Johnston R.A. All Things Medieval: An Encyclopedia of the Medieval World

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infected the inland Italian city of Florence. In June it entered Paris, and

around August 1348, the plague came to Rome and to the coast of En-

gland. As the plague spread throughout France, London was struck in the

fall of 1348. Around April 1349, an English ship brought the plague to

Norway, where it spread into Sweden. Coming from a different direction,

the plague was in Germany around June 1349, beginning with Bavaria

and Vienna. It entered Poland in the summer of 1349, and by the winter

of 1350, it had reached Scotland. Ireland had a lighter case of plague, and

the disease did not reach Iceland at that time. In 1352, the plague reached

distant Moscow. During the same years, the plague also spread through the

Middle East, ravaging Egypt, Palestine, Arabia, and North Africa.

In each place, the plague lasted for about a year and then died out.

New cases became weekly, rather than daily, then every few weeks, then

monthly, and ﬁ nally there were no new cases. In 1349, Italy’s plague ended,

and relief from plague followed in other countries at the same pace the

plague had entered.

The plague continued to return in waves until the 17th century. Al-

though the disease was not native to Europe, it was established in the local

rat population for two centuries until it ﬁ nally died out even among the

rats. Europe continued to lose up to 10 percent of its population with each

wave of plague; the wave that followed the Black Death, in 1361, struck

down many of the children born since the ﬁ rst plague.

Treatment and Prevention

Medieval medical ideas were based on the late Roman works of Galen,

who lived through a similar plague but did not absorb its lessons. There

was no workable theory of contagion, and physicians debated whether dis-

eases were passed from one person to another, rather than through bad air

or a pernicious astrological combination in the skies. The medical faculty

of Paris determined that the plague’s severity was due to a bad conjunction

of three planets in 1345. This created a disturbance on the planet, causing

bad air; poisons from the earth had been drawn out into the atmosphere.

The physicians of Paris recommended that south-facing windows should be

blocked off to guard against warm, damp air. In Spain, Arab doctors held

the same views but were not permitted to recommend preventative mea-

sures. According to Islam, people lived or died by God’s will alone, and a

belief in contagion was irreligious and dangerous.

The prevailing idea that bad air caused the plague pushed many people

to use pleasant-smelling ﬂ owers or spices to avoid infection. They carried

small bouquets under their noses when they went into the streets, and

those who could afford cinnamon or cloves used lockets or pressed the

spices into oranges and carried them. The other prevailing idea in medicine

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was that the proper balance of the body maintained health, so especially

at this time, people needed to keep a temperate diet that was properly

balanced.

Medieval writers recorded extremes of behavior among their fellow citi-

zens. Some became terriﬁ ed of the bad air and contagion around them

and isolated themselves. The Pope survived the plague by remaining in-

doors with roaring ﬁ res going at all times. Others took in supplies for a few

months and shut themselves inside with their families, boarding up win-

dows and bolting doors, hoping the plague would pass them by (it worked

in some cases). Some responded to the overwhelming death rate by living

carelessly. They believed that an excess of food, drink, and dancing would

drive off the humors of the bad air and keep them balanced. They went to

taverns and entered private homes, looking for alcohol and fun. Still others

ﬂ ed the city and went as far into the country as they could, hoping to escape

the contagion. In most cases, it was futile.

Cities did have rudimentary ideas about waste disposal and proper burial

of corpses to try to control infection. The cities that retained basic services

throughout the plague organized a daily collection of bodies on biers or, in

the case of Venice, by boat. When the cemeteries ﬁ lled, they dug trenches

or pits, layered the bodies in with some charcoal ash or dirt, and covered

the top as well as they could. In many cases, the sheer number of the dead

made it difﬁ cult for cities to bury them well enough to keep dogs from dig-

ging them up and spreading more infection.

Although the people of that time had no concept of microscopic organ-

isms that could pass from one person to another, they also knew that being

close to a sick person was dangerous. Care for the sick and dying, which

was normally orderly and thorough, fell apart in most cities. In Florence,

where the public order nearly broke down, relatives abandoned the dying,

even their own children. Although many or perhaps most families con-

tinued normal care for their sick, the terror of the plague was too much

for some.

Across southern France and Germany, a rumor spread that Jews were

causing the plague by poisoning the water supply. The town of Chillon,

in the county of Savoy, sent letters to other German towns to warn them

that a Jew had confessed to the plot. Although the Pope, the king of

Aragon, the duke of Austria, and some city governments tried to protect

the local Jews, people in Germany, Flanders, France, and Spain massacred

their Jewish populations. Strasbourg recorded the death of 16,000 Jews;

in Mainz, where Jews struck back and killed 200 Christians, 12,000 Jews

were recorded as dead. The Jewish population of Germany, from the Swiss

border to the northern towns on the Baltic, became extinct. Some Jews

ﬂ ed to Poland and Lithuania, where the king of Poland offered them pro-

tection.

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Effect on Society

During the Black Death, many people believed the epidemic was God’s

punishment for their sins. A town’s ﬁ rst response to the approaching plague

was often to organize a ceremonial procession through the streets with a

saint ’s relics carried at the front, and they offered many prayers for mercy

for the people’s sins. But as the plague grew worse, a less moderate reli-

gious response began. Centered in Germany, the movement is known as

the Flagellants.

The Flagellants were monks and laymen who believed that only a dra-

matic demonstration of repentance would sufﬁ ce. They went on pilgrim-

ages of 33 days each during which they whipped themselves three times a

day. On these pilgrimages, they arrived in a town and led a procession to the

church, where they whipped their own backs and each other’s with whips

that were barbed so as to wound deeply. The townspeople looked on with

awe or were pulled into the frenzied emotion. Some joined the Flagellants

for month-long pilgrimages, while others went on rampages against the re-

maining Jews. The Flagellant movement was very popular in Germany and

as far away as Flanders, but when it came to England, it met with less en-

thusiasm. As the plague ended in Europe, the Flagellants went home.

Across Europe, two contradictory social changes took place immedi-

ately following the plague. Contemporary writers stated that survivors had

lost their moral standards; at the same time, there was a rise in personal

piety that began to develop European religion away from the medieval

model.

The attitude of “eat, drink, and be merry” stemmed from the immense

grief, too great to be fully comprehended, combined with the loss of some

social institutions and conventions. Survivors felt very relieved. They pur-

sued fun to drive away the memories and to enjoy life before the next catas-

trophe. Italian writers observed this trend the most strongly. They reported

that women were dressing immodestly and acting immorally and that feast-

ing and drinking were at irresponsible levels.

At the same time, the breakdown of social connections during the crisis

had frightened many survivors. They recalled the improper, hasty burials,

and they knew cases in which no family members had survived to bury or

mourn the dead. Priests were not able to keep up with the demand for vis-

its to the dying or burial rites. Survivors of the plague knew that if another

plague struck, they might ﬁ nd themselves with no burial rites or prayers.

In many Italian cities, they began to form societies that promised to see to

each other’s funerals. These societies began to do charitable acts, such as

caring for the poor, and meet for prayer. Piety became a personal matter,

rather than just for monks and priests. There was also a surge of interest

in occult magic and ways to contact the dead. Witchcraft became a bigger

concern than before the plague.

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Europe’s pre-plague economy had been based on feudal agriculture.

When the population of Europe was cut by an average of 40 percent, many

estates could not get in their harvests. There were not enough peasants to

work the lord’s land, and peasants resisted some other feudal provisions. In

many places, when a peasant died, the lord’s estate took his best animal as

a death tax. In a time of extreme mortality, the peasants resisted this tax,

which impoverished them when they were already struggling. Feudalism,

with its restrictions on where a peasant could live and what he could do,

no longer made sense.

Land values dropped. There were not enough people to farm the land,

and some acres began to revert to forest or swamp. Food production

dropped, but, with fewer people to feed, prices for food also went down.

The only value that rose was the value of labor. With so few laborers, and

so many places to ﬁ ll, poor men demanded high wages.

Landowners found themselves in a weak position because they had to

expend cash in order to get work done that used to be done for free. Their

farm produce was worth less, but they paid more to produce it. Servants

As the Black Death plague hit its peak in continental Europe, the common people of

Germany, France, and the Netherlands appealed to God. Men vowed to complete

33-day pilgrimages as Flagellants, walking from town to town and publicly whipping

their backs to show repentance for society’s sins. These Flagellants are arriving in the

cloth-manufacturing town of Tournai, bearing a cruciﬁ x and banners. (Ann Ronan

Pictures/StockphotoPro)

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were hard to ﬁ nd, and more skilled labor positions were now available for

them to move into. Landowners in many places petitioned for laws that

would keep the old order. With wages frozen and peasants not permit-

ted to leave, their estates could keep running. In England, after at least

four more outbreaks of plague, the peasants ﬁ nally exploded in a revolt

in 1381.

When land prices fell and many farms were left vacant, estates, schools,

and individuals were able to purchase or lease land at good prices. Most

historians believe much of Europe had been relatively overpopulated, leav-

ing many peasants without land. Survivors found themselves farming more

prosperously, with more to eat.

So many priests died in the plague that bishops had to rush uneducated

men into vacancies. The universities of Oxford and Cambridge both ex-

panded in the years immediately following the Black Death, so as to train

more priests. The educational standard of priests in England rose, as a

result.

The plague may also have inﬂ uenced both architecture and education.

Medieval masons were highly trained and took years to learn their craft.

Some historians believe the deaths of many master masons during the Black

Death disrupted the training process. Later masons did not have the skills

to create the elaborate stone features of earlier cathedrals. Teachers, an-

other educated group, also suffered losses. In England, this may have has-

tened the shift from French to English as the national language. Until that

time, children who went to school (a minority) learned French, but after

the plague, schools did not require mastery of French in a teacher, and

most children were educated only in English.

Ideas about Causes of the Plague

In the late 19th century, Europeans in India and China witnessed an

outbreak of plague that became known as the Third Pandemic. It began

in China in 1855, and, over the next 70 years, it spread through Asia and

beyond. During this epidemic, researchers could observe and study the

plague. The Swiss biologist Alexandre Yersin isolated the destructive bacil-

lus in 1894, and it was named for him: Yersinia pestis. By 1900, research-

ers were certain the plague was being spread mostly by ﬂ eas on rats. Fleas

are speciﬁ c to host species. Rat ﬂ eas are called Xenopsylla cheopis, while ﬂ eas

that prefer humans (and pigs) are called Pulex irritans. Y. pestis is particu-

larly suited to X. cheopis, the rat ﬂ ea. During the Third Pandemic, observers

saw many dead rats just before an outbreak among humans; as the rats died

of plague, the ﬂ eas moved to a less preferred host—humans.

The mechanism of transmission in the ﬂ ea is dependent on how severely

the ﬂ ea is infected by the bacteria. If the Y. pestis bacteria remain in its

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digestive tract, the ﬂ ea is unlikely to transmit it to the rats or other animals

it bites. However, if the bacteria begin to multiply rapidly, the ﬂ ea’s stom-

ach becomes blocked. The only way it can restore its own ability to digest

blood is to vomit bacteria into the animal it is biting.

Researchers used this knowledge to understand what had happened dur-

ing the Middle Ages. Rats infested ships, houses, and ﬁ elds. As merchants

traveled, their rats and ﬂ eas traveled with them. As in the Third Pandemic,

the infection was passed through blood contact with the ﬂ eas, which dis-

charged Y. pestis bacteria into each bite.

However, the Black Death was not entirely like the Third Pandemic. Its

contagion moved much faster, and its mortality was much higher. There

were outbreaks of plague that did not appear to be connected to the move-

ment of rats, and medieval observers did not comment on the number of

dead rats in the streets. On the other hand, excavations where medieval

plague victims are buried have turned up traces of Y. pestis.

The medieval plague may have been worse due to differences in the pop-

ulation and its ability to handle an epidemic. In the years before the plague,

medieval Europe and Asia had suffered several major famines. These fam-

ines probably weakened immune systems, especially for babies born during

the famines; these babies were adults during the Black Death. During the

modern outbreak, doctors used public health measures such as quarantine,

while medieval towns did not. When modern public health measures broke

down, the death rate increased rapidly.

The infection itself may have been a more virulent strain of Y. pestis.

Some evidence points to an origin not in the rat population, but in a group

of Asian marmots called tarabagans. These large rodents live in burrow

communities on the steppes of southern Russian and northern Kyrgyz-

stan, and the Silk Road, a major trade route during the later Middle Ages,

ran through their territory. The earliest records of the medieval outbreak,

around 1339, come from Lake Issyk Kul, in tarabagan country. From there,

the plague spread east to India and China and then west to Europe. It is

possible that the strain of Y. pestis active among tarabagans was deadlier

than the later-studied rat strain. It may have been more likely to develop

into pneumonic disease.

A fourth difference may be that the infection spread not only through

the rat ﬂ ea, X. cheopis, but also through the human ﬂ ea, P. irritans. Euro-

peans in the 14th century rarely changed their clothes, and they all had ﬂ eas

and lice. If the infection went from an infected human to P. irritans and

was then spread by both types of ﬂ eas, some of the contagion stories make

more sense, especially cases in which it was unlikely that rats moved from

place to place.

See also: Climate, Funerals, Jews, Medicine.

Poison

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