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The Great Pestilence (A.D. 1348-9), Now Commonly Known as the Black Death

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Title: The Great Pestilence (A.D. 1348-9), Now Commonly Known as the Black Death

Author: Francis Aidan Gasquet


        
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT PESTILENCE (A.D. 1348-9), NOW COMMONLY KNOWN AS THE BLACK DEATH ***

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE

Original small caps type is all capitals herein. Original italics is
_surrounded with underscores_. See also the ENDNOTE.




 THE GREAT PESTILENCE.




 The Great Pestilence
 (A.D. 1348-9),
 NOW COMMONLY KNOWN
 AS
 The Black Death.

 BY
 FRANCIS AIDAN GASQUET, D.D., O.S.B.


 London:
 SIMPKIN MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO., LIMITED.
 1893.




 Lewes:
 SOUTH COUNTIES PRESS LIMITED.




CONTENTS.


 TO THE READER                                                      xi

 INTRODUCTION                                                     xiii

 CHAPTER I.

 THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE EPIDEMIC.

 First reports as to the sickness — General account of the
 epidemic in eastern countries — The great trade routes
 between Asia and Europe — The plague in the Crimea —
 Tartar siege of Caffa — Origin of the name "Black Death"
 — Symptoms of the disease — Constantinople is attacked;
 account of the epidemic by the Emperor Cantacuzene —
 Genoese traders carry the infection to Sicily — Effect in
 Messina and Catania                                              1-15

 CHAPTER II.

 THE EPIDEMIC IN ITALY.

 Date of the arrival of the infected ships at Genoa —
 Striking sameness in all accounts — De Mussi's account of
 the beginning of the plague in Italy, specially in Genoa
 and Piacenza — Boccaccio's description of it in Florence —
 This confirmed by the historian Villani — Progress of the
 disease in Italy — Pisa — Padua, Siena, etc. — Petrarch's
 letter on the epidemic at Parma — Venice and its doctors —
 Description of the desolation by Bohemian students              16-33

 CHAPTER III.

 PROGRESS OF THE PLAGUE IN FRANCE.

 Its arrival at Marseilles — A Parisian doctor's account
 of the epidemic at Montpellier — Avignon is attacked and
 suffers terribly — Contemporary account of its ravages by
 a Canon of the Low Countries — Gui de Chauliac, the Pope's
 physician — Spread of the infection in every direction —
 William of Nargis' description of the mortality in Paris
 — Philip VI. consults the medical faculty — Normandy —
 Amiens — Account of Gilles Le Muisis, Abbot of Tournay —
 M. Siméon Luce on the conditions of popular life in France
 in the Fourteenth century — Agrarian troubles follow the
 epidemic                                                        34-57

 CHAPTER IV.

 THE PLAGUE IN OTHER EUROPEAN COUNTRIES.

 From Sicily the pestilence is carried to the Balearic
 islands — Majorca — The scourge in Spain — The shores of
 the Adriatic are visited — From Venice the wave passes
 into Austria and Hungary — It passes over the Alps into
 the Tyrol and Switzerland — Account of a Notary of Novara
 — From Avignon the epidemic is carried up the Rhone Valley
 to the Lake of Geneva — It visits Lucerne and Engelberg
 — Account of its ravages at Vienna — It goes from Basle
 up the valley of the Rhine — Frankfort — Bremen — From
 Flanders it passes into Holland — Denmark, Norway, and
 Sweden — Account of Wisby on the Island of Gotland —
 Labour difficulties consequent upon the epidemic                58-70

 CHAPTER V.

 THE PLAGUE REACHES ENGLAND.

 Jersey and Guernsey are attacked — First Rumours of the
 epidemic in England — It is brought to Melcombe Regis in
 Dorsetshire — Discussion as to the date — Difficulty in
 dealing with figures in Middle Ages — Value of episcopal
 registers in giving institutions of beneficed clergy —
 Evidence of Patent Rolls — Institutions in Dorsetshire —
 Letter of the Bishop of Bath and Wells — Difficulty of
 obtaining clergy — Institutions in Somerset — Effect of
 the disease in the religious houses — Bristol — Evidence
 of the mortality in Devon and Cornwall — Institutions in
 the diocese of Exeter — Spread of mortality — Religious
 houses of the diocese                                           71-91

 CHAPTER VI.

 PROGRESS OF THE DISEASE IN LONDON AND THE SOUTH.

 Rapidity of the spread of the epidemic — Date of its
 reaching London — The opening of new churchyards — Number
 of the dead in the capital — State of the city streets —
 Evidence of the wills of the Court of Hustings at this
 period — Westminster and other religious houses — St.
 Alban's — Institutions of clergy for Hertfordshire —
 Evidence as to the counties of Bedford, Buckingham, and
 Berks — Special value of the _Inquisitiones post-mortem_
 — State of various manors after the Plague — Institutions
 for the county of Bucks — The diocese of Canterbury
 — William Dene's account of the Rochester Diocese —
 Difficulty in finding priests — The diocese of Winchester
 — Bishop Edyndon's letter on the pestilence — Date of the
 epidemic in Hampshire — Troubles about the burying of
 the dead — Institutions for Hants — Institutions for the
 county of Surrey — Little information about Sussex             92-115

 CHAPTER VII.

 THE EPIDEMIC IN GLOUCESTER, WORCESTER, WARWICK, AND OXFORD.

 Le Baker's account of the disease — Evidence of it in
 Wales — Account by Friar Clyn of the plague in Ireland —
 Institutions for Worcester — New burial ground in the city
 — State of the county after the plague — Institutions in
 Warwickshire — The city and county of Oxford — Effect on
 the university                                                116-127

 CHAPTER VIII.

 STORY OF THE DISEASE IN THE REST OF ENGLAND.

 Dr. Jessop's account of Norfolk and Suffolk — Institutions
 in the diocese of Norwich — Evidence of the court rolls
 — Norwich and its population — Yarmouth — The diocese
 of Ely — Preparations by the bishop — Institutions in
 the diocese — Cambridge — Decay of parishes consequent
 upon the mortality — Straits of the clergy — Huntingdon
 — Institutions in the county of Northampton — Effect on
 religious house of the county — Fall in the value of land
 — Leicestershire — Knighton upon the plague in the city
 of Leicester — Fall in prices — Labour difficulties —
 Staffordshire — Institutions in the diocese of Hereford
 — Shropshire — Evidence of _Inquisitiones post-mortem_ —
 Chester — Accounts of the County Palatine — Derbyshire
 — Derby — Monasteries — Wakebridge and Drakelow —
 Nottinghamshire — Lincolnshire — Louth Park abbey —
 Yorkshire — Archbishop Zouche — Vacant livings — Deaths
 among superiors of religious houses — Meaux abbey —
 Deanery of Holderness — Doncaster — Hull — Lancashire —
 Amounderness — Westmoreland — Cumberland — Carlisle —
 Durham — Northumberland — Alnwick                             128-161

 CHAPTER IX.

 THE DESOLATION OF THE COUNTRY.

 Vacant livings in diocese of Salisbury — In Dorset and
 Wilts — Ivychurch priory — Manors ruined by plague —
 Somerset parsonages — Court roll of Gillingham, Dorset
 — Stockton, Wilts — Chedzoy, Bridgwater — Carthusians
 of Hinton and Witham — Exeter diocese — Lydford — North
 Cornwall — The Black Prince and his tenants — Essex
 benefices — Lands vacant — Rents lowered — Colchester
 wills — Talkeley priory — Chesthunt nunnery — Anglesey
 priory — Kent — Sussex — Hants — Isle of Wight — Surrey
 — Winchester cathedral priory — Hyde abbey — Nuns of St.
 Mary's abbey — of Romsey — Decrease among the mendicant
 friars of Winchester diocese — Debts at the cathedral —
 At Christchurch — Sandown hospital — Shireborne priory —
 Hayling Island — Taxation — Gloucester — Lantony priory —
 Horsleigh cell — Warwickshire — Wappenbury — Whitchurch
 — Bruerne abbey — St. Frideswide's at Oxford — Barlings       162-193

 CHAPTER X.

 SOME CONSEQUENCES OF THE GREAT MORTALITY.

 Estimate of population of England in 1377, and before the
 great pestilence — Social revolution — Dearth of labourers
 and artisans — The tenantry swept off — Rise in prices —
 State efforts to depress the working classes — A third
 of the land falls out of cultivation — Leasehold farming
 — Serfdom declines — Popular rising of 1381 practically
 emancipates the labourer — Growth of large landowners —
 English language spreads as French declines — Effects on
 architecture — Great works left unfinished — Statistics
 of clerical mortality — Effects on the Church — Old
 traditions perished — Decline of public liturgical worship
 — Young and aged, and inexperienced persons ordained
 priests — Curious examples of this — Great falling off in
 number of candidates for ordination at Winchester, Ely,
 Hereford — Decline of the universities — False views about
 the preponderance of regular clergy — After the Black
 Death their number relatively greater — Pluralities —
 Depopulation of monasteries — Instances cited — Wadding's
 explanation of Franciscan decadence — The Black Death, a
 calamity sudden, overwhelming, and of widespread effect       194-219




TO THE READER.


In publishing this story of a great and overwhelming calamity, which
fell upon England in common with the rest of Europe, in the middle
of the fourteenth century, I desire to record my grateful thanks
to those who have in any way assisted me in gathering together my
material, or in weaving it into a connected narrative. Amongst these
many kind friends I may specially name Mr. F. Bickley, of the British
Museum, Mr. F.J. Baigent, the Rev. Prebendary Hingeston-Randolph,
and, above all, Mr. Edmund Bishop, to whom I am greatly indebted
for advice, criticism, and ever-patient assistance in revising the
proof-sheets.

[p-xiii]




INTRODUCTION.


The story of the Great Pestilence of 1348-9 has never been fully
told. In fact, until comparatively recent times, little attention was
paid to an event which, nevertheless, whether viewed in the magnitude
of the catastrophe, or in regard to its far-reaching results, is
certainly one of the most important in the history of our country.

Judged by the ordinary manuals, the middle of the fourteenth century
appears as the time of England's greatest glory. Edward III. was
at the very height of his renown. The crushing defeat of France at
Crecy, in 1346, followed the next year by the taking of Calais, had
raised him to the height of his fame. When, wearing the laurels of
the most brilliant victory of the age, he landed at Sandwich, on
October 14th, 1347, the country, or at least the English courtiers,
seemed intoxicated by the success of his arms. "A new sun," says the
chronicler Walsingham, "seemed to have arisen over the people, in
the perfect peace, in the plenty of all things, and in the glory of
such victories. [p-xiv] There was hardly a woman of any name who did
not possess spoils of Caen, Calais and other French towns across the
sea;" and the English matrons proudly decked themselves with the rich
dresses and costly ornaments carried off from foreign households.
This was, moreover, the golden era of chivalry, and here and there
throughout the country tournaments celebrated with exceptional pomp
the establishment of the Order of the Garter, instituted by King
Edward to perpetuate the memory of his martial successes. It is
little wonder, then, that the Great Pestilence, now known as the
"Black Death," coming as it does between Crecy and Poitiers, and at
the very time of the creation of the first Knights of the Garter,
should seem to fall aside from the general narrative as though
something apart from, and not consonant with, the natural course of
events.

It is accordingly no matter for wonder that a classic like Hume,
in common with our older writers on English history, should have
dismissed the calamity in a few lines; but a reader may well feel
surprise at finding that the late Mr. J. R. Green, who saw deeper
into causes and effects than his predecessors, deals with the great
epidemic in a scanty notice only as a mere episode in his account
of the agricultural changes in the fourteenth century. Although he
speaks generally of the death of one-half the population through the
disease, he evidently has not realised the enormous effects, social
and religious, which are directly traceable to the catastrophe.

Excellent articles, indeed, such as those from the pen of [p-xv]
Professor Seebohm and Dr. Jessop, and chance pages in books on
political and social economy, like those of the late Professor
Thorold Rogers and Dr. Cunningham, have done much in our time to draw
attention to the importance of the subject. Still, so far as I am
aware, no writer has yet treated the plague as a whole, or, indeed,
has utilised the material available for forming a fairly accurate
estimate of its ravages. The collections for the present study had
been entirely made when a book on the _Epidemics in Britain_, by Dr.
Creighton, was announced, and, as a consequence, the work was set
aside. On the appearance of Dr. Creighton's volume, however, it was
found that, whilst treating this pestilence at considerable length
as a portion of his general subject, not merely had it not entered
into his design to utilise the great bulk of material to be found in
the various records of the period, but the author had dealt with the
matter from a wholly different point of view.

It is proper, therefore, to state why a detailed treatment of a
subject, in itself so uninviting, is here undertaken. The pestilence
of 1348-49, for its own sake, must necessarily be treated by the
professional writer as an item in the general series of epidemics;
but there are many reasons why it has never been dealt with in
detail from the mere point of view of the historian. Yet an adequate
realisation of its effects is of the first importance for the right
understanding of the history of England in the later [p-xvi]
Middle Ages. The "Black Death" inflicted what can only be called
a wound deep in the social body, and produced nothing less than a
revolution of feeling and practice, especially of religious feeling
and practice. Unless this is understood, from the very circumstances
of the case, we shall go astray in our interpretation of the later
history of England. In truth, this great pestilence was a turning
point in the national life. It formed the real close of the Mediæval
period and the beginning of our Modern age. It produced a break with
the past, and was the dawn of a new era. The sudden sweeping away of
the population and the consequent scarcity of labourers, raised, it
is well recognised, new and extravagant expectations in the minds of
the lower classes; or, to use a modern expression, labour began then
to understand its value and assert its power.

But there is another and yet more important result of the pestilence
which, it would seem, is not sufficiently recognised. To most people,
looking back into the past, the history of the Church during the
Middle Ages in England appears one continuous and stately progress.
It is much nearer to the truth to say that in 1351 the whole
ecclesiastical system was wholly disorganised, or, indeed, more than
half ruined, and that everything had to be built up anew. As regards
education, the effect of the catastrophe on the body of the clergy
was prejudicial beyond the power of calculation. To secure the most
necessary public ministrations of the rites of religion the most
inadequately-prepared subjects had to be accepted, and even [p-xvii]
these could be obtained only in insufficient numbers. The immediate
effect on the people was a religious paralysis. Instead of turning
men to God the scourge turned them to despair, and this not only in
England, but in all parts of Europe. Writers of every nation describe
the same dissoluteness of manners consequent upon the epidemic. In
time the religious sense and feeling revived, but in many respects
it took a new tone, and its manifestations ran in new channels.
If the change is to be described in brief, I should say that the
religion of Englishmen, as it now manifested itself on the recovery
of religion, and as it existed from that time to the Reformation,
was characterised by a devotional and more self-reflective cast
than previously. This is evidenced in particular by the rise of a
whole school of spiritual writers, the beginnings of which had been
already manifested in the writings of Hampole, himself a victim
of the plague. It was subsequently developed by such writers as
Walter Hilton and the authors of a mass of anonymous tracts, still
in manuscript, which, in so far as they have attracted notice at
all, have been commonly set down under the general designation of
_Wycliffite_. The reason for this misleading classification is not
difficult to understand. Finding on the one hand that these tracts
are pervaded by a deeply religious spirit, and on the other being
convinced that the religion of those days was little better than a
mere formalism, the few persons who have hitherto paid attention to
the subject have not hesitated to attribute them to the [p-xviii]
"religious revival of the Lollards," and were naturally unable to
believe them to be inspired by the teaching of "a Church shrivelled
into a self-seeking secular priesthood."[1] The reader, who has a
practical and personal experience of the tone, spirit, and teaching
of works of Catholic piety, will, however, at once recognise that
these tracts are perfect Catholic in tone, spirit, and doctrine, and
differ essentially from those of men inspired by the teaching of
Wycliffe.

The new religious spirit found outward expression in the multitude of
guilds which sprang into existence at this time, in the remarkable
and almost, as it may seem to some, extravagant development of
certain pious practices, in the singular spread of a more personal
devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, to the Blessed Virgin, to the Five
Wounds, to the Holy Name, and other such manifestations of a more
tender or more familiar piety. Even the very adornment and enrichment
of the churches, so distinctive of this period, bears witness to the
change. At the close of the fourteenth century and during the course
of the fifteenth the supply of ornaments, furniture, plate, statues
painted or in highly decked "coats," with which the churches were
literally encumbered as time went on, proved a striking contrast
to the comparative simplicity which characterised former days, as
witnessed by a comparison of inventories. Moreover, the source of all
this wealth and elaboration is [p-xvix] another indication of the
change that had come over the country. Benefactions to the Church are
no longer contributed entirely, or at least chiefly, by the great
nobles, but they are now the gifts of the burgher folk and middle
classes, and this very profusion corresponds, according to the ideas
and feelings of those days, to the abundant material comfort which
from the early years of the last century to the present has specially
characterised the English homes of modern times. In fact, the
fifteenth century witnessed the beginnings of a great middle-class
movement, which can be distinctly traced to the effect of the great
pestilence, and which, whether for good or for evil, was checked by
the change of religion in the sixteenth century.

It is sufficient here to have indicated in the most general way the
change which took place in the religious life of the English people
and the new tendencies which manifested themselves. If the later
religious history of the country is to be understood it is necessary
to take this catastrophe, social and religious, as a starting-point,
and to bring home to the mind the part the Black Death really played
in the national history.

Merely to report what is said of England would tend to raise in the
mind of the reader a certain incredulity. A short and rapid review
has accordingly been made of the progress of the pestilence from
Eastern Europe to these Western shores, and by this means the very
distressing unanimity, even to definite forms of language, of writers
[p-xx] who recorded events hundreds and even thousands of miles
apart, brings home the reality of the catastrophe with irresistible
force. The story, so far as England is concerned, is told at greater
length, and the progress of the disease is followed as it swept from
south to north and passed on to higher latitudes. The state of the
country after the pestilence was over is then briefly described, and
attention is called to some of the immediate results of the great
plague, especially as bearing upon the Church life of the country.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] Green, _Short History of the English People_, p. 216.

[p001]




THE GREAT PESTILENCE.




CHAPTER I.

THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE EPIDEMIC.


The Great Pestilence, which first reached Europe in the autumn of
1347, is said to have originated in the East some three or four years
previously. So far as actual history goes, however, the progress of
the disease can be traced only from the ports of the Black Sea and
possibly from those of the Mediterranean, to which traders along
the main roads of commerce with Asiatic countries brought their
merchandise for conveyance to the Western world. Reports at the
time spoke of great earthquakes and other physical disturbances as
having taken place in the far East, and these were said to have been
accompanied by peculiar conditions of the atmosphere, and followed by
a great mortality among the teeming populations of India and China.
Pope Clement VI. was informed that the pestilence then raging at
Avignon had had its origin in the East, and that, in the countries
included under that vague name, the infection had spread so rapidly,
and had proved to be so deadly, that the victims were calculated
at the enormous, and no doubt exaggerated, number of nearly
four-and-twenty millions.

A Prague chronicle speaks of the epidemic in the kingdoms of China,
India, and Persia, and the contemporary historian, Matteo Villani,
reports its conveyance to Europe by Italian traders, who had fled
before it from the ports on the eastern shores of the Black Sea. The
same authority [p002] corroborates, by the testimony of one who had
been an eye-witness in Asia, the reports of certain Genoese merchants
as to earthquakes devastating the continent and pestilential fogs
covering the land. "A venerable friar minor of Florence, now a
bishop, declared," so says Villani, "that he was then in that part of
the country at the city of Lamech, where by the violence of the shock
part of the temple of Mahomet was thrown down."[2]

A quotation from Hecker's "Epidemics of the Middle Ages" will be a
sufficient summary of what was reported of the plague in eastern
countries before its arrival in Europe. "Cairo lost daily, when the
plague was raging with its greatest violence, from 10 to 15,000,
being as many as, in modern times, great plagues have carried off
during their whole course. In China more than thirteen millions
are said to have died, and this is in correspondence with the
certainly exaggerated accounts from the rest of Asia. India was
depopulated. Tartary, Mesopotamia, Syria, Armenia were covered with
dead bodies; the Kurds fled in vain to the mountains. In Caramania
and Cæsarea none were left alive. On the roads, in the camps, in the
caravansaries unburied bodies were alone to be seen. . . . In Aleppo
500 died daily; 22,000 people and most of the animals were carried
off in Gaza within six weeks. Cyprus lost almost all its inhabitants;
and ships without crews were often seen in the Mediterranean, as
afterwards in the North Sea, driving about and spreading the plague
wherever they went ashore."[3]

There can be little doubt that the contagion was first spread by
means of the great trade routes of the East. The lines of commerce of
European countries with India, China, and Asiatic countries generally
are first definitely described in 1321 by Marino Sanudo, a Venetian,
in a work addressed to Pope John XXI., not thirty years before the
outbreak of [p003] the pestilence.[4] His object was to indicate
the difficulties and dangers which then beset the traffic of the
mercantile world with the East. In so doing he pointed out that the
ancient centre of all trade with the far East was Bagdad. To and from
this great depôt of Oriental merchandise all the caravan routes led;
but, at the time when Sanudo wrote, the incursion of barbarian hordes
into Central Asia had rendered trade along these roads difficult and
unsafe. Two trading tracts are in particular named by the author
as the chief lines of communication. One ran from Bagdad over the
plains of Mesopotamia and Syria to Lycia,[5] where the goods were
purchased by the Italian merchants. This, the best known route,
was the shortest by which the produce of China and India could be
conveyed to the European markets; but in the fourteenth century it
was the most perilous. The second route also started from Bagdad,
and having followed the Tigris to its sources in Armenia, passed on
either to Trebizond and other ports of the Black Sea, or taking the
road from the Caspian, upon the other side of the Caucasus, passed to
the Genoese and other flourishing Italian settlements in the Crimea.

A third route was, however, according to Sanudo, the most used in his
day because the least dangerous. By it the produce of eastern lands
was brought to Alexandria, whence, after having been heavily taxed
by the Sultan, it was transported to Europe. Merchandise coming to
Italy and other countries by this route from India was, according to
the same authority, shipped from two ports of the peninsula, which he
calls Mahabar[6] and Cambeth.[7] Thence it was conveyed to ports in
the Persian Gulf, to the river Tigris, or to Aden, at the entrance
of the Red Sea. From this last point a journey of nine days across
the desert [p004] brought the caravans to a city called Chus[8] on
the Nile. Fifteen days more of river carriage, however, was required
before the produce of the Eastern marts reached Cairo, or Babylon,
as it was called by mediæval writers. From Cairo it was conveyed to
Alexandria by canal.

These were the three chief routes by which communication between
Asiatic countries and Europe was kept up, and the markets of the
Western world supplied with the spices, gums, and silks of the East.
It is more than probable that the great pestilence was conveyed to
Europe by the trading caravans coming from the East by all these
roads and by other similar lines of commerce. In the country along
one of the trade routes, by which caravans reached the Italian
ports established on the Crimea, it is certain that the plague was
raging with great virulence in 1346, the year before its appearance
in Europe. Moreover, Gabriele de' Mussi, a notary of Piacenza, and
an eye-witness of the first outbreak of the plague in Upper Italy,
has described the way in which the infection was conveyed in the
ships of traders from Caffa,[9] a Genoese settlement in the Crimea.
This account will be found in the next chapter; and here it is only
necessary to report what he gathered from the survivors about the
outbreak of the plague among the Tartar tribes and its appearance at
Caffa.[10] [p005]

"In the year 1346," he writes, "in eastern parts an immense
number of Tartars and Saracens fell victims to a mysterious and
sudden death. In these regions vast districts, numerous provinces,
magnificent kingdoms, cities, castles, and villages, peopled by a
great multitude, were suddenly attacked by the mortality, and in
a brief space were depopulated. A place in the East called Tana,
situated in a northerly direction from Constantinople and under
the rule of the Tartars, to which Italian merchants much resorted,
was besieged by a vast horde of Tartars and was in a short time
taken."[11] The Christian merchants violently expelled from the city
were then received for the protection of their persons and property
within the walls of Caffa, which the Genoese had built in that
country.

"The Tartars followed these fugitive Italian merchants, and,
surrounding the city of Caffa, besieged it likewise.[12] Completely
encircled by this vast army of enemies, the inhabitants were hardly
able to obtain the necessaries of life, and their only hope lay in
the fleet which brought them provisions. Suddenly 'the death,' as it
was called, broke out in the Tartar host, and thousands were daily
carried off by the disease, as if "arrows from heaven were striking
at them and beating down their pride."

"At first the Tartars were paralysed with fear at the ravages of
the disease, and at the prospect that sooner or later all must fall
victims to it. Then they turned their vengeance on the besieged,
and in the hope of communicating the infection to their Christian
enemies, by the aid of the engines of war, they projected the bodies
of the [p006] dead over the walls into the city. The Christian
defenders, however, held their ground, and committed as many of these
plague-infected bodies as possible to the waters of the sea.

"Soon, as might be supposed, the air became tainted and the wells of
water poisoned, and in this way the disease spread so rapidly in the
city that few of the inhabitants had strength sufficient to fly from
it."[13]

The further account of Gabriele de' Mussi describing how a ship from
Caffa conveyed the infection to Genoa, from which it spread to other
districts and cities of Italy, must be deferred to the next chapter.
Here a short space may be usefully devoted to a consideration of the
disease itself, which proved so destructive to human life in every
European country in the years 1348-1350. And, in the first place,
it may be well to state that the name _Black Death_, by which the
great pestilence is now generally known, not only in England, but
elsewhere, is of comparatively modern origin.[14] In no contemporary
account of the epidemic is it called by that ominous title; at the
time people spoke of it as "the pestilence," "the great mortality,"
"the death," "the plague of Florence," etc., and, apparently, not
until some centuries later was it given the name of "the Black
Death." This it seems to have first received in Denmark or Sweden,
although it is doubtful whether the _atra mors_ of Pontanus is
equivalent to the English _Black Death_.[15] It is hard to resist the
impression that in England, at least, it was used as the recognised
name for the epidemic of 1349 only after the pestilence of the 17th
century had assumed to itself the title of the _Great Plague_.
Whether the name _Black Death_ was first adopted to express the
universal state of mourning to which the disease reduced the people
of all [p007] countries, or to mark the special characteristic
symptoms of this epidemic, is, under the circumstances of its late
origin, unimportant to determine.

The epidemic would appear to have been some form of the ordinary
Eastern or bubonic plague. Together, however, with the usual
characteristic marks of the common plague, there were certain
peculiar and very marked symptoms, which, although not universal, are
recorded very generally in European countries.

In its common form the disease showed itself in swellings and
carbuncles under the arm and in the groin. These were either few
and large—being at times as large as a hen's egg—or smaller and
distributed over the body of the sufferer. In this the disease does
not appear to have been different from the ordinary bubonic plague,
which ravaged Europe during many centuries, and which is perhaps best
known in England as so destructive to human life in the great plague
of London in 1665. In this ordinary form it still exists in Eastern
countries, and its origin is commonly traced to the method of burying
the dead in vogue there.

The special symptoms characteristic of the plague of 1348-9 were four
in number:—

(1) Gangrenous inflammation of the throat and lungs;

(2) Violent pains in the region of the chest;

(3) The vomiting and spitting of blood; and

(4) The pestilential odour coming from the bodies and breath of the
sick.

In almost every detailed account by contemporary writers these
characteristics are noted. And, although not all who were stricken
with the disease manifested it in this special form, it is clear
that, not only were many, and indeed vast numbers, carried off by
rapid corruption of the lungs and blood-spitting, without any signs
of swellings or carbuncles, but also that the disease was at the
time regarded as most deadly and fatal in this special form. "From
the carbuncles and glandular swellings," says a contemporary writer,
"many recovered; from the [p008] blood-spitting none."[16] Matteo
Villani, one of the most exact writers about this plague at Florence,
says that the sick "who began to vomit blood quickly died;"[17]
whilst Gui de Chauliac, the Pope's physician at Avignon, who watched
the course of the disease there and left the most valuable medical
account of his observations, says that the epidemic was of two kinds.
The first was marked by "constant fever and blood-spitting, and from
this the patient died in three days;" the second was the well-known
and less fatal bubonic plague.

The characteristic symptoms of this epidemic, noted in numerous
contemporary accounts, appear to be identical with those of the
disease known as malignant pustule of the lung; and it would appear
probable that this outbreak of the plague must be distinguished from
every other of which there is any record. "I express my profound
conviction," writes an eminent French physician, "that the Black
Death stands apart from all those which preceded or followed it. It
ought to be classed among the great and new popular maladies."[18]

Be that as it may, the disease, as will be subsequently seen in the
accounts of those who lived at the time, showed itself in various
ways. Some were struck suddenly, and died within a few hours; others
fell into a deep sleep, from [p009] which they could not be roused;
whilst others, again, were racked with a sleepless fever, and
tormented with a burning thirst. The usual course of the sickness,
when it first made its appearance, was from three to five days; but
towards the close of the epidemic the recovery of those suffering
from the carbuncular swellings was extended, as in the case of
ordinary Eastern plague, over many months.[19]

Such is a brief account of the disease which devastated the world
in the middle of the fourteenth century. Before following the
course of the epidemic in Italy, to which it was conveyed, as
De' Mussi relates, from the Crimea, some account of its ravages
in Constantinople and in Sicily may be given. From the Crimea
Constantinople lay upon the highway to the west. Italian ships
crossing the Black Sea [p010] would naturally touch at this city,
then the great centre of communication between the Eastern and
Western Worlds. From the relation of De' Mussi it appears that
Caffa, the plague-stricken Genoese city in the Crimea, besieged by
the Tartars, was in communication by ship with countries from which
it received supplies. To Constantinople, therefore, it seems not
unlikely that the dreaded disease was conveyed by a ship coming from
this plague centre in the Crimea. An account of the pestilence at the
Imperial city has come from the pen of the Emperor John Cantacuzene,
who was an eye-witness of what he reports. And although he adopted
the language of Thucydides, about the plague of Athens, to describe
his own experiences at Constantinople, he could hardly have done so
had the description not been fairly faithful to the reality. "The
epidemic which then (1347) raged in northern Scythia," he writes,
"traversed almost the entire sea-coasts, whence it was carried over
the world. For it invaded not only Pontus, Thrace, and Macedonia, but
Greece, Italy, the Islands, Egypt, Lybia, Judea, Syria, and almost
the entire universe."

The disease according to his account was incurable. Neither
regularity of life nor bodily strength was any preservation against
it. The strong and the weak were equally struck down; and death
spared not those of whom care was taken, any more than the poor,
destitute of all help. No other illness of any sort showed itself
in this year; all sickness took the form of the prevalent disease.
Medical science recognised that it was powerless before the foe.
The course of the malady was not in all cases the same. Some people
died suddenly, others during the course of a day, and some after
but an hour's suffering. In the case of those who lingered for two
or three days the attack commenced with a violent fever. Soon the
poison mounted to the brain, and the sufferer lost the use of speech,
became insensible to what was taking place about him, and appeared
sunk in a deep sleep. If by chance he came to himself and tried to
speak [p011] his tongue refused to move, and only a few inarticulate
sounds could be uttered, as the nerves had been paralysed; then he
died suddenly.

Others who fell sick under the disease were attacked first, not in
the head, but in the lungs. The organs of respiration became quickly
inflamed, sharp pains were experienced in the chest, blood was
vomited, and the breath became fetid. The throat and tongue, burnt up
by the excessive fever, became black and congested with blood. "Those
who drank copiously experienced no more relief than those who drank
but little."

Then, after describing the terrible sleeplessness and restlessness
of some sufferers, and the plague spots which broke out over the
body in most cases, the Emperor proceeds:—"The few who recovered
had no second attack, or at least not of a serious nature." Even
some of those who manifested all the symptoms recovered against
every expectation. It is certain that no efficacious remedy has been
discovered. What had been useful to one appeared a real poison to
another. People who nursed the sick took their malady, and on this
account the deaths multiplied to such an extent that many houses
remained deserted, after all who had lived in them—even the domestic
animals—had been carried off by the plague.

The profound discouragement of the sick was specially sad to behold.
On the first symptoms of the attack men lost all hope of recovery,
and gave themselves up as lost. This moral prostration quickly made
them worse and accelerated the hour of their death.

It is impossible in words to give an idea of this malady. All that
can be said is that it had nothing in common with the ills to which
man is naturally subject, and that it was a chastisement sent by God
Himself. By this belief many turned to better things and resolved
to change their lives. I do not speak only of those who were swept
away by the epidemic, but of those also who recovered and endeavoured
to correct their vicious tendencies and devote themselves [p012]
to the practice of virtue. A large number, too, before they were
attacked distributed their goods to the poor, and there were none so
insensible or hard-hearted when attacked as not to show a profound
sorrow for their faults so as to appear before the judgment seat of
God with the best chances of salvation.

"Amongst the innumerable victims of the epidemic in Constantinople
must be reckoned Andronicus, the Emperor's son, who died the third
day. This young man was not only remarkable for his personal
appearance, but was endowed in the highest degree with those
qualities which form the chief adornment of youth; and everything
about him testified that he would have followed nobly in the
footsteps of his ancestors."

From Constantinople the Italian trading ships passed on towards
their own country, everywhere spreading the terrible contagion.
Their destinations were Genoa and Venice, as De' Mussi relates;
but as the same authority says: "The sailors, as if accompanied by
evil spirits, as soon as they approached the land, were death to
those with whom they mingled." Thus the advent of the plague can
be traced in the ports of the Adriatic in the autumn of 1347, and
there can be little doubt that it was due to the arrival of ships
bound from the East to Venice. Of the islands of the ocean, and
particularly of Sicily, De' Mussi speaks as having been affected by
the ships that were bound from the Crimea to Genoa. Of the plague
in Sicily there exists a particular account by one who must have
been a contemporary of the events he describes.[20] "A most deadly
pestilence," he says, "sprang up over the entire island. It happened
that in the month of October, in the year of our Lord, 1347, about
the beginning of the month, twelve Genoese ships, flying from the
divine vengeance which our Lord for their sins had sent upon them,
put into the port of Messina, bringing with them such a sickness
clinging to their very bones [p013] that, did anyone speak to them,
he was directly struck with a mortal sickness from which there was
no escape." After detailing the terrible symptoms and describing the
rapid spread of the infection, how the mere breath of the strangers
poisoned those who conversed with them, how to touch or meddle with
anything that belonged to them was to contract the fatal malady, he
continues: "Seeing what a calamity of sudden death had come to them
by the arrival of the Genoese, the people of Messina drove them in
all haste from their city and port. But the sickness remained and
a terrible mortality ensued. The one thought in the mind of all
was how to avoid the infection. The father abandoned the sick son;
magistrates and notaries refused to come and make the wills of the
dying; even the priests to hear their confessions. The care of those
stricken fell to the Friars Minor, the Dominicans and members of
other orders, whose convents were in consequence soon emptied of
their inhabitants. Corpses were abandoned in empty houses, and there
was none to give them Christian burial. The houses of the dead were
left open and unguarded with their jewels, money, and valuables; if
anyone wished to enter, there was no one to prevent him. The great
pestilence came so suddenly that there was no time to organise any
measures of protection; from the very beginning the officials were
too few, and soon there were none. The population deserted the city
in crowds; fearing even to stay in the environs, they camped out
in the open air in the vineyards, whilst some managed to put up at
least a temporary shelter for their families. Others, again, trusting
in the protection of the virgin, blessed Agatha, sought refuge in
Catania, whither the Queen of Sicily had gone, and where she directed
her son, Don Frederick, to join her. The Messinese, in the month of
November, persuaded the Patriarch[21] Archbishop of Catania to allow
the relics of the Saint to be taken to their city, but the people
refused to [p014] permit them to leave their ancient resting place.
Processions and pilgrimages were organised to beg God's favour. Still
the pestilence raged and with greater fury. Everyone was in too great
a terror to aid his neighbour. Flight profited nothing, for the
sickness, already contracted and clinging to the fugitives, was only
carried wherever they sought refuge. Of those who fled some fell on
the roads and dragged themselves to die in the fields, the woods, or
the valleys. Those who reached Catania breathed their last in the
hospitals. At the demand of the terrified populace the Patriarch
forbade, under pain of excommunication, the burial of any of these
Messina refugees within the city, and their bodies were all thrown
into deep pits outside the walls.

"What shall I say more?" adds the historian. "So wicked and timid
were the Catanians that they refused even to speak to any from
Messina, or to have anything to do with them, but quickly fled at
their approach. Had it not been for secret shelter afforded by some
of their fellow citizens, resident in the town, the unfortunate
refugees would have been left destitute of all human aid." The
contagion, however, was already spread, and the plague soon became
rife. The same scenes were enacted at Catania as before in Messina.
The Patriarch, desiring to provide for the souls of the people, gave
to the priests, even the youngest, all the faculties he himself
possessed, both episcopal and patriarchal, for absolving sins. "The
pestilence raged in the city from October, 1347, to April, 1348, and
the Patriarch himself, Gerard Otho, of the Order of St. Francis, fell
a victim to his duty, and was one of the last to be carried off by
the disease. Duke John, who had sought security by avoiding every
infected house and person, died of the disease at the same time. The
plague was spread in the same way from Messina throughout Sicily;
Syracuse, Girgenti, Sciacca, and Trapani were successively attacked;
in particular it raged in the district of Trapani, in the extreme
west of the island, [p015] which," says the writer, "has remained
almost without population."[22]

Having briefly noticed the origin of the great pestilence which
ravaged Europe in the fourteenth century, and its progress towards
Italy, the story of Gabriel de' Mussi may again be taken up at the
point where he describes the flight of the Genoese traders from the
Crimea. The narrative has so far anticipated his account only by
giving the history of the epidemic in Constantinople and Sicily.


FOOTNOTES:

[2] Muratori, _Rerum Italicarum Scriptores_, xiv, col. 14.

[3] _The Epidemics of the Middle Ages_, translated by B. G. Babington
(Sydenham Society), p. 21.

[4] Marinus Sanutus, _Liber secretorum Fidelium crucis super Terræ
Sanctæ recuperatione et conversatione_, in Bongars, _Gesta Dei per
Francos_, vol. ii.

[5] The most southern part of Asiatic Turkey.

[6] Probably Mahe, on the Malabar coast.

[7] Now Cambay, in the Baroda Dominion to the north of Bombay.

[8] Otherwise Kus, now Koos, in Upper Egypt, not far from Thebes.

[9] Sometimes known as S. Feodosia. This port was by the beginning
of the 14th century a most important trading settlement of Genoese
merchants. In 1316 Pope John XXII issued a Bull making it the
cathedral city of an extensive diocese. By the time of the outbreak
of the great plague it had become the centre of almost all commerce
between Asia and Europe (_Cf._ M. G. Canale, _Della Crimea, del suo
commercio et dei suoi dominatori_, i, p. 208 _et seq._)

[10] The account of Gabriele de' Mussi, called _Ystoria de morbo seu
mortalitate qui fuit a. 1348_, was first printed by Henschel, in
Haeser's _Archiv für gesammte Medicin_ (Jena) ii, 26-59. The editor
claims that De' Mussi was actually present at Caffa during the Tartar
siege, and came to Europe in the plague-stricken ships which conveyed
the infection to Italy. Signor Tononi, who in 1884 reprinted the
_Ystoria_ in the _Giornale Ligustico_ (Genoa) vol. x (1883), p. 139
_seqq._, has proved by the acts of the notaries of Piacenza that
De' Mussi never quitted the city at this time, and his realistic
narrative must have been consequently derived from the accounts of
others. From the same source Tononi has shown that De' Mussi acted as
notary between A.D. 1300 and 1356, and was consequently born probably
somewhere about 1280. He died in the first half of the year 1356.

[11] Tana was the port on the north-western shore of the sea of Azor,
which was then known as the sea of Tana. The port is now Azor.

[12] De' Mussi says the siege lasted "three years." Tononi shows that
this is clearly a mistake, and adduces it as additional evidence that
the author was not himself at Caffa.

[13] Gabriele de' Mussi, _Ystoria de Morbo_, in Haeser, _ut supra_.

[14] K. Lechner, _Das grosse Sterben in Deutschland_ (Innsbruck,
Wagner, 1884), p. 8.

[15] J. J. Pontanus, _Rerum Danicarum Historia_ (1631), p. 476.

[16] See Lechner, _Das grosse Sterben_, p. 15. De' Mussi gives the
same account.

[17] "Chi cominciavano a sputare sangue, morivano chi di subito."
The contemporary chronicle of Parma by the Dominican John de
Cornazano also notes the same: "Et fuit talis quod aliqui sani, si
spuebant sanguinem, subito ibi moriebantur, nec erat ullum remedium"
(_Monumenta historica ad provincias Parmensem et Placentinam
pertinentia_, vol. v, p. 386).

[18] Anglada, _Étude sur les Maladies Éteintes_ (Paris, 1869), p.
416. The idea that this peculiar malady was altogether novel in
character is confirmed by its specially malignant nature. According
to a well-recognized law new epidemics are always most violent and
fatal. The depopulation of the Fiji Islands by the measles is an
instance of the way in which a comparatively mild disease may in its
first attack upon a people prove terribly destructive. It is commonly
thought that it has been the action of some new disease whereby the
races which built the great prehistoric cities of Africa and America
have been completely swept away.

[19] The following account of an outbreak of disease somewhat similar
to the "Black Death" appeared in the _British Medical Journal_ of
5 November, 1892:—"An official report of the Governor-General of
Turkestan, which has recently been published in St. Petersburg,
states that that province has been severely visited by an epidemic
of 'Black Death,' which followed upon the footsteps of cholera. On
September 10 (22) it appeared suddenly at Askabad, and in six days
it killed 1,303 persons in a population of 30,000. 'Black Death'
has long been known in Western Asia as a scourge more deadly than
the cholera or the plague. It comes suddenly, sweeping over a whole
district like a pestilential simoon, striking down animals as well
as men, and vanishes as suddenly as it came, before there is time
to ascertain its nature or its mode of diffusion. The visit here
referred to was no exception to this rule. After raging in Askabad
for six days the epidemic ceased, leaving no trace of its presence
but the corpses of its victims. These putrified so rapidly that
no proper post-mortem could be made. The Governor-General gives
some details as to the symptoms and course of the disease, which,
though interesting as far as they go, do not throw much light on
its pathology. The attack begins with rigors of intense severity,
the patient shivering literally from head to foot; the rigors occur
every five minutes for about an hour. Next an unendurable feeling of
heat is complained of; the arteries become tense, and the pulse more
and more rapid, while the temperature steadily rises. Unfortunately
no thermometric readings or other precise data are given. Neither
diarrhœa nor vomiting has been observed. Convulsions alternate with
syncopal attacks, and the patients suffer intense pain. Suddenly
the extremities become stiff and cold, and in from 10 to 20 minutes
the patient sinks into a comatose condition, which speedily ends in
death. Immediately after he has ceased to breathe large black bullæ
form on the body, and quickly spread over its surface. Decomposition
takes place in a few minutes."

[20] A Franciscan friar, Michael Platiensis (of Piazza).

[21] The Archbishop was a member of the Order of St. Francis, and had
been created Patriarch of Antioch.

[22] Gregorio (R.), _Bibliotheca Scriptorum qui res in Sicilia gestas
retulere_, tom. i, p. 562 _seqq._ The historian wrote probably not
later than A.D. 1361.

[p016]




CHAPTER II.

THE EPIDEMIC IN ITALY.


The great sickness reached Italy in the early days of 1348. The
report at Avignon at the time was that three plague-stricken vessels
had put into the port of Genoa in January, whilst from another
source it would appear that at the same time another ship brought
the contagion from the East to Venice. From these two places the
epidemic quickly spread over the entire country. What happened in
the early days of this frightful scourge is best told in the actual
words of Gabriel de' Mussi, who possessed special means of knowledge,
and who has until quite recently been looked upon, but incorrectly,
as a passenger by one of the very vessels which brought the plague
from the Crimea to Genoa. The history of the progress of the plague
may be gathered from the pages of the detailed chronicles, which at
that time recorded the principal events in the various large and
prosperous cities of the Italian peninsula, as well as from the
well-known account of the straits to which Florence was reduced
by the sickness, given in the introduction to the "Decameron" of
Boccaccio.

On reviewing in detail the testimonies from every land relating to
this great calamity, it is impossible to overlook the sameness of
the terms in which writers the most diverse in character, and in
places far distant from one another, describe what passed before
their eyes. It has already been remarked that the imperial historian,
John Cantacuzene, in recounting the horrors of the plague in
Constantinople, has borrowed from Thucydides. But the same ideas, the
very same words, suggest themselves involuntarily to one and all.
The simple monastic annalist of the half-buried [p017] cloister in
Engelberg, the more courtly chronicler of St. Denis, the notary who
writes with the dryness and technicalities of his profession, but
displays withal a weakness for rhetoric and gossip, _littérateurs_
like Boccaccio, whose _forte_ is narrative, or like Petrarch,
delighting in a show of words, the business-like town chronicler of
an Italian city, and the author who aspires to the rank of historian,
the physician whose interest is professional, even the scribbler who
takes this strange theme as the subject for his jingling verse, all
speak with such complete oneness of expression that it would almost
seem that each had copied his neighbour, and that there is here a
fine theme for the scientific amusement known as "investigation
of sources." It is only when we come to examine the whole body of
evidence that there is borne in upon the mind a realisation of the
nature of a calamity which, spreading everywhere, was everywhere the
same in its horrors, becoming thus nothing less than a world-wide
tragedy, and it is seen that even the phrases of the rhetorician can
do no more than rise to the terrible reality of fact.

First in importance, as well as in order of time, comes the testimony
of De' Mussi, the substance of which is here given. It so happened
that when the ships left Caffa—some bound for Genoa, some for Venice,
and some to other parts of the Christian world—a few of the sailors
were already infected by the fatal disease. One sick man was enough
to infect the whole household, and the corpse as it was carried to
the grave brought death to its bearers. "Tell, O Sicily, and ye, the
many islands of the sea, the judgments of God. Confess, O Genoa, what
thou hast done, since we of Genoa and Venice are compelled to make
God's chastisement manifest. Alas! our ships enter the port, but of
a thousand sailors hardly ten are spared. We reach our homes; our
kindred and our neighbours come from all parts to visit us. Woe to
us for we cast at them the darts of death! Whilst we spoke to them,
whilst they embraced us and kissed us, we scattered [p018] the
poison from our lips. Going back to their homes, they in turn soon
infected their whole families, who in three days succumbed, and were
buried in one common grave. Priests and doctors visiting the sick
returned from their duties ill, and soon were numbered with the dead.
O, death! cruel, bitter, impious death! which thus breaks the bonds
of affection and divides father and mother, brother and sister, son
and wife.

"Lamenting our misery, we feared to fly, yet we dared not remain."
The terror increased when it was found that even the effects and
clothes of the dead were capable of communicating the disease.
This was seen in the case of four soldiers at a place near Genoa.
Returning to their camp they carried back with them a woollen
bed-covering they had found in a house at Rivarolo, on the sea-coast,
where the sickness had swept away the entire population. The night
following the four slept under the coverlet, and in the morning all
were found to be dead. At Genoa the plague spared hardly a seventh
part of the population. At Venice it is said that more than seventy
died out of every hundred, and out of four-and-twenty excellent
doctors twenty were soon carried off by the sickness.

"But as an inhabitant I am asked to write more of Piacenza so that
it may be known what happened there in the year 1348. Some Genoese
who fled from the plague raging in their city betook themselves
hither. They rested at Bobbio, and there sold the merchandise they
had brought with them. The purchaser and their host, together with
all his family and many neighbours, were quickly stricken with the
sickness and died. One of these, wishing to make his will, called
a notary, his confessor, and the necessary witnesses. The next day
all these were buried together. So greatly did the calamity increase
that nearly all the inhabitants of Bobbio soon fell a prey to the
sickness, and there remained in the town only the dead.

"In the spring of 1348 another Genoese infected with the plague came
to Piacenza. He sought out his friend Fulchino [p019] della Croce,
who took him into his house. Almost immediately afterwards he died,
and the said Fulchino was also quickly carried off with his entire
family and many of his neighbours. In a brief space the plague was
rife throughout the city. I know not where to begin; everywhere there
was weeping and mourning. So great was the mortality that men hardly
dared to breathe. The dead were without number, and those who still
lived gave themselves up as lost, and prepared for the tomb.

"The cemeteries failing, it was necessary to dig trenches to receive
the bodies of the dead. It frequently happened that a husband
and wife, a father and son, a mother and daughter—nay, whole
families—were cast together in the same pit.

"It was the same in the neighbouring towns and villages. One Oberto
di Sasso, who had come one day from an infected place to the church
of the Friars Minor to make his will, called thither a notary,
witnesses, and neighbours. All these, together with others, to the
number of more than sixty, died within a short space of time. Also
the religious man, friar Sifredo de' Bardi, of the convent and
order of Preachers, a man of prudence and great learning, who had
visited our Lord's sepulchre, died with twenty-three other members
of his order and convent. Also the learned and virtuous friar
Bertolin Coxadocha, of Piacenza, of the order of Minorites, with
four-and-twenty members of his community was carried off. So too of
the convent of Augustinian Hermits—seven; of the Carmelites—seven;
of the Servites of Mary—four, and more than sixty dignitaries and
rectors of churches in the city and district of Piacenza died. Of
nobles, too, many; of young people a vast number."

De' Mussi then proceeds to give examples of the scenes daily passing
before his eyes in the plague-stricken cities of northern Italy. The
sick man lay languishing alone in his house and no one came near
him. Those most dear to him, regardless of the ties of kindred or
affection, [p020] withdrew themselves to a distance; the doctor
did not come to him, and even the priest with fear and trembling
administered the Sacraments of the Church. Men and women, racked with
the consuming fever, pleaded—but in vain—for a draught of water, and
uselessly raved for someone to watch at their bedside. The father or
the wife would not touch the corpse of child or husband to prepare it
for the grave, or follow it thither. No prayer was said, nor solemn
office sung, nor bell tolled for the funeral of even the noblest
citizen; but by day and night the corpses were borne to the common
plague-pit without rite or ceremony. The doors of the houses now
desolate and empty remained closed, and no one cared, nor, indeed,
dared to enter.

Such is the picture of the effect of the malady and the terrible
mortality caused by it drawn by one who seems to have seen its first
introduction into Italy, and who certainly had the best opportunity
of early observing its rapid progress. It might, perhaps, be
thought that his description of the horrors of the infected cities
was over-coloured and the creation of his imagination. But in the
details it bears on the surface the stamp of truth, and in its chief
characteristics it is confirmed by too many independent witnesses in
other parts of Italy, and even in Europe generally, to leave a doubt
that it corresponded to the literal reality.

What happened at Florence is well-known through the graphic
description of Boccaccio. So terrible was the mortality in that
prosperous city that the very outbreak became for a time known in
Europe as the "Pestilence of Florence." In the spring of the previous
year (1347) a severe famine had been experienced, and some 94,000
people had been in receipt of State relief, whilst about 4,000 are
supposed to have perished of starvation in the city[23] and its
neighbourhood. The people, enfeebled by previous hardships, would
naturally fall a prey more easily [p021] to the poison of the
epidemic. In April, 1348, the dreaded infection began to show itself.
"To cure the malady," writes Boccaccio, "neither medical knowledge
nor the power of drugs was of any avail, whether because the disease
was in its own nature mortal, or that the physicians (the number
of whom—taking quacks and women pretenders into account—was grown
very great) could form no just idea of the cause, nor consequently
ground a true method of cure; of those attacked few or none escaped,
but they generally died the third day from the first appearance of
the symptoms, without a fever or other form of illness manifesting
itself. The disease was communicated by the sick to those in health
and seemed daily to gain head and increase in violence, just as fire
will do by casting fresh fuel on it. The contagion was communicated
not only by conversation with those sick, but also by approaching
them too closely, or even by merely handling their clothes or
anything they had previously touched.

"What I am going to relate is certainly marvellous, and, had I not
seen it with my own eyes, and were there not many witnesses to
attest its truth besides myself, I should not venture to recount it,
whatever the credit of persons who had informed me of it. Such, I
say, was the deadly character of the pestilential matter, that it
passed the infection not only from man to man; but, what is more
wonderful, and has been often proved, anything belonging to those
sick with the disease, if touched by any other creature, would
certainly affect and even kill it in a short space of time. One
instance of this kind I took special note of, namely, the rags of a
poor man just dead having been thrown into the street, two hogs came
by at the time and began to root amongst them, shaking them in their
jaws. In less than an hour they fell down and died on the spot.

"Strange were the devices resorted to by the survivors to secure
their safety. Divers as were the means, there was one feature common
to all, selfish and uncharitable as it [p022] was—the avoidance of
the sick, and of everything that had been near them; men thought only
of themselves.

"Some held it was best to lead a temperate life and to avoid every
excess. These making up parties together, and shutting themselves up
from the rest of the world, ate and drank moderately of the best,
diverting themselves with music and such other entertainments as they
might have at home, and never listening to news from without which
might make them uneasy. Others maintained that free living was a
better preservative, and would gratify every passion and appetite.
They would drink and revel incessantly in tavern after tavern, or in
those private houses which, frequently found deserted by the owners,
were therefore open to anyone; but they yet studiously avoided, with
all their irregularity, coming near the infected. And such at that
time was the public distress that the laws, human and divine, were
not regarded, for the officers to put them in force being either
dead, sick, or without assistants, everyone did just as he pleased."

Another class of people chose a middle course. They neither
restricted themselves to the diet of the former nor gave way to
the intemperance of the latter; but eating and drinking what their
appetites required, they went about everywhere with scents and
nosegays to smell at, since they looked upon the whole atmosphere as
tainted with the effluvia arising from the dead bodies.

"Others, again, of a more callous disposition declared, as perhaps
the safest course in the extremity, that the only remedy was
in flight. Persuaded, therefore, of this, and thinking only of
themselves, great numbers of men and women left the city, their
goods, their house, and kindred, and fled into the country parts; as
if the wrath of God had been restricted to a visitation of those only
within the city walls, and hence none should remain in the doomed
place.

"But different as were the courses pursued, the sickness fell upon
all these classes without distinction; neither did [p023] all of any
class die, nor did all escape; and they who first set the example of
forsaking others now languished themselves where there was no one
to take pity on them. I pass by the little regard that citizens and
distant relations showed one to the other, for the terror was such
that brother even fled from brother, wife from husband, nay, the
parent from her own child. The sick could obtain help only from the
few who still obeyed the law of charity, or from hired servants who
demanded extravagant wages and were fit for little else than to hand
what was asked for, and to note when the patient died. Even such
paid helpers were scarce, and their desire of gain frequently cost
them their lives. The rich passed out of this world without a single
person to aid them; few had the tears of friends at their departure.
The corpse was attended to the grave only by fellows hired for the
purpose, who would put the bier on their shoulders and hurry with it
to the nearest church, where it was consigned to the tomb without any
ceremony whatever, and wherever there was room.

"With regard to the lower classes, and, indeed, in the case of many
of the middle rank of life, the scenes enacted were sadder still.
They fell sick by thousands, and, having no one whatever to attend
them, most of them died. Some breathed their last in the streets,
others shut up in their own houses, when the effluvia which came
from their corpses was the first intimation of their deaths. An
arrangement was now made for the neighbours, assisted by such bearers
as they could get, to clear the houses, and every morning to lay the
bodies of the dead at their doors. Thence the corpses were carried
to the grave on a bier, two or three at a time. There was no one
to follow, none to shed tears, for things had come to such a pass
that men's lives were no more thought of than those of beasts. Even
friends would laugh and make themselves merry, and women had learned
to consider their own lives before everything else.

"Consecrated ground no longer sufficed, and it became [p024]
necessary to dig trenches, into which the bodies were put by
hundreds, laid in rows as goods packed in a ship; a little earth was
cast upon each successive layer until the pits were filled to the
top. The adjacent country presented the same picture as the city; the
poor distressed labourers and their families, without physicians,
and without help, languished on the highways, in the fields, in
their own cottages, dying like cattle rather than human beings. The
country people, like the citizens, grew dissolute in their manners
and careless of everything. They supposed that each day might be
their last; and they took no care nor thought how to improve their
substance, or even to utilise it for present support. The flocks and
herds, when driven from their homes, would wander unwatched through
the forsaken harvest fields, and were left to return of their own
accord, if they would, at the approach of night."

Between March and the July following it was estimated that upwards of
a hundred thousand souls had perished in the city alone.

"What magnificent dwellings," the writer continues, "what stately
palaces, were then rendered desolate, even to the last inhabitant!
How many noble families became extinct! What riches, what vast
possessions were left with no known heir to inherit them! What
numbers of both sexes, in the prime and vigour of youth, whom in
the morning Galen, Hippocrates, or Æsculapius himself, would have
declared in perfect health, after dining heartily with their friends
here, have supped with their departed friends in another world."[24]

It might perhaps be suspected that this description of Boccaccio
as to the terrible nature of the plague in Florence was either a
fancy picture of his imagination or intended merely as a rhetorical
introduction to the tales told in the "Decameron," with only a
slender foundation of fact. Unfortunately other authorities are
forthcoming to confirm [p025] the graphic relation of the Florentine
poet in all its details. Amongst others who were carried off by the
pestilence in Florence was the renowned historian, Giovanni Villani.
His work was taken up by his brother Matteo, who commences his annals
with an account of the epidemic. So terrible did the destruction of
human life appear to him that he tells his readers that no greater
catastrophe had fallen on the world since the universal Deluge.
According to his testimony, it involved the whole of the Italian
peninsula, with the exception of Milan and some Alpine districts of
northern Lombardy. In each place visited by the scourge it lasted
five months, and everywhere Christian parents abandoned their
children and kinsfolk, in as callous a way as "might perhaps be
expected from infidels and savages." As regards Florence, whilst
some few devoted themselves to the care of the sick, many fled from
the plague-stricken city. The epidemic raged there from April till
September, 1348, and it is the opinion of Villani that three out of
every five persons in the city and neighbourhood fell victims to
it. As to the effect of the scourge on the survivors, the historian
records that whilst it would naturally have been expected that men,
impressed by so terrible a chastisement, would have become better,
the very contrary was the fact. Work, too, was given over, and "men
gave themselves up to the enjoyment of the worldly riches to which
they had succeeded." Idleness, dissolute morals, sins of gluttony,
banquets, revels in taverns, unbridled luxury, fickleness in dress
and constant changes according to whim, such were the characteristic
marks of the well-to-do Italian citizens when the plague had passed.
And the poor, also, Villani states, became idle and unwilling to
work, considering that when so many had been carried off by the
pestilence there could not but be an abundance for those whom
Providence had spared.[25] [p026]

The same story is told in all the contemporary chronicles of Italian
cities. At Pisa the terrible mortality lasted till September, 1348,
and there were few families that did not reckon two or three of their
members among the dead. Many names are said to have been completely
wiped off from the roll of the living. At least a hundred each
week were carried to the grave in the city, whilst those who had
been bold enough to watch at the death-bed of a relation or friend
appealed in vain to passers-by to aid them to bury the corpse. "Help
us to bear this body to the pit," they cried, "so that we in our
turn may deserve to find some to carry us." The awful suddenness
of the death often inflicted by the scourge is noted by the author
of the "Chronicle of Pisa," in common with nearly every writer of
this period. Men who in the morning were apparently well had before
evening been carried to the grave.[26]

A Paduan chronicler, writing at the time, notes that one sick man as
a rule infected the house in which he lay, so that once the sickness
entered into a dwelling all were seized by it, "even the animals."
To Padua a stranger brought the sickness, and in a brief space the
whole city was suffering from it. Hardly a third of the population
was left after the scourge had passed.[27] At Siena, according to
Di Tura, a contemporary chronicler, the plague commenced in April
and lasted till October, 1348. All who could fled from the stricken
city. In May, July, and August so many died that neither position
nor money availed to procure porters to carry the dead to the public
pits. "And I, Agniolo di Tura," writes this author, "carried with my
own hands my five little sons to the pit; and what I did many others
did likewise." All expected death, and people generally said, and
believed, that the end of the world had certainly come. In Siena and
its [p027] neighbourhood, according to Di Tura, about 80,000 people
were thought to have died in these seven months.[28]

At Orvieto the plague began in May. Some 500 died in a very short
space of time, many of them suddenly; the shops remained closed,
and business and work was at a standstill. Here it ran its usual
five months' course, and finished in September, when many families
were found to have become extinct.[29] At Rimini it was noticed that
the poor were the first to be attacked and the chief sufferers. The
sickness first showed itself on May 15th, 1348, and only died out
in the following December, when, according to the computation of
the chronicler, two out of three of the inhabitants had been swept
away.[30]

An anonymous contemporary Italian writer describes the sickness as a
"swift and sharp fever, with blood-spitting, carbuncle or fistula."
Only the few, he says, recovered when once stricken with the disease.
The sick visibly infected with their corruption the healthy, even by
talking with them; for from this mere conversing with the sick an
infinite number of men and women died and are buried. "And here,"
says the writer, "I can give my testimony. A certain man bled me, and
the blood flowing touched his face. On that same day he was taken
ill, and the next he died; and by the mercy of God I have escaped.
I note this because, as by mere communication with the sick the
plague infected mortally the healthy, the father afterwards avoided
his stricken son, the brother his brother, the wife her husband,
and so in each case the man in health studiously avoided the sick.
Priests and doctors even fled in fear from those ill, and all
avoided the dead. In many places and houses [p028] when an inmate
died the rest quickly, one after another, expired. And so great was
the overwhelming number of the dead that it was necessary to open
new cemeteries in every place. In Venice there were almost 100,000
dead, and so great was the multitude of corpses everywhere that few
attended any funeral or dirge. . . . This pestilence did not cease in
the land from February till the feast of All Saints (November 1st,
1348), and the offices of the dead were chanted only by the voices
of boys; which boys, without learning, and by rote only, sang the
office walking through the streets." The writer then notices the
general dissoluteness which ensued after the disease, and its effect
in lowering the standard of probity and morals.[31]

To the terrible accounts given by De' Mussi of the state of
plague-stricken Genoa and Piacenza, and that of Boccaccio, of the
ravages of the pestilence in the city of Florence, may be well added
the eloquent letters of the poet Petrarch, in which he laments the
overwhelming catastrophe, as he experienced it in the town of Parma.
Here, as in so many other places, the inhabitants vainly endeavoured
to prevent the entry of the disease by forbidding all intercourse
with the suffering cities of Florence, Venice, Genoa and Pisa. The
measures taken to isolate Parma appear to have been, at least, for
a time, successful, as the dreaded plague apparently did not make
its appearance till the beginning of June, 1348.[32] But in the six
months during which it lasted it desolated the entire neighbourhood.
In Parma and Reggio many thousands, estimated roundly at 40,000,
were carried off by it.[33] Petrarch was at this period a canon of
the cathedral of Parma, and had made the acquaintance at Avignon of
Laura, who quickly became the object of his admiration as a typical
Christian mother of a family, and as a fitting subject to inspire
his poetic muse. Laura died at Avignon, one of the [p029] many who
fell victims to the great pestilence which was then raging in that
city. The letter written by a friend named Louis to inform Petrarch
of this death found him at Parma on May 19th, 1348.[34] A month later
the poet wrote to Avignon in the most heart-broken language to his
brother, a religious at Monrieux, and the only survivor of a convent
of five-and-thirty.[35] "My brother! my brother! my brother," he
wrote. "A new beginning to a letter, though used by Marcus Tullius
fourteen hundred years ago. Alas! my beloved brother, what shall I
say? How shall I begin? Whither shall I turn? On all sides is sorrow;
everywhere is fear. I would, my brother, that I had never been born,
or, at least, had died before these times. How will posterity believe
that there has been a time when without the lightnings of heaven or
the fires of earth, without wars or other visible slaughter, not
this or that part of the earth, but well-nigh the whole globe, has
remained without inhabitants.

"When has any such thing been ever heard or seen; in what annals has
it ever been read that houses were left vacant, cities deserted, the
country neglected, the fields too small for the dead, and a fearful
and universal solitude over the whole earth? Consult your historians,
they are silent; question your doctors, they are dumb; seek an answer
from your philosophers, they shrug their shoulders and frown, and
with their fingers to their lips bid you be silent.

"Will posterity ever believe these things when we, who see, can
scarcely credit them? We should think we were dreaming if we did not
with our eyes, when we walk abroad, see the city in mourning with
funerals, and returning to our home, find it empty, and thus know
that what we lament is real.

"Oh, happy people of the future, who have not known these miseries
and perchance will class our testimony with [p030] the fables. We
have, indeed, deserved these (punishments) and even greater; but our
forefathers also have deserved them, and may our posterity not also
merit the same."

Then, after saying that the universal misery is enough to make one
think that God has ceased to have a care for His creatures, and
putting this thought aside as blasphemy, the writer continues: "But
whatever the causes and however hidden, the effects are manifest. To
turn from public to private sorrows; the first part of the second
year is passed since I returned to Italy. I do not ask you to look
back any further; count these few days, and think what we were and
what we are. Where are now our pleasant friends? Where the loved
faces? Where their cheering words? Where their sweet and gentle
conversation? We were surrounded by a crowd of intimates, now we are
almost alone."

Speaking of one special friend, Paganinus of Milan, Petrarch writes:
"He was suddenly seized in the evening by the pestilential sickness.
After supping with friends he spent some time in conversation with
me, in the enjoyment of our common friendship and in talking over our
affairs. He passed the night bravely in the last agony, and in the
morning was carried off by a swift death. And, that no horror should
be wanting, in three days his sons and all his family had followed
him to the tomb."[36]

In other towns of Italy the same tragedy, as told in the words of
Boccaccio and Petrarch, was being enacted during the early spring and
the summer months of 1348. At Venice, where the pestilence obtained
an early foothold, and the position of which rendered it particularly
susceptible to infection, the mortality was so great that it was
represented by the round numbers of 100,000 souls.[37]

Signor Cecchetti's researches into the history of the medical faculty
at Venice at this period furnish many [p031] interesting details
as to the spread of the sickness.[38] Although surgeons were not
allowed by law to practise medicine, so great was the need during
the prevalence of the dread mortality that one surgeon, Andrea di
Padova, was allowed to have saved the lives of more than a hundred
people by his timely assistance.[39] In the 14th century Venice was
troubled by the plague some fifteen times, but that of 1348 was
"the great epidemic"—"the horrible mortality"—to the chroniclers of
the time. For a long period after, public and other documents make
it the excuse for all kinds of irregularities.[40] The diplomas of
merit bestowed upon doctors who remained faithful to their posts by
the authorities of Venice speak of death following upon the first
infection within a very short space of time. So depopulated was the
city that it might be said no one was left in it. Many doctors fled,
others shut themselves in their houses. Artisans and even youths
undertook the duties of physicians, and helped numbers to recover.[41]

On Sunday, March 30th, 1348, the Great Council of Venice chose a
commission of three to watch over the public safety. These a few days
later ordered deep pits to be made in one of the islands to receive
the bodies of those who died in the hospitals and of the poor, and to
convey them thither, ships were appointed to be always in waiting.

The rich fled from the place; officials could not be found, and the
Great Council was so reduced that the legal number for transacting
business could not be got together. Notaries died in great numbers,
and the prisons were thrown open.[42] When the epidemic had ceased
the Senate had great difficulty in finding three doctors for the
city. On January 12th, 1349, Marco Leon, a capable physician, and a
native of Venice, who was in practice at Perugia, offered to return
to his own city "since," as he says, "it has pleased God by the
terrible mortality to leave our native [p032] place so destitute
of upright and capable doctors that it may be said not one has been
left."[43]

Details of a similar nature might be multiplied from the contemporary
Italian records. What has been here given, however, will enable the
reader to form some estimate of the nature of the terrible disease
and of the extent of the universal devastation of the Italian
peninsula. The annals relate that in every city, castle, and town
death and desolation reigned supreme. In most places, as in Pisa, for
example, law and order became things of the past; the administration
of justice was impossible; criminals of every kind did what they
best pleased,[44] and for a considerable time after the plague
had passed the Courts of Law were occupied in disputes over the
possessions of the dead. When the wave of pestilence had rolled on
to other lands there came in its wake famine and general distress
in Italy, but strangely accompanied with the lavish expenditure of
those who considered that, where so many had died, there should be
enough and to spare of worldly goods for such as were left. The
land lay uncultivated and the harvest was unreaped. Provisions and
other necessaries of life became dear. Markets ceased to be held,
and cities and towns devoid of inhabitants were spectacles of decay
and desolation. It is said, and there does not appear to be reason
to doubt the statement, in view of the many contemporary accounts of
the disaster, that at least one half of the general population of
Italy were swept away by the scourge. This relation of the horrors
of the year 1348 in Italy may be closed by the account left us of
some students from Bohemia, who at this time journeyed back to their
country from Bologna.

"At this time," says a chronicle of Prague, "some students, coming
from Bologna into Bohemia, saw that in most of the cities and castles
they passed through few remained alive, and in some all were dead.
In many houses [p033] also those who had escaped with their lives
were so weakened by the sickness that one could not give another a
draught of water, nor help him in any way, and so passed their time
in great affliction and distress. Priests, too, ministering the
sacraments, and doctors medicines, to the sick were infected by them
and died, and so many passed out of this life without confession or
the sacraments of the Church, as the priests were dead. There were
generally made great, broad and deep pits in which the bodies of the
dead were buried. In many places, too, the air was more infected and
more deadly than poisoned food, from the corruption of the corpses,
since there was no one left to bury them. Of the foresaid students,
moreover, only one returned to Bohemia, and his companions all died
on the journey."[45]


FOOTNOTES:

[23] Sismondi, _Histoire des Républiques Italiennes du Moyen Age_,
vi, p. 11.

[24] "The Decameron," Introduction.

[25] Muratori, _Scriptores_, xiv, coll. 11-15.

[26] Muratori, _Scriptores_, xv. 1021.

[27] _Ibid._, xii, 926.

[28] _Ibid._ xv, 123. At this period the population at Siena was more
than 100,000, and it had been determined to proceed with the building
of the vast Cathedral according to the designs of Lando Orefice. The
work was hardly undertaken when the plague of 1348 broke out in the
city. The operations were suspended, and the money which had been
collected for the purpose was devoted to necessary public works (G.
Gigli, _Diario Sanese_, ii, 428).

[29] Muratori, _Scriptores_ xv, 653.

[30] _Ibid._, 902.

[31] _Ibid._, xvi, 286.

[32] A. Pezzana, _Storia della città di Parma_, vol. i, p. 12.

[33] _Historiæ Parmensis Fragmenta_, in Muratori, _Scriptores_, xii,
746.

[34] T. Michelet, _Histoire de France_, iv, p. 238.

[35] A. Phillippe, _Histoire de la Peste Noire_ (Paris, 1853), p. 103.

[36] _Epistolæ Familiares_ (Ed. 1601), lib. viii, pp. 290-303.

[37] Muratori, _Scriptores_, xii, 926.

[38] See his article _La Medicina in Venezia nel 1300_ in _Archivio
Veneto_, tom. xxv, p. 361, _seqq._

[39] p. 369.

[40] _Ibid._, 377.

[41] _Ibid._

[42] _Ibid._, p. 378.

[43] _Ibid._, p. 379.

[44] Roncioni, _Istorie Pisane_ in _Archivio Storico Italiano_, iv,
808.

[45] _Chronicon Pragense_, ed. Loserth in _Fontes rerum
Austriacarum_, _Scriptores_, vol. i, p. 395.

[p034]




CHAPTER III.

PROGRESS OF THE PLAGUE IN FRANCE.


Almost simultaneously with the outbreak of the pestilence in Italy
it obtained a foothold in the South of France. According to a
contemporary account, written at Avignon in 1348, the disease was
brought into Marseilles by one of the three Genoese ships, which
had been compelled to leave the port of Genoa when the inhabitants
discovered that by their means the dreaded plague had already
commenced its ravages in their city. It would consequently appear
most likely that the mortality began in Marseilles somewhere about
the first days of January, 1348, although one account places the
commencement of the sickness as early as All Saints' Day (November
1), 1347.[46] The number of deaths in this great southern port of
France fully equalled that of the populous cities of Italy. In
a month the sickness is said to have carried off 57,000 of the
inhabitants of Marseilles and its neighbourhood.[47] One chronicle
says that "the Bishop, with the entire chapter of the cathedral,
and nearly all the friars, Preachers and Minorites, together with
two-thirds of the inhabitants, perished" at this time; and adds that
upon the sea might be seen ships, laden with merchandise, driven
about hither and thither by the waves, the steersman and every sailor
having been carried off by the disease.[48] Another, speaking of
Marseilles after the pestilence had passed, says that "so many died
that it [p035] remained like an uninhabited place."[49] It is of
interest to record that amongst the survivors there was an English
doctor, William Grisant, of Merton College, Oxford. He had studied
medicine at the then celebrated school of Montpellier, and was in
practice at Marseilles during the visitation of the great plague of
1348, dying two years later, in 1350.[50]

At Montpellier the ravages were, if possible, even greater. Of
the twelve magistrates, or consuls, ten died, and in the numerous
monasteries scarcely one religious was spared. The Dominicans here
were very numerous, numbering some 140 members, and of these seven
only are said to have been left alive.[51] Simon de Covino, a doctor,
of Paris, who probably witnessed the course of the disease at
Montpellier, wrote an account of his experiences in a poetical form
in 1350. The moral of his verse is the same as Boccaccio's, and the
chief interest lies in the fact that, like the Italian poet, Covino
was an eye-witness of what he relates, whilst his medical training
makes his testimony as to the chief characteristics of the disease
specially important. The name he gives to the malady is the _pestis
inguinaria_, or bubonic plague of the East. He describes a burning
pain, beginning under the arms, or in the groin, and extending to the
regions of the heart. A mortal fever then spread to the vital parts;
the heart, lungs, and breathing passages were chiefly affected, the
strength fell quickly, and the person so stricken was unable to fight
any length of time against the poison.

One very singular effect of the disease is noted by the author:—"The
pestilence," he asserts, "stamped itself upon [p036] the entire
population. Faces became pale, and the doom which threatened the
people was marked upon their foreheads. It was only necessary to look
into the countenances of men and women to read there recorded the
blow which was about to fall; a marked pallor announced the approach
of the enemy, and before the fatal day the sentence of death was
written unmistakably on the face of the victims. No climate appeared
to have any effect upon the strange malady. It appeared to be stayed
neither by heat nor cold. High and healthy situations were as much
subject to it as damp and low places. It spread during the colder
season of winter as rapidly as in the heat of the summer months."

About the contagious nature of the epidemic there could be no doubt.
"It has been proved," wrote Covino, "that when it once entered a
house scarcely one of those who dwelt in it escaped." The contagion
was so great that one sick person, so to speak, would "infect the
whole world." "A touch, even a breath, was sufficient to transmit
the malady." Those who were obliged to render ordinary assistance to
the sick fell victims. "It happened also that priests, those sacred
physicians of souls, were seized by the plague whilst administering
spiritual aid; and often by a single touch, or a single breath of the
plague-stricken, they perished even before the sick person they had
come to assist." Clothes were justly regarded as infected, and even
the furniture of houses attacked was suspected. At Montpellier, at
the time of the visitation, the writer says there were more doctors
than elsewhere, but hardly one escaped the infection, and this even
although it was recognised that medical skill was of little or no
avail.

According to the experience of this Montpellier doctor the mortality
was greatest among the poor, because their hard lives and their
poverty rendered them more susceptible to the deadly infection, and
their condition did not enable them to combat it with the chances
of success possessed by the well-to-do classes. As to the extent of
[p037] the mortality, he says "that the number of those swept away
was greater than those left alive; cities are now (_i.e._, 1350)
depopulated, thousands of houses are locked up, thousands stand with
their doors wide open, their owners and those who dwelt in them
having been swept away." Lastly, this writer bears testimony to the
baneful effect the scourge had upon the morals of those who had been
spared. Such visitations, he thinks, must always exercise the most
lowering influence upon the general virtue of the world.[52]

From Marseilles the epidemic quickly spread northwards up the Rhone
valley, and in a westerly direction through Languedoc. Montpellier,
too, quickly passed on the infection. It commenced at Narbonne in
the first week of Lent, 1348, and is said to have carried off 30,000
of the inhabitants. Indeed, so fearful was the visitation, that this
ancient city is reported never to have recovered from the desolation
it caused.[53]

At Arles, which was attacked very shortly after the disease
had gained a footing on French soil, most of the inhabitants
perished.[54] It reached Avignon as early as January, 1348. In this
city Pope Clement VI., then in the sixth year of his pontificate,
held his court. Before the arrival of the dreaded visitant was
publicly recognised sixty-six religious of the convent of Carmelites
had been carried off, and in the first three days 1,800 people are
reported to have died. In the seven months during which the scourge
lasted the vast roll of the dead in the territory of Avignon had
mounted up to 150,000 persons, amongst whom was the friend of
Petrarch, Laura de Noves, who died on Good Friday, March 27th,
1348.[55] Even in England at the time the excessive mortality at
Avignon [p038] was noted and remarked upon.[56] Great numbers of
Jews are said to have been carried off because of the unsanitary
conditions in which they lived, and an equally great number of
Spaniards resident in the city, whose propensity for good living
rendered them most susceptible to the infection.[57]

The alarming mortality quickly caused a panic. "For such terror,"
writes an author of the lives of the Popes at Avignon, "took
possession of nearly everyone, that as soon as the ulcer or boil
appeared on anyone he was deserted by all, no matter how nearly
they might be related to him. For the father left his son, the son
his father, on his sick bed. In any house when a person became sick
with the infirmity and died it generally happened that all others
there were attacked and quickly followed him to the grave; yea, even
the animals in the place, such as dogs, cats, cocks, and hens also
died. Hence those who had strength fled for fear of what had taken
place, and, as a consequence, many who might otherwise have recovered
perished through want of care. Many, too, who were seized with the
sickness, being considered certain to die and without any hope of
recovery, were carried off at once to the pit and buried. And in this
way many were buried alive."

The same writer notices the charity of the Pope at this terrible
time, in causing doctors to visit and assist the sick poor. "And
since the ordinary cemeteries did not suffice to hold the bodies
of the dead, the Pope purchased a large field and caused it to be
consecrated as a cemetery where anyone might be buried. And here an
infinite number of people were then interred."[58] [p039]

The most important and particular account of the pestilence at
Avignon, however, is that of a certain Canon of the Low Countries,
who wrote at the time from the city to his friends in Bruges. He
was in the train of a Cardinal on a visit to the Roman Curia when
the plague broke out. "The disease," he writes, "is threefold in
its infection; that is to say, firstly, men suffer in their lungs
and breathing, and whoever have these corrupted, or even slightly
attacked, cannot by any means escape nor live beyond two days.
Examinations have been made by doctors in many cities of Italy, and
also in Avignon, by order of the Pope, in order to discover the
origin of this disease. Many dead bodies have been thus opened and
dissected, and it is found that all who have died thus suddenly have
had their lungs infected and have spat blood. The contagious nature
of the disease is indeed the most terrible of all the terrors (of the
time), for when anyone who is infected by it dies, all who see him
in his sickness, or visit him, or do any business with him, or even
carry him to the grave, quickly follow him thither, and there is no
known means of protection.

"There is another form of the sickness, however, at present running
its course concurrently with the first; that is, certain aposthumes
appear under both arms, and by these also people quickly die. A third
form of the disease—like the two former, running its course at this
same time with them—is that from which people of both sexes suffer
from aposthumes in the groin. This, likewise, is quickly fatal. The
sickness has already grown to such proportions that, from fear of
contagion, no doctor will visit a sick man, even if the invalid would
gladly give him everything he possessed; neither does a father visit
his son, nor a mother her daughter, nor a brother his brother, nor
a son his father, nor a friend his friend, nor an acquaintance his
acquaintance, nor, in fact, does anyone go to another, no matter
how closely he may be allied to him by blood, unless he is prepared
to die with him or [p040] quickly to follow after him. Still, a
large number of persons have died merely through their affection for
others; for they might have escaped had they not, moved by piety and
Christian charity, visited the sick at the time.

"To put the matter shortly, one-half, or more than a half, of the
people at Avignon are already dead. Within the walls of the city
there are now more than 7,000 houses shut up; in these no one is
living, and all who have inhabited them are departed; the suburbs
hardly contain any people at all. A field near 'Our Lady of Miracles'
has been bought by the Pope and consecrated as a cemetery. In
this, from the 13th of March,[59] 11,000 corpses have been buried.
This number does not include those interred in the cemetery of the
hospital of St. Anthony, in cemeteries belonging to the religious
bodies, and in the many others which exist in Avignon. Nor must I be
silent about the neighbouring parts, for at Marseilles all the gates
of the city, with the exception of two small ones, are now closed,
for there four-fifths of the inhabitants are dead.

"The like account I can give of all the cities and towns of Provence.
Already the sickness has crossed the Rhone, and ravaged many cities
and villages as far as Toulouse, and it ever increases in violence
as it proceeds. On account of this great mortality there is such
a fear of death that people do not dare even to speak with anyone
whose relative has died, because it is frequently remarked that in
a family where one dies nearly all the relations follow him, and
this is commonly believed among the people. Neither are the sick now
served by their kindred, except as dogs would be; food is put near
the bed for them to eat and drink, and then those still in health fly
and leave the house. When a man dies some rough countrymen, called
_gavoti_, come to the house, and, after receiving a sufficiently
large reward, carry the corpse to the grave. Neither relatives
nor friends go to the sick, nor do priests even hear their [p041]
confessions nor give them the Sacraments; but everyone whilst still
in health looks after himself. It daily happens that some rich man
dying is borne to the grave by these ruffians without lights, and
without a soul to follow him, except these hired mourners. When
a corpse is carried by all fly through the streets and get into
their houses. Nor do these said wretched _gavoti_, strong as they
are, escape; but most of them after a time become infected by this
contagion and die. All the poor who were wont to receive bread from
the rich are dead; that is to say, briefly, where daily in ordinary
times there were distributed sixty-four measures of wheat for bread,
fifty loaves being made from each measure, now only one measure is
given away, and sometimes even a half is found to be sufficient.

"And it is said that altogether in three months—that is from January
25th to the present day (April 27th)—62,000 bodies have been buried
in Avignon. The Pope, however, about the middle of March last past,
after mature deliberation, gave plenary absolution till Easter, as
far as the keys of the Church extended, to all those who, having
confessed and being contrite, should happen to die of the sickness.
He ordered likewise devout processions, singing the Litanies, to be
made on certain days each week, and to these, it is said, people
sometimes come from the neighbouring districts to the number of
2,000; amongst them many of both sexes are barefooted, some are in
sackcloth, some with ashes, walking with tears and tearing their
hair, and beating themselves with scourges even to the drawing of
blood. The Pope was personally present at some of these processions,
but they were then within the precincts of his palace. What will
be the end, or whence all this has had its beginning, God alone
knows. . . .

"Some wretched men have been caught with certain dust, and, whether
justly or unjustly God only knows, they are accused of having
poisoned the water, and men in fear do not drink the water from
wells; for this many have been burnt and daily are burnt. [p042]

"Fish, even sea fish, is commonly not eaten, as people say they have
been infected by the bad air. Moreover, people do not eat, nor even
touch spices, which have not been kept a year, since they fear they
may have lately arrived in the aforesaid ships. And, indeed, it has
many times been observed that those who have eaten these new spices
and even some kinds of sea fish have suddenly been taken ill.

"I write this to you, my friends, that you may know the dangers in
which we live. And if you desire to preserve yourselves, the best
advice is to eat and drink temperately, to avoid cold, not to commit
excess of any kind, and, above all, to converse little with others,
at this time especially, except with the few whose breath is sweet.
But it is best to remain at home until this epidemic has passed. . . .

"Know, also, that the Pope has lately left Avignon, as is reported,
and has gone to the castle called Stella, near Valence on the
Rhone, two leagues off, to remain there till times change. The
Curia, however, preferred to remain at Avignon, (but) vacations
have been proclaimed till the feast of St. Michael. All the
auditors, advocates, and procurators have either left, intend to
leave immediately, or are dead. I am in the hands of God, to whom I
commend myself. My master will follow the Pope, so they say, and I
with him, for there are some castles near the airy mountains where
the mortality has not yet appeared, and it is thought that the best
chance is there. To choose and to do what is best may the Omnipotent
and merciful God grant us all. Amen."[60]

From another source some corroboration of the mortality, described by
the writer of this letter, can be obtained. The 11,000, stated by the
anonymous canon to have been buried in the Pope's new cemetery from
March 13th to April 27th may appear excessive; still more, the 62,000
reported to have died in the three months between the [p043] first
outbreak, on January 25th, and the date when the letter was written.
The statements of the writer are, however, so circumstantial and
given with such detail, that, allowing for the tendency in all such
catastrophes to exaggerate rather than minimise the number of the
victims, it is probable that his estimate of the terrible destruction
of life at Avignon and in the neighbourhood is substantially
accurate. Writing, as he does, on the Sunday after Easter, 1348, he
evidently points to the time of Lent as the period during which the
epidemic was at its height. This is borne out by a statement in a
German chronicle, which says: "In Venice, in the whole of Italy and
Provence, especially in cities on the sea-coast, there died countless
numbers. And at Avignon, where the Roman Curia then was, in the first
three days after mid-Lent Sunday, 1,400 people were computed to have
been buried."[61] Mid-Lent Sunday, in 1348, fell upon March 30th,
and, consequently, according to this authority, on the last day of
March and the first two days of April the death-rate was over 450 a
day.

No account of the plague at Avignon would be complete without some
notice of Gui de Chauliac, and some quotations from the work he has
left to posterity upon this particular outbreak. De Chauliac was
the medical attendant of Pope Clement VI. He devoted himself to the
service of the sick during the time of the epidemic, and, although
he himself caught the infection, his life was happily spared to the
service of others, and to enable him to write an account of the
sickness. The mortality, he says, commenced in the month of January,
1348, and lasted for the space of seven months. "It was of two kinds;
the first lasted two months, with constant fever and blood-spitting,
and of this people died in three days.

"The second lasted for the rest of the time. In this, together with
constant fever, there were external carbuncles, or buboes, under
the arm or in the groin, and the [p044] disease ran its course in
five days. The contagion was so great (especially when there was
blood-spitting) that not only by remaining (with the sick) but even
by looking (at them) people seemed to take it; so much so, that many
died without any to serve them, and were buried without priests to
pray over their graves.

"A father did not visit his son, nor the son his father. Charity was
dead. The mortality was so great that it left hardly a fourth part
of the population. Even the doctors did not dare to visit the sick
from fear of infection, and when they did visit them they attempted
nothing to heal them, and thus almost all those who were taken
ill died, except towards the end of the epidemic, when some few
recovered."

"As for me, to avoid infamy, I did not dare to absent myself, but
still I was in continual fear." Towards the end of the sickness de
Chauliac took the infection, and was in great danger for six weeks,
but in the end recovered.[62]

It was according to the advice of this same Gui de Chauliac that
Pope Clement VI. isolated himself and kept large fires always
alight in his apartments, just as Pope Nicholas IV. had done in a
previous epidemic. In the whole district of Provence the mortality
appears to have been very great. In the Lent of 1348 no fewer than
358 Dominicans are said to have died.[63] Even by the close of the
November of this year the terror of the time had not passed away
from Avignon and the Papal Court. Writing to King Louis of Hungary,
on the 23rd of that month, the Pope excused himself for not having
sent before, "as the deadly plague, which has devastated these and
other parts of the world by an unknown and terrible mortality, has
not only, by God's will, carried off some of our brethren, but caused
others to fly from the Roman Curia to avoid death."[64] [p045]

In the early summer of the same year, 1348, just as the plague was
lessening its ravages at Avignon, the Pope addressed a letter to the
General Chapter of the Friars Minor then being held at Verona. He
laments the misery into which the world has been plunged, chiefly
"by the mortal sickness which is carrying off from us old and young,
rich and poor, in one common, sudden and unforeseen death." He urges
them to unite in prayer that the plague may cease, and grants special
indulgences "to such among you as, during this Chapter, or whilst
returning to your homes, may chance to die."[65] Of these Franciscans
it is said that, in Italy alone, 30,000 died in this sickness.

From its first entry into France in the early days of 1348, the
plague was ever spreading far and wide. The letter from Avignon,
already given, speaks of the ravages of the mortality in the whole
of Provence, and of its having, before the end of April, reached
Toulouse on its journey westward. In the August of this year (1348)
Bordeaux was apparently suffering from it, since in that month the
Princess Joan, daughter of Edward III., who was on her way to be
married to Pedro, son of the King of Castille, died suddenly in that
city.

In a northerly direction the epidemic spread with equal virulence.
At Lyons evidence of the pestilence is afforded by an inscription
preserved in the town museum. It relates to the construction of a
chapel in 1352 by a citizen, "Michael Pancsus," in which Mass should
be said for the souls of several members of his family "who died in
the time of the mortality, 1348."[66] The anonymous cleric of Bruges,
who preserved the Avignon letter, writing probably at the time, gives
the following account of its progress: "In the year of our Lord 1348,
that plague, epidemic, and mortality, which we have mentioned before,
by the will of God has [p046] not ceased; but from day to day
grows and descends upon other parts. For in Burgundy, Normandy, and
elsewhere it has consumed, and is consuming, many thousands of men,
animals, and sheep."[67]

It arrived in Normandy probably about the feast of St. James (July
25th), 1348. A contemporary note in a manuscript, which certainly
came from the Abbey of Foucarmont, gives the following account: "In
the year of grace 1348, about the feast of St. James, the great
mortality entered into Normandy. And it came into Gascony, and
Poitou, and Brittany, and then passed into Picardy. And it was so
horrible that in the towns it attacked more than two-thirds of the
population died. And a father did not dare to go and visit his son,
nor a brother his sister, and people could not be found to nurse one
another, because, when the person breathed the breath of another he
could not escape. It came to such a pass that no one could be found
even to carry the corpses (to the tomb). People said that the end
of the world had come."[68] In another manuscript, M. Delisle has
found a further note, or portion of a note, referring to the terrible
nature of the malady in Normandy. It never entered a city or town
without carrying off the greater part of the inhabitants. "And in
that time the mortality was so great among the people of Normandy
that those in Picardy mocked them."[69]

Paris was, of course, visited by the disease. Apparently, it was some
time in the early summer of 1348 when it first manifested itself.
In the chronicle of St. Denis it is recorded that "in the year of
grace 1348 the said mortality commenced in the Kingdom of France and
lasted about a year and a half, more or less. In this way there died
in Paris, one day with another, 800 persons. . . . In the space of
the said year and a half, as some declare, the number of the dead
in Paris rose to more than 50,000, and [p047] in the town of St.
Denis the number was as high as 16,000."[70] The chronicle of the
Carmelites at Rheims places the total of deaths in Paris at the
larger number of 80,000,[71] amongst whom were two Queens, Joan of
Navarre, daughter of Louis X., and Joan of Burgundy, wife of King
Philip of Valois.

The most circumstantial account of the plague in France at the time
when the capital was attacked is given in the continuation of the
chronicle of William of Nangis, which was written probably before
1368. "In the same year" (1348), it says, "both in Paris in the
kingdom of France, and not less, as is reported, in different parts
of the world, and also in the following year, there was so great
a mortality of people of both sexes, and of the young rather than
the old, that they could hardly be buried. Further they were ill
scarcely more than two or three days, and some often died suddenly,
so that a man to-day in good health, to-morrow was carried a corpse
to the grave. Lumps suddenly appeared under the arm-pits or in
the groin, and the appearance of these was an infallible sign of
death. This sickness, or pestilence, was called by the doctors the
epidemic. And the multitude of people who died in the years 1348 and
1349, was so large that nothing like it was ever heard, read of,
or witnessed in past ages. And the said death and sickness often
sprung from the imagination, or from the society and (consequent)
contagion of another, for a healthy man visiting one sick hardly
ever escaped death. So that in many towns, small and great, priests
retired through fear, leaving the administration of the Sacraments to
religious, who were more bold. Briefly, in many places, there did not
remain two alive out of every twenty.

"So great was the mortality in the Hotel-Dieu of Paris that for a
long time more than fifty corpses were carried [p048] away from it
each day in carts to be buried.[72] And the devout sisters of the
Hotel-Dieu, not fearing death, worked piously and humbly, not out of
regard for any worldly honour. A great number of these said sisters
were very frequently summoned to their reward by death, and rest in
peace with Christ, as is piously believed."

After saying that the plague had passed through Gascony and Spain,
the chronicler speaks of it as going "from town to town, village
to village, from house to house, and even from person to person;
and coming into the country of France, passed into Germany, where,
however, it was less severe than amongst us."

"It lasted in France," the writer says, "the greater part of 1348
and 1349, and afterwards there were to be seen many towns, country
places, and houses in good cities remaining empty and without
inhabitants."

The writer concludes by declaring that nature soon began to make
up for losses. "But, alas! the world by this renovation is not
changed for the better. For people were afterwards more avaricious
and grasping, even when they possessed more of the goods of this
world, than before. They were more covetous, vexing themselves by
contentious quarrels, strifes, and law suits." Moreover, all things
were much dearer; furniture, food, merchandise, of all sorts doubled
in price, and servants would work only for higher wages. "Charity,
too, from that time began to grow cold, and wickedness with its
attendant, ignorance, was rampant, and few were found who could or
would teach children the rudiments of grammar in houses, cities, or
villages."[73] [p049]

Whilst the plague was at its height King Philip VI. requested the
medical faculty of Paris to consult together and to report upon the
best methods by which the deadly nature of the disease could be
combated. The result of their consultation was published, probably
in June, 1348.[74] Unfortunately, adhering closely to the text of
the question addressed to them, their reply does not furnish any
historical details. They broadly state their views as to the probable
origin of the epidemic, and confine themselves to suggestions as to
its treatment, and to the means by which contagion is to be avoided.
They are clear as to the infectious nature of the disease, and
earnest in their recommendations that all who were able should have
nothing to do with the sick. "It is chiefly the people of one house,
and above all those of the same family, who are close together," they
say, "who die, for they are always near to those who are sick. We
advise them to depart, for it is in this way that a great number have
been infected by the plague."[75]

Meanwhile the epidemic was spreading northward. At Amiens, where
17,000 are said to have been carried off by the sickness, it seems
probable that the malady was not at its height before the summer of
the following year, 1349. The wave of pestilence from Paris seems to
have divided. One stream swept on through Normandy towards the coast,
which it probably reached, in the regions round Calais, about July
or August of the year 1348. The other stream, checked probably by
the autumn and winter, made its way more slowly towards Belgium and
Holland.

In the June of 1349 the King granted a petition from the Mayor of
Amiens for a new cemetery. In the document the plague in the city
is described as having been then so terrible that the cemeteries
are full, and no more corpses could safely be buried in them.
"The mortality in the said town," says the King's letter, "is so
marvellously great [p050] that people are dying there suddenly, as
quickly, as from one evening to the following morning, and often
even quicker than that."[76] This was in June, 1349, and already
by September of the same year the authorities were called upon
to deal with a combination of workmen at a tannery to secure for
themselves excessive wages "to the great hurt of the people at
large." The promptness of the action of the Mayor, and the tone of
the proclamation establishing a rate of wages, is a sufficient proof
that the crisis was regarded as serious.[77] This trouble at Amiens
is an indication of difficulties which will be seen to have existed
elsewhere in France, in Germany, and in England, which had their
origin in the dearth of labourers after the scourge had passed.

The account of the ravages of this great pestilence in France, as
well as its course in the city of Tournay, where it commenced in
August, 1349, is well given in the chronicle of Gilles Li Muisis,
Abbot of St. Martin's, Tournay, who was a contemporary of the events
he describes. "It is impossible," he says, "to credit the mortality
throughout the whole country. Travellers, merchants, pilgrims, and
others who have passed through it declare that they have found cattle
wandering without herdsmen in fields, towns, and waste lands; that
they have seen barns and wine-cellars standing wide open, houses
empty, and few people to be found anywhere. So much so that in many
towns, cities and villages, where there had been before 20,000
people, scarcely 2,000 are left; and in many cities and country
places, where there had been 1,500 people, hardly 100 remain. And in
many different lands (_multis climatibus_), both lands and fields are
lying uncultivated. I have heard these things from a certain knight
well skilled in the law, who was one of the members of the Paris
Parliament. He was sent, together with a certain Bishop, by Philip,
the most [p051] illustrious King of France, to the King of Aragon,
and on his return journey passed through Avignon. Both there and in
Paris, as he told me, he was informed of the foresaid things by many
people worthy of credit."

After speaking of the evidence given by a pilgrim to Santiago, Li
Muisis proceeds to relate his own experiences in Tournay in the
summer of 1349. This he does in verse and prose. The poem, after
speaking of the manifestation of God's anger, describes the plague
beginning in the East and passing through France into Flanders. Like
other writers, Li Muisis declares that he hesitates to say what he
has seen and heard, because posterity will hardly credit what he
would relate.[78] The reports of all travellers and merchants as to
the terrible state of the country generally give one and the same
sad story of universal death and distress. The particulars as to the
plague in Tournay, the writer's own city, may best be given from his
prose account.

John de Pratis, the Bishop of Tournay, was one of the first to be
carried off by the sickness. He had gone away for change of air,
and on Corpus Christi Day, June 11th, 1349, he carried the blessed
Sacrament in the procession at Arras. He left that city the next
day for Cambray, but died the day after almost suddenly.[79] He was
buried at Tournay; and "time passed on," says our author, to the
beginning of August, up to which no other person of authority died
in Tournay. But after the feast of St. John the plague began in the
parish of St. Piat, in the quarter of Merdenchor, and afterwards in
other parishes. Every day the bodies of the dead were borne to the
churches, now five, now ten, now fifteen, and in the parish of St.
Brice sometimes twenty or thirty. In all parish churches the curates,
parish clerks, and sextons to get their fees, [p052] rang morning,
evening, and night the passing bells, and by this the whole people of
the city, both men and women, began to be filled with fear.

The officials of the town consequently seeing that the Dean and
Chapter, and the clerics generally, did not care to remedy this
matter, since it was in their interest it should go on, as they made
profit out of it, having taken counsel together, issued certain
orders. Men and women who, although not married, were living together
as man and wife, were commanded either to marry or forthwith to
separate. The bodies of the dead were to be buried immediately in
graves at least six feet deep. There was to be no tolling of any bell
at funerals. The corpse was not to be taken to the church, but at the
service only a pall was to be spread on the ground, whilst after the
service there was to be no gathering together at the houses of the
deceased. Further, all work after noon on Saturdays and during the
entire Sunday was prohibited, as also was the playing of dice and
making use of profane oaths.

These ordinances having lasted for a time, and the sickness still
further increasing, it was proclaimed on St. Matthew's Day (September
24th) that there should be no more ringing of bells, that not more
than two were to meet for any funeral service, and that no one was
to dress in black. This action of the city authorities, the writer
declares to have been most beneficial. In his own knowledge, he
says, many who had hitherto been living in a state of concubinage
were married, that the practice of swearing notably diminished, and
that dice were so little used that the manufacturers turned "the
square-shaped dice" into "round objects on which people told their
_Pater Nosters_."

I have tried, says our author, to write what I know, "and let future
generations believe that in Tournay there was a marvellous mortality.
I heard from many about Christmas time who professed to know it as
a fact that more than 25,000 persons had died in Tournay, and it
was strange [p053] that the mortality was especially great among
the chief people and the rich. Of those who used wine and kept away
from the tainted air and visiting the sick few or none died. But
those visiting and frequenting the houses of the sick either became
grievously ill or died. Deaths were more numerous about the market
places and in poor narrow streets than in broader and more spacious
areas. And whenever one or two people died in any house, at once, or
at least in a short space of time, the rest of the household were
carried off. So much so, that very often in one home ten or more
ended their lives together, and in many houses the dogs and even cats
died. Hence no one, whether rich, in moderate circumstances, or poor,
was secure, but everyone from day to day waited on the will of the
Lord. And certainly great was the number of curates and chaplains
hearing confessions and administering the Sacraments, and even of
parish clerks visiting the sick with them, who died."

In the parishes across the river, the mortality was as great as in
Tournay itself. Although death as a rule came so suddenly, still the
people for the most part were able to receive the Sacraments. The
rapidity of the disease, remarked upon by Petrarch and Boccaccio
in Italy, is also spoken of in the same terms by the Abbot of St.
Martin's. People that one had seen apparently well and had spoken to
one evening were reported dead next day. He specially remarks upon
the mortality among the clergy visiting the sick,[80] and speaks of
the creation of two new cemeteries outside the walls of the town.
One was in a field near the Leper House _De Valle_, the other at the
religious house of the Crutched Friars. Strange to say Li Muisis
speaks of the disfavour with which this necessary precaution of
establishing new grave-yards was regarded. People, he says, grumbled
because they were no longer [p054] allowed to be buried in their own
family vaults. The town authorities, however, were firm, and as the
pestilence increased deep pits were dug in these two common burying
places, and into them numbers of bodies were constantly being thrown
and covered up with a slight layer of earth.[81]

It has been supposed by many that the accounts given by contemporary
writers of the excessive mortality throughout the countries of Europe
must be greatly exaggerated, and that the population in the middle
of the fourteenth century was not sufficiently large to allow of the
number of deaths. On the one hand it is evident that in the majority
of cases the round figures stated can be at most nothing more than
a rough approximation of the actual deaths, and that the natural
tendency of those who have witnessed a catastrophe as great and as
universal as that of the plague of 1348 and subsequent years, is to
magnify, rather than to diminish, the disaster. On the other hand,
whilst allowing that in most cases the actual figures are little
more than guesses at the truth, and can only be taken as evidence
of the belief of the age in the magnitude of the mortality, it must
be admitted that Italy, France, and other countries of Europe were
at the time more teeming with population than is perhaps usually
understood.

M. Siméon Luce has made a special study of the conditions of French
popular life at this period,[82] and the conclusions at which he has
arrived may be here usefully stated in brief. It has been proved by
the labours of French antiquaries that the general population of
France before the great pestilence of 1348-1349, and the hundred
years' war with England, was equal to what it is in the present
century. Numerous villages were scattered over the face of the
country, every trace of which has now disappeared. The houses, or
rather huts, in which the [p055] population of rural France lived
were very seldom framed of any kind of masonry, but were for the most
part merely four mud, or clay, walls, and sometimes wickerwork lined,
and the interstices filled in, with hay and straw. As a rule there
was but one storey, although some, chiefly taverns and places of that
class, had an upper floor. The roof was thatched or covered with
wood or stone; windows were the exception, and where they did exist
they were mere slits in the clay walls closed with wooden shutters.
Even the coarse, opaque glass then made was beyond the means of the
ordinary peasant and farmer, whilst just about this time even a rich
bourgeois of Paris recommended the filling of windows with waxen
cloth or parchment. The doors were fastened with wooden latches, and
over them, according to the general arrangement, a shutter of wood
was fixed which was generally left open for air, light, and to allow
the smoke of the brushwood fire to pass out of the living room. It
will be readily understood how the condition of life in houses such
as these would not be such as to put much obstacle to the spread of
an epidemic in the rural districts; whilst if such tenements were
vacant even for a short time they would readily fall into decay and
would present the spectacle of ruin and desolation spoken of by so
many writers of the period as caused by the great pestilence.

The furniture of these houses was simple, but very much what it is
now in small country houses. The inventories of the period show that
most houses had vessels of copper, tin and glass, and that there
were few who did not possess some articles of silver. The people for
the most part lived on a soup of bread and meal; but even by the
fourteenth century white bread was by no means unknown. The principal
meat was pork fed in the forests, but most cottages possessed a spit
upon which fowls, previously larded, were occasionally roasted.
Of condiments, mustard was the chief, and it was much, if not
universally, used. Even in the humblest houses a cloth would be
spread on [p056] the table at meals. For drink there was the wine
of the country, and in Normandy cider was plentiful. With the drink,
especially in taverns, which were exceedingly numerous, a little
ginger would generally be mixed. In dress fur of various kinds was
much used, and, by the time of this pestilence, in France the use of
the linen shirt as an undergarment had become almost universal. The
sleeping places were dark, airless recesses, in which the people,
having divested themselves of all clothing, rested upon straw
mattresses, or sometimes on feather beds. Contrary to the opinion
entertained by persons of repute there is evidence to show that
bathing was common and much used especially among the lower classes,
and that even small villages had their public bath places.

This sketch of the epidemic in these regions may be concluded by one
or two instances of the agrarian difficulties which followed upon it.
On August 16th, 1349, the Emperor Charles IV. issued an order to the
tenants of the Abbey of St. Trond, in the diocese of Liège, to return
to their obedience. The document says that the holders of the Abbey
lands and other dependents are now demanding their own terms and
claiming liberty to do what they like, with the result that the Abbot
and monastery are so distressed in temporal matters that absolute
ruin is impending.[83] The second instance is that of the Abbey of
St. John at Laon. A document, addressed by the French King Charles
to the Abbot and convent, says that the monastery is so decayed in
revenues that it is impossible to keep up the fitting and proper
services of the Church. And although the letter was not written till
nearly the close of the century—1392-3—the cause assigned for this
poverty and decay is "the great mortality which took place about the
year 1349," by which the tithes and other revenues were destroyed.

And to quote but one more example: "On 5th July, [p057] 1352, relief
was granted to the inhabitants of the town of Arras because by reason
of the wars, and because of the mortality which has been universal in
the world, the said city is so greatly decayed, both as to buildings
and people, as also in revenues and temporal goods, that it is on the
high road to (absolute) desolation."[84]


FOOTNOTES:

[46] Labbe, _Nova Bibliotheca Manuscriptorum_, i, p. 343.

[47] C. Anglada, _Étude sur les Maladies Éteintes_, p. 432.

[48] Matthias Nuewenburgensis in Boehmer, _Fontes rerum
Germanicarum_, iv, p. 261.

[49] Henricus Rebdorfensis, _Ibid._, p. 560. Another account speaks
of Marseilles remaining afterwards almost "depopulated," and of
"thousands dying in the adjoining towns" (_Chronicon Pragense_, in
_Fontes rerum Austriacarum_, _Scriptores_, i, p. 395).

[50] J. Astruc, _Histoire de la Faculté de Médecine de Montpellier_
(Montpellier, 1862), p. 184.

[51] Anglada, _ut supra_, p. 432.

[52] _Opuscule relatif à la peste de 1348, composé par un
contemporain_ in _Bibliothèque de l'École des Chartes_, 1e Sér., ii,
pp. 201-243.

[53] Martin, _Histoire de France_ (4th ed.), v, p. 109.

[54] Phillippe, _Histoire de la Peste Noire_, p. 103.

[55] Anglada, _Maladies Éteintes_, p. 431.

[56] Higden, _Polychronicon_ (ed. Rolls Series), viii, p. 344.

[57] L. Michon, _Documents inédits sur la grande peste de 1348_
(Paris, 1860), p. 22.

[58] Baluze, _Vitæ Paparum Avenionensium_, i, p. 254. In a second
life of Clement VII. (p. 274) it is said that vast pits were dug in
the public cemetery, where the dead were buried "ut pecora gregatim."

[59] The writer was sending his letter on April 27th, 1348, so that
the period would have been about six weeks.

[60] _Breve Chronicon clerici anonymi_, in De Smet, _Recueil des
Chroniques de Flandre_, iii, pp. 14-18.

[61] Henricus Rebdorfensis, in Boehmer, _Fontes_, iv, p. 560.

[62] Anglada, _Maladies Éteintes_, pp. 413-14.

[63] Barnes, _History of Edward III._, p. 435.

[64] Thiener, _Monumenta Historica Hungariæ_, i, p. 767.

[65] Wadding, _Annales Minorum_, viii, p. 25 (ed. 1723).

[66] Olivier de la Haye, _Poëme sur la grande peste de 1348_.
Introduction par G. Guigue, p. xviii, _note_.

[67] _Breve Chronicon_ in De Smet, _Recueil des Chroniques de
Flandre_, iii, p. 19.

[68] Delisle, _Cabinet des Manuscrits_, i, p. 532.

[69] _Ibid._ Here the note abruptly finishes.

[70] H. Martin, _Histoire de France_, v, p. 111.

[71] Marlot, _Histoire de Ville de Reims_, iv, p. 63.

[72] All copies of this chronicle give "_quingente_," and it has
usually been stated that the number so buried each day was 500. M.
Géraud, who edited the work for the Société de l'Histoire de France,
suggests that it is a mistake for 50, and quotes two MSS., in which
in the margin the following note is found: "L corps par jour a
l'Hostel-Dieu de Paris." As this reading is more probable it has been
adopted above.

[73] _Continuatio Chronici Guillelmi di Nangiaco, éd._ pour la
Société de l'Histoire de France par H. Géraud, ii, pp. 211-217.

[74] They speak in the document of "the 17th of the ensuing month of
July."

[75] Michon, _Documents inédits sur la Peste Noire_, p. 22.

[76] Thierry, _Recueil des Monuments inédits de l'Histoire du Tiers
Etat_, i, p. 544.

[77] _Ibid._, p. 546.

[78]

 "Certe dicere timeo
 Quæ vidi et quæ video
 De ista pestilentia."

[79] Gams, _Series Episcoporum_, gives 13th June, 1349, as the day of
his death.

[80]

 "Quia de sacerdotibus
 Infirmos visitantibus
 Quamplurimi defecerunt."

[81] _Chronicon majus Ægidii Li Muisis, abbatis Sti. Martini
Tornacensis_, in De Smet, _Receuil des Chroniques de Flandre_, ii,
pp. 279-281 and 361-382.

[82] S. Luce, _Bertrand du Guesclin_, i, ch. 3.

[83] Piot, _Cartulaire de l'abbaye de Saint-Trond_, i, 507.

[84] Lechner, _Das grosse Sterben in Deutschland_, p. 93.

[p058]




CHAPTER IV.

THE PLAGUE IN OTHER EUROPEAN COUNTRIES.


In following the great pestilence through Europe, according to the
historical sequence of events, its course in England should be now
described. Inasmuch, however, as the story of the ravages caused
by the disease in England will be told in greater detail, it may
conveniently be left till the last. Here a brief account may be
interposed of the mortality in other European countries, although it
will take the reader to the year 1351.

From Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica the plague was carried to the
Balearic Islands. The three streams of infection met with destructive
force at Majorca. The historian Zurita declares that in less than
a month 15,000 persons had perished on the island. Another writer
estimates the total loss of life during the epidemic at double
that number, and some ancient records have been quoted as stating
that in the island eight out of every ten people must have died, a
proportion, of course, exaggerated, but sufficient to show local
tradition as to the extent of the misfortune. In the monasteries and
convents, according to this authority, not one religious was left;
and the Dominicans are said to have been obliged to recruit their
numbers by enrolling quite young children.[85]

The scourge fell upon Spain in the early part of the year 1348. It is
supposed to have first appeared at Almeira, and in Barcelona whole
quarters of the city were depopulated and rendered desolate by it.
In May, 1348, it was already raging in Valencia, and by midsummer
300 persons a day are reported to have been buried in the city. At
[p059] Saragossa, where Pedro IV. then was, the malady was at its
height in September. The people here, as elsewhere, became hardened,
and charity died out in the presence of the terrors of death. They
fled from the sick, leaving them to die alone, and abandoned the
corpses of the dead in the streets. Most of the cities and villages
of Spain suffered more or less severely, and the sickness appears to
have lingered longer here than in most other countries. The new Queen
of Aragon had been one of the earliest victims; Alphonsus XI. was one
of the last. In March, 1350, he was laying siege to Gibraltar, when
the plague broke out suddenly with great violence amongst his troops.
He refused to retire, as his officers desired him to do, and fell a
victim to the epidemic on Good Friday, March 26th, 1350.[86]

An interesting account of Northern Spain during the plague is given
in the chronicle of Li Muisis, Abbot of St. Martin's, Tournay, from
which much was cited in the previous chapter. The writer says that
he learnt the details from "a pilgrim, who, in going to St. James'
(of Compostella), passed by Notre Dame de Roc Amadour[87] and by
Toulouse, because by reason of the wars he could not travel the
usual way." This pilgrim to Compostella, in the middle of the 14th
century, would consequently have crossed the Pyrenees by one of
the passes into Navarre, and so travelled along the north of Spain
to Santiago. Having performed his pilgrimage, Li Muisis informs us
that he returned through Galicia, and "with his companion, reached a
town named Salvaterra," probably the place now called Salvatierra,
situated below the Pyrenees, and just above the Sierra de la Pena.
This town, as the traveller reported, "was so depopulated by the
mortality that not one person out of ten had been left alive. The
city itself was fairly large. The said pilgrim related," says Li
Muisis, "that after supping with the host (who, with two daughters
and [p060] one servant, had alone so far survived of his entire
family, and who was not then conscious of any sickness upon him), he
settled with him for his entertainment, intending to start on his
journey at daybreak, and went to bed. Next morning rising and wanting
something from those with whom they had supped, the travellers could
make no one hear. Then they learnt from an old woman they found in
bed that the host, his two daughters, and servant had died in the
night. On hearing this the pilgrims made all haste to leave the
place."[88]

From North Italy the pestilence soon spread to the country across the
Adriatic, if indeed it had not already been infected independently,
as seems more than probable, by ships from the East. The port of
Ragusa, in Dalmatia, is said to have been attacked as early as
January 13th, 1348, and more than 7,000 are reported as having been
swept away by it. A letter sent in April to the authorities "condoles
with them on the terrible mortality, by which the population had been
so greatly diminished."[89] At Spalatro, on March 22nd, 1348, the
Archbishop Dominic de Lucaris died of the disease, and it is known
to have raged for some months in the city. An anonymous chronicler
of Spalatro in the 15th century, who professed to take his account
of this period from ancient records, declares that it is impossible
to picture "the terrors and miseries of these unhappy days." To
add to the horror of the situation, as he declares, wolves and
other wild animals came down from the mountains and fell upon the
plague-stricken city and boldly attacked the survivors. The same
writer notes the rapidity with which the disease carried off those it
attacked. According to him, when swellings or carbuncles appeared on
any part of the body all hope of saving the life of the patient was
abandoned. As a rule, those stricken in this way died in three or at
most four days, and so great was the general mortality that bodies
were left lying unburied [p061] in the streets because there were
none to carry them to the grave.[90]

Further north again, Sebenico, through intercourse with which, very
possibly, the plague was carried into Hungary, was attacked in
the spring of the same year, 1348. By the 8th of May the Count of
Sebenico had written a description of the wretched condition and
state of the city, by reason of the great mortality in those parts,
through which it had been left almost without inhabitants.[91]
Istria, on August 27th, 1348, was declared in a Venetian State paper
to have suffered greatly. The people left, especially in the city
of Pola, were very few, so many having been swept away "by the late
pestilence."[92]

From Venice the epidemic spread northwards into Austria and Hungary.
Attacking on its way Padua and Verona, it passed up the valley of the
Etsch and was already at Trent on June 2nd, 1348. Thence it spread
quickly through Botzen up the Brenner Pass, in the Tyrolese Alps,
and was at Muhldorf on the Inn, in Bavaria on June 29th, 1348.[93]
Here it seems to have lasted for a considerable time. One chronicler,
writing of the subsequent year, 1349, says "that from the feast of
St. Michael, 1348, there perished in Muhldorf 1,400 of the better
class of inhabitants."[94] Another, speaking of the plague generally,
says "that it raged so terribly in Carinthia, Austria, and Bavaria
that many cities were depopulated, and in some towns which it visited
many families were destroyed so completely that not a member was
found to have survived."[95]

In November of the same year, 1348, the epidemic is found in Styria,
at Neuberg, in the valley of the Mürz. [p062] The Neuberg Chronicle,
giving an account of it, says, "Since this deadly pestilence raged
everywhere, cities became desolate which up to this had been
populous. Their inhabitants were swept off in such numbers that
such as were left, with closed gates, strenuously watched that no
one should steal the property of those departed." After speaking of
Venice, it continues, "The pest in its wanderings came to Carinthia,
and then so completely took possession of Styria, that people,
rendered desperate, walked about as if mad."

"From so many sick pestilential odours proceeded, infecting those
visiting and serving them, and very frequently it happened that when
one died in a house all, one after the other, were carried off. So
certain was this that no one could be found to stop in the houses of
the sick, and relations, as if in the natural course of events, seem
to die all together. As a consequence of this overwhelming visitation
cattle were left to wander in the fields without guardians, for no
one thought of troubling himself about the future; and wolves coming
down from the mountains to attack them, against their instincts, and
as if frightened by something unseen, quickly fled into the wilds
again. Property, too, both moveable and immoveable, which sick people
leave by will, is carefully avoided by all, as if it were sure to be
infected. The sickness . . . declined about the feast of St. Martin
(November 11th), 1348, and at Neuberg it had carried off many monks
and inhabitants."[96]

It is necessary to return once again to North Italy, from
which another wave of pestilence rolled on to Switzerland. The
contemporary—but not very accurate—notary of Novara, Peter Azarius,
speaks to the fact of the plague being at Momo, Gallarete, Varese,
and Bellinzona, on[97] the great highway over the Alps through the
St. Gothard Pass, and all in the immediate neighbourhood of his
home. [p063] What Azarius says from personal experience of this
terrible time is of interest. He had left his house at Novara for
fear of the disease, and resting for a while in the town of Tortona,
he occupied himself in philosophising upon the misfortunes which had
fallen upon Lombardy, and the strange unchristian neglect of the sick
he could hardly help noticing. "I have seen," he says, "a rich man
perish, who, even by offering an immense sum of money, could get no
one to help him. Through fear of the infection I have seen a father
not caring for his son, nor a son for his father, nor a brother
for a brother, nor a friend for his friend, nor a neighbour for
his neighbour. And what was worse than this, I have seen a family,
although one of high position, miserably perish, not being able to
get any help or assistance. Medicine being useless, the strong and
the young, men and women, were struck down in a moment, and all
the infected were so shunned that none dared even to enter their
houses."[98]

From the pass of St. Gothard the epidemic passed down the Rhine
Valley, and before the close of 1348 was in the neighbourhood
of Dissentis; whilst by May, 1349, the district round about the
monastery of Pfäffers, half way between the pass of St. Gothard
and Lake Constance, had been attacked. Shortly afterwards the
country near the celebrated Abbey of St. Gall was likewise greatly
afflicted.[99]

Meanwhile another wave of pestilence passed into Switzerland from
the side of France. Avignon had been attacked, as it has been shown,
in the early part of 1348, and thence the infection was carried up
the Rhone Valley to the Lake of Geneva. Thence one stream passed in
a north-easterly direction over Switzerland, and a second followed
the course of the river Rhone. By the 17th of March, 1349, the plague
was at Ruswyl, in the neighbourhood of Lucerne, having passed through
Berne on its way.[100] At Lucerne alone 3,000 people are said to
have died of the [p064] disease. It must have remained about the
neighbourhood of this lake for some months, for it was not until
September, 1349, that it is known to have manifested its presence
in the high and healthy valley of Engelberg. "This year (1349),"
says the chronicler of the Abbey of Engelberg, "the pestilence or
mortality was great, and, indeed, most great, in this valley, so that
more than twenty houses were left empty without an inhabitant. In
the same year from the feast of Our Lady's nativity, September 8th,
to the feast of the Epiphany 116 of our nuns died in the cloister.
One of the first to die was the Superior Catherine; about the middle
(of the epidemic) the venerable Mother Beatrix, Countess of Arberg,
formerly Superior; and on the morrow of Holy Innocents, Mechtilde of
Wolfenschiessen, the new Superior likewise passed away. And of our
own numbers (there died) two priests and five scholars."[101] Basle
was attacked, and is said to have lost some 14,000 people about the
middle of the year; Zurich about September 11th; and Constance some
time during the winter.

It is unnecessary to follow the wanderings of the great mortality in
detail further through Europe. The annals of almost every country
prove incontestably that most places were in turn visited, and more
or less depopulated, by the epidemic. By April 4th, 1349, it was
reported in Venice that the pestilence was raging in Hungary, and
by June 7th the King could declare "that by Divine mercy it had now
ceased in our kingdom." It must consequently have commenced in the
country in the early part of the year, although there is evidence
that it was still to be found in some parts in October of the same
year. Poland was attacked about the same time as Hungary. Here it is
said many of the nobility died. There seemed no help for the daily
misfortunes. The sickness rendered desolate not alone numberless
houses, but even towns and villages.[102] [p065]

It has been already pointed out that the pestilence had reached
Neuberg, in Styria, by the autumn of the year 1348. It was only the
following year, about the feast of St. John the Baptist, June 24th,
1349, that such a plague as never before was either heard or seen was
raging in Vienna.

It commenced seemingly about Easter time, and lasted till St.
Michael's, and a third part of the population was carried off by
it.[103] Each day there died 500 or 600, and one day 960.[104]
The dead were buried in trenches, each of which, according to one
chronicle, contained some 6,000 corpses. The parish of St. Stephen
lost 54 ecclesiastics during the course of the epidemic, and when it
passed some 70 families were found to be entirely extinct, whilst
the property of many more had passed into the hands of very distant
relations.

Another account declares that in the city and neighbourhood barely a
third of the population survived. "Because of the odour, and horror
inspired by the dead bodies, burials in the church cemeteries were
not allowed; but as soon as life was extinct the corpses were carried
out of the city to a common burial-place (called) 'God's acre.' There
the deep and broad pits were quickly filled to the top with the dead.
And this plague lasted from Pentecost to St. Michael's; and not alone
in Vienna, but in the surrounding country it raged with great fury.
It spared not the monks and the nuns, for in (the Cistercian Abbey
of) Heiligenkreuz 53 religious at the same time passed out of this
life."[105]

In Bohemia the winter cold apparently put a stop to the sickness at
its commencement. "The mortality commenced to be severe in Bohemia,
but the recent cold and snow stayed it." However, "in the year 1350
the plague again [p066] devastated various countries, and then in
Bohemia likewise it was to be found."[106]

The wave of pestilence which passed up the Rhine Valley and attacked
Basle passed on to Colmar, and appeared in Strasburg in July,
1349.[107] At the end of the same year, about December 18th, it had
reached Cologne. "In the first year of archbishop William von Gennep
(who succeeded to the See of that city on the above date) there
was," says the chronicle, "a great pestilence in Cologne and its
neighbourhood."[108]

Meanwhile the wave had divided lower down the valley of the Rhine,
for in the summer of 1349 the plague was raging at Frankfort. "In
that year," writes Caspar Camentz, "from the feast of St. Mary
Magdalene (June 22nd) to the feast of the Purification following
(February 2nd, 1350) the universal pestilence was at Frankfort. In
the space of 72 days more than 2,000 people died. Every second hour
they were buried without bell, priest, or candle. On one day 35 were
buried at one time."[109]

During 1349 and 1350 the pestilence was rife in the towns and country
places of Prussia. In the latter year it attacked Bremen in the far
north, and in the following year the authorities of the city took a
census of the numbers that had been carried off by it. "In the year
of our Lord 1350," the account says, "the plague had gone round the
world and had visited Bremen, and the Council determined to take the
number of the dead, and it was found that of known and named people
there were (entered on the list) in the parish of St. Mary 1,816;
in that of St. Martin, 1,415; in St. Anschar's, 1,922; and in St.
Stephen's, 1,813; moreover, numberless people had died in the fields
beyond [p067] the walls and in cemeteries, the number of whom, as
known and described, reached almost 7,000."[110]

From Flanders, where the pestilence was at Tournay in December, 1349,
as before reported, the epidemic spread into Holland. Here in the
following year its progress was marked by the same great mortality,
especially among those who lived together in monasteries and
convents. "At this time," writes the chronicler, "the plague raged
in Holland as furiously as has ever been seen. People died walking
in the streets. In the Monastery of Fleurchamps 80 died, including
monks and lay brethren. In the Abbey of Foswert, which was a double
monastery for men and women, 207 died, including monks, nuns, lay
brethren, and lay sisters."[111]

This brief review of the progress of the plague in Europe will be
sufficient to show that the mortality and consequent distress were
universal. The northern countries of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden
received the infection from England. As will be seen subsequently,
the northern parts of England were troubled with the epidemic in
the late summer and autumn of 1349, and either from a port on the
eastern coast, or from London, the plague was brought over in a ship.
Lagerbring, a Swedish historian of repute, says that a ship with a
cargo of woollen cloth sailed out of the port of London early in the
summer of 1349.[112] The plague had been very great in the English
capital, and all the crew died whilst the ship was at sea. Driven
about by the winds and currents the fatal bark was cast on the shore
at Bergen, in Norway. The epidemic spread quickly over the entire
country. The Archbishop of Drontheim and all his Chapter, with one
single exception, died, and the survivor was nominated Archbishop.
Most of his suffragans were also carried [p068] off.[113] Several
families who had fled from Bergen to avoid the infection died in the
mountains to which they had retired.

Another Swedish historian states that in the country of West-Gotland
alone 466 priests were swept away by the plague. In that district
then there were about 479 churches, many of which were served by
more than one priest, so that the number given may not be altogether
improbable.[114] It is stated that in Norway there long existed what
were called _Find-dale_—wildernesses—in which were unmistakable
traces of cultivation, and after the plague there is evidence of a
state of exhaustion and a dearth of inhabitants, which lasted for
several generations, so that forests grew where there had once been
churches and villages.

Some interesting particulars may be gathered about the town of Wisby,
on the Isle of Gotland. The annals of the Franciscan convent note
that the plague raged in 1350. In the necrology of the same house
are entered the names of a great number of friars and many novices
who died in this fatal year, and the comparison of one portion of
the necrology with another, in which the names are collected into
groups, shows that the worst time at Wisby was in July, August,
and September, 1350.[115] In all twenty-four friars, a very large
proportion of the convent, appear to have been carried off by the
epidemic. In [p069] the Cathedral of Wisby five sepulchral slabs are
still preserved with the date 1350, whilst of such memorials as have
escaped destruction not more than a single one remains for any other
year.

The King of Sweden, Magnus II., in 1350 addressed letters patent
to his people, wherein he says that "God for the sins of man has
struck the world with this great punishment of sudden death. By it
most of the people in the land to the west of our country (_i.e._,
Norway) are dead. It is now ravaging in Norway and Holland, and is
approaching our kingdom of Sweden." The king therefore summons them
to abstain on every Friday from all food but bread and water, or "at
most to take only bread and ale," to walk with bare feet to their
parish churches, and to go in procession round about the cemeteries
attached to them, carrying with them the holy relics.

In the capital of Sweden, when the plague burst upon the country, it
is recorded that "the streets were strewn with corpses," and among
the victims are named Hacon and Knut, two brothers of the king.

Denmark and Sleswig Holstein suffered from the pestilence at the same
time as Norway and Sweden. In one chronicle it is called "a most
grievous plague of buboes;" in another it is recorded that in the
year 1350 "a great plague and sudden death raged both in the case of
men and in that of cattle."[116] The accounts of the Bishopric of
Roskild, on the Isle of Zealand, about the year 1370, or twenty years
after this plague had passed, show the state of universal desolation
to which the country was reduced. Lands are described as lying idle
and uncultivated, villages and houses desolate and uninhabited.
Property that formerly used to bring in four marks, or 48 "pund," now
produced only 18 "pund." The same story is repeated on almost every
page throughout these long accounts.[117]

A few words only need now be said of the desolation [p070] which
everywhere throughout Europe was naturally the consequence of the
great pestilence. Of North Italy John of Parma writes that "at the
time (1348) labourers could not be got, and the harvest remained
on the fields, since there was none to gather it in."[118] Twenty
years after the pestilence, in 1372, it is said of Mayence that
"it is indubitable and notorious that because of the terrible
character of the pestilence and mortality which suddenly swept away
labourers, copyholders (_parciarios_) and farmers, even the most
robust, labourers are to-day few and rare, for which reason many
fields remain uncultivated and deserted."[119] Again, in 1359, Henry,
Bishop of Constance, impropriated to the monastery of St. Gall, in
Switzerland, the Church of Marbach and others, to enable the abbey
"to keep up its hospitality, bestow alms, and fulfil its other
duties," and he assigns as a reason why it cannot now do this "that
by the epidemic or mortality of people, which by permission of God
has existed in these parts, the number of farmers and other retainers
of both sexes of this abbey, belonging by law of service to the said
monastery, which has passed from this life to the Lord (has been so
great) that many of the possessions of this monastery have remained,
on account of the said death, uncultivated, and no proper return
comes from them."[120]


FOOTNOTES:

[85] Phillippe, _Histoire de la Peste Noire_, p. 54.

[86] _Ibid._, pp. 54-56.

[87] This was a place of pilgrimage on the Amadour, not far from
Toulouse.

[88] _Chronicon majus Ægidii Li Muisis_, ii, 280.

[89] Lechner, _Das grosse Sterben in Deutschland_, p. 21.

[90] Farlati, _Illyricum Sacrum_, iii, p. 324.

[91] Lechner, _ut sup._, p. 22.

[92] _Ibid._

[93] _Ibid._, p. 23.

[94] _Annales Matscenses_ in _Mon. Germ._, ix, 829.

[95] _Annales Mellicenses_, _Ibid._, p. 313.

[96] _Continuatio Novimontensis_, _Ibid._, p. 675.

[97] _Chronicon_, in Muratori, xvi, 361. He places the event under
the year 1347.

[98] _Ibid._, 298.

[99] Lechner, _ut sup._, p. 27.

[100] _Ibid._

[101] _Annales Engelbergenses_, in _Mon. Germ._, xvii, 281.

[102] Dlugoss, _Historia Polonica_, in Philippe, _ut sup._, p. 94.

[103] _Kalendarium Zwetlense_, in _Mon. Germ._, ix, 692.

[104] _Annales Matscenses_, _Ibid._, 829.

[105] _Continuatio Novimontensis_, _Ibid._, 675.

[106] _Chronicon Pragense_, ed. Loserth (in _Fontes rerum
Austriacarum_, _Scriptores_, t. viii) p. 603.

[107] Lechner, _ut sup._, p. 35.

[108] _Ibid._, p. 38.

[109] Boehmer, _Fontes rerum Germ._, iv, 434.

[110] Hoeniger (R.), _Der schwarze Tod in Deutschland_ (Berlin,
1882), p. 26.

[111] Philippe, _ut sup._, p. 124.

[112] _Historia_, iii, 406.

[113] Finn Jonsson, _Hist. eccl. Islandiæ_, ii, p. 198, says that
most of the Bishops died, and that Ormus, Bishop of Holar, in
Iceland, who happened then to be in Norway, _solus fere evasit_. It
appears that the archbishopric of Nidaros, or Drontheim, at that time
comprised seven sees. Changes appear in six of these at this time,
including Drontheim and Bergen; and of Solomon, Bishop of Oslo, it
is said that "he was the only Bishop who survived the plague" (Gams,
_Series Episcoporum_, 336). The same account is given in the monastic
chronicles of Iceland (_Ftateyjarbok_, iii, p. 562).

[114] Henric Jacob Sirers, _Historisk Beskrifning om then Pesten_, p.
23.

[115] Langebeck, _Scriptores rerum Danicarum_, vi, 564. I am indebted
for much assistance in all that regards the plague in the north of
Europe to Dr. Lindstrom, of the Riksmusei, Stockholm. He kindly
examined for me the original MS. of the Franciscan Necrology at Wisby.

[116] Langebeck, _ut sup._, i, 307, 395.

[117] _Ibid._, vii, p. 2, _et seqq._

[118] Pezzana, _Storia di Parma_, i, 52.

[119] Henricus de Hervordia, _Chronicon_ ed. Potthast, 274.

[120] Lechner, _ut sup._, p. 73.

[p071]




CHAPTER V.

THE PLAGUE REACHES ENGLAND.


The plague first attacked England in the autumn of 1348. It has
already been pointed out that Northern France was suffering under the
scourge in the summer of that year, and that in August the pestilence
had visited Normandy and was found at Calais, then in possession of
the English. Probably, also, at this time, Jersey and Guernsey, with
which England was in constant communication, were decimated by the
disease. So greatly did these islands suffer that the King's taxes,
usually raised upon the fishing industries, could not be levied. "By
reason," writes the English King to John Mautravers, the Governor,
"of the mortality among the people and fishing folk of these islands,
which here as elsewhere has been so great, our rent for the fishing,
which has been yearly paid us, cannot be now obtained without the
impoverishing and excessive oppression of those fishermen still
left."[121]

Rumours of the coming scourge reached England in the early summer. On
August 17th, 1348, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, Ralph of Shrewsbury,
sent letters through his diocese ordering "processions and stations
every Friday, in each collegiate, regular, and parish church, to beg
God to protect the people from the pestilence which had come from the
East into the neighbouring kingdom," and granting an indulgence of
forty days to all who, being in a state of grace, should give alms,
fast or pray, in order, if possible, to avert God's anger.[122]

The "neighbouring kingdom" spoken of by the Bishop [p072] in his
letter may be taken almost certainly to refer to France. From
Calais it is probable that the pestilence was brought into England
in certain ships conveying some who were anxious to escape from
it. Most of the contemporary accounts agree in naming the coast of
Dorsetshire as the part first infected. Thus Galfrid le Baker, a
contemporary, says "it came first to a seaport in Dorsetshire, and
then into the country, which it almost deprived of inhabitants, and
from thence it passed into Devon and Somerset to Bristol."[123] Two
or three of the chronicles, also, more particular than the rest, name
Melcombe Regis as the memorable spot where the epidemic first showed
itself in England. "In the year of our Lord 1348, about the feast
of the Translation of St. Thomas (July 7th)," writes the author of
the chronicle known as the _Eulogium Historiarum_, who was a monk
of Malmesbury at this time, "the cruel pestilence, terrible to all
future ages, came from parts over the sea to the south coast of
England, into a port called Melcombe, in Dorsetshire. This (plague)
sweeping over the southern districts, destroyed numberless people
in Dorset, Devon, and Somerset."[124] So, too, a continuation of
Trivet's chronicle, taken down to the death of Edward III. by a
canon of Bridlington, who was thus probably a contemporary of the
event, says that "the great plague came into England to the southern
districts, beginning by some (ships) putting in from the sea into a
town called Melcombe."[125]

Melcombe Regis, or Weymouth, was at that time a port of considerable
importance. In 1347-8, for example, it furnished Edward III., for his
siege of Calais, with 20 ships and 264 mariners; whilst Bristol sent
only 22 ships and 608 sailors, and even London but 25 boats and 662
men.[126] [p073] This fact is of interest, not merely as showing the
importance of Melcombe Regis as a port on the southern coast, but
as evidence actually connecting the place at this very period with
Calais, and, doubtless, with other coast towns of France. It is not
at all improbable that by the return of some of the Melcombe boats
from Calais, the epidemic may have been conveyed into the town. No
evidence is known to exist as to the mortality in the port itself;
but an item of information as to the effect of the disease in the
neighbourhood is afforded at a subsequent period. Three years after
the plague had passed the King, by his letters patent, forbade any
of the inhabitants of the island of Portland to leave their homes
there, or, indeed, to sell any of their crops out of the district,
"because," he says, "as we have learnt, the island of Portland, in
the county of Dorset, has been so depopulated in the time of the
late pestilence that the inhabitants remaining are not sufficiently
numerous to protect it against our foreign enemies."[127]

The actual date when the pestilence first showed itself in
Dorsetshire has been considered somewhat doubtful. The earliest day
suggested is that assigned by the monk of Malmesbury in his _Eulogium
Historiarum_, who names July 7th (1348) as the time when it commenced
at Melcombe Regis. The latest date is that given by Knighton, the
sub-contemporary canon of Leicester, who mentions generally that it
began in the autumn of the year 1348. One chronicle gives July 25th,
and two others August 1st, whilst another merely names August as the
month. Under these circumstances, and in view of the fact that its
arrival in England was apparently unknown to the Bishop of Bath and
Wells, who was then in his diocese, in the middle of August, it seems
more than likely that the terrible scourge did not make itself felt
in the West of England until after the middle of that month and not
later than its end. [p074]

The early commencement of the disease is borne out by a document
in the archives of the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury. Archbishop
Strafford died on St. Bartholomew's Eve, August 23rd, 1348, and
before the end of September the Prior of Canterbury, acting with
archiepiscopal power during the vacancy, addressed a mandate to
the Bishop of London, as the Dean of the College of Bishops, to
issue directions to the suffragans of Canterbury to hold public
processions in their respective dioceses to pray God's aid against
"the mortality" which was already assuming alarming proportions.[128]

The summer and autumn of 1348 were abnormally wet in England, and
the chronicles record that from St. John the Baptist's Day (June
24th) to Christmas it rained either by night or by day with hardly an
exception. In such a season, naturally unhealthy, the sickness, of
its own nature most deadly, found every condition suitable for its
rapid development.

Starting from Melcombe Regis, the wave of contagion spread itself
very quickly over Dorset, Devon, and Somerset, with the other
counties comprised in the dioceses of Salisbury, Exeter, and Wells.
"It passed," writes Robert of Avesbury, the contemporary Registrar
of the Court of Canterbury, "most rapidly from place to place,
swiftly killing ere mid-day many who in the morning had been well,
and without respect of persons (some few rich people excepted), not
permitting those destined to die to live more than three, or at most
four, days. On the same day twenty, forty, sixty, and very often more
corpses were committed to the same grave."[129] In fact, over the
West of England during the late autumn of 1348 and the first months
of the following year the words of the old play must have had only
too true an application—

 "One news straight came huddling on another
   Of death, and death, and death." [p075]

In dealing with a case of this kind a first object is to control
as far as possible, by means of definite statistics, the general
and vague statements of chroniclers and other contemporary writers;
whilst in the absence of such statistics lies one of the great
difficulties in dealing with the history of the Middle Ages. Owing
partly to the troublesome and intricate nature of the subject, as
well as to the poverty of the material and the inherent dryness of
such matters, modern writers have made little advance to a more
correct knowledge of the population of European countries in those
ages. Much, however, might be done. As usual, the ecclesiastical
documents form the surest basis for any calculation, and the
episcopal registers enable us to arrive at actual numbers.
Accordingly, in the present inquiry, these registers are of the
highest importance, and it is necessary constantly to recur to them,
as they furnish the only means of arriving at any adequate knowledge
of the proportion of the population swept away by the plague.
Possibly the mortality may have been greater among ecclesiastics than
among lay persons; but only from the number of the clergy carried
off by the epidemic can an estimate be formed as to the number of
lay people who died. Accordingly, in the course of this work, the
mortality of the clergy is systematically investigated.

To understand the nature and value of the evidence thus afforded
as to the extent of the mortality, a few words of explanation are
necessary. In each diocese there was kept by the Bishop's Registrar a
list of all the institutions made to vacant benefices by the Bishop.
As a rule, not only was the name of the place and of the out-going
and the incoming incumbent, together with the date expressed, but
the reason of the vacancy was stated, whether arising from death,
exchange, or resignation. These lists, then, for the fatal period, or
the autumn of 1348 and the year 1349, afford some means of gauging
the extent of the mortality among the clergy. It must, however, be
borne in mind that these registers record only the institutions of
the actual [p076] incumbents, and take no account of the larger
body of curates and chaplains, to say nothing of the monks, canons,
and friars of a diocese. It has been calculated by a recent writer
that non-beneficed clergy more than equal in numbers the holders of
benefices, and that the total number of institutions of a diocese may
fairly be doubled in estimating the deaths of the clergy during this
epidemic.[130] These Books of Institutions, moreover, by furnishing
the dates of the appointments made to various livings, afford a means
of determining, at least approximately, the time when the plague was
rife in a district, and even, making allowances for any delay in
filling up the benefice, in any given place.

Besides the special register of each diocese a series of official
state documents, called the _Patent Rolls_, contains much evidence of
the destructive powers of the disease. On these rolls, amongst every
variety of public document, are entered royal grants, licenses, and
presentations made by the Sovereign to such vacant ecclesiastical
livings as were at the time in the royal gift. These were ordinarily—

(1) Benefices of which the King was by right the patron.

(2) Those to which he presented, as guardian of the sons of tenants
_in capite_ during their minority, and

(3) Livings to which bishops and abbots of sees and monasteries, then
vacant, ordinarily presented. At this period, 1348-9, moreover, the
royal presentations were largely augmented by the patronage attached
to the alien religious houses existing in England, the possession of
which, "by reason of his war with France," as the official phrase
runs, "the King had seized into his own hands."

The evidence of the mortality among the beneficed clergy during the
great pestilence, as witnessed by the entries on the patent rolls,
may be here briefly summarised. In 1348, in the period from January
to May, the King presented to [p077] 42 livings, and to 36 during
the following four months; so that in the eight months, immediately
before the arrival of the plague in England, the average number of
presentations monthly was below ten, the previous _yearly_ average
being hardly more than a hundred. The roll, upon which are entered
the grants and presentations from September to the close of the
year, affords conclusive proof that in the last four months of the
year 1348 death had been busy among those holding royal preferments.
Eighty-one more livings had to be filled up by the Sovereign during
that period.

The patents for 1349, in the same way, occupy three parts, or rolls.
On the first part are enrolled the presentations from January 25th
to the end of May. This large roll is a curiosity, since a very
great part of the parchment record is devoted to the entry of
Royal presentations to the vacant livings, no fewer than 249 being
recorded, as against 42 during the same period of the previous year.
The second part registers the livings filled by King Edward from
June to the middle of September, 1349, when the number reaches the
extraordinary figure of 440, as against 36 in the corresponding
period of 1348.

The third period, ending on January 24th, 1350, shows a decline in
the number, although it still stands at the considerable total of
205. Altogether, therefore, from January 25th, 1349, to the same date
in 1350, the King alone presented to 894 livings, which had become
vacant. Comparing the figures thus obtained with the normal period
of 1348 it may be said roughly that out of the 1,053 presentations,
made by King Edward in the two years, at least 800 must have been due
to the mortality caused by the great plague. This will be seen to
be sufficiently terrible when it is remembered that, even allowing
for the large number of presentations then in the hands of the King,
they would form but a very small portion of the total number of
institutions to vacant livings at this period.

The whole question of statistics in their details, as also [p078]
any special indications of the effects which followed upon the
ravages of the plague, will be dealt with in subsequent chapters in
order to interfere as little as possible with the consecutive story
of the visitation itself. Among the presentations made by the King,
in the autumn of this year, frequent mention is made of vacancies in
the diocese of Sarum, in which the county of Dorset is situated. From
October 8th, 1348, to January 10th, 1349—that is, in the space of
three months—the Crown presented to no fewer than 30 livings in the
diocese. Most of these were in the county of Dorset, and Abbotsbury
Abbey, apparently the first monastery attacked, and Bincombe rectory,
to which Edward III. presented on October 8th, 1348, were both close
to Melcombe Regis, where the plague commenced its ravages.

Judged merely by the few royal presentations it is curious to observe
how closely the epidemic in this country clung to the rivers and
water-courses. The neighbourhood of Blandford, for instance, must
have suffered severely enough during the November and December
of 1348, the two Winterbournes and Spettisbury, together with
Blandford—all four close on the river Stour—losing their incumbents.
To Spettisbury, indeed, the King presented thrice in a very short
space of time. Even before John le Spencer, of Grimsby, to whom the
living was granted on December 7th, could have been installed in his
cure—in fact, probably even before the grant was made—he was dead,
for on December 10th, only three days later, another letter patent
is issued, upon the death of Spencer, to Adam de Carleton. Adam in
his turn did not hold the benefice long, and on January 4th, 1349,
Robert de Hoveden was appointed in his place. Nor are these the only
instances, even among the few presentations recorded on the patent
rolls, of Dorset incumbents following one another in rapid succession
during the last months of 1348.

Looking at the number of institutions in each month of this period,
and making due allowance for the fact that the [p079] vacancy had
probably occurred some little time before it was filled up, it is
evident that the epidemic was prevalent in the county of Dorset from
October, 1348, to February, 1349, and the mortality was highest in
December and January.[131] The existence of the epidemic begins to
be manifest in the institutions for October, 1348. Previously only
twelve institutions are recorded during that year. West Chickerell,
a place close to Weymouth, received a new incumbent on October 14th,
whilst to Bincombe, close by, which was then vacant, as is proved by
the King's presentation on the 8th of the month, no new incumbent
was inducted till November 4th. Warmwell and Combe Kaynes, a little
to the eastward, received new parish priests on October the 9th and
19th, and Dorchester, the capital, was attacked apparently about the
same time.

Following the indications afforded by the Bishop's registers the
ravages of the pestilence are apparent on the coast early in
November, when many vacancies begin to be noted in the coast towns.
Bridport, East Lulworth, Tynham, Langton, and Wareham had all been
visited by this time, whilst before the end of the month the epidemic
had crossed the county and appeared at Shaftesbury. On December 3rd
two vicarages in the south, quite close together, Abbotsbury and
Portesham, received new incumbents.

At Shaftesbury appointments were made to St. Laurence's on the 29th
of November, to St. Martin's on the 10th of December, to St. John's
on the 6th of January, 1349, and to [p080] St. Laurence's again on
the 12th of May. At Wareham, the small alien priory became vacant
before November 4th, for on that day the King appointed a successor
to Michael de Molis, lately dead,[132] and appointments were made
to St. Martin's, Wareham, on the 8th of December, to St. Peter's
on the 22nd of December, to St. John's on the 29th of May, and to
St. Michael's on the 17th of June. Three changes were registered as
having taken place at Winterbourne St. Nicholas, between December
27th and May 3rd. As far as can be judged by the dates of these
institutions it would appear as if a fresh outbreak of peculiar
violence occurred towards the end of April.

The Bridport Corporation records show that four bailiffs held
office in 1349, in place of the usual two, on account of the
pestilence.[133] In common with most places in the land, Poole, which
was then of sufficient importance to be called upon to furnish four
ships and 94 men for the siege of Calais, suffered greatly from the
pestilence, and received a considerable check to its prosperity. "At
Poole," writes Hutchins, "a spot on the projecting slip of land,
known as the _Baiter_, is still pointed out as the burial-place of
its victims."[134] And the same writer adds that the country did not
entirely recover for the next 150 years; since, in the reign of Henry
VIII., "Poole and other towns in Dorsetshire" were included in that
numerous list of places whose desolated buildings were ordered to be
restored.

Before the close of the year 1348 the pestilence had spread itself
far and wide in the western counties of England. The diocese of Bath
and Wells, and that of Exeter, the former conterminous with the
county of Somerset, and the latter comprising those of Devon and
Cornwall, were infected in the late autumn of that year, and all over
the west, as the old chronicle relates, the sickness "most pitifully
destroyed people innumerable." [p081]

Indeed, so terrible had been the effect of the scourge among the
clergy of Somerset that, as early as January 17th, 1349, the Bishop
of Bath and Wells felt himself constrained to address a letter of
advice to his flock. The document is of such interest, both as
evidence of the straits to which at that early date the diocese had
been reduced by the excessive mortality, and for the advice that it
contains, that it is here quoted at considerable length, since it
proves the depth of degradation to which the whole religious life was
reduced by the terror inspired by the disease. Every bond was loosed,
and every ordinary ecclesiastical regulation and provision set aside,
because none could now be enforced, or, indeed, observed. "The
contagious nature of the present pestilence, which is ever spreading
itself far and wide," writes the Bishop, "has left many parish
churches and other cures, and consequently the people of our diocese,
destitute of curates[135] and priests. And inasmuch as priests cannot
be found who are willing out of zeal, devotion, or for a stipend to
undertake the care of the foresaid places, and to visit the sick
and administer to them the Sacraments of the Church (perchance for
dread of the infection and contagion), many, as we understand, are
dying without the Sacrament of Penance. These, too, are ignorant
of what ought to be done in such necessity, and believe that no
confession of their sins, even in a case of such need, is useful or
meritorious, unless made to a priest having the keys of the Church.
Therefore, desiring, as we are bound to do, the salvation of souls,
and ever watching to bring back the wandering from the crooked paths
of error, we, on the obedience you have sworn to us, urgently enjoin
upon you and command you—rectors, vicars, and parish priests—in all
your churches, and you deans, in such places of your deaneries as
are destitute of the consolation of priests, that you at once and
publicly instruct and induce, yourselves or by some other, all who
are sick of the present [p082] malady, or who shall happen to be
taken ill, that _in articulo mortis_, if they are not able to obtain
any priest, they should make confession of their sins (according to
the teaching of the apostle) even to a layman, and, if a man is not
at hand, then to a woman. We exhort you, by the present letters, in
the bowels of Jesus Christ, to do this, and to proclaim publicly
in the aforesaid places that such confession made to a layman in
the presumed case can be most salutary and profitable to them for
the remission of their sins, according to the teaching and the
sacred canons of the Church. And for fear any, imagining that these
lay confessors may make known confessions so made to them, shall
hesitate thus to confess in case of necessity, we make known to all
in general, and to those in particular who have already heard these
confessions, or who may in future hear them, that they are bound by
the precepts of the Church to conceal and keep them secret; and that,
by a decree of the sacred canons, they are forbidden to betray such
confession by word, sign, and by any other means whatever, unless
those confessing so desire. And (further) should they do otherwise,
let such betrayers know that they sin most gravely, and incur the
indignation of Almighty God and of the whole Church." And further to
stir up the zeal of both clergy and laity to this work the Bishop
grants ample indulgences to such as follow the advice here given them.

"And since late repentance," he says "(when, for example, sickness
compels and the fear of punishment terrifies) often deceives many,
we grant to all our subjects, who in the time of the pestilence
shall come to confession to priests having the keys of the Church
and power to bind and to loose, before they are taken sick, and who
do not delay till the day of necessity, forty days of indulgence.
To every priest also who shall induce people to do this, and hear
the confessions of those thus brought to confess whilst in health,
we grant the same by the mercy of God Almighty, and trusting to the
merits and prayers of [p083] his glorious Mother, of the Blessed
Peter, Paul, and Andrew the Apostles, our patrons, and of all the
Saints."

"You shall further declare," he adds, "to all thus confessing to lay
people in case of necessity, that if they recover they are bound to
confess the same sins again to their own parish priest. The Sacrament
of the Eucharist, when no priest can be obtained, may be administered
by a deacon. If, however, there be no priest to administer the
Sacrament of Extreme Unction, faith must, as in other matters,
suffice for the Sacrament."[136]

These large derogations from the usual ecclesiastical practice,
though consonant alike with Christian charity and the teaching of
the Church, are resorted to only in cases of the direst need, and
the circular letter of the Bishop of Bath and Wells witnesses to the
extreme gravity of the situation throughout the diocese, as early as
the month of January, 1349. Already, as is certain from the Bishop's
words, the dearth of clergy had made itself felt, and people were
dying in the county of Somerset without the possibility of obtaining
spiritual aid in their last hours, and no priests could be found
to take the places of those who had already fallen victims to the
disease. The list of institutions given in the register of Bishop
Ralph of Shrewsbury shows that the mortality in that county was
considerable as early as the November of the previous year, 1348.

Taking the institutions of the diocese as a guide to the time when
the plague was most violent, and bearing in mind that the death
would have occurred some little time before the institution, and
that according to the Bishop's letter some delay had been inevitable
in the filling up of benefices, the months when the pestilence
was at its height in the county of Somerset would appear to be
December, 1348, and January and February, 1349, although the number
of institutions each month remains high until June. The [p084]
mortality was apparently highest about Christmastide, 1348.[137]

The Bishop of Bath and Wells remained at his manor of Wiveliscombe
till the worst was past in May of 1349. Thither came the long
procession of priests to receive their letters of institution to
vacant benefices. Day after day for nearly six months the work went
on with hardly any cessation. Singly, or in twos and threes, often
four and five, once, at least, ten together, the clergy came to be
instituted to cures which the disease had left without a priest.

How the epidemic entered into the county, and the course it pursued,
it would be now impossible, even if it were profitable, to discover.
In December it would seem to have gained a foothold in most parts
of the county. It was at Evercreech about November 19th, and
about a fortnight later at Castlecary and Almsford, in the same
neighbourhood. The fact that Bridgwater, Clevedon, Weston-super-mare,
Portishead, and Bristol were amongst the earliest places in the
county to be attacked would almost make it appear that the contagion
was carried to these coast towns by a boat passing up the Bristol
Channel. This supposition, moreover, is somewhat confirmed, as will
be seen subsequently, by the fact that the towns of North Devon were
attacked by the disease almost simultaneously with those on the south
coast, and very much about the same time as those of North Somerset.

Bath suffered under the scourge in the early part of January, 1349.
On the 9th and 10th of that month several [p085] institutions to
livings, either in the city or the neighbourhood, being recorded. In
the same month it had spread to the abbey of Keynsham, on the road
between Bath and Bristol, and its path can almost be traced along
the line of communication between Bath and Wells. Thus the villages
of Freshford, Twerton, Hardington, Holcombe, Cloford, Kilmersdon,
Babington, Compton, and Doulting, as well as several benefices in
Wells itself, all fell vacant at this time.

It may be said with considerable certainty that fully half the number
of beneficed clergy fell victims to the disease in this diocese. Many
livings were rendered vacant two and three times during its course;
whilst a not inconsiderable number had four changes of incumbents
within these few months. Bathampton, for example, had four parsons
appointed in this period. At Hardington, not far from Frome, from
January, 1349, to the middle of March, there were certainly three and
perhaps four changes due to the disease; and at Yeovil, from the 15th
December, 1348, to the 4th February, 1349, three priests held the
living, one after the other.

Little or no information is forthcoming as to the religious houses
of the county at this time. Both Athelney and Muchelney lost their
abbots, and probably also many of their members. The fact that the
great abbey of Glastonbury, which previously contained within its
walls a community of some 80 monks, is found in A.D. 1377 to have
44, seems to indicate that it must have suffered very severe losses
through the epidemic.

At Bath, in 1344, only five years before the outbreak of the disease,
the community at the Priory consisted of thirty professed monks
under Prior John de Ford.[138] A list on the roll of the Somerset
clergy, on whom a clerical subsidy was levied at the close of Edward
the Third's reign, in 1377, shows that the number had been reduced
to sixteen,[139] [p086] and at this number it apparently remained
to the time of the final dissolution of the house in the sixteenth
century.[140]

It is not difficult to understand that the plague must have raged
with great virulence in the larger cities, where in those days the
most elementary notions of sanitation were almost unknown. In the
west, Bristol, of course, suffered severely. "There," says the
sub-contemporary writer, Knighton, "died, suddenly overwhelmed by
death, almost the whole strength of the town, for few were sick more
than three days, or two days, or even half a day." Nor need this be
a subject of wonder when, according to the description of a modern
writer, speaking of the city at this very period, the streets were
very narrow; in the busier parts the ground was honeycombed with
cellars for storing wine, salt, and other merchandise, whilst refuse
streamed down the centre ditch. So small was the distance between the
houses that no vehicle was allowed to be used in the streets, and all
goods were carried on pack-horses or porters, a custom which even in
the 17th century excited the wonder of Samuel Pepys.[141]

"Here in Bristol," says the local historian Seyer, quoting an old
calendar of the town, "in 1348 the plague raged to such a degree that
the living were scarce able to bury the dead. The Gloucestershire men
would not suffer the Bristol men to have access to them. At last it
reached Gloucester, Oxford, and London; scarce the tenth person was
left alive, male or female. At this period the grass grew several
inches high in High Street and Broad Street; it raged at first
chiefly in the centre of the city. This pestilence came from abroad,
and the people near the sea-coast in Dorsetshire and Devonshire were
first affected."[142] By the wholesale destruction of the population
of this western port the same authority accounts for the reduction of
the King's taxation of the city from £245 to £158. [p087]

Lastly, in Bristol, as indeed without doubt in most places, the
cemeteries did not long suffice for the multitude of the dead.
Of this there is an example upon the Patent Rolls. The parson of
Holy Cross de la Temple soon found the necessity of enlarging his
graveyard. For this purpose he obtained half-an-acre adjoining the
old cemetery, and so great and pressing was the need of this fresh
accommodation that it was done without the required royal license,
for which subsequently a pardon had to be sued from the King.[143]

The diocese of Exeter, comprising the two counties of Devon and
Cornwall, was stricken by the disease apparently about the same time
as the county of Somerset.[144] For eight years before 1348 the
average number of livings annually rendered vacant in the diocese
was thirty-six,[145] whilst in the single month of January 1349, the
Bishop instituted to some thirty livings, which shows that death had
already been busy among the clergy.

The number of institutions in each month of the year points to
the conclusion that the disease lingered somewhat longer in these
counties than elsewhere. It is not till the close of September that
any great decrease in the number of vacancies is seen, and although
probably beginning in December, the height of the plague was not
reached till March, April, and May.[146] [p088]

Prebendary Hingeston-Randolph thus describes the state of the Exeter
episcopal registers at this period:—"There is very little direct
information about the Black Death in Bishop Grandisson's register;
but there is a great deal of indirect information. The _Registrum
Commune_, which is wonderfully full before and after the fatal year,
records scarcely anything during the year itself. The ordinary work
of the diocese seems to have been all suspended, with a single
exception. The register of institutions—a separate volume—is a record
of incessant and most distressing work. Its very outward aspect for
this period tells a tale of woe. The entries are made hurriedly and
roughly, in striking contrast with the neatness and regularity of
the rest of the Register. They are no longer grouped, as before,
in years, but in months, and the changes in each month exceed the
changes of a whole ordinary year, when there was no pestilence.
The scribe leaves off the customary 'vacant _per mortem_,' as if
he dreaded to write the fatal word. The clergy must have fallen by
wholesale; evidently they were faithful, and, for their flocks' sake,
faced the foe without flinching. And, as each of them fell, another
was ready at his Bishop's call fearlessly to fill the vacant place.
Some incumbencies lasted but a few weeks. And, when all was over,
the survivors were, comparatively, so few that there was no small
difficulty in filling many a subsequent vacant benefice; this result
of the sickness is to be traced for some time after the mortality had
ceased.

"The Bishop never left his diocese, and the continuous presence
of so strong, so earnest, and devoted a prelate must have been an
unspeakable consolation and help to his grievously afflicted flock."

An examination of the institutions of the diocese, in relation to the
time when the plague visited the various parts of it, appears to show
that it commenced almost simultaneously in both north and south. In
North Devon it is found at both Northam and Alverdiscott on the 7th
of [p089] November, at Fremington in the same district on the 8th,
and at Barnstaple on December the 23rd. It is found in November at
villages on the Exe, and had possibly also reached Exeter before the
close of the month. In the South, the fact of the close proximity of
the part first infected to Dorsetshire explains the course of the
epidemic; but the early outbreak in the coast villages at the mouth
of the estuary leading to Barnstaple points to the conclusion that
the infection was brought by a ship passing up the Bristol Channel,
which subsequently infected other towns further up on the Somerset
shore of the passage.

It is of interest also to note how greatly the coast towns generally
appear to have suffered, as the contagion was very probably carried
from one place to another by the fishing boats. Up some of the
estuaries it would seem as if the passage of the disease could be
traced by the dates of the institutions. Thus, to take one example,
in March, 1349, there is an institution to a living at the mouth of
the Fowey in Cornwall; a week later there is another at St. Winnow's
Vicarage higher up, and on March 22nd the sickness had reached
Bodmin, at no great distance from the river, and a place with which,
in all probability, the passage up the estuary of the Fowey would be
an ordinary and usual means of communication.

As to the result of the sickness in the religious houses of the
diocese some few details are known. At St. Nicholas', Exeter, the
Prior died in March, 1349; his successor, John de Wye, was admitted
on the 26th of that month, but died almost immediately. The next
Prior was not installed until June 7th, and the house was found to be
in a deplorable state.[147] So also at Pilton Priory two superiors
died within a few weeks one of the other. At the alien priory of
Minster, Cornwall, William de Huma, the Prior, was carried off by the
sickness on 26th of April, 1349, and the house was so impoverished by
the death of tenants [p090] and labourers that it could not support
both its members, and the chaplain they were bound to find to do the
parish work, as neither the prior nor his brethren spoke English, "or
rather Cornish."[148]

At the Cistercian abbey of Newenham the register records that "in the
time of this mortality or pestilence there died in this house twenty
monks and three lay-brothers, whose names are entered in other books.
And Walter, the abbot, and two monks were left alive there after the
sickness."[149]

At the Augustinian abbey of Hartland, Roger de Raleghe, the abbot,
died, and the proclamation of the election of his successor is dated
18th March, 1349. At Benedictine Tavistock also the abbot died, and
his successor, Richard de Esse, was taken ill after his confirmation,
and, "detained by so grave a sickness," could not go to the King,
who, on October 17th, commissioned Bishop Grandisson to receive his
fealty.[150]

At Bodmin, according to a note taken by William of Worcester from a
register in the Church of the Friars Minor there, it was estimated
that 1,500 persons died of this sickness.[151] Amongst these was
the Vicar, whose successor was appointed on April 8th, 1349. The
Augustinian priory in the town was almost depopulated. The prior,
John de Kilkhampton, and all his brethren but two were carried off by
the sickness. The two survivors, on March 17th, wrote to the Bishop
saying that they "were left like orphans," and begging that he would
provide a superior [p091] for their house at once. The next day,
March the 18th, 1349, an inquisition was held under a writ of the
Prince of Wales. The jury found that the priory was free, and that
the last prior had died "on Friday, next after the feast of St. Peter
in Cathedra then last past" (February 27th).[152]

On March 19th Bishop Grandisson wrote to the prior of Launceston
setting forth the facts, and appointing a member of that house to the
office. Three days later the mandate for his induction was issued,
in the hopes that "by his careful watchfulness the said priory may
recover from the calamity."[153]

The plight to which the Augustinians of Bodmin were reduced by the
disease is, after all, typical of that of many religious houses
throughout the country. Meantime, however, the epidemic had not
confined its ravages to the western counties, but continued to spread
the same desolation in every direction, as the wave of pestilence
rolled onward over the length and breadth of the land.


FOOTNOTES:

[121] Originalia Roll, 24 Ed. III., m. 2.

[122] B. Mus., Harl. MS. 6965, f. 132.

[123] _Chronicon Galfridi le Baker_, ed. E. M. Thompson, p. 98.

[124] _Eulogium Historiarum_ (ed. Rolls series), iii, p. 213. It
seems not at all improbable that this account was written whilst the
plague was still confined to the west of England.

[125] Harl. MS. 688, f. 361.

[126] Hutchins, _History of Dorset_ (3rd ed.), ii, p. 422.

[127] Rot. Pat., 26 Ed. III., pars 3, m. 5.

[128] _Historical Manuscripts Commission, Eighth Report_, App., p.
338.

[129] _De Gestis Edwardi III._ (ed. Rolls series), p. 406.

[130] As will be seen subsequently, this estimate of Dr. Jessopp is
certainly too low, and it is probably more correct to suppose that
the non-beneficed clergy, including under that head the religious,
were four times as numerous as those holding benefices.

[131] The following table will show the actual number of institutions
in Dorsetshire for some months:—

 +-------------------+-------------------------------+
 |       1348.       |           1349.               |
 +-----+------+------+------+------+--------+--------+
 |Oct. | Nov. | Dec. | Jan. | Feb. | March. | April. |
 +-----+------+------+------+------+--------+--------|
 | 5   | 15   |  17  |  16  |  14  |  10    |   4    |
 +-----+------+------+------+------+--------+--------+

[132] Originalia Roll, 22 Ed. III., m. 4.

[133] _Hist. MSS. Comm., Sixth Report_, p. 475.

[134] _History of Dorset_, i, p. 5.

[135] _Curates_ here and elsewhere is used for Rectors or Vicars, who
had the actual cure of souls.

[136] Wilkins, _Concilia_, ii, pp. 735-6.

[137] The following is a table of the institutions in Somersetshire
for some months:—

 +--------------+-------------------------------------------------+
 |     1348.    |                       1349.                     |
 +------+-------+-------+-------+--------+--------+-------+-------+
 | Nov. | Dec.  | Jan.  | Feb.  | March. | April. | May.  | June. |
 +------+-------+-------+-------+--------+--------+-------+-------+
 |   9  |   32  |  47   |  43   |   36   |   40   |  21   |   7   |
 +------+-------+-------+-------+--------+--------+-------+-------+

[138] Bath Chartulary (Lincoln's Inn MS.), p. 119. This is now being
edited for the _Somerset Record Society_, and the list is given at p.
73 of Mr. Hunt's edition.

[139] R. O. Clerical Subsidy (Somerset), 4/2.

[140] See list given in _Deputy Keeper's Report_, vii, p. 280.

[141] W. Hunt, _Historic Towns_, _Bristol_, p. 77.

[142] S. Seyer, _Memoirs of Bristol_ (Bristol, 1823) ii, p. 143.

[143] Rot. Pat., 23 Ed. III., pars 3, m. 4.

[144] For information about the institutions of this diocese and
other matters concernin

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