The Black Death

The outbreak of the plague called the Black Death can be traced to 1347, when a ship from the Crimea berthed in Messina, on the island of Sicily. Apart from its regular cargo, the ship also carried the plague.a Soon the Black Death spread throughout Italy.

The following year Agnolo di Tura, of Siena, Italy, described the horror in his hometown: ‘The mortality in Siena began in May. It was a cruel and horrible thing. The victims died almost immediately. They died by the hundreds, both day and night.’ He added: ‘I buried my five children with my own hands, and so did many others likewise. Nobody wept no matter what his loss because almost everyone expected death. So many died that all believed it was the end of the world.’

Within four years, say some historians, the plague spread throughout Europe and about a third of the population lost their life​—perhaps between 20 million and 30 million people. Even remote Iceland was decimated. It is said that in the Far East, the population of China slumped from 123 million at the beginning of the 13th century to 65 million during the 14th century, apparently as a result of the plague and the accompanying famine.

No previous epidemic, war, or famine had ever caused such widespread suffering. “It was a disaster without equal in human history,” notes the book Man and Microbes. “Somewhere between one-quarter and one-half of the people in Europe, North Africa, and parts of Asia perished.”

The Americas escaped the ravages of the Black Death, thanks to their isolation from the rest of the world. But oceangoing ships soon brought that isolation to an end. In the 16th century, a wave of epidemics that proved even more lethal than the plague ravaged the New World.

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Knowledge Versus Superstition

In the 14th century, when the Black Death threatened the pope’s household in Avignon, his doctor informed him that the conjunction of three planets​—Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars—​in the sign of Aquarius was the principal cause of the plague.

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A German engraving, dating from about 1500, depicts a doctor wearing a mask to protect against the Black Death. The beak contained perfume

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Godo-Foto

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The bacteria that caused the bubonic plague

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© Gary Gaugler/Visuals Unlimited