The Black Death
However bad the coronavirus may be, it is not a patch on the great plague that ravaged Europe in the 14th century
What caused the plague?
The Black Death was caused by the bacterium which was carried primarily by the Oriental rat flea,
which in turn was carried by the black rat, – though other fleas and rodents also served as vectors. The prevailing theory now is that it emerged in Central Asia in the 1330s, as rodents were forced into closer contact with humans by a series of ecological upheavals. It spread along the Eurasian steppe via the Silk Road, and entered the historical record at the Crimean city of Caffa on the Black Sea, in 1347. Mongol soldiers laying siege to Caffa began to fall sick and die from the plague, and their general, Khan Janibeg, ordered disease-ridden corpses to be catapulted over the city walls to spread the infection among the inhabitants. It worked. Genoese merchants who had been trading in the city fled in terror on ships infested with flea-ridden black rats – taking the disease with them.
Yersinia pestis,
Xenopsylla cheopis,
Rattus rattus
How did it spread from there?
From Caffa it reached Constantinople in the summer of 1347. In October, 12 Genoese galleys put into the port of Messina in Sicily; port authorities found most of the men onboard dead or dying. Its deadly spread through western Europe had begun. In an age of increasing maritime commerce, the disease first reached major trading ports like Naples and Marseille. Then, it spread to nearby towns and countryside, sometimes travelling at a rate of up to two miles a day. It arrived in Melcombe Regis, Dorset, on a ship from Gascony in June 1348. By the following year, it had spread to the north of England, Wales and Ireland and, in 1350, it reached Scotland. In 1351, after wreaking devastation across Europe and North Africa – notably in Egypt, Italy, Spain, France, the low countries and Britain – the disease finally began to burn itself out.
Europe’s people were wiped out; its population did not recover until the early 16th century. Perhaps 25 million people died there out of a world population of 450 million. The Justinian plague aside, “nothing like this has happened before or since in the history of mankind”, according to the medievalist Norman Cantor. In England, in two years, two million out of a total of 4.8 million died. The sense of doom was captured by an Irish monk writing in 1349, who said he was leaving a record “in case anyone should be alive in the future”. Corpses were stacked in city plague pits “like lasagne” according to one Florentine chronicler, after being collected by cart drivers who issued daily commands to “Bring down your dead!”
How did people react?
The 14th century Italian author Boccaccio observed a breakdown of social order as “terror was struck into the hearts of men and women”, such that “brother abandoned brother... fathers and mothers refused to see and tend their children”. Peasants stopped work, “as if they expected death that very day”. The wealthy took refuge in country houses – though not all were spared: England lost two archbishops and Edward III’s daughter, Joan. It was blamed on “miasma” – bad air – and there were no effective treatments: sweating, bloodletting and forced vomiting were tried, along with ointments from chopped-up snake and herbs. More usefully, there was quarantine, a word that emerged from the Italian for “40 days” during the 1340s. The disease was attributed primarily to the wrath of God; or blamed on scapegoats.