The Black Death
© Phyllis Agronsky
It was the defining event of the 14th century, perhaps the single most devastating plague in the history of mankind. It has been used as an historic benchmark, the dividing line between the central and late Middle Ages. In two and a half years, 1/3 of the population of Europe died. No country in which it struck was undamaged, economically or socially. With its appearance, the seeds of the Reformation were sown. What was this catastrophic event? It has been known by various names: the Black Death, the Black Plague, or simply The Plague.
It started in China in the late-1320's. In an earlier time, the Plague might well have been an isolated phenomenon, limited in scope. With the Crusades, however, trade routes to the Far East were consistently expanded, involving more and more countries. With this expanded trade came wealth, and knowledge. On the ships that carried trade goods from exotic ports to Marseilles, Genoa, Venice and London came a more sinister visitor. In the holds of these ships were rats, and the fleas they carried. These fleas moved freely to human hosts - and from these flea bites, the bubonic plague spread.
By 1345, the plague was on the lower Volga River. By 1346 it was in the Caucasus and the Crimea. In 1347, it reached Constantinople. It hit Alexandria in the autumn of 1347, and by the spring of 1348, a thousand people a day were dying there. In Cairo, the count was seven times that.
In late summer of 1347, the plague reached Cyprus. By October of that year, a Genoese fleet landed at Messina, Sicily, and the plague erupted throughout that island. By winter, it had spread to the rest of Italy; Marseilles in January 1348; Paris that spring, and in September 1348, the plague came to England.
So devastating were the effects of the disease that for two years there was a truce between England and France, who were forced to suspend hostilities for lack of manpower. The plague made no discrimination between high and low born, sinner and saint. So swift was its progress that entire villages were depopulated in the space of weeks. The following is an excerpt from the journal of Agnolo di Tura, of Siena,(Italy) written in 1348:
"The mortality in Siena began in May. It was a cruel and horrible thing. . . .The victims died almost immediately. They would swell beneath the armpits and in the groin, and fall over while talking. Father abandoned child, wife husband, one brother another; for this illness seemed to strike through breath and sight. And so they died. None could be found to bury the dead for money or friendship. (They) brought their dead to a ditch as best they could, without priest, without divine offices. In many places in Siena great pits were dug and piled deep with the multitude of dead. And they died by the hundreds, both day and night, and all were thrown in those ditches and covered with earth... I, Agnolo di Tura . . . buried my five children with my own hands. . . . And so many died that all believed it was the end of the world."
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