Christianity and the Black Death Seeking solace
What literature tells about people’s struggle with faith in a pandemic
A recent Pew Research poll found that religious faith had deepened for a quarter of Americans because of the coronavirus pandemic. Some might indeed take solace in religion at a time of uncertainty, such as a pandemic, but the literary texts that I teach in my university course, “Pandemics in Literature,” suggest that this is not always the case: Faith may deepen for some, while others may reject or abandon it altogether.
In one of the most well known works of pandemic literature, Giovanni Boccaccio’s “The Decameron” — sales of which have reportedly risen during the coronavirus — faith and religion are mocked and satirized.
“The Decameron” is a set of one hundred stories told by seven young women and three young men quarantined from the Black Death on the outskirts of medieval Florence.
Interestingly, “The Decameron” is the earliest and most significant text that shows a rejection of Christianity at a time when most of Europe was still under the powerful influence of the Catholic Church and its teachings.
In Boccaccio’s massive collection of novellas, monks and other dignitaries of the Church are ridiculed, disparaged and shown in their human fallibility. For example, in the fourth story on the first day, an abbot and a monk conspire to bring a willing young girl into a monastery — an act that is celebrated by the narrators as brave and laudable, even though this went against every religious and moral doctrine of the time.
This and other stories show that personal faith or the church and priests are never able to help humans in their vulnerability. Instead, it is earthly love or passion that become the driving forces of human behavior.
Both the structure and the representatives of the Catholic Church as well as the possibility for individual, personal faith are rejected in Boccaccio’s collection.
Religion in the time of cholera
In German writer Thomas Mann’s wellknown novella of 1912, “Death in Venice,” an outbreak of cholera affects the protagonist Gustav von Aschenbach, a learned man.
On the face of it, Mann’s novella does not seem to engage with religion or faith. Yet, Aschenbach’s character is deeply rooted in the religious principles and values of a Protestant work ethic. For Mann, Aschenbach’s service to art and literature is like religion because of his dedication — he writes stoically every day, even when it’s difficult.
When Aschenbach decides to travel to cholerastricken Venice, he is seduced by the Polish boy Tadzio, who not only unleashes Aschenbach’s sudden homoerotic desire but also leads him to feast on cholera-infested strawberries that eventually kill him.
Since Tadzio, the object of Aschenbach’s forbidden love, is always an object of adoration and never a subject, it is easy to regard him as a personification of art. Aschenbach’s admiration of Tadzio is almost religious: Tadzio is depicted as an “angel” when he is seen to follow “the Summoner,” the angel of death, embodied by Tadzio: “It seemed to him the pale and lovely Summoner out there smiled at him and beckoned; (…) And, as so often before, he rose to follow.”
In the face of cholera, religion, in “Death in Venice,” gets replaced with art as a spiritual experience; earthly love becomes a substitute for personal faith. Agnes Mueller is Professor of German and Comparative Literature at University of South Carolina.
The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts. The Conversation is wholly responsible for the content.