The Black Death: What It Was, And Characteristics Of This Pandemic
We’ve all heard of the Black Death This sad episode of humanity has appeared in numerous literary works and films, such as A world without end by Ken Follet or The Cathedral of the Sea by Ildefonso Falcones, the latter recently transferred to the small screen.
However, literature about the epidemic dates back to the 14th century, when Giovanni Bocaccio, survivor of the great mortality in the city of Florence, conceived his novel, the Decameron, like a series of short stories told to each other by friends, confined in the countryside to escape the pestilence. The novel begins with a vivid description of the epidemic, which constitutes one of the most eloquent testimonies of the calamity it caused for the European population.
Boccaccio tells us of thousands of deaths (in a single city); of husbands who abandoned their wives, and vice versa, for fear of contagion, and even parents who left their children dying in bed, alone, without attention or care. He tells us about mass graves loaded with dead people, about quick and furtive funerals, with hardly any priests and no relatives present to mourn the deceased It bears witness to the speed with which death arrived, silently, almost without warning, to the horrible torment of the sick, to the loneliness of the dying, to the chaos, the terror, the confusion.
This was the Black Plague, the most gruesome and deadly epidemic in the history of humanity In this article we will try to rescue all its aspects, and also discern, as always, between reality and fantasy.
The Black Death, or the evil that came from the East
Europe in the 14th century was an eminently mercantile land The first centuries of the Middle Ages were long gone, where the economy was predominantly local and practically subsistence. Indeed, towards the 11th century everything began to change: the towns acquired new strength with the reactivation of the economy; The bourgeois class appeared and, with it, the commercial routes, which deepened their roots in distant Asia, acquired new vitality and importance.
One of the most important routes (the Silk Road) started from China, crossed the entire Asian continent and ended in Europe. Specifically, it ended in the Italian cities, which had emerged as true leaders in international trade. One of these receiving centers was Venice, which, due to its geographical location, was the gateway for products from the East.
Between 1346 and 1347, a Mongol army laid siege to the Asian city of Caffa (on the shores of the Black Sea, which at that time was a Genoese merchant colony). According to the chronicler Gabriele de Mussis, The Asians dedicated themselves to throwing their plague victims into the city using powerful catapults Supposedly, this was the way through which the Genoese of Caffa were infected with the disease, and which they later transferred to their homes in Italy.
However, The original focus of the pestilence is unknown with certainty Some historians, such as Ole J. Benedictow, insist that its origin was the Black Sea itself, specifically the Crimean Peninsula, since there are no records of any focus in the regions closest to China. Therefore, it is unlikely that the disease traveled via the Silk Road, as other researchers have suggested.
Be that as it may, the fact is that in 1348 the pestilence was already in Europe. The pandemic moved with extraordinary speed compared to the other epidemics of Antiquity, and in the middle of that fateful year it had already devastated most of the European territories. The figures are terrifying: only 2 inhabitants out of ten escaped death. The terror had only just begun.
The end of abundance and God’s punishment
Europe had left the so-called terrors of the year 1000 far behind. The decades before the great Plague had been fruitful: Agricultural and livestock activity prospered due to the good climate and the improvement of cultivation techniques and all of this translated into a considerable improvement in nutrition, which in turn led to an extraordinary increase in the population.
But at the beginning of the 14th century, things began to go wrong. According to many authors, including the eminent French medievalist Jacques Le Goff, this situation caused an exhaustion in productive capacity, and There came a point where it was impossible to feed the entire European population Furthermore, the good climatic conditions disappeared, giving way to the so-called Little Ice Age, in which hail and frost caused meager harvests that were clearly insufficient for so many mouths.
All of this, as expected, caused an excessive famine that weakened the population and left them practically defenseless against the arrival of the Black Death. The result: Death fell even among the youngest and apparently healthiest, and did not differentiate at all between sexes, ages or social classes. For all these reasons, the Europeans of the time believed that the pestilence was a punishment from God for their many serious sins.
Penance versus carpe diem
At this point, religious hysteria broke out. Endless processions, prayers to ask God for mercy, flagellants who tore their skin to wash away the sins of the world with their blood… the so-called Dances of Death spread, macabre musical performances in which the Grim Reaper called the living to leave for his kingdom. Pessimism spread across Europe; No one really believed that humanity could survive this second Flood. It was the end.
Curiously, this certainty that times were ending and, with them, life, led to the proliferation in some sectors and social groups of a reaction absolutely contrary to what we have commented before. Instead of retiring to pray, or to do penance to ask God for forgiveness of sins, certain people chose carpe diem as a response to the collective shipwreck Thus, many dedicated themselves to having fun, drinking and eating, frequenting the city brothels more than ever, and even neglecting their chores and obligations. What did it matter? The world was ending. And if it’s over, those people must have thought, it’s better that we take advantage of these last moments and take a good memory with us to the other world.
This second reaction is the one that Boccaccio collects in the aforementioned Decameron, when he tells us the story of these ten young people who cloister themselves in a beautiful villa in the countryside to wait for the plague to pass, and who to mitigate their boredom they dedicate themselves to love, food, music, laughter and ridicule. In short: they laugh at death.
“The stigmatization of Jews
Unaware of the nature of the disease, the medievals could only establish conjectures about it And as it is known that in all misfortunes there always has to be a scapegoat, on this occasion it was the Jewish community’s turn.
Jews were accused of such vile and unprecedented acts as poisoning water wells to spread pestilence Thus, numerous popular attacks on Jewish neighborhoods were recorded, and in some places they became truly atrocious. In Tárrega, for example, there are about 300 victims, all of whom died in a truly gruesome way.
However, it is not clear whether the attackers really believed the poisoning story, or whether it was just an excuse to vent their hatred. It is worth remembering that the impoverishment of the population had made it impossible to repay the loans granted by the Jewish bankers… and many of the Christians did not forgive it.
Rats and the plague
Obviously, in the Middle Ages the pathogenic elements causing the diseases were unknown In fact, it was not until a very recent date, 1870, that science finally managed to discover these tiny beings that were responsible for so much death and suffering. And it was at the end of the 19th century, following an outbreak of plague that occurred in China, when Dr. Yersin described in detail the microorganism responsible for causing the disease. In his honor, he named the little enemy Yersinia Pestis.
But how did Yersinia act? It was shown that the main carrier of the bacteria was the black rat, very common in Europe. From the rodent, fleas that fed on their blood could travel to humans and transmit the disease With minimal levels of hygiene this contagion was practically impossible, but we have to remember that in the Middle Ages, rats were common guests in both cities and the countryside.
In addition to infection through rat fleas, there was another way to contract the disease. And was through the expectorations of the sick At this point we will have to clarify that the Black Death manifested itself in three different ways.
One, the bubonic plague (the most common and famous), for which the bacteria traveled through the lymphatic system and inflamed the lymph nodes which turned into buboes.
A second way, also quite common, in which the bacteria managed to reach the bloodstream and, through it, settle in the lungs of the patient. In this case, pneumonic plague appeared, whose symptoms were persistent cough and expectoration of bloody, highly contagious sputum.
Finally, A third type of Black Death was the septicemic, the most dangerous of all and that never left any survivors. In this case, the bacteria proliferated in the blood and infected it. Black spots then appeared on the patient’s skin, and he died a few hours after infection. It is the modality that caused the most terror (the “sudden death”), since a person could be healthy in the morning and die hours later, between convulsions and very high fevers.
Europe after the Black Death
At the end of the 14th century, Europe was literally devastated. By 1353 three parts of its population had died (that is, about 25 million people). Entire towns were uninhabited, fields were not cultivated due to lack of labor the cities had lost their commercial drive due to high mortality (in Florence, for example, only a fifth of the population survived).
The Plague also caused an important social change: the few peasants who remained, aware that the lords needed them to work the land, began to demand more and more rights. It is not surprising, then, that the great peasant revolutions, such as the Remença, which bathed Catalonia in blood, occurred in those years of instability and change.
The world would never be the same after the Black Death. In fact, quite a few historians place this capital fact as the exit door of the Middle Ages in Europe
