The Black Death

1
The Black Death

• 1347 and on - - -

2
Introduction

• Epidemic Disease
• Divider betw. Central and late Middle Ages
• Illustration
• From the
• Toggenburg
• Bible, 1411

3
3 Forms of the Disease

• Bubonic Plague.
• painful lymph node swellings, buboes
• Septicemic Plague.
• also called blood poisoning, attacked the
  blood system
• Pneumonic Plague.
• attacked the respiratory system

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The Bubonic Plague

• Painful lymph node swelling, called buboes
• In groins and armpits
• Oozing pus and blood
• Damage to the skin and underlying tissue
• Dark blotches acral necrosis ? Black Death!

5
The Bubonic Plague

• A plague victim reveals
• the telltale buboe on
• his leg. From a 14th
• Century illumination.

6
Symptoms of the bubonic Plague

• Swellings egg ? apple
• Fever of 101-105 degrees F
• Headaches and Aching joints
• Nausea and vomiting (of blood)
• General feeling of malaise
• Swellings expanding until they burst ? death
  following soon after
• Whole process 3-5 days
• NB People who didnt develop swellings
  invariably died. People with swellings might
  have a chance.
• Mortality Rate 30-75
• If 40 of population was getting infected, and
  80 of them died mortality rate of 32

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The Pneumonic Plague

• Second most commonly seen form of the Black Death

8
The Rat Flea

• The flea drinks rats blood
• The bacteria multiplies inside the flea
• The fleas stomach is blocked
• The flea is very hungry
• The flea voraciously bites a host a human
• The flea is unable to satisfy its hunger
• The flea continues to feed
• Infected blood carrying the plague bacteria is
  flowing into the humans wound
• The rat dies
• The flea dies of starvation
• The human dies

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The Path of the Plague

• Erupted in Gobi Desert, late 1320s
• Epidemic in Europe in 6th century but dormant
  since then
• Reached the shores of Italy in 1348
• Spread in every direction, primarily westward
• Lasted 3 years

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The Path of the Plague

• Traveled on trade routes and caravans
• Generally from south to north
• And east to west
• Passing through
• Italy
• France
• England
• Germany
• Denmark
• Sweden
• Poland
• Finland
• Greenland

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Preexisting Conditions

• War Civil War in China 1205-1353
• Little Ice Age at beg. Of 13th century
• The Great Famine 1315-1322 in Northern Europe
• Typhoid Epidemic
• Pestilence, maybe anthrax, hit the animals of
  Europe in 1318
• Unemployment, famine, disease

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The Path of the Plague

• The progress of the plague coincides with the
  medieval trade routes
• Iceland, North Finland, and North Sweden had no
  plague
• Norway 1348 (Oslo, Bergen)
• Denmark 1348, from Jutland to the islands, and
  then on to Sweden

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Recurrences

• Every 5-7 years
• Next plague 1360 The Pest of the Children
• Italian Plague 1629-1631
• Great Plague of Vienna in 1679
• Great Plague of London 1665-1666 one of the
  last major outbreaks
• Resembles modern day Ebola

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Efforts to Stop the Plague

• Cities were hardest hit
• Isolation healthy and sick
• Quarantine
• Isolation of incoming ships
• Here a reproduction of a peasants hovel

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Efforts to stop the Plague

• Scents - incense and aromatic oils
• Sound church bells
• Sound cannons
• Talismans
• Here burial in coffins

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Efforts to stop the Plague

• Quarantine was the best method
• Avoiding the sick
• The wealthy fled to the countryside (Isaac
  Newton)
• Pope Clement VI in Avignon sat between two large
  fires to breathe pure air. The plague bacillus
  is destroyed by heat, so this worked!

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Consequences for Populations

• Approx. 25 million deaths in Europe
• Between one third and one half of European
  population died 1348-1350
• 25 of villages depopulated
• 45-75 of Florence died in one year
• In Venice, 60 died over 18 months

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Consequences for Population

• Urban populations recovered quickly
• Rural populations recovered slowly
• Friars took a couple of generations to recover
• Pre-plague population reached in the 1500s or
  1600s
• Later period of Middle Ages was characterized by
  chronically reduced population

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Consequences for Population

• 1348
• Gaza 10.000 dead
• Aleppo 500 dead per day
• Damascus 1000 dead per day
• Syria total of 400.000 dead
• Lower mortality rate in the Middle East of less
  than one third of population

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Economic Consequences

• Shortage of laborers? rising wages for peasants
  and artisans
• Valuable artisan skills disappeared
• Oversupply of goods ? prices dropped
• For the living, standard of living rose!
• Landlords stopped freeing their serfs? serfs
  revolting and leaving the land
• The oppressed demanded fairer treatment

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Economic Consequences

• The great equalizer
• Lack of sufficient law enforcement personnel
• Promoted lawlessness
• People tried their luck

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Religious Consequences

• Persecutions of the Jews scapegoats
• Massacres and burnings
• By 1351, 60 major and 150 smaller Jewish
  communities had been exterminated
• Lepers were also targeted
• Jews expelled, moved to Poland Lithuania

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Religious Consequences

• Church lost prestige, spiritual authority,
  leadership
• Promised cures, treatment, and explanations
• No answers to the people
• Revolt against the church
• Severe shortage of clergy functioned as nurses
  and consequently died.
• The church targeted the Jews for persecution
  had killed Jesus and brought sin to the world

25
Music and Art

• Culture turned morbid
• Sense of death impending inevitable
• Death is a game, like chess!
• Dance of death death is random
• Everyone suffered
• Despair

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Music and Art

• Danse Macabre the dance of death skeletons
  mingling with the living (here Hans Holbein the
  Younger)
• Shocking juxtapositions
• Written language almost lost
• Coffins had pictures of corpses on the lid
• New creativity in motives

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The Children

• Ring a-round the rosy rosary beads give you
  Gods help
• Pocket full of posies used to stop the odor of
  rotting bodies through to cause the plague
• Ashes, ashes! the church burned the dead when
  burying became too laborious
• We all fall down! dead
• Children suffered mentally and physically
• Children were not thought worth the trouble to
  raise!

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And Now?

• The bubonic Plague still exists
• Quite common among rodent populations
• A cure is known today but the disease moves
  very quickly
• The Plague is still with us
• Hythe Ossuary, remains of victims of the Black
  Death