Competing Viewpoints

Responses to the Black Death

Many chroniclers, intellectuals, and private individuals have left accounts of the plague in which they attempt to understand why it had occurred, how it spread, and how communities should respond to it.

The Spread of the Plague According to Gabriele de’ Mussi (d. 1356), a Lawyer in Piacenza (Northern Italy)

H God! See how the heathen Tartar races, pouring together from all sides, suddenly infested the city of Caffa [on the Black Sea] and besieged the trapped Christians there for almost three years. . . . But behold, [in 1346] the whole army was affected by a disease which overran the Tartars and killed thousands upon thousands every day. It was as though arrows were raining down from heaven to strike and crush the Tartars' arrogance. All medical advice and attention was useless; the Tartars died as soon as the signs of disease appeared on their bodies: swellings in the armpit or groin caused by coagulating humours, followed by a putrid fever.

The dying Tartars, stunned and stupefied by the immensity of the disaster brought about by the disease, and realising that they had no hope of escape, lost interest in the siege. But they ordered corpses to be placed in catapults and lobbed into the city in the hope that the intolerable stench would kill everyone inside. What seemed like mountains of dead were thrown into the city, and the Christians could not hide or flee or escape from them, although they dumped as many of the bodies as they could in the sea. And soon the rotting corpses tainted the air and poisoned the water supply. . . . Moreover one infected man could carry the poison to others, and infect people and places with the disease by look alone. No one knew, or could discover, a means of defence.

Thus almost everyone who had been in the East. . . fell victim. . . through the bitter events of 1346 to 1348-the Chinese, Indians, Persians, Medes, Kurds, Armenians, Cilicians, Georgians, Mesopotamians, Nubians, Ethiopians, Turks, Egyptians, Arabs, Saracens and Greeks. . . .

As it happened, among those who escaped from Caffa by boat were a few sailors who had been infected with the poisonous disease. Some boats were bound for Genoa, others went to Venice and to other Christian areas. When the sailors reached these places and mixed with the people there, it was as if they had brought evil spirits with them. . . .

Scarcely one in seven of the Genoese survived. In Venice, where an inquiry was held into the mortality, it was found that more than 70 percent of the people had died. . . . The rest of Italy, Sicily and Apulia and the neighbouring regions maintain that they have been virtually emptied of inhabitants. . . . The Roman Curia at Avignon, the provinces on both sides of the Rhone, Spain, France, and the Empire cry up their griefs. . . .

Everyone has a responsibility to keep some record of the disease and the deaths, and because I am myself from Piacenza I have been urged to write more about what happened there in 1348. . . .

Brought it to Sicily and northern Italy. From Italy, it spread westward along trade routes, first striking seaports, then turning inland with the travelers who carried it. It moved with astonishing rapidity, advancing about two miles per day, summer or winter. By 1350, it had reached Scandinavia and northern Russia, then spread southward again until it linked up with the original waves of infection that had brought it from Central Asia to the Black Sea. It continued to erupt in local epidemics for the next 300 years; some localities could expect a renewed outbreak every decade. The last Europe-wide instance occurred between 1661 and 1669, although there were

I don't know where to begin. Cries and laments arise on all sides. Day after day one sees the Cross and the Host being carried about the city, and countless dead being buried. . . . The living made preparations for their [own] burial, and because there was not enough room for individual graves, pits had to be dug in colonnades and piazzas, where nobody had ever been buried before. It often happened that man and wife, father and son, mother and daughter, and soon the whole household and many neighbours, were buried together in one place. . . .

A Letter from the Town Council of Cologne to the Town Council of Strasbourg (Germany), 12 January 1349

Ery dear friends, all sorts of rumours are now flying about against Judaism and the Jews prompted by this unexpected and unparalleled mortality of Christians. . . . Throughout our city, as in yours, manywinged Fame clamours that this mortality was initially caused, and is still being spread, by the poisoning of springs and wells, and that the Jews must have dropped poisonous substances into them. When it came to our knowledge that serious charges had been made against the Jews in several small towns and villages on the basis of this mortality, we sent numerous letters to you and to other cities and towns to uncover the truth behind these rumours, and set a thorough investigation in train. . . .

If a massacre of the Jews were to be allowed in the major cities (something which we are determined to prevent in our city, if we can, as long as the Jews are found to be innocent of these or similar actions) it could lead to the sort of outrages and disturbances which would whip up a popular revolt among the common people-and such revolts have in the past brought cities to misery and desolation. In any case we are still of the opinion that this mortality and its attendant circumstances are caused by divine vengeance and nothing else. Accordingly we intend to forbid any harassment of the Jews in our city because of these flying rumours, but to defend them faithfully and keep them safe, as our predecessors did-and we are convinced that you ought to do the same. . . .

Source: From Rosemary Horrox, ed. and trans.,

The Black Death (Manchester: 1994), pp. 16-21, 219-20.

Questions for Analysis

1.  How does Gabriele de' Mussi initially explain the causes of the plague? How does his understanding of it change as he traces its movements from East to West-and closer to Italy?

2.  Why does the Council of Cologne wish to quell violence against the Jews? How does this reasoning complement or challenge what we have learned so far about the treatment of Jews in medieval Europe?

3.  I n your view, do these two perspectives display a rational approach to the horrors of the Black Death? Why or why not?

Sporadic outbreaks in Poland and Russia until the end of the eighteenth century.

What caused the Black Death? In 2011, scientists were able to confirm that it can be traced to the deadly microbe Yersinia pestis, and that it did indeed originate in China. Y. pestis actually causes three different kinds of contagion: bubonic plague and its even deadlier cousins, septicemic plague and pneumonic plague. In its bubonic form, this microbe is carried by fleas that travel on the backs of rats; humans catch it only if they are bitten by an infected flea or rat. Bubonic plague attacks the lymphatic system, producing enormous swellings (buboes) of the lymph nodes in the groin, neck, and armpits. Septicemic plague occurs when an infected flea introduces the microbe directly into the human bloodstream, causing death within hours, often before any symptoms of the disease can manifest themselves. Pneumonic plague, perhaps the most frightening variation, results when Y. pestis infects the lungs, allowing the contagion to spread silently and invisibly, in the same ways as the common cold.

One of the things that made the Black Death so terrifying, therefore, was that it manifested itself in several different ways. Those afflicted by the hideous bubonic plague might actually recover, while others—seemingly untouched— might die suddenly, mysteriously. Immediate reactions understandably ranged from panic to resignation. Observers quickly realized that the plague was contagious, but precisely how it spread remained enigmatic. Some believed that it was caused by breathing “bad air” and so urged people to flee from stricken areas, which caused the disease to spread even faster.

Others looked for scapegoats and revived old conspiracy theories that implicated Jews in the poisoning of wells. Scores of Jewish communities were attacked and thousands of their inhabitants massacred in the

Rhineland, southern France, and Christian Spain. (No such attacks are known to have occurred in Muslim areas of Spain or elsewhere in the Muslim world.) The papacy and some local authorities tried to halt these attacks, but these admonitions came too late. Another response to the plague was the flagellant movement, so called because of the whips (flagella) with which traveling bands of penitents lashed themselves in order to appease the wrath of God. But the unruly and sometimes hysterical mobs that gathered around the flagellants aroused the concern of both ecclesiastical and secular authorities, and the movement was suppressed by papal order.

CONCLUSION

The century between 1250 and 1350 was a time of significant change within all Western civilizations. The growing power of some monarchies led to encroachments on territories and cities that had once been independent, and that fueled resistance to these internal acts of colonization. The papacy, whose power had seemed so secure at the turn

REVIEWING THE OBJECTIVES

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Visit StudySpace for quizzes, additional review materials, and multimedia documents. wwnorton. com/web/westernciv18

¦  The conquests of the Mongols had a significant impact on Europe. How?

¦  The expansion of commerce and communication between Eastern and Western civilizations created a new world system. What were some key characteristics of this system? What kinds of exchange did it enable?

¦  What were the short - and longer-term causes for the papacy's loss of prestige? Why was the papal court moved to Avignon?

¦  What is sovereignty? What were the effects of competition for sovereign among European rulers?

¦  What caused the Black Death? In what sense can it be seen as a product of the new world system that began with the Mongol conquests?

Of the thirteenth century, would itself become a pawn in the keeping of the French king by the beginning of the fourteenth. Rome thereby lost its last source of authority while the New Rome, Constantinople, struggled to rebuild its prestige in the face of Mongol expansion. Yet for the Mongol khans and the merchants they favored, for seafaring civilizations like Venice and Genoa, for ambitious students at the universities, and for men on the make, the opportunities for advancement and mobility were great.

And there were still other factors at play during this era. Even in good times, Europe’s population had outgrown its capacity to produce food, and when the climate grew cooler, years of cold summers and heavy rainfall took an enormous toll. Those regions most closely tied to the new global networks were also densely settled and urban, which made the shortage of food and the spread of disease more acute there. In short, the benefits and drawbacks of increased globalization were already beginning to manifest themselves in the early fourteenth century—700 years ago. The Black Death can be understood as the ultimate example of medieval connectivity and also as a modern phenomenon.

The scale of mortality caused by this pandemic is almost unimaginable, to us as to those who survived it. At least a third, and probably half, of Europe’s people died between 1347 and 1353. In the countryside, entire villages disappeared. Cities and towns, overcrowded and unsanitary, were particularly vulnerable to plague and, thereafter, to outbreaks of violence. The immediate social consequences were profound, and so were the economic ones. Crops rotted in the fields, manufacturing ceased, and trade came to a standstill in affected areas. Basic commodities became scarcer and prices rose, prompting ineffectual efforts to control prices and to force the remaining able-bodied laborers to work.

These were the short-term effects. How did the Black Death matter to those who survived it—including ourselves? According to Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), a Muslim historian who is considered one of the founders of modern historical methods, it marked the end of the old world and the beginning of a new one, which would require new systems of government, bodies of knowledge, and forms of art. Was he right? We will begin to answer that question in Chapter 11.

PEOPLE, IDEAS, AND EVENTS IN CONTEXT

THINKING ABOUT CONNECTIONS

¦  What accounts for the success of GENGHIS KHAN and his successors? What circumstances enabled MARCO POLO's travels to China? To what extent does the term PAX MONGOLICA describe this era in history?

¦  How did seafaring communities like that of GENOA rise to prominence in this era? Why were new navigational aids like PORTOLAN CHARTS necessary?

¦  How do the paintings of GIOTTO capture contemporary attitudes toward the world? How does DANTE's artistry respond to the religious and political trends of his day?

¦  What was at stake in the controversy between BONIFACE VIII and PHILIP IV? Why is the papacy's residency at AVIGNON called the BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY? What is a SACRAMENT, and why were these rites so important?

¦  In what different ways did LOUIS IX of France and EDWARD I of England contribute to the sovereignty of their respective kingdoms? What was the relationship between claims to sovereignty and the causes of the HUNDRED YEARS' WAR?

¦  How did climate change contribute to the outbreak of the GREAT FAMINE?

¦  What were the long-term and short-term causes of the BLACK DEATH?

¦  If the Mongol khan Ogedei had not died in 1241, the Mongols could conceivably have continued their westward movement into Europe. Given what you have learned about Mongol rule, how might this have changed the history of the world?

¦  How do the patterns of conquest and colonization discussed in this chapter compare to those of earlier periods, particularly those of antiquity? How many of these developments were new in 1250-1350?

¦  We live in a world in which the global circulation of people, information, goods, and bacteria is rapid. How does the medieval system compare to ours? What features seem familiar?

Conclusion | 355

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CORE OBJECTIVES

¦  TRACE the economic and social effects of the Black Death.

¦  EXPLAIN the relationship between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

¦  DESCRIBE the intellectual, cultural, and technological innovations of this era.

¦  DEFINE the concept of national monarchy and summarize its implications.

¦  UNDERSTAND the significance of the conciliar movement and its defeat by the papacy.