There were two important forms of the plague. One, the bubonic
plague, was characterized by high fever and glandular swelling
in the groin and the armpits. Its bacilli developed in black rats
and were carried from them to humans by fleas. The other, the
pneumonic plaque, was a lung disease transmitted from one person
to another by coughing and sneezing.
The first catastrophic epidemic of the plague during the late
Middle Ages has become known as the Black Death. It apparently
originated in Asia and moved westward along the trade routes,
entering Europe in 1347 during a period of inadequate harvests,
when the poor had little natural resistance to combat the disease.
In three years, the Black Death spread to nearly every country
in Christendom, decimating the villages and towns in its path.
Such obvious symptoms as gangrenous inflammation of the throat
and lungs, violent pains in the chest, vomiting and spitting of
blood, pestilential odor from bodies and breath, tumors in the
groin, arm pits and the neck, constipation or diarrhea, and purple
spots (caused by subcutaneous hemorrhages) marked the victims.
Frequent stabs of pain gave rise to the conviction that the stricken
were being shot with arrows by some invisible demon.
Most estimates suggest over one-fourth of the population of Europe
was wiped out, the losses being heavier among the poor than the
rich, the elderly than the young. Some localities suffered severely,
others lightly, but after the plague had spent its force around
1350, it returned with almost equal vehemence in 1360-61 and many
times thereafter.
The little town of Givry in Burgundy had about l,600 inhabitants
when the plague arrived in 1348, but between August 5 and November
19 there were 615 deaths. The city of Florence had 114,000 inhabitants
in 1338, and only 45,000 to 50,000 in 1351. Partial recovery followed
in most localities, only to be halted by the return of the plague,
so that the north German cities were at least 20 per cent smaller
at the end of the 15th century than they were at the beginning
of the 14th. Zurich had 12,375 inhabitants in 1350 and 4,713 in
1468. Catalonia, a country in the northeastern part of the Iberian
Peninsula, recovered rapidly from the first onslaught and boasted
95,000 homesteads in 1365, but in 1497 it had only 59,000. England
had 3,700,000 inhabitants when the Black Death struck in 1348,
but only 2,100,000 in the early 15th century.
As high a percentage of the population lost their lives as is
usually predicted if Europe were subjected to nuclear war. When
the plague struck a city, it moved rapidly, often taking a proportion
of the population equal to that killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It is difficult to evaluate the impact of the Black Death on European
civilization. The modern world has not yet had to suffer so acutely
either from Disease or war. Today, when epidemics strike, the
suffering can be attributed to natural causes and mitigated by
medical and social services. The 14th century man, on the other
hand, often thought in terms of an angry God or of vengeful demons.
To the horror of death was added the fear of the supernatural
and inexplicable and inexpiable.
A Flemish chronicler thought he knew what happened: He wrote how,"in
the East, hard by Greater India, in a certain province, certain
horrors and unheard-of tempests overwhelmed the whole province
for the space of three days. On the first day there was a rain
of frogs, serpents, lizards, scorpions, and many venomous beasts
of that sort. On the second, thunder was heard, and lightning
and sheets of fire fell upon the earth, mingled with hailstones
of marvelous size, which slew almost all, from the greatest even
to the least. On the third day there fell fire from heaven and
stinking smoke, which slew all that were left of men and beasts,
and burned up all the cities and towns in those parts. By these
tempests the whole seashore and surrounding lands were infected,
and are waxing more and more venomous from day to day. And now
it cometh round the seacoasts, by God's will, after the following
fashion.
For, in Jan. of the year 1348, three galleys touched at Genoa,
driven by a fierce blast from the East, horribly infected and
laden with divers spices and other weighty goods. When the men
of Genoa learned this, and saw how suddenly and irremediably they
infected other folk, they were driven forth from that port by
fiery arrows and divers engines of war. For no man dared touch
them. Nor could any man deal with them in merchandise, but he
would die forthwith. Thus, they were scattered from port to port,
till at length one of these aforesaid three galleys came to Marseilles.
At whose coming all who took precautions were infected and died
forthwith."
Before the unknown horror, brave men became panic-stricken and
men of responsibility deserted their charges. Magistrates fled
from stricken cities, physicians refused to attend the sick, clergymen
to administer the sacraments, and notaries to write the wills
of the dying. Few had the courage to expose themselves by burying
the dead. "Neither kinsfolk nor friends nor priests nor friars
went with the corpses, nor was the funeral office sung,"
wrote a Sienese chronicler, "and I, Angelo da Tura, buried
five of mine own children in one grave with mine own hands, and
so did many others likewise. And beyond this some of them were
so ill covered that the dogs drew them forth and at many bodies
about the city."
As though war and plague were not enough, three hundred years
of economic advance came to an end in the early 14th c. The causes
of this economic decline are not fully known, but the fact that
there were signs of it in some places before the Black Death or
the wars suggests that the economic system itself was at fault.
By 1300, in the more thickly populated portions of Europe, there
was no new land suitable for farming, and there were indications
of lower yields per acre because of land exhaustion or the use
of marginal fields. New technological advances were necessary
if food was to be found for a population that increased rapidly
unless checked by war or disease. But medieval Europeans failed
to meet the challenge. No new ways were found to improve agriculture
and there were widespread famines. Not until the eighteenth century
did technological progress and social change permit new advances
comparable to those achieved during the high Middle Ages.
The wars and plagues also had their economic effect. Certainly
the Black Death, which in a few months carried off over half the
population of some towns. was significant, although economically
less catastrophic than one might think. If it sharply reduced
the number of consumers and accounted for much of the decline
in trade that surviving statistics suggest, it also reduced even
more substantially the number of producers, since the poorly fed
workers were more susceptible to disease than be well-to-do burghers.
As a result, for over a century there was a shortage of workers
that forced employers to pay higher wages in spite of their resistance,
and the standard of living of the lower classes actually improved.
More serious for the urban economy, perhaps, were the wars that
disrupted trade and led several kings to repudiate the debts which
they had incurred to put armies in the field. When, for example,
Edward III of England failed to meet his financial obligations
in 1343, two great Florentine merchant- banking houses were bankrupted
and other firms were adversely affected. Thus, the Hundred Years
War between England and France damaged the Italian economy and
contributed to the depression.
The cessation of economic progress led to social strife in the
towns. The merchants, who had hitherto played the dominant role
in municipal government, now sought to use their political power
to support their economic position. Their interests frequently
clashed with those of the craft guilds, because the latter, faced
with declining markets, sought to raise protective tariff walls
around their towns to prevent outside competition. They also tried
to make more stringent economic regulations within the towns and
to halt, forcibly in some instances, the manufacture of cloth
in neighboring villages. The merchants, of course, tried to block
these efforts because they depended on inter-urban and international
trade. They were assisted by the handful of industrialists who
were circumventing the guild system by arranging for peasants
to make cloth in neighboring villages. Revolt often seemed the
only recourse for the craft guilds, and there were frequent uprisings
in the Low Countries and northern Italy where the economy had
been further advanced and where, therefore, the depression caused
the most unrest.
Rural agitation was equally severe, for the noble was badly hurt
by the economic decline and sought to make good his losses at
the expense of the peasant. The Black Death and the wars created
a labor shortage in the country as in the towns. This shortage
forced the price of agricultural labor up, but the nobles tried
to circumvent this natural rise by every means in their power.
Prior to the catastrophes, they had usually found it to their
advantage to free their serfs and to commute their labor services
into money rent, but they now tried to halt this movement in order
to avoid paying high wages.
Thus, these were years of trial for the noble as well as the peasant,
for the merchant as well as the guildmaster and the journeyman.
The old order had ceased to work and no one fully understood why.
During the late Middle Ages than, Europeans lived in the midst
of wars, plagues, and social unrest. The Church was still in need
of reform. Heresy was spreading. The old authorities--whether
king, noble, or pope--were discredited in many eyes. Old customs
no longer sufficed and old institutions no longer worked. No one
understood what was happening and no one had a bold, original
program to propose for the future. The idea of earthly progress.
of economic, social and moral betterment had scarcely been born.
The optimism that had characterized the 13th century yielded to
a profound pessimism: "I, man of sadness, born in an eclipse
of darkness, and thick fogs of lamentation," wrote one chronicler,
and his autobiographical sketch could have applied to the age
as a whole.
Because the world seemed to be disintegrating, an emotional instability
replaced the serenity of the earlier age. Man laughed and cried
at the slightest provocation. They were alternately cruel and
merciful, generous and grasping, devout and immoral, loyal and
treacherous. This tendency towards opposite extremes resulted
from the general insecurity of the age and has been called "the
violent tenor of life." Some sought to restore the old system
by glorifying its customs and values to the point of absurdity.
The tendency towards extremism can be found in the religious life
of the period. Fasting and mortification of the flesh were practiced
by some to a degree unknown before, but there were instances of
equally extreme forms of licentiousness. Mysticism and religious
emotionalism flourished in many forms, yet there were those who
sought the assistance of the devil. Gilles de Rais (1404?-1440),
patron of the arts, one-time companion of Joan of Arc, and Marshal
of France, sold himself to the devil in return for knowledge,
power, and wealth. In the diabolical rituals performed in his
castle, he and his cohorts sacrificed scores of children.
Others sought contact with the underworld, and their crimes lent
a small degree of justification for an increase in the number
of trials for witchcraft. However, the vast majority of those
who were condemned for witchcraft suffered because their fellow
men could imagine only two reasons for the disasters of the period:
either an angry God was punishing them for their sins or their
neighbors had turned the demons of the underworld loose upon them.
Perhaps the temper of the age can be seen best through its abnormal
preoccupation with death and decay. In sculpture, in painting,
and in stained glass, the human body was often depicted as it
would appear after death, with the flesh first appeared, the Dance
of Death. That crowded city did not have enough cemetery space
to bury its many dead. After a corpse had rested for a brief period
in the Cemetery of the Innocents in the heart of the city, it
was dug up to make room for another. The bones were piled in the
charnel houses, without distinction of rank, for all to see, a
lesson in the frailty of earthly glory and a suggestion that even
death brought no repose.
This scene in the daily life of the Parisian inspired an artist
to paint along the cemetery.s cloistered walls a series of persons
fully clothed in all the dignity of their earthly station but
each figure accompanied by its own future corpse, leading it onward
to the dance of the dead. Had this macabre theme been confined
to the cloister wall of the Cemetery of the Innocents, it would
have had little significance. But it was reproduced in many churches,
it influenced such great writers as Francois Villon, it was acted
out at the court of the dukes of Burgundy, and it was depicted
in a book as early as 14 85. The motif had a meaning for the age
that it is difficult for us to understand.
Thus, the medieval civilization was dying and seemed almost conscious
of its fate. The experience was painful, especially in France
and the western portions of the Empire where the roots of that
civilization were deepest. In dying, it would give birth to something
new.