The Black Death (5 page)

It would have been astonishing if he had found many others to share his opinions. Even in the materialistic and, at a certain level,
sophisticated nineteen-sixties the apocalyptic vision of a world about to incur destruction through its own folly and wickedness is by no means lost. Man-made devices may have been
substituted
for the pestilential hammer of the Middle Ages but both methods can be and are interpreted as manifestations of God’s
inscrutable
workings.

How far more certain it was that the credulous and
superstitious
citizens of fourteenth-century Europe, unable to see any natural explanation of this sudden and horrifying holocaust, believing without question in hell-fire and the direct participation of God in life on earth, well-versed in Old Testament precedents for the destruction of cities or whole races in a sudden access of divine indignation, would take it for granted that they were now the victims of God’s wrath. Like the citizens of Sodom and
Gomorrah
they were to die in expiation of their sins. ‘Tell, O Sicily, and ye, the many islands of the sea, the judgements of God! Confess, O Genoa, what thou hast done, since we of Genoa and Venice are compelled to make God’s chastisement manifest!’
20

The Europeans were possessed by a conviction of their guilt. They were not so sure of what, exactly, they were guilty but the range of choice was wide. Lechery, avarice, the decadence of the church, the irreverence of the knightly classes, the greed of kings, the drunkenness of peasants; each vice was condemned
according
to the prejudices of the preacher and presented as the last straw which had broken the back of God’s patience.

‘In those days,’ wrote the English chronicler, Knighton,

Knighton was something of a conservative. Though many others might have condemned the current fashions, only a few would have called the Black Death a ‘marvellous remedy’ or have believed that God was being entirely temperate in his retribution when he obliterated quite so many to punish the extravagance of a few. But his conviction of the immorality of the age was
wide-spread
. ‘These pestilences were for pure sin’ wrote Langland sadly and more comprehensively.
22
None of those who believed that the plague was God’s punishment of men suggested that the punishment did not fit the crime. God’s will had to be done, his vengeance wreaked, and it was for man blindly to accept. To question His justice would have been a fresh and still more
heinous
sin, inviting yet further chastisement from on high.

Looking back, the victim of the Black Death saw a host of portents which should have warned him of God’s intentions. Simon of Covino noticed heavy mists and clouds, falling stars, blasts of hot wind from the South. A column of fire stood above the papal palace at Avignon and a ball of fire was seen in the skies above Paris. In Venice a violent earth tremor set the bells of St Mark’s pealing without touch of human hand. Anything which seemed in the least out of the way was retrospectively identified as a herald of the plague: a stranded whale, an
outstandingly
good crop of hazel nuts. Blood fell from bread when taken freshly from the oven. An illustration of the way that a legend could build up came in a later epidemic when mysterious bloodstains were found on men’s clothes. Subsequent
examination
showed that the stains were in fact caused by the
excrement
of butterflies.

The skies not only provided a portent of what was coming but, through the movement of the planets, were the instruments by which the will of God was translated into harsh reality. In the fourteenth century astronomy was by far the most advanced branch of systematized scientific knowledge. For students of the stars, totally at a loss to explain what was happening around them, it was only natural to extrapolate desperately from what
they understood and seek to compose from the movement of the planets some code of rules which would interpret and give
warning
of events on earth. ‘The medieval cosmic outlook’, wrote Singer,
23
‘cannot be understood unless it is realized that analogy pushed to extreme lengths unchecked by observation and
experiment
was the major intellectual weapon of the age.’

Astrology, that arcane compound of astronomical research and semi-magical crystal-gazing, was near the peak of its prestige in the fourteenth century. It was the Arab astronomers who had evolved the theory that the movements of the planets and their relationship to each other in space dictated the future of
humanity
. Since the Black Death was clearly far out of the normal, some abnormal behaviour on the part of the planets had to be found to explain it.

Various theories were propounded from time to time but the classic exposition was that laid down by the Medical Faculty of the University of Paris in the report prepared on the orders of King Philip VI in 1348.
24
On 20 March 1345, at 1 p.m., there
occurred
a conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars in the house of Aquarius. The conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter notoriously caused death and disaster while the conjunction of Mars and Jupiter spread pestilence in the air (Jupiter, being warm and humid, was calculated to draw up evil vapours from the earth and water which Mars, hot and dry, then kindled into infective fire). Obviously the conjunction of all three planets could only mean an epidemic of cataclysmic scale.

The doctrine that the movement of the planets was the force which set the Black Death in motion was never overtly
challenged
except by Konrade of Megenberg who argued that no planetary conjunction lasted for more than two years and that therefore, since the plague persisted longer, it must necessarily have had some other cause. Besides, he pointed out, all
movements
of celestial bodies were subject to strict order while the plague was patently haphazard in its action. Among a few other writers, however, a certain scepticism can be detected or,
perhaps
more correctly, an indifference to remote causes which were not susceptible of proof and were anyhow beyond the power of man to mend. Gentile da Foligno referred to the planets in general
terms and then went on
25
‘… It must be believed that, whatever may be the case with regard to the aforesaid causes, the
immediate
and particular cause is a certain poisonous material which is generated about the heart and lungs.’ The job of the doctor, he concluded, was not to worry about the heavens but to
concentrate
on the symptoms of the sick and to do what he could to cure them.

Such admirable common sense was the exception. The
European
, in the face of the Black Death, was in general overwhelmed by a sense of inevitable doom. If the plague was decreed by God and the inexorable movement of the planets, then how could frail man seek to oppose it? The preacher might counsel hope, but only with the proviso that the sins of man must first be washed away by the immensity of his suffering. The doctor might
prescribe
remedies, but with the tepid enthusiasm of a civil-defence expert advising those threatened by imminent nuclear attack to adopt a crouching posture and clasp their hands behind their necks. The Black Death descended on a people who were drilled by their theological and their scientific training into a reaction of apathy and fatalistic resignation. Nothing could have provided more promising material on which a plague might feed.

T
HE
Black Death arrived in Sicily early in October 1347, about three months before it reached the mainland. According to Michael of Piazza,
1
a Franciscan friar who wrote his history some ten years later, twelve Genoese galleys brought the infection to the port of Messina. Where they came from is unknown;
possibly
also from the Crimea, though they must have left the area several months before the galleys which bore the Black Death from Caffa to Genoa and Venice. Nor can one now know whether the disease was borne by rats and fleas or was already rampant among members of the crew; the chronicler’s description of ‘
sickness
clinging to their very bones’ suggests the latter.

Within a few days the plague had taken a firm grasp on the city. Too late to save themselves, the citizens turned on the sailors who had brought them this disastrous cargo and drove them from the port. With their going, the Black Death was
scattered
around the Mediterranean but Messina’s sufferings were no lighter for its dispersion. With hundreds of victims dying every day and the slightest contact with the sick seeming a guarantee of rapid infection, the population panicked. The few officials who might have organized some sort of measures to mitigate the danger were themselves among the first to perish. The people of Messina fled from their doomed city into the fields and vineyards of southern Sicily, seeking safety in isolation and carrying the plague with them through the countryside.

When the first victims reached the neighbouring city of Catania they were lodged in the hospital and kindly treated. But as soon as the Catanians realized the scale and nature of the disaster they concluded that, by accepting the refugees, they were condemning themselves to the same fate. Strict control over
immigration
was introduced and it was decreed that any plague victim who had already arrived and subsequently perished should be buried in pits outside the walls. ‘So wicked and timid were
the Catanians,’ wrote Michael of Piazza, ‘that they refused even to speak to any from Messina, or to have anything to do with them, but quickly fled at their approach.’ What was wickedness in the eyes of the doomed of Messina must have seemed
elementary
prudence to the menaced of Catania. The same pattern of behaviour was to be repeated all over Europe but rarely did it do any good to those who sought to save themselves by cutting themselves off from their neighbours. The Black Death had
already
breached the walls of Catania and nothing could stop it running riot through the population.

The Messinese now appealed to the Patriarch Archbishop of Catania to allow the relics of St Agatha to be taken from Catania to Messina. The Patriarch agreed but the Catanians, not
unnaturally
feeling that charity began at home and that St Agatha should remain at her post in her own cathedral, rose in protest. ‘They tore the keys from the sacristan and stoutly rebuked the Patriarch, saying that they would rather die than allow the relics to be taken to Messina.’ The Patriarch, who must have been a man of singular courage, accepted the mob’s decision but
insisted
at least on dipping some of the relics in water and
personally
taking the water with him to Messina.

‘The aforesaid Patriarch,’ reads Michael of Piazza’s account,

This description exemplifies the curious blend of sober
eye-witness
reporting and superstitious fantasy which is
characteristic
of so many similar chronicles. How much of it should one believe? How much of it, for that matter, did Michael of Piazza
believe himself? Rabies was endemic in Sicily and, since nobody can have had the time or energy to keep mad dogs in check, it is not surprising that there should have been an unusally large number running in the streets. In the circumstances the
panic-stricken
Sicilian can hardly be blamed for detecting some
supernatural
influence in their activities. But did the chronicler really believe that he, or some other reliable witness, had actually seen a black dog with a drawn sword in its paws? Or was the
statement
no more than an expression in symbolic terms of the chronicler’s belief in the dog’s daemonic possession? Probably Michael of Piazza himself would hardly have known the answer. Medieval man skated on the thinnest possible ice of verified knowledge with beneath him unplumbed and altogether
terrifying
depths of ignorance and superstition. Let the ice break and with it was lost all grasp on reality and all capacity for objective, logical analysis.

The people of Messina, disappointed of St Agatha’s relics, then set off barefoot in procession to a shrine some six miles away where was to be found an image of the Virgin said to possess exceptional powers. Once again they were discomfited and, in their discomfiture, Michael of Piazza saw another proof that the plague was God’s retribution on his erring people.

Eventually the animal was bullied or cajoled into the city and the Virgin lodged in Santa Maria la Nuova, the largest church of the city. But little good did it do the unfortunate Messinese. ‘… this coming of the image availed naught; nay, the pestilence raged so much the more violently that one man could not
succour
another but the greater part of the citizens deserted
Messina
and were scattered abroad.’

After his return from Messina the gallant Patriarch succumbed to the disease which he had combated so stoutly. He was buried
in the Cathedral at Catania. By his behaviour and by his death he set a standard which was to be matched by few indeed of his peers.

*

Quickly the plague spread over Sicily, ravaging with especial violence the towns and villages at the western end. It was not for long confined to such narrow limits. Sicily, as Professor Renouard dryly remarks,
2
‘fulfilled its natural mission as a centre of the Mediterranean world’. From thence it spread probably to North Africa by way of Tunis; certainly to Corsica and Sardinia; the Balearics, Almeria, Valencia and Barcelona on the Iberian
peninsula
; and to Southern Italy. It is remarkable, in this as in every other epidemic of bubonic plague, how closely the disease
followed
the main trade-routes.
3
Largely, of course, this is a token of the role which the rat played in the propagation of plague. But whether the Black Death travelled by rat, by unescorted flea or by infected sailor, ship was the surest and most rapid means. The Black Death, indeed, is peculiar among plagues in that the particularly high incidence of its pneumonic variant meant that it struck inland with unusual vigour. But even though it could thus attain the hinterland, its first target was still the coastal towns. It travelled from the Crimea to Moscow not overland but by way of Italy, France, England and the Hanseatic ports.
4

The three great centres for the propagation of the plague in Southern Europe were Sicily, Genoa and Venice. It seems to have arrived more or less simultaneously at the latter ports some time in January, 1348. But it was Pisa, attacked a few weeks later,
5
which provided the main point of entry to Central and Northern Italy. From there it moved rapidly inland to Rome and Tuscany. It had begun the march which was not to end until the whole continent of Europe had been blanketed by death.

In Italy the previous years had provided a chapter of disasters less dramatic but little less damaging than those which had
overtaken
the unfortunate Chinese. A crescendo of calamity was reached shortly before the plague arrived.
6
Earthquakes had done severe damage in Naples, Rome, Pisa, Bologna, Padua and Venice. The wine in the casks had become turbid: ‘a statement which,’ as the nineteenth-century German historian Hecker hopefully
remarked, ‘may be considered as furnishing a proof that changes causing a decomposition of the atmosphere had taken place.’ From July 1345 six months of almost continuous rain had made sowing impossible in many areas. The following spring things were little better. The corn crop was less than a quarter of the usual and almost all the domestic fowls had to be slaughtered for want of feeding stuffs. Even for the richest states and cities it was difficult to replace the loss by imports. ‘In 1346 and 1347 there was a severe shortage of basic foodstuffs … to the point where many people died of hunger and people ate grass and weeds as if they had been wheat.’
7
Near Orvieto the bridges were washed away by the floods and the damage done to communications all over Italy made the work of feeding the hungry still more
difficult
.
8

Inevitably prices soared. The price of wheat doubled in the six months prior to May 1347, and even bran became too costly for the poor. In April 1347 a daily ration of bread was being issued to 94,000 people in Florence; prosecutions for all minor debts were suspended by the authorities and the gates of the prisons thrown open to all except serious criminals. It is said that four thousand Florentines died either of malnutrition or from
diseases
which, if malnutrition had not first existed, would never have proved fatal.
9
And yet of all the cities of Italy, Florence, with its great wealth, its powerful and sophisticated
administration
and its relatively high standards of education and of
hygiene
, was best equipped to cope with the problems of famine and disease.

Financial difficulties in Florence and Siena, which the
agricultural
problem complicated but did not create, made things even worse. The great finance house of the Peruzzi was declared bankrupt in 1343, the Acciaiuoli and the Bardi followed in 1345. By 1346 the Florentine houses alone had lost 1.7 million florins and virtually every bank and merchant company was in
difficulties
. It was an economic disaster without precedent.
10
Even if the grain had been available it would have been hard for the cities of Tuscany to find the money to purchase it.

The final and perhaps the most dangerous element in this sombre picture was the political disorder which was an almost
invariable feature of fourteenth-century Italy. There were, said Professor Caggese,
11
no ‘events of universal import’ but only a multiplicity of ‘local dramas’. These dramas turned Italy into a bloody patch-work of bitter and seemingly unending squabbles. The Guelphs fought the Ghibellines, the Orsini fought the Colonna, Genoa fought Venice, the Visconti fought everybody and marauding German freebooters preyed on what was left. Rome was demoralized by the disappearance of the Papacy to Avignon and shaken by the revolution of Rienzo. Florence had recently experienced the rising of Brandini. Naples was in
turmoil
as Lewis of Hungary pursued his vendetta against Queen Joanna, the murderer of his brother.

For the nobles and the warriors there was, at least, glamour, excitement and a chance of booty. For the common people there was nothing except despairing fear, a total and disastrous lack of confidence in what the future might hold for them. What has been argued of Europe as a whole is,
a
fortiori
, true of Italy. The people were physically in no state to resist a sudden and severe epidemic and psychologically they were attuned to an
expectation
and supine acceptance of disaster. They lacked the will to fight; almost, one might think, they welcomed the termination of their troubles. To speak of a collective death-wish is to trespass into the world of metaphysics. But if ever there was a people with a right to despair of life, it was the Italian peasantry of the mid-fourteenth century.

*

‘Oh, happy posterity,’ wrote Petrarch of the Black Death in Florence, ‘who will not experience such abysmal woe and will look upon our testimony as a fable.’
12
The Black Death is
associated
more closely with Florence than with any other city; so much so that in contemporary and even more recent accounts it is sometimes referred to as ‘The Plague of Florence’. Partly this is because Florence at that period was one of the greatest cities of Europe and certainly the first of them to feel the full force of the epidemic. Partly it is because the plague raged there with
exceptional
intensity; certainly more severely than in Rome, Paris or Milan and at least as violently as in London or Vienna. But most of all Florence owes its notoriety to the terms in which its
sufferings
were described. In his introduction to
The
Decameron
Boccaccio
wrote what is undoubtedly and deservedly the best-known account of the Black Death and probably the most celebrated eye-witness account of any pestilence in any epoch.
13
One or two sentences from it have already appeared in this book but no account of the Black Death would be complete unless it were quoted extensively.