Reactions to the Black Death
Era 5: The First Global Age Reactions to the Black Death By Bridgette Byrd O’Connor The horrifying body count of the Black Death moved many at the time to write theories as to the cause, transmission, and treatment of the plague—even though a true cure was still centuries away.
2Era 5: The First Global AgeReactions to the Black DeathBridgette Byrd O’Connor IntroductionThe Black Death, or bubonic plague, hit most of Europe, southwestern and central Asia, and northern Africa in the fourteenth century. While this was not the world’s first epidemic, it was one of the worst humanity had ever experienced. Physicians and scholars at the time wrote first-hand accounts of the disease and its effects. They also hypothesized about the causes and appropriate treatments. Most medical professionals from both the European and Arab worlds studied the teachings of Greek physicians such as Hippocrates and Galen. They believed that the body became ill due to an imbalance in bodily fluids called humors. Galen wrote that there were four humors of the body: blood, phlegm (mucus), yellow bile, and black bile. They believed that most illnesses, including the plague, could only get you when your humors were not balanced, and that this balance depended on proper diet and health of the body. Others believed that the position of the stars and possibly air pollution caused the plague. Still others believed that God sent the plague as punishment for sin and straying from his teachings. Sometimes physicians prescribed theriac, a medicine composed of numerous ingredients including opium. Practices such as bloodletting and cupping were also recommended in order to keep the humors in balance. Different diets were used to maintain this balance including the use of herbs, garlic, vinegar, and fruit. Modern medicine and alternative medicine have retained many of these practices to a certain degree—though while some are widely accepted, other practices can be controversial. The excerpts below provide a glimpse into the varied reactions from those who lived through this plague.Document 1Ibn al-Khatīb (1313-1375 CE) was a historian and government official in Granada (a big city in what is now the south of Spain) and wrote down his observations and theories about the plague. Islamic teaching at the time discouraged people from fleeing to or from the plague-infected areas. Some Islamic legal and religious scholars also argued that the teachings of Muhammad discouraged the idea that a disease could be contagious—an unproven theory at the time. In this passage Ibn al-Khatīb speculates on the infectious nature of the plague.“If one asks ‘How can you admit the assertion [claim], there is infection, when the revealed word [from Islamic teachings] denies this?,’ we answer that infection exists, is confirmed by experience, research, insight and observation, and through constantly recurring accounts. These are the elements of proof. For him who has treated or recognized this case, it cannot remain concealed that mostly the man who has had contact with a patient infected with this disease must die, and that, on the other hand, the man who has had no contact remains healthy. So it is with the appearance of the illness in a house or quarter because of a garment or a vessel [container]. Even an earring can destroy him who puts it in his ear, and all the inhabitants of his house...There is nothing more wonderful at this time than the prison camp of the Muslims—may God free them—in the Arsenal of Seville: there were thousands but the plague did not touch them although it practically destroyed the town itself. The report is also true that the itinerant [travelling] nomads living in tents in North Africa and elsewhere remained healthy because there the air is not shut in and the corruption proceeding from it could only gain a slight hold.”Source: Hopley, Russell. “Contagion in Islamic Lands: Responses from Medieval Andalusia and North Africa.” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 10, no. 2 (2010): 55-56.
3Era 5: The First Global AgeReactions to the Black DeathBridgette Byrd O’Connor Spread of the Black Death in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East from 1346 to 1353 CE. By Flappiefh, CC BY-SA 4.0.Document 2The Black Death devastated many communities in Europe. Looking for a scapegoat (someone to blame), Christians in various regions accused the Jewish community of poisoning the water wells to spread this illness. In October 1348 a Jewish man in Switzerland was arrested and tortured. When he could no longer handle the torture, he eventually confessed to the crimes for which he was charged, although we of course cannot know if he actually committed these crimes, or simply wanted the torture to end. In the next year, European councils ordered that Jewish people were to be punished for these alleged crimes.
4Era 5: The First Global AgeReactions to the Black DeathBridgette Byrd O’Connor “In the year 1349 there occurred the greatest epidemic that ever happened. Death went from one end of the earth to the other, on that side and this side of the sea, and it was greater among the Saracens [Arabs] than among the Christians. In some lands everyone died so that no one was left. Ships were also found on the sea laden with wares [loaded with goods to be sold]; the crew had all died and no one guided the ship...In other kingdoms and cities so many people perished that it would be horrible to describe. The pope of Avignon stopped all sessions of court, locked himself in a room, allowed no one to approach him and had a fire burning before him all the time. And for what this epidemic came, all wise teachers and physicians could only say that it was God’s will...This epidemic also came to Strasbourg [Alsace, Germany] in the summer of the above mentioned year, and it is estimated that about sixteen thousand people died.In the matter of this plague the Jews throughout the world were reviled [hated] and accused in all lands of having caused it through the poison which they are said to have put into the water and the wells—that is what they were accused of—and for this reason the Jews were burnt all the way from the Mediterranean into Germany, but not in Avignon, for the pope protected them there.Nevertheless they tortured a number of Jews in Berne and Zofingen [Switzerland] who then admitted that they had put poison into many wells, and they also found the poison in the wells.1 Thereupon they burnt the Jews in many towns and wrote of this affair to Strasbourg, Freiburg, and Basel in order that they too should burn their Jews. But the leaders in these three cities in whose hands the government lay did not believe that anything ought to be done to the Jews. However in Basel the citizens marched to the city-hall and compelled the council to take an oath that they would burn the Jews, and that they would allow no Jew to enter the city for the next two hundred years. Thereupon the Jews were arrested in all these places and a conference was arranged to meet at Benfeld Alsace, February 8, 1349. The Bishop of Strasbourg, all the feudal lords of Alsace, and representatives of the three above mentioned cities came there. The deputies of the city of Strasbourg were asked what they were going to do with their Jews. They answered and said that they knew no evil of them. Then they asked the Strasbourgers why they had closed the wells and put away the buckets, and there was a great indignation [anger] and clamor [uproar] against the deputies from Strasbourg. So finally the Bishop and the lords and the Imperial Cities agreed to do away with the Jews. The result was that they were burnt in many cities, and wherever they were expelled they were caught by the peasants and stabbed to death or drowned.”Source: “The Cremation of Strasbourg Jewry St. Valentine’s Day, February 14, 1349.” Jewish History Sourcebook: The Black Death and the Jews, 1348-1349 CE. Fordham University.https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/jewish/1348-jewsblackdeath.asp 1 We must remember that they admitted to these crimes only after being tortured so these were forced confessions.
5Era 5: The First Global AgeReactions to the Black DeathBridgette Byrd O’Connor The people of Tournai (a city in present-day Belgium) bury plague victims, 1353. Pierart dou Tielt, public domain. Document 3Abu Hafs Umar ibn al-Wardi wrote of his experiences and observations of the plague in Syria in 1348 and provides a brief commentary about the plague’s effects in China. It is one of the only records we have of the plague in East Asia. Ibn al-Wardi spoke with merchants who had allegedly travelled to the east and told of the plague infecting this region. However, contemporary sources of the Yuan dynasty do not mention any plague fitting the description of the Black Death. The area was affected by famine and natural disasters during the fourteenth century but symptoms such as those reported in Europe and southwest Asia are not found in China. The same holds true for the Indian subcontinent, which also may have escaped the fourteenth-century plague.2“God is my security in every adversity [difficulty]. My sufficiency is in God alone. Is not God sufficient protection for His servant? Oh God, pray for our master, Muhammad, and give him peace. Save us for his sake from the attacks of the plague and give us shelter.The plague frightened and killed. It began in the land of darkness [northern Asia]. Oh, what a visitor: it has been current for fifteen years. China was not preserved from it nor could the strongest fortress hinder it. The plague afflicted the Indians in India. It weighed upon the Sind. It seized with its hand and ensnared even the lands of the Uzbeks. How many backs did it break in what is Transoxiana [central Asia]! The plague increased and spread further. It attacked the Persians...The plague destroyed mankind in Cairo. Its eye was cast upon Egypt, and behold, the people were wide awake. It stilled all movement in Alexandria...Have patience with the fate of the plague, which leaves of seventy men only seven...2 For more information about this debate see Sussman, George D. (2011). Was the Black Death in India and China? Bulletin of the History of Medicine 85(3), 319-355.
6Era 5: The First Global AgeReactions to the Black DeathBridgette Byrd O’Connor We ask God’s forgiveness for our souls’ bad inclination [feeling]; the plague is surely part of His punishment...They said: the air’s corruption kills; I said: the love of corruption kills. How many sins and how many offenses does the crier call our attention to?...This plague is for the Muslims a martyrdom and a reward, and for the disbelievers a punishment and a rebuke [scold]. When the Muslim endures misfortune, then patience is his worship. It has been established by our Prophet, God bless him and give him peace, that the plague-stricken are martyrs [sacrifices]...If someone says it causes infection and destruction, say: God creates and recreates. If the liar disputes the matter of infection and tries to find an explanation, I say that the Prophet, on him be peace, said: who infected the first? If we acknowledge the plague’s devastation of the people, it is the will of the Chosen Doer. So it happened again and again.”Source: Ibn al-Wardi, Abu Hafs Umar. Risālah al-Naba’ ‘an al-Waba’: An Essay on the Report of the Pestilence (1348),quoted in Joseph P. Byrne, The Black Death (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004), 173-176.Document 4Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian writer who lived through the ravages of the plague. His most famous work, The Decameron, tells the story of ten people (seven women and three men) who journeyed from Florence to the countryside to escape the plague. Along the course of their journey, each traveler tells a story to pass the time. In the “First Day” of The Decameron Boccaccio provides a detailed account of people’s reactions to the plague.“In Florence, despite all that human wisdom and forethought could devise to avert [avoid] it, as the cleansing of the city from many impurities by officials appointed for the purpose, the refusal of entrance to all sick folk, and the adoption of many precautions for the preservation of health; despite also humble supplications [prayers] addressed to God, and often repeated both in public procession and otherwise by the devout; towards the beginning of the spring of the said year the doleful [sad] effects of the pestilence [plague] began to be horribly apparent by symptoms that shewed [showed] as if miraculous.Not such were they as in the East, where an issue of blood from the nose was a manifest sign of inevitable death; but in men and women alike it first betrayed itself by the emergence of certain tumors in the groin or the armpits, some of which grew as large as a common apple, others as an egg, some more, some less, which the common folk called gavoccioli. From the two said parts of the body this deadly gavocciolo soon began to propagate [grow] and spread itself in all directions differently; after which the form of the malady [sickness] began to change, black spots or livid [purple] making their appearance in many cases on the arm or the thigh or elsewhere, now few and large, then minute and numerous. And as the gavocciolo had been and still were an infallible token [guaranteed sign] of approaching death, such also were these spots on whomsoever they shewed [showed] themselves. Which maladies seemed set entirely at naught both the art of the physician and the virtue of physic;3 indeed, whether it was that the disorder was of a nature to [able to] defy such treatment, or that the physicians were at fault—besides the qualified there was now a multitude both of men and of women who practiced without having received the slightest tincture [bit] of medical science—and, being in ignorance of its source, failed to apply the proper remedies; in either case, not merely were those that covered few, but almost all within three days from the appearance of said symptoms, sooner or later, died, and in most cases without any fever or other attendant [accompanying] malady...Some again, the most sound, perhaps, in judgment, as they were also the most harsh in temper, of all, affirmed that there was no medicine for the disease superior or equal in efficacy [effectiveness] to flight; following which prescription a multitude of men and women, negligent of all but themselves, deserted their city, their houses, their estates, their kinsfolk, their goods, and went into voluntary exile, or migrated to the country parts ...”Source: Boccaccio, Giovanni. The Decameron. Translated by M. Rigg. London: David Campbell, 1921, 5-11.3 Which maladies seemed set entirely at naught both the art of the physician and the virtue of physic: These illnesses seemed completely resistant to anything medical science tried.
7Era 5: The First Global AgeReactions to the Black DeathBridgette Byrd O’Connor Bridgette Byrd O’Connor Bridgette Byrd O’Connor holds a DPhil in history from the University of Oxford and has taught Big History, World History, and AP U.S. Government and Politics for the past ten years at the high school level. In addition, she has been a freelance writer and editor for the Big History Project and the Crash Course World History and U.S. History curriculums.Image creditsCover: The plague of Florence in 1348, as described in Boccaccio’s Decameron, Wellcome, CC BY 4.0. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_plague_of_Florence_in_1348,_as_described_in_Boccaccio%27s_Wellcome_L0004057.jpg Spread of the Black Death in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East from 1346 to 1353 CE. By Flappiefh, CC BY-SA 4.0. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1346-1353_spread_of_the_Black_Death_in_Europe_map.svg#/media/File:1346-1353_spread_of_the_Black_Death_in_Europe_map.svgCitizens of Tournai, Belgium bury the dead during the plague, c. 1353. By Pierart dou Tielt, public domain. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Doutielt3.jpg#/media/File:Doutielt3.jpg