Black Death

Black Death

Living in Europe in the middle of the 1300’s would have been heartbreaking and awful. Not only were the living conditions very poor but there was an unknown disease that was wiping out a large percentage of European population. It is unimaginable the fear of wondering whether you or someone you loved was going to catch this deadly disease and no explanation would make a person feel safe from catching it or dying with it. The Europeans lived their lives as best they could, realizing that there was nothing they could do to stop this illness. They stood powerless against it waiting for their moment to come.

This unknown disease is known as the Bubonic Plague or the Black Death. It is a bacterial disease so lethal and so fast-spreading that it still causes people to worry about epidemics. Nowadays the disease can be successfully treated if caught early, but in the Middle Ages, when "elements and humors" were part of the medical process, catching the disease early was never an option. At a time when doctors diagnosed illnesses by the color of urine and treated patients by "bleeding" them, no one had a clue how to prevent, or cure the disease. The Pope (Clement VI) called for an inquiry to determine what was happening. Scholars assigned to brief him reached a less than scholarly conclusion mostly because at the time, and for many years later, physicians

believed that medicine and astrology were linked.

The plague was passed among rats by fleas. Fleas living on the rat�s blood would eject the disease into the rat causing it to die quickly. When there were no rats left around, the flea would search for a new host, such as a human. When an infected flea bit the human the bacteria multiplies quickly causing death within a few days. When a person obtains this disease they can easily spread it among other humans by bacilli coughed or sneezed in to the air. The plague had struck other parts of the world before it was first reported in Europe. The disease had been found in China and throughout India around 1330’s. Rumors had spread to Europe about the strange and terrible things happening in the East. Europeans began fearing this plague not knowing of its origin or cause. Eventually, the same unusual things started to occur in Europe and the plague was then reported to be there. The plague came to Europe by means of transportations such as merchant ships, or caravans bringing goods from the east to the west. Unfortunately wherever there are humans there’s bound to be rats as well, and that’s how the epidemic was spread in the west.

Underneath is an overview of the routes the plague spread in Europe.

(Insecta Online)

According to Geoffrey Marks the epidemic spread as such,

In 1334 an epidemic which would eventually kill two-thirds of China's inhabitants struck the northeastern Chinese province of Hopei, claiming up to 90% of the population - some 5,000,000 people. Carried along trade routes, the "Black Death," as it would soon be called, began to work its way west, striking India, Syria, and Mesopotamia. In 1346, the Plague came to Kaffa, a Genoese cathedral city and a port central to the successful Genoese trade industry located on the Crimean Peninsula of the Black Sea. The Tartar forces of Kipchak khan Janibeg, backed by Venetian forces - competitors of the Genoese - had laid siege to Kaffa in hopes of removing the Genoese from one of the cornerstones of Europe's defense against Eastern attack and Genoa's dominance of east-west trade. Kaffa was helpless, barely able to sustain even the crudest living conditions. Finding its chief means of supplies cut off, Kaffa spent the next year watching itself decline into a hopeless state. But then, in 1347, to the Italians' delight, their opponents began to die off at an alarming rate - Janibeg's army was overcome by the Plague. Janibeg had no choice but to call off his siege, but not until he performed one last act of warfare against Genoa. Using the catapults designed to throw boulders and fireballs over the walls of fortified cities like Kaffa, Janibeg launched the Plague infested corpses of his dead men into the city. The Italians quickly dumped these bodies back into the sea, but the damage was done. Due to the squalid conditions forced upon Kaffa by the siege, it was ripe for the quick desolation of the Plague. Hoping to escape the quickly spreading disease, four Genoese ships, thought to be untainted, departed from Kaffa.

(Marks Geoffrey)

Plague-ridden ships from Kaffa brought the disease to Italy. As early as January 1348, Genoese ships had carried the infection to their home port and to Venice, and from there the Black Death spread quickly throughout the Italian peninsula. The terrible devastation is recounted in numerous contemporary reports, such as the account of Boccaccio's famous introduction to the Decameron.

Some cities lost almost all their inhabitants: in Venice at least three-quarters died. In Pisa seven-tenths of the inhabitants died, and many families were completely destroyed. In Siena the plague raged from April until October and, according to the Cronica Senese of Agnolo di Tura, 80,000 people died in those seven months. Di Tura reported: "And I, Agnolo di Tura, carried with my own hands my five little sons to the pit; and what I did many others did likewise." The expanding economy of the city was checked and the deaths of many painters, among them the brothers Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, ended the development of the first Sienese school. Florence was so devastated that for a long time the disease itself was known as "the plague of Florence." Estimates of the dead vary greatly: Villani says three out of every five died; Antoninus, the Archbishop, estimates the toll at 60,000. Throughout Italy at least half the population died. (Deaux George)

This devastated the remaining population and disrupted the ongoing way of life.

The plague had large scale social effects. Some people left town altogether and carelessly avoided helping the sick. When the Black Death found them, their neighbors showed them similar consideration. Boccaccio’s Introduction continues as such,

And not all those who adopted these diverse opinions died, nor did they all escape with their lives; on the contrary, many of those who thought this way were falling sick everywhere, and since they had given, when they were healthy, the bad example of avoiding the sick, they, in turn, were