The Black Death

The Black Death

A series of natural disasters, droughts, earthquakes and floods in China from 1333 to 1345 was followed by locust swarms, famine and pestilence. By the end of 1346, it was widely known in the major European seaports that a plague of a previously unheard of magnitude was raging in the East.  This plague or The Black Death was probably carried first along the Silk Road and then from Constantinople by rat fleas living on the black rats that were regular passengers on merchant ships trading throughout the Mediterranean.

The plague was reportedly first introduced to Europe in 1347 at the trading city of Caffa in the Crimea in Eastern Europe. The city was under siege by the Mongol army who were suffering from the disease. The Mongols catapulted infected corpses over the city walls to infect the inhabitants. When the traders fled the city, they took the plague by ship into Sicily and the south of Europe, where it then spread to the rest of continental Europe.

From Italy, the Black Death spread to France where in Marseilles it’s reported that 50 to 60% of the city’s population died, and then onto England in 1348, where in London half the population perished. By mid-1349 the plague had reached Germany, followed by Scandinavia and northern Scotland at the end of that year, and then onto Russia by the end of 1350. Then for some unknown reason the pandemic halted.

The plague presented itself in three various forms. With the bubonic variant which was the most common, swellings (buboes) appeared on a victim's neck, armpits or groin. These tumors could range in size from that of an egg to that of an apple.  The victim had a life expectancy of up to a week. A second variation, pneumonic plague, attacked the respiratory system and was spread by simply breathing the exhaled air of a victim. Life expectancy was measured in only one or two days. Finally, the septicemic version of the disease attacked the blood system.

As the plague hit with such devastating fury, people tried to make sense of what the disease was. Some people believed that the planets were responsible for the plague when the coming together of planets was a sign of terrible or violent things to come. Others believed invisible fumes or poisons could kill people from either looking at each other or merely breathing air in. Another belief, in particular with highly religious people of those times, was that God or the Devil was the cause of all of their problems. Having no defense and no real understanding of the cause of the plague, the men, women and children caught in its path were baffled, panicked, and finally devastated.

The sick, regardless of their position in society were abandoned by family and those closest to them. However it was the poorest that suffered the most as they received no attention or care. Many ended their lives in the streets while many others who remained and died in their homes were only known to be dead because the neighbours smelled their decaying bodies. Dead bodies filled every corner of villages, towns and cities, and such was the multitude of corpses that mass graves were dug in church cemeteries by those concerned to get rid of their rotting bodies.

'This epidemic... kills almost instantly, as soon as the airy spirits leaving the eyes of the sick man has struck the eye of a healthy bystander looking at him, for then the poisonous nature passes from one eye to the other.

The plague was especially deadly as it ravaged crowded European cities. Here is an account from one in Siena, Italy:

They died by the hundreds, both day and night, and all were thrown in … ditches and covered with earth. And as soon as those ditches were filled, more were dug. And 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.

While the humanist Giovanni Boccaccio witnessed the Black Death in Florence:

Such was the cruelty of heaven and, to a great degree, of man that, between March [1348] and the following July, it is estimated that more than 100,000 human beings lost their lives within the walls of Florence, what with the ravages attendant on the plague and the barbarity of the survivors towards the sick.

The Black Death reduced the world population from an estimated 450 million to between 350 and 375 million in the 14th century. It was particularly devastating in Europe, killing between 30 to 60% of the population. Population levels in Europe then took 150 years to fully recover to their pre-plague levels. The aftermath of the plague created a series of huge social, economic and religious upheavals, which had profound effects on the course of European history.

Written by: Matt Kershaw

References:

• Alcon, S.A. 2003, A Pest in the Land: new world epidemics in a global perspective,  The Univeristy of New Mexico Press, USA.
• Channel 4 – History. 2008, The Black Death, viewed on Aug 23^rd 2012, <http://web.archive.org/web/20080625094232/http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/a-b/blackdeath.html>
• EyeWitness to History. 2001, ‘The Black Death, 1348’, viewed on Aug 23^rd 2012, <http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/plague.htm>
• Ziegler, P. 2009, The Black Death, Harper Perennial, New York.