THE BLACK DEATHS INFLUENCE ON MEDIEVAL SOCIETY 



   The Black Death, also known as the Black Plague, or the Bubonic
Plague killed one third of the population of Europe during its reign in the
13th and 14th centuries. The arrival of this plague set the scene for years
of strife and heroism.  Leaving the social and economic aspect in a
standstill.  The phantom of death became a subject of art, music and
folklore and it influenced the consciousness of the people. The impact of
this mass killer caused enormous chaos and havoc to the Medieval
society  because of its unknown origin, the unknown causes and
preventions, its deathly symptoms and its breakdown of orderly life,
therefore religion was greatly affected and changed. 
        In 1347, a Tartar army under Kipchak khan Janibeg had been
besieging the Genoese cathedral city and trading ports of Caffa on the
Black Sea for a year.  A deadly, ruthless plague hit the besieging army
and was killing off soldiers at an unstoppable rate.  It was plain to Janibeg
Khan that he must call off the siege.  But before he decided to retreat, he
wanted to give the defenders a taste of what his army was suffering.  So
Janibeg used giant catapults to hurl the rotting corpses of the plagued
victims over the walls of the town.   By this means the infection spread
among the Genoese defenders.  Before long the Genoese were dying
from the plague as fast as the Tartars on the outside.  A few who thought
themselves free of plague took to their ships and headed for the
Mediterranean. The deathly disease was unleashed at every port the ship
and its crew set foot on.  The trading routes contributed to the spread of
the disease throughout the continent.  In October of 1347, several Italian
merchant ships returned from a trip to the Black Sea.  These ships carried
a cargo of flea infested rats, which had guts full of the bacillus Yersinia
pestis (the bacteria which causes the plague). Inspectors attempted to
quarantine the fleet, but it was too late.  Realizing what a deadly disaster
had come to them, the people quickly drove the Italians from their city. 
But the disease remained, and soon death was everywhere.  Fathers
abandoned their sick sons.  Lawyers refused to come and make out wills
for the dying. Friars and nuns were left to care for the sick, and
monasteries and convents were soon deserted, as they were stricken,
too.  Bodies were left in empty houses, and there was no one to give
them a Christian burial.  The terror of this seemingly unstoppable march of
death was the unknown nature of its origin.  The absence of an identifiable
earthly cause gave the plague supernatural and sinister quality. 
        The plague had stunned Europe and everywhere people were
desperate for explanations and answers to their many questions.   Most
explanations were based on folklore, superstition, and rumor.  Blame was
frequently placed on travelers and other suspicious outsiders.  Some
blamed invisible particles carried in the wind, others talked of poisoned
wells.  An earthquake, which had a carved a path of wreckage from
Naples to Venice in the summer of 1347, was blamed for releasing gases
into the air which poisoned all on whom they fell.  The scholars of the
University of Paris stated that the Black Death resulted from a triple
conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars in the 40th degree of Aquarius,
occurring on the 20th of March 1345' but added they didn't know how. 
Others blamed Jews for poisoning wells which inspired more than 350
massacres across Germany and Switzerland.  Many Jews who escaped
fled to Poland. 
Also, hysterical charges of sorcery and witchcraft were brought against
eccentric or unpopular people.  The violence against outsiders
demonstrated, in a tragically negative manner, the nature and the limits of
citizenship in Europe.  This was a society which defined itself as Christians
and recurrent plague changed religious practice, if no belief.  Ordinary
folk had their own theory about the plague: It was plainly God's
punishment for man's wickedness.  Bands of hooded men, wearing robes
marked front and back with a red cross  also believed in this theory and
that by scourging themselves they can show mankind's repentance.  They
traveled in parties of 50 to 500, led by a layman.  Moving from town to
town, singing hymns and sobbing, the men beat themselves with scourges
studded with iron spikes. The ritual was performed twice a day in public. 
The masses worshiped the flagellants, as they were known, as living
martyrs. Religious donations soared, pilgrimages swelled.  A million
Christians trudged to Rome in 1350, a holy year by decree of Clement
VI.  The pope himself remained at Avignon, sitting between two fires in
his private chamber, even in the summer, and rubbing an emerald ring,
practices recommended to him to ward off the plague.  Many peasants
and uneducated folk believed the cause of the plague was a beautiful but
an evil witch called the "plague maiden."  It was said that when she
passed by a house she could infect those inside simply by waving a red
scarf through an open window.   People seeking tips on avoiding infection
were counseled to eat lots of figs and filberts before breakfast or not to
sleep on their backs, and less pestilential air ran down their nostrils into
the lungs. 
        The plague occurred from the bite of an infected flea or by a scratch
or bite while handling animals.  Also it could be contracted from breathing
in airborne droplets from people who already had the infection in their
lungs.  The first symptoms of the bubonic plague often appear within
several days: headache and a general feeling of weakness, followed by
aches and chills in the upper leg and groin, a white coating on the tongue,
rapid pulse, slurred speech, confusion, fatigue, apathy and staggering
gait.  A blackish pustule usually would form at the point of the fleabite. 
By the third day, the lymph node begins to swell.  Because the bite is
commonly in the leg, the lymph nodes in the leg swell, which is how the
disease got its name.  The Greek word for "groin' is bubon, thus the
name.  The swelling then becomes tender, and perhaps as large as an
egg.  The heart begins to flutter rapidly as it tries to pump blood through
swollen, suffocating tissues.  Subcutaneous hemorrhaging occurs, causing
purplish blotches on the skin.  The victim's nervous system began to
collapse, causing dreadful pain and bizarre neurological disorders.  By the
fourth day, wild anxiety and terror overtake the sufferer and then the
sense of resignation, as the skin blackens and the rictus of death settles on
the body. 
        During all this confusion the church's leadership in the lives of people
weakened.  Before the arrival of the Black Death the church was seen as
one of the wealthiest and most powerful landlords in all of Europe. 
Unsurprisingly, monasteries, converts, prisons, and other closed
communities were doomed when plague was introduced to them.  The
Convents of Carcassonne and Marseille lost everyone. At Montpelier
133 Dominican Friars died out of 140. When the plague subsided, many
towns were left without a priest.  Those priests who had not fled but
ministered to the dying during the plague were constantly exposed to the
disease; many died.  Consequently, new priests were often ordained
without adequate training, and frequently the selection of priestly
candidates was hasty and ill-advised, thus reducing the esteem people
had for the church.  Everywhere the Church was forced to resort to
extraordinary ends to assure at least the semblance of the sacraments for
the dying.  Bishops in England, faced with a loss of priests to minister the
sacraments gave permission to laymen to make confession t each other. 
Without the guidance and support which the church was recognized saints
as models of the godly life and as mediators before God.  A whole new
series of "plague saints" came into existence along with new religious
brotherhoods and shrines dedicated to protecting the population from the
plague. 
        With the start of the plague Europeans looked desperately for help
to answer their many questions, on why God would allow such a thing to
occur.  People throughout Christendom had prayed devoutly for
deliverance form the plague and when their prayers weren't answered
they began to change their methods of administering the traditions which
were attached to the church.  They were left alone to live life without the
powerful God which left awe and fear in all, during a very difficult era.
Religion affected every aspect of everyday life and without it a new
period of philosophical questioning lay ahead.



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