and south to India. Issyk-Kul’s location along the trading routes of the Silk Road and its accessibility from both China and the Caspian Sea make it a convenient spot for spreading disease.

Other sources, however, refer to plague in China as early as the 1320s. Whether this strain infected the entire country before spreading westward to Issyk-Kul, or whether it was an isolated incident that had died out by the time a separate strain from Issyk-Kul reached the east is impossible to tell. But however it started and however it spread, it took a devastating toll on China, killing millions. It is most likely that, rather than moving south from the lake through the seldom-traveled mountains of Tibet, the plague reached India from China via common ship trading routes. There too millions would succumb to its horror.

How the pestilence made its way to Mecca is not clear. Both merchants and pilgrims traveled by sea from India to the holy city with some regularity. But Mecca was not struck until 1349 (more than a year after the disease was in full swing in Europe). It is possible that pilgrims or merchants from Europe brought it south with them. Also, whether the disease moved directly to the Caspian Sea from Lake Issyk-Kul, or whether it first moved to China and back again along the Silk Road is unknown. It may have been the latter, since it took a full eight years to reach Astrakhan and the capital of the Golden Horde, Sarai.

It Hits Europe

The first recorded appearance of the plague in Europe was at Messina, Sicily in October of 1347. It arrived on trading ships that very likely came from the Black Sea, past Constantinople and through the Mediterranean. This was a fairly standard trade route that brought to European customers such items as silks and porcelain, which were carried overland to the Black Sea from as far away as China. As soon as the citizens of Messina realised what horrible sickness had come aboard these ships, they expelled them from the port, but it was too late. Plague quickly raged through the city, and panicking victims fled, thus spreading it to the surrounding countryside. While Sicily was succumbing to the horrors of the disease, the expelled trading ships brought it to other areas around the Mediterranean, infecting the neighboring islands of Corsica and Sardinia by November.

Meanwhile, plague had traveled from Sarai to the Genoese trading station of Tana, east of the Black Sea. Here Christian merchants were attacked by Tartars and chased to their fortress at Kaffa (Caffa). The Tartars besieged the city in November, but their siege was cut short when the Black Death struck. Before breaking off their attack, however, they catapulted dead plague victims into the city in the hopes of infecting its residents. The defenders tried to divert the pestilence by throwing the bodies into the sea, but once a walled city had been struck by plague, its doom was sealed. As the inhabitants of Kaffa began to fall to the disease, the merchants boarded ships to sail home. But they could not escape the plague. When they arrived in Genoa and Venice in January of 1348, few passengers or sailors were left alive to tell the tale.

Once the disease had traveled along most of the trade routes in Europe, its exact course becomes more difficult – in some areas nearly impossible – to plot. It had penetrated into Bavaria by June, but its course across the rest of Germany is uncertain. And while the south of England was also infected by June of 1348, the worst of the epidemic did not strike the majority of Great Britain until 1349.

In Spain and Portugal, the plague crept inland from the port cities at a somewhat slower pace than in Italy and France. In the war at Granada, the Muslim soldiers were the first to succumb to the illness, and so horrific did they find it that some feared it was Allahss punishment and even contemplated converting to Christianity. Before any could take so drastic a step, however, their Christian enemies were also struck down by the hundreds, making it plain that the plague took no notice of religious affiliation. It was in Spain that the only ruling monarch to die of the disease met his end. The advisors of King Alfonse XI of Castile begged him to isolate himself, but he refused to leave his troops. He fell ill and died on March 26, 1350.

Death Toll

Historians, traditionally, accept that there were variations in the rates of mortality as different areas suffered slightly differently, but roughly one-third (33%) of Europe’s entire population succumbed between 1346-53, somewhere in the region of 20-25 million people. Britain is often quoted as losing 40%. There is some dispute about urban versus rural losses but, in general, the rural population suffered as heavily as the urban ones, a key factor given that 90% of Europe’s population lived in rural areas. In England alone, deaths rendered 1000 villages unviable and survivors left them. While the poor had a higher chance of contracting the disease, the rich and noble still suffered, including King Alfonso XI of Castile, who died, as did a quarter of the Pope’s staff at Avignon (the papacy had left Rome at this point and hadn’t yet returned).

The Beliefs about the Plague

The majority of people believed the plague was sent by God, largely as a punishment for sins. Medical knowledge in this period was insufficiently developed for any effective treatments, with many doctors believing the disease was due to ‘miasma,’ the pollution of the air with toxic matter from rotting material. There were also those who believed in demonic dogs, and in Scandinavia, the superstition of the Pest Maiden was popular. Some people accused the Jews of poisoning wells and the result was a horrific persecution of Jews that the papacy was hard-put to stop.

Scholars attempted a more scientific view, but they were hampered by the fact that the microscope would not be invented for several centuries. The University of Paris conducted a study, the Paris Consilium, which, after serious investigation, ascribed the plague to a combination of earthquakes and astrological forces.

The Effects of the Plague

Social Effects

• The marriage rate rose sharply—in part due to predatory men marrying rich orphans and widows
• The birth rate also rose, though recurrences of the plague kept population levels reduced
• There were notable increases in violence and vice acts
• Upward mobility took place on a small scale.

Economic Effects

• A surplus of goods resulted in overspending; it was swiftly followed by a shortage of goods and inflation
• A shortage of laborers meant they were able to charge higher prices; the government tried to limit these fees to pre-plague rates

Effects on the Church

• The Church lost many people, but the institution became richer through bequests. It also grew richer by charging more money for its services, such as saying mass for the dead
• Less-educated priests were shuffled into jobs where more learned men had died
• The failure of the clergy to help the suffering during the plague, combined with its obvious wealth and the incompetence of its priests, caused resentment among the people. Critics grew vocal, and the seeds of the Reformation were sown

Conclusion

By 1349, many of the areas that had initially been afflicted were beginning to see the end of the first wave. However, in the more heavily-populated cities it was only a temporary respite. Once again utilizing trade routes, the plague appears to have made its way to Norway via ship from Britain. A few areas in Europe managed to escape the worst. Milan saw little infection, possibly due to the drastic measures taken to prevent the spread of the illness. The lightly-populated and little-traveled region of southern France near the Pyrenees, between English-controlled Gascony and French-controlled Toulouse, saw very little plague mortality. The port city of Bruges, however, was spared the extremes that other cities on the trade routes suffered, possibly due to a recent drop-off in trade activity resulting from the early stage of the Hundred Years War.