Black Plague
During mid-fourteen century, a terrible plague hit Europe and wiped out a third of the population, 25,000,000 people of Western Europe. This plague was named the Black Plague since when people got the disease they got bumps that oozed black liquid and different body parts would turn black. The plague was spread by infected fleas on rats that bit humans. Since the Europeans lacked medical knowledge, the Plague caused hysteria and hopelessness to spread across Europe. Therefore the Europeans turned to the one stable unit in their lives, the Church. The Europeans lack of medical knowledge really hurt them.
They had all types of perceived causes and treatments that they thought would work. People just kept dying and they couldn’t find a cure for something that they didn’t know the cause. According to Heinrich Truchess von Diessenhoven, Jewish people were one perceived cause that the Europeans believed. They spread a rumor that the Jews poisoned the wells and rivers for people had “confessed” to the crime. The Report of the Paris Medical Faculty states another perceived cause to be the configurations of the heavens and the major conjunction of three plants in Aquarius to be blamed.
Another excerpt states that an earthquake that occurred on St. Paul’s day in 1347 corrupted and infected the air above the earth and killed people in various parts of the world. In the excerpt from an anonymous poem, the vices rule is indicted as a cause. The Europeans tried many treatments in which most of them failed. However, Lisavetta Centenni wrote that her husband, Ottavio, had a fatal fever. She believed he would die but Sister Angelica sent her a little piece of bread that had touched the body of St. Domencia. Her husband was a lucky one and his fever broke.
Other methods didn’t work so well and patients died anyway. For example, H. de Rochas, a French physician states that patients would hang toads around their neck either dead or alive, in which they believed the venom would draw out the poison of the disease. Furthermore William Zouche, an Archibishop of York, wrote to his official that he believes the plague was surely caused by the sins of men so in order to stop the plague they should pray to the Almighty God and ask him to drive away the infection. In addition Dom Theophilus of Milan, a priest, suggests a few things to do if a person is struck by the plague.
First let him gather as much as he can of bitter hatred towards the sins he committed, and the same quantity of true sorrow of heart, and mix the two into an ointment with tears. That is just one example of his unrealistic treatments. As you can see now this is why the plague had spread and killed so many people. The lack of medical knowledge led to hysteria in Europe as well. The first example is a letter from a schoolmaster saying the plague had taken twenty of the boys and this kept people from coming to them at all.
The plague affected the education of the people as well. The hysteria only got worse. Heinrich von Laden stated that people were dying in their own houses of starvation for they were so afraid to leave and get food, and if a person had died within their home they were buried there. Imagine being as afraid as to leave your home, children must’ve been terrified. Then people started turning to more murderous options. According to the ‘Motto of Giovan Filippo, Sicilian physician of Palermo,’ gold, fire, and the gallows were being used.
The gold was used for income for the pest houses to quarantine the sick, the gallows to punish those who violated the health regulations and bonfires to eliminate the infected. People were just turning to anything to try and get rid of this horrid plague. In an English Puritan’s diary, the father Nehemiah Wallington writes, “Who would I be willing to give up to the disease? Then would I say the maid. Who next? My son John. Who next? My daughter Elizabeth. Who next? Myself. People were going mad in their homes, and willing to give up anyone but themselves.
I don’t even know if I’d be able to keep my head either. The document from Heinrich Truchess von Diessenhoven comes up again for the hysteria was causing people to spread rumors that really hurt the Jew’s reputation and caused a huge decline in their population. Even some people confessed to it because they were starting to actually believe the untrue rumors. Some Christians confessed that the Jews had induced them to carry out the deeds. Even though an excerpt from an anonymous poem argues that everyone should rejoice with each other.
People were obviously not listening to that poem if they were pointing out certain people who “caused” the plague. I already spoke about Dom Theophilus’ ridiculous methods of getting rid of the plague but I just wanted to bring it up again to show how hysterical people were getting by making up absurd remedies like that. Therefore, Europeans suffered greatly from this plague and lost a third of their population which is 25 million people. I would’ve liked to see a death chart rate over the years in Europe. With all of this death and exposure education and centralization was very hard to recover.
Even through all of this havoc the people always turned to the church in their time of need. An example is Lisavetta Centenni, an Italian housewife, whose husband survived from the blessed piece of bread from St. Domencia. It was probably out of luck, or good immune system that helped him survive, but people looked at this in a very serious and reliable manner. Furthermore, Father Dragoni states he has accompanied danger with compassion and charity and paid guards and gravediggers with alms the lordships sent him.
They depended a lot on alms and holy charities would help. The Church not only had a religious role but a secular one as well. Peasants were taught how to farm and how to use tools. Noble’s daughters were taught to farm as well. As I mentioned before, William Zouche said that people believed that if they prayed to the Almighty One, he would stop the spread of the plague and go to church every Wednesday and Friday. Once again, the document with Dom Theophilus of Milan appears for he believed if you used these remedies you could save yourself.
Overall, you could see how important the Church was to the people. The lack of medical knowledge really didn’t help the Europeans against the plague. It led to hysteria and all kinds of disasters. The people turned to the Church in a time of need, but even the Church was little help in this catastrophe. The Bubonic Plague still exists in countries today but with our advanced medical knowledge, people can get the right medical attention and medication they need. Doctors never want to have a repeat in history like the Black Plague in Europe and lose millions of people again.
