Black Death Image.jpg

 The Black Death
-Chrissie

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            The Black Death is the name given to an outbreak of Bubonic Plague (and a few other diseases) that struck Europe in the mid-14th century. It came into Europe via the Black Sea trade routes in 1347, and reached northern Europe and England within three years, then ending in 1353. Bubonic plague was not a new disease, its symptoms were described in chronicles and other historical documents since the fifth century BCE. Despite this, there had not been a major outbreak in Europe in centuries, so there was little chance of anyone carrying antibodies. It also hit at a particularly bad time because Europe was still recovering from the Great Famine a few decades earlier, which left a generation malnourished and thereby vulnerable to disease. Also, this particular instance of the Pestilence (as it was called at the time) did not only include Bubonic Plague and its pneumonic and septicemic forms, but also an outbreak of anthrax. The combination of disease and circumstance produced an epidemic that wiped out somewhere between a quarter and a third of the population of Europe.

            The diseases of the Black Death, like most diseases, are zoonotic, meaning they first evolved in non-human animals. For Bubonic Plague, the black rat has traditionally been blamed, though recent scholarship points to an origin in the giant gerbils of the central Asia. Whatever the initial origin, the black rat and its incumbent fleas were a major factor in the spread of the disease in Europe. It is the fleas, not the animals themselves, which spread the Yersinia Pestis bacteria. I’ll spare you the details in case you’re listening to this over breakfast. Without treatment, survival rates range from 20% for Bubonic Plague on its own, 10% for those who develop pneumonia along with it, and less than 1% if septicemia sets in.

            During the Black Death, people reacted according to their inclinations and circumstances. Some people became more religious, believing that it was people’s sinfulness which brought the Pestilence. The most drastic of these were a group called Flagellants. They believed that self-punishment was the most effective way to do penance for their own sins and the sins of the community, so they traveled around Europe, parading through towns while hitting themselves over the back with flails as an expression of piety. They were, at best, disruptive and, at worst, actively spreading the disease. Though the practice had existed as a means of penance for centuries, it was outlawed by the Catholic Church at this time. Oppositely, sources also note people becoming irreligious, reasoning that any god who could allow such horrors was not worth worshipping.  One thing the Plague did not, and could not, do was inspire a feeling of mutual aid, as might be seen with other diseases, because contact with the sick could infect and kill a caregiver within days, if not hours. Not even familial relationships could overcome this fear, as chronicles note parents abandoning sick children and children abandoning their sick parents. Practicality required that religious ceremonies and sacraments be abandoned, causing immense fear in the faithful who could not receive Last Rites or be buried with a funeral Mass. Pope Clement VI authorized a general remission of sin for all who died of the plague because it was impossible for them to properly confess their sins before dying when they could not be attended by priests.

            Human nature being what it is, people also looked to place blame, with that blame most often landing on the Jews. Because Jews seemed to be less likely to catch the Pestilence (likely because they were segregated from the Christian population and thereby less exposed) it was theorized that they controlled it. This led to pogroms across Europe, with the idea that killing the Jews would stop the disease. The most common means of a community ridding itself of the Jewish population was to lock everyone in the synagogue and burn it. As an interesting side note, many of the places in the German states that saw pogroms during the fourteenth century would be some of the first to carry out Nazi extermination policies in the 1930s.[1]

            The Bubonic Plague appears to have had a lasting effect on the genetic makeup of Europeans. A mutated gene, identified as CCR5, begins to appear in the fourteenth century and is believed to be a reaction to the Black Death; that same gene has been shown to contribute to immunity to HIV/AIDS, though the diseases are not in any way related.

            By 1353, the Pestilence had burned itself out, but it did not disappear. People isolated themselves from those who were ill, denying the disease the opportunity to spread. Other outbreaks have occurred in the centuries since, most notably in London in 1665 and ’66. And, it still exists, the World Health Organization reporting approximately 1500 cases per year. Thankfully, though, it can be treated with modern antibiotics, if it is caught quickly enough. As medievalist Norman Cantor told his students, if you’re in the showers at the gym and someone has “black welts under the armpits and in the groin (the infamous plague buboes), [you] should dress and leave immediately. And if a rat runs by as well as the buboe-marred student, don’t even bother to dress.”[2]

 

[1] https://voxeu.org/article/how-anti-semitism-interwar-germany-was-influenced-medieval-mass-murder-jews

[2] Norman Cantor, In the Wake of the Plague. (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 19.