The Black Death — Part One
An Unseen Terror Arrives in Medieval Europe
The Tempest Cometh…
In 1346, whispers first reached Europe that something terrible, something calamitous, was besieging the East.
“In the East… horrors and unheard-of tempests overwhelmed the whole province… a rain of frogs, serpents, lizards, scorpions… thunder was heard and lightning and sheets of fire fell upon the earth… there fell fire from heaven and stinking smoke, which slew all that were left of men and beasts and burned up all the cities and towns… by these tempests the whole province was infected… through the foul blast of wind that came from the South… and are waxing more and more poisonous from day to day…” Anonymous Flemish Cleric in a letter to a friend in 1346
Grim rumors of pestilence abounded in the bustling port cities of Venice and Genoa. Merchants familiar with the Eastern trade routes spoke of overflowing graveyards, villages choked by death, and a disease so swift and savage it defied comprehension.
These whispered horrors sent shivers down the spines of those already accustomed to hardship; for while famine, war, and plague were familiar foes, this looming terror promised something unlike anything Europe had ever faced before.
Life in the late Middle Ages was far from idyllic for most Europeans. A rigid social hierarchy held them firmly in place. Kings and nobles bickered and fought amongst themselves and wielded absolute power over the masses. Legions of serfs toiled the land or bled in battles, with little hope of freedom or advancement.
The omnipresent Roman Catholic Church provided spiritual guidance, but with an iron fist. It dictated strict social and religious norms, leaving no room for dissent. Heretics and non-believers faced swift and brutal punishment.
Medicine, compared to our modern understanding, was shrouded in superstition and mysticism. Treatments relied heavily on prayer, pilgrimages, and dubious concoctions of herbs and bloodletting. Galen’s ancient theory of the four humors held sway, leaving Europe woefully unprepared for the biological rampage to come.
This rigid, insular world, where faith and hierarchy reigned supreme, stood on the precipice of a terrifying new future. The unseen beast of Plague, its hunger already whetted by the suffering in the East, prepared its deadly advance.
And, when it arrived, it would find a people terrified, confounded, and tragically ill-equipped to face such a formidable foe.
The Nightmare Begins…
In October 1347, the shadow of the Plague beast fell upon the vibrant port of Messina, Sicily.
A merchant fleet limped into the harbor and, when the dockworkers arrived to unload the cargo, they stumbled upon an horrific scene: Sailors lay stricken, their bodies ravaged by buboes, grotesque swellings oozing pus and blood.
Rats scampered from the ships and onto the docks, the fleas on their backs carrying the invisible killer: Yersinia pestis, the bacteria responsible for the Plague.
Within days, a chilling silence descended upon the bustling docks and the first European succumbed to the illness.
Panic, raw and primal, ripped through the city. Messina, once teeming with life, became a ghost town as terrified residents fled, unknowingly carrying the Black Death in their bodies and belongings.
Merchants, oblivious to the deadly cargo they now bore, continued their journeys, spreading disease and death from port to port.
Like wildfire, the plague followed the trade routes, weaving a macabre tapestry of suffering and death across the continent.
What is The Black Death?
The moniker of ‘The Black Death’ still strikes terror into hearts today, but it’s worth knowing that the phrase describes a terrifying Pandemic that engulfed Europe from 1347 to 1353.
The actual name of the disease is the Plague and it wore three faces, each as deadly as the other.
The most common ‘face’ was the Bubonic Plague, which attacked the lymph nodes and transformed them into swollen, agonizing buboes that oozed pus and blood. Fever, chills, and weakness accompanied its gruesome progression and it was fatal in 60% of cases.
The Bubonic variant of the Plague spread through the bites of infected fleas, carried by their unwitting rodent hosts.
Giovanni Boccaccio, an Italian writer, described the physical appearance of the Bubonic plague in his introduction to his famous book, The Decameron:
“… in men and women alike, it first betrayed itself by the emergence of certain tumours in the groin or the armpits, some of which grew as large as a common apple, others as an egg… which the common folk called gavocciolo. From the two said parts of the body, this deadly gavocciolo soon began to propagate and spread in all directions indifferently; after which the form of the malady began to change, black spots or livid making their appearance in many cases on the arm or the thigh or elsewhere…”
The Pneumonic Plague, swift and merciless, followed close behind. This second variant caused hacking coughs, choked with blood and phlegm. Difficulty breathing, chest pain, and fever led to respiratory failure within days.
Pneumonic Plague spread through the coughs and sneezes of the infected, and claimed a near-100% mortality rate.
Gui de Chauliac, French Physician at the Papal Court (then located in Avignon, France) witnessed the second variant of the Black Death:
“It was of two types,” he wrote. “[One] with continuous fever and spitting of blood and from this, one died in three days. The second… also with continuous fever but with carbuncles on the external parts, principally in the armpits and groin. From this, one died in five days.”
Finally, the Septicemic Plague emerged as the swiftest and most horrifying of the three. It bypassed the lymph nodes and coursed directly through the bloodstream, turning the skin black and shutting down vital organs. Death came within hours, swift and absolute.
Like the Pneumonic Plague, it spread through the infected droplets of its victims.
I cannot find a specific primary source describing the Septicemic variation, but Boccaccio claims to have witnessed two pigs snuffling into the rags of a poor man who had just died of plague. According to Boccaccio, the pigs smelt the rags, tossed them to and fro between them, then almost immediately ran around and around and tumbled dead to the ground.
When the Plague struck Europe in the mid-1300s, most believed that it was God’s retribution for the perceived wickedness of the world at the time.
Philip Ziegler summarizes it thus in his brilliant book, The Black Death:
“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.” Philip Ziegler, The Black Death, p36
