Howard Hughes

The Black Death is a Pandémie of Bubonic plague which has affected all the Europe between 1347 and 1350. It is neither the first nor the last epidemic of this type, but it is the only one to bear this name. On the other hand, it is the first epidemic of the history to being described well by the Chronique the USSR contemporaries.

It is estimated that the Black Death caused the death of a quarter to a third of the European population, that is to say around 25 million victims, and probably the same number in Asia. The Black Death had durable consequences on European civilization, the more so as after this first wave, the disease then regularly remade its appearance in the various touched countries (for example between 1353 and 1355 in France, between 1360 and 1369 in England, etc)

Preceding epidemics

The Moyen-âge is crossed by many epidemics. The Peste of Justinien devastated the Roman Empire of the East at the 6th century and was surely at the origin of the demographic deficit of the Early middle ages in Europe. The Lèpre also prevails there in a chronic way since the Antiquité. Other more or less virulent and localized epidemics but often badly identified started sporadically. Except perhaps the badly of burning the which is due to a food poisoning, the majority of these epidemics coincide with the Disette S or the Famine S which weaken the organizations.

Chronology

Origins

The bubonic plague prevailed in an endemic way in Central Asia, and they are surely the wars between Mongolian and Chinese which started the epidemic. She declares in 1334 in the Chinese province of the Hubei and spreads herself quickly in the close provinces (Jiangxi, Shanxi, Hunan, Guangdong, Guangxi, Henan and Suiyuan, an old province disputed between the empires Mongolian and Chinese).

In 1346, the Tatars attack the port city of Caffa, commercial counter génois on the edges of the Black Sea, in the Crimea and establish its seat. The epidemic, brought back Central Asia by the Mongolian touches soon besieging and besieged, because the Mongols catapult their corpses over the walls to infect the city.

The seat is broken after Tartar alliance géno- and the boats leaving the city transmit the plague to all the ports where they stop: the Metz-native disease reached (September 1347), Genoa and Marseilles (December 1347). Venice is reached in June 1348. In one year, all the Mediterranean circumference is reached.

Consequently, the plague devastates all the Europe south in north, more especially as it meets a favorable ground, the population being already weakened by Famine S with repetition, epidemics due to a climatic cooling which began at the end of the 13th century and wars. The proliferation of the rats also played a big role, the cats having almost disappeared at the 14th century.

Diffusion

The Black Death is spread like a wave, and is not established durably at the touched places. The average death rate from approximately 30% of the total population (and 60 to 100% of the infested population) is such as weakest are quickly killed, and the plague on average lasts only six to nine months.

Since Marseilles (November 1347), it gains quickly Avignon (January 1348), then quoted papal and crossroads of the Christian world, which gives him a formidable platform of diffusion. It reaches Paris in June 1348, and in December 1348, all the southernmost Europe of Greece in the south of England is touched. In December 1349, the plague crossed all almost the Germany, the Denmark, the England, the Wales, a good part of the Ireland and Scotland. It continues then its progression towards the east and north devastating the Scandinavia in 1350, then loses in the vast uninhabited plains of Russia in 1351.

It is noted that this progression is not homogeneous. The areas all are not in the same way touched and of the villages and even certain cities are saved like Bruges, Milan and Nuremberg at the price of drastic measurements of exclusion, and it is the same for the Béarn and the Poland (chart opposite).

Consequences

The plague causes important economic, social and religious disorders:

the labor has suddenly missed and its cost increases, in particular in agriculture. Many villages are given up, of the grounds fall down in waste land and the forest develops;
the cities désertifient the ones after the others, the medicine of the time not having neither knowledge nor the capacities to suppress the epidemics;
the land incomes crumble, following the fall of the rate of the royalties and with the rise of the wages;
of the groups of Whipping S is formed and tried of expier their sins before the Apocalypse, because they think that the plague is only one sign heralding;
the Jewish S, the gipsies, “Travelling entertainers” and another generally known population under the name of Canting hypocrites, made guilty by the population which thinks that they poison the wells, are persecuted in spite of the protection of the Pape Clément VI (see below).

The plague also marks arts: to see the macabre dances in particular.

Human account

The documentary sources are rather scattered and generally cover a longer period, but they allow a rather reliable approximation. The historians intend themselves to estimate the proportion of dead between 30 % and 50 % of the European population. The cities are touched hard than the campaigns because of concentration of the population, but also of the food shortages and difficulties of provisioning which the plague caused. It seems that in Europe, the tendency was with the fall since the beginning of the 14th century, because of the famines and of overpopulation. This decrease lasted until the beginning of the 15th century, amplified by the assessment of the plague.

In France, between 1340 and 1440, the population passed from 17 to 10 million inhabitants is 42% less. The parochial register of Givry (Saône-et-Loire), one among most precise, watch that on approximately 1.500 inhabitants, 649 burials took place in 1348, including 630 from June to September, for a parish which counted approximately 40 of them per annum usually, is a death rate of 40,6 %.

In Italy, it is commonly admitted by the historians that the plague killed at least half of the inhabitants. Only Milan seems to be saved, though the sources are very few and vague on this subject. The contemporary sources quote alarming death rates: eight out of ten with Majorque, as much with Florence, three out of four with Venice, etc

In Spain, the plague could decimate from 30 to 60% of the population, in particular that of the Aragon (nine waves between 1348 and 1401).

In Austria, one counts 40.000 victims with Vienna and 25 to 35% of the population is decimated.

It is the England which left us the most sources, which paradoxically makes the estimate of death rate more difficult, the historians basing their calculations on different documents. The advanced figures go thus from 20 % with 50 %. However, the estimates of population between 1300 and 1450 show a reduction located in a fork of 45 % with 70 %. Even if there still the fall of population were a tendency before the arrival of the plague, these estimates return the bottom of the fork (20 %) not very credible, more especially as this rate is based on documents concerning of the laic landowners who are not representative of the population primarily country and weakened by the food shortages.

It is also estimated that the town population of Germany decreased by half. Hamburg would have lost 66% of its population, Bremen 70%, the Pomérélie 42%.

Antijuives riots

As of 1348, the plague causes antijuives riots in Provence. The Synagog of Saint-Rémy-of-Provence is burnt (it will be rebuilt out of the city in 1352). Juifs are burned with Serres, in Dauphiné, others massacred in Navarre and Castille. May 13rd 1348, the Jewish district of Barcelona is plundered.

The Ashkénaze S of Germany are victims of Pogrom S. In September 1348, the Juifs of the area of Chillon, on the Lac Léman in Suisse, are tortured until they wrongfully acknowledge to have poisoned the wells. Their confessions cause the fury of the population which is devoted to massacres and expulsions. Three hundred communities are destroyed or expelled. Six thousand Jews are killed with Mainz. Many Jews flee towards the east, in Poland and Lithuania.

Many Jews are burned with Strasbourg the February 14th 1349, others are thrown in the Vienna with Chinon. In Austria, the people, taken of panic, is caught some at the Jewish communities suspected of having diffused the epidemic and Albert II of Austria must intervene to protect its subjects Juifs.

For more information on persecutions whose Jews were the object following the Black Death, one will refer to the History Jews by Heinrich Graetz.

Treatments

The medicine of the 14th century is quite impotent vis-a-vis the plague which is spread, the overflowed doctors can only make in front of this disease which reaches them as much as their patients. Nevertheless, some councils, vain, are given:

to burn trunks of cabbages and peels of Quince
to light odoriferous wood fires in the thatched cottages
to make boil water and roast the meats
to take hot baths
to practice the sexual abstinence
to practice many bled
to manage emetic S and Laxative S, the effect obtained being the weakening of the patients who more quickly die
to organize solemn religious processions to move away the demons

In the literature

The Décaméron of the Italian author Boccace has as a framework the Black Death of 1348 which prevails in Florence.

Several uchronies was written on the topic of the Black Death. Thus in the Door of the worlds of Robert Silverberg, the author imagines that the Black Death is much more fatal, eliminating the three quarters from the European population and changing the history of the world completely. This idea is also taken up by Kim Stanley Robinson in Chroniques of the black years, but in this Uchronie it is the totality of the inhabitants of the Europe which dies, involving (in the same way that in the preceding novel) a history completely different from that which one knows.

Random links: