The disease arrived in Messina, Sicily aboard a merchant ship returning from a Crimean port. The sailors had black lumps in their armpits and groins about the size of an egg or an apple. The black swellings oozed blood and pus and spread over the men’s bodies as boils and black spots caused by internal bleeding. A revoltingly foul odor emanated from their bodies.
The disease spread rapidly through the cities of northern Italy, then the center of international commerce. From Italy, it traveled on ships to Marseille, then on to ports in northern Europe. Crowded cities with poor sanitation succumbed overnight. Horrified aristocrats and unemployed workers fled the cities spreading the disease into the countryside.
As the disease spread, unaffected areas tried to block outsiders from bringing them the infection. They barricaded roads and closed city gates. They succumbed anyway.
The fatal disease was bubonic plague which attacked in two strains. The hemorrhagic strain infected the bloodstream causing internal bleeding and excruciating pain and killed within five days. The pneumonic strain infected the lungs making it increasingly difficult to breathe. It killed within 24 hours to three days after an infection. The plague is with us today in a children’s rhyme.
Ring around the rosy
Pocket full of posy
Achoo! Achoo!
We all fall down
Bubonic plague arrived in Italy in October 1347. By 1349 it had killed about half the population of Europe. Most Europeans blamed China because the disease spread along the trade routes from there. It probably originated in the central Asian steppes and spread along the Silk Road to China, then to the Middle East and on to Europe.
In the 14th century, medicine relied on astrology rather than social distancing and antiseptics. Doctors at the University of Paris concluded the disease was caused by misaligned planets. Their medical report became a bestseller as every literate person in Europe bought a copy trying to find answers to the horrible affliction. The report’s popularity created a brand new industry of publishing in French, Spanish, English and other European languages.
Survivors told stories of doctors treating their patients and priests administering last rites to parishioners until these caregivers succumbed to the plague. Survivors also told stories of doctors and priests who charged exorbitant fees for their services or simply refused to help due to fear for their own lives.
Sick people might forego a doctor, but they couldn’t do without a priest. Only a priest could administer last rites to save the dying person’s soul from eternal damnation. Since there weren’t enough priests to attend all the dying, the pope authorized monks and city and town officials to administer last rites to the dying.
When that wasn’t sufficient, the pope authorized families to pay the Church to administer absolution in the future for their dead. This quickie religious fix to save souls evolved into the corrupt “indulgences” practice at the heart of Martin Luther’s protest in 1517 when he nailed his 95 Theses to a church door.
After 1349, the bubonic plague abated because the most susceptible were dead and a sort of herd immunity existed among the living. The disease returned periodically over the next couple of centuries but only in isolated spots and without the mass die off.
But the plague irrevocably changed European society. People became pessimistic believing God had punished them for their sins, although no one could say exactly what sin justified such suffering. They lost faith in government leaders who were unable to protect them from the plague.
The economic system of loyalty to a liege lord changed. Serfs demanded freedom in exchange for continuing to farm land owned by aristocrats and kings. Many aristocrats died without a will, leaving vast tracts of land without an owner. With no liege lord to claim them, farm workers moved to the cities to take jobs paying high wages due to a worker shortage. That set Europe on the path to a money-based economy.
Today, the covid-19 pandemic evokes the same responses as the bubonic plague did over 600 years ago. Pessimism and anxiety are on the rise because we don’t know how to stop the disease from spreading and killing more people. Economic uncertainty affects every industry and workers don’t know which businesses will survive. Covid-19 will change our world as the bubonic plague changed 14th century Europe. As happened then, not all of the changes will be bad.
My account of the Black Death is based on A Distant Mirror, by Barbara W. Tuchman (1978).
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