BLACK DEATH
. Beginning in late 1347, most of western Europe was attacked by a pandemic that
overshadows both the earlier outbreaks in 6th- and 7th-century eastern Gaul and the
recurrent epidemics from the 14th through the 16th centuries. The plague later acquired
the labels “bubonic” and “black,” for the swellings and hematomas it caused, but it was
called the “Great Pestilence” by contemporaries. It originated in the Far East and was
spread by the rat-flea as carrier of the pasteurella pestis. Landing in Marseille in
December 1347, the disease swept along the coast and up the Rhône, entering Avignon
within the next month. By August 1348, it had ravaged Languedoc and reached
Bordeaux, overran Provence and Burgundy, and entered Paris. Before year’s end, it raged
through Normandy and the northern counties.
Populous, weakened by famines, and distressed by war, France suffered the highest
mortality. Fatalities ran between one-fifth of the pontifical courtiers to over half of the
population in many rural parishes from Anjou to Savoy. In Paris, Jean de Venette
recalled, over 500 dead were buried each day. Religious communities were afflicted
disproportionately, with several monasteries in the south decimated or exterminated. The
poor were defenseless, but even the noble were not exempt: Philip VI’s queen, Jeanne of
Burgundy, and her daughter-in-law Bonne de Luxembourg succumbed in the last weeks
of the pandemic. Many fell ill but lived, and some of these left poignant testimonies,
notably the mystic friar Jean de Roquetaillade and the papal physician Gui de Chauliac.
Distinguishing between pneumonic and bubonic plague, Chauliac reported that in the
former, more contagious and prevalent in winter, people died within three days after
running a high fever and spitting blood; in the latter, the victims often survived after
developing abscesses, particularly in the armpits and groin. The vast medical literature
generated by the pestilence, including an official report by the University of Paris made
at the request of Philip VI, was largely sterile. Scientific attempts to determine the causes,
while more rational than the popular explanations, hinged on humoral theories and
astrological beliefs. Prescriptions offered, at best, commonsensical precautions and
palliation; at worst, they recommended such dangerous procedures as bleeding and the
lancing of buboes. Many physicians evidently labored heroically, for the profession
suffered more from a severe decline in numbers than from a crisis of credibility.
The socioeconomic and cultural consequences of the Black Death, ranging from
inflation and class changes to mass psychoses and a preoccupation with mortality, cannot
always be isolated from the impact of the Hundred Years’ War and of subsequent
epidemics. Among the immediate effects, however, may be counted an extension of the
Truce of 1347, a setback for constitutional reforms, and the outbreak of the flagellant
movement, which, though banned from the realm, raged in the fringe regions of Flanders,
Hainaut, and Lorraine.
Luke Demaitre
[See also: DISEASES; MILLENNIALISM; POPULATION AND DEMOGRAPHY]
The Encyclopedia 247