.~-,-l

778 HENRY DAVID THOREAU

harrowed by witnessing the struggle, the ferocity and carnage, of a human bat-

tle before my door. Kirby and Spence tell us that the battles of ants have long been celebrated

and the date of them recorded , thoogh they say that Huber 5

is the only mod- ern author who appears to have witnessed them. "Aeneas Sylvius," say they, "after giving a very circumstantial account of one contested with great obsti- nacy by a great and small species on th e trunk of a pea r tree," adds that " 'this action was fought in the pontificate of Eugenius th e Fourth, in the presence of Nicholas Pistorie nsis , an eminent lawyer, who related the whole history of the battle with the greatest fidelity.' A similar engagement between great a nd small ants is recorded by Olaus Magnus , in which the small ones, being victorious, are said to have buried the bodies of their own soldiers, but left those of their giant enemies a prey to the birds . This event happen e d previous to the ex']Jul- sion of the tyrant Christiern the Second from Sweden." The battle which I witnessed took place in the Presidency of Polk, five years before the passage of

Webster's Fugitive-Slave Bill. 6

5. Kirby and Spence were nineteenth-c e ntury American en tomologists; Fran<;ois Huber

( J 750-l 83 J) was a great Swiss entomologist.

6. Passed in 185 J.

QUESTIONS

I. Thoreau uses the Latin word bellum to describe the battle of the ants and follows it with a reference to the Myrmidons, the sold iers of Achilles in Homer's lliild. Locale ad- ditional examples oF this kind of allusion. How does it work? Why does Thoreau com-

pare the ants to Greek so ldiers? 2. Ordinarily we speak of accounts of natural events as ''natural history" and accounts of human events as "his tory." Ho w does Thoreau, in this selection, blur the distinction?

To what effect? 3. Look up a description of the behavio r of ants in a book by one of the entomologists Thoreau refers to or in another scientific text. Compa re the scientist's style with Thoreau's. Take another event in nature and describe it twice, once in scientific and once in allusive lan guage. Or write an essay in which you describe and analyze the dif-

ferences between th e sc ie nti st's style and Thoreau's.

BARBARA TucHMAN "This Is the End of the World": The Blach. Death

I N OCTOBER 1347, two months after the fall of

Calais, 1 Genoese trading ships put into the harbor of Messina in Sicily with dead and dying m e n at the oars. The ships had come from the Black Sea port of Caffa (now Feodosiya) in the Crimea, w here the Genoese maintained a trading post. The diseased

sailors showed strange black swellings about the size of an egg or an apple in the armpits and groin. The swellings oozed blood and pus and were followed by spreading boils and black blotches on the skin from internal bleeding. The sick suffered severe pain and died quickly within five days of th e first symp- toms . As th e disease spread, other symptoms of continuous fever and spitting of blood appeared instead of the swellings or buboes. These victims coughed and sweated heavily and died even more quickly, within three days or Jess, sometimes in 24 hours. In both types everything that issued from the body- breath , sweat, blood from the buboes and lungs, bloody urin e, and blood- blackened excre ment-smelled foul. Depression and despair accompan ied the physical symptoms, and before the end "death is seen seated on the face."

The disease was bubonic plague, present in two forms: one that infected the bloodstream, causing the buboes and internal bleeding, and was spread by con- tact; and a second, more virulent pneumonic type that infected the lungs and was spread by respiratory infection. The presence of both at once caused the high mortality and speed of contagion. So let hal was the disease that cases were known of persons going to bed well and dyin g befo re they woke, of doc- tors catching the illness at a bedside and dying before the patient. So rapidly did it spread from one to another that to a French physician, Simon de Covino, it seemed as if one sick person "could infect the whole wo rld. " The malignity of th e pestilence appeared more te rrible because its victims knew no prevention and no remedy.

The physical suffering of the disease and its aspect of evil mystery were expressed in a strange Welsh lament which saw "death coming into our midst like black smoke, a plague which cuts off the young, a rootless phantom which has no mercy for fair countenance. Woe is me of the s hilling in the armpit! It is seething, terrible ... a head that gives pain an d causes a loud cry ... a painful angry knob ... Great is its seething like a burning cinder ... a griev- ous thing of ashy color." Its eruption is ugly like the "seeds of black peas, bro- ken fragments of brittle sea-coal . . the early ornaments of black death,

From A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century ( I 978 ). iu which 'fliCinun" presents a vivid picture of life in Htedieval France and draws porallels betweeu the dis(/s/ers of that tim.e and those in our own.

I. After a year-long siege, the French citizens of Calais s urr.cnde rcd to Echvard Ill , king of England and self-declared king of France.

779

780 BARBARA TucHMAN

The Triumph of Death. A detail from a fresco by Francesco Traini in th e Cam-

posanto, Pisa, c. 1350.

cinders of the peelings of the cockle weed, a mixed multitude, a black plague

like halfpence , like berries .... " Rumors of a te rrible plague supposedly arising in China a nd spreading

through Tartary (Central Asia) to India and Persia , Mesopotamia, Syria, Egypt, a nd all of Asia Minor h ad reac hed Europe in 1346. They told of a dea th toll so devastating that all of India was said to be depopulate d , whole territories cov- ered by dead bodies, other areas with no one left alive. As added up by Pope Clement VI at Avignon, the total of reported dead reach ed 23,840,000. In the absence of a concept of contagion, no serious alarm was felt in Europe until th e trading ships brought their black burden of pestilence into Messina while other infected ships from the Leva nt carried it to Genoa and Venice.

By January 1348 it pe ne trated France via Marseille , and North Africa via Tunis. Shipborn e along coasts and navigable rivers, it spread westward from Marseille through the ports of Languedoc to Spain a nd north wa rd up the Rhone to Avignon , where it arrive d in March. It reac h ed Narbonne, Montpel- lier, Carcassonne, and Toulouse between Febru ary and May, an d at the same time in Italy spread to Rom e and Flore nce and their hinte rlands . Between June and August it re ac h ed Bordeaux, Lyon , and Paris , spread to Burgundy and Normandy, and crossed th e Channel from Normandy into southern En- gland. From Italy during the same summer it crossed th e Alps into Switzerland

and reached eastward to Hungary. In a given area the plague accomplished its kill within four to six months

and then fad ed , except in th e larger cities, where , rooting into the close-

"T1-1rs Is TilE END oF THE WoRLD": THE BLACK DEATH 781

Burial of the plague victim. From Annales cle Gales li Muisis.

quartered population, it abated during the winter, only to reappea r in spring and rage for another six months .

In 1349 it res umed in Pari s, sp read to Picard y, Flanders, a nd th e Low Countries, and from England to Scotland and Ire land as well as to Norway, where a gho st ship wi th a cargo of woo l and a dead crew drifted offshore until it ran agro und near Bergen. From th ere the plague pa ssed into Sweden, De n- mark, Prussia, Ice lan d , and as far as Gree nland. Leavin g a stra nge pocket of immunity in Bohemia, and Russi a unattacked until 135 1, it had p asse d from most of E urop e by mid-1350 . Although the mortality rate was erratic, ranging from one fifth in some places to nine tenths o r a lmost total elimination in oth- ers, the overall estimate of modern demographers has se ttled-for the area ex- tending from Indi a to Iceland-around the same frgure expressed in Froiss a rt's casual words: "a third of the world died." Hi s esti ma te , the common one at th e time, was not an inspired guess but a borrowing of St. John's figur e for mort a l- ity from plague in Revelation , th e favor ite guide to human a ffairs of th e Mid- dl e Ages.

A third of Europe wou ld have meant a bout 20 million deaths. No one knows in truth how man y di ed. Contemporary reports were a n awed impres- sion, not an accurate count. In crowded Avigno n, it was said , 400 died daily; 7,000 houses emp tied by death were s hut up; a single graveyard received 11,000 corpses in six weeks; half the c ity's inhabi ta nts reportedly died, includ- ing 9 cardin als or one third of th e tota l, an d 70 lesser prelates. Watching th e endlessly passing dea th carts, c hronicl ers let normal exagge ration tak e wings and put th e Avignon dea th toll at 62,000 and eve n at 120,000, al thou gh the city's total population was proba bly less than 50,000.

Wh en graveyards filled up , bodies at Avignon were thrown into the Rhone until mass burial pits were du g for dumping the corpses. In London in s uch

10

782 8ARBAHi\ TUC\I i\ IA N

pits co rp ses piled up in laye rs un ti l t hey overflowed. Eve ryw h ere reports speak of th e sick d ying too fast for the li ving to bury. Corpses were dragged out of homes a nd left in front of d oorways. Morn in g li ght revea led new p il es of bod- ies. In F lorence th e dead were gathered up by th e Co mpagnia de lla Miser icor- dia-founded in 1244 to ca re for th e sick-whose membe rs wore red robes a nd hoods masking the face excep t for the eyes. When th eir e fforts fai led , the dead lay putrid in th e streets for clays at a tim e. When no coffins were to be had, the bodi es were la id on boards, two or three at once, to be carried to graveyards o r common pits. Fam ili es cl ump ed the ir own relatives into the pits, or buried them so h ast il y and thinly "that dogs dragged them forth an d de-

vo ured their bodies. " Am id accumu la tin g death a nd fear o f contagion, people died without last

rites a nd we re buried without prayers, a prospect that terrified the last hours of th e stri cke n . A bishop in E ng lan d gave permission to laymen to make con - fe ss ion to eac h ot her as was don e by the Apost les, "or if no man is pt·esent then even to a woma n ," a nd if n o priest co uld be found to administer ext reme unction, "then fa ith must s urfl ce." C lement VI found it necessary to grant re- missions o f sin to a ll w ho di e d of the plague b ecause so many were un atte nded by priests. "And no bells toll ed," w rote a chronicl e r of Siena , "a nd nobody wep t no matter what hi s loss because almost everyone expected death .. . . And people sai d a nd be li eved , 'Thi s is th e end of th e wor ld .'"

In Paris, w h ere the plague laste d throu gh 1349 , the reported deat h rate was 800 a d ay, in Pisa 500 , in Vienna 500 to 600. Th e total dead in Pa ri s num- bered 50,000 or ha lf the popul at io n . Florence, weake n ed by th e fami ne of I 34 7, lost three to four fifth s of its c itize ns, Venice two thi rd s, Hamburg an d Bremen, though smaller in s ize, abo ut th e sa m e proportion. Cities , as cente rs of transportation, were more like ly to be affec ted than villages, a lth ough o nc e a vi ll age was infected, its deat h rate was equa ll y hi g h. At Givry, a prospero us vill age in Burgund y of I ,2 00 to I ,500 peo pl e, th e pa ri sh register records 6 15 deaths in the space of fourt ee n weeks, com pare d to an ave rage of thirty deaths a year in the previous decad e . In three vill ages of Camb rid geshire, manorial reco rd s sho w a dea th rate of 47 p ercent, 57 percent, and in one case 70 pe rcent. When th e las t survivo rs, too few to carry on, moved away, a de- serted village sa nk back into th e wi ld erness a nd disappeared from th e map al- to ge th e r, leav in g on ly a grass-covere d ghost ly o utlin e to s ho w where mortals

o nce had li ved. In e nclosed pl aces su ch as monasteries and p ri so ns , the infection of one

perso n usually meant that of a ll , as ha ppened in the Franciscan convents of Carcasso nn e a nd Marseille , where every inmate wit hout exception died. Of th e 140 Dominic a ns a t Montpellie r o nl y seven survived. Petrarch 's 2 bro th er G hera rclo , member of a Ca rthu sian m o naste ry, buried the prior an d 3 4 fellow monks o n e by one, sometim es t hree a clay, unt il he was le ft a lon e with hi s dog a nd fled to look for a place that wo uld take him in. Watc hin g every com rade

2. Fra nc esco Petrarch (1304- 1374 ), ltulia n wTiter whose son nets to "my lady Laura" inAucnced a traditio n of Europea n love po e try for centuries.

''T Hi S I s TilE ENo OF Til E VVonLo'': TilE ilLIICK DEIITII 783

die, men in s uch places co uld not but wonder w h et h er the stra nge peril th a t filled the air had not been sent to exterm in ate the human race. I n Kilkenn y, Ireland , Brother John C lyn of the Friars i\ linor, another monk left alone a mon g dead men , kept a record of what had happened lest "things which sh ould be .remembered perish with time and vanis h from the memory of tho se who come after us ." Sensing "the whol e world, as it we re, placed withi n the gra sp of th e Evi l One," and wa itin g for death to vis it him too, he wrote, " I leave parchment to continue th is work, if perchance any man surv ive and any of the race of Adam escape this pestilence and ca rry on the work which I have beg un. " Brother J ohn , as noted by another hand , died of the pest ile nce, but he foiled oblivion.

Th e largest ci ties of Europe, with populations oF about I 00,000, were Paris and F lorence, Ve ni ce and Genoa. At the next level, with more than 50,000 , we re G h en t and Bruges in Flanders , Mi la n , Bologna, Rom e, Naples , a nd Palermo, a nd Cologne . London hovered below 50,000 , the only c ity in England excep t York wit h mo re than I 0,000. At th e le ve l of 20,000 to 50,000 were Bord ea ux, To ul ouse , Montpellier, Marseille , and Lyo n in France , Bm-ce- lon a, Seville, and Toledo in Spa in , Siena , Pisa, and other seco ndary cities in Italy, and the Hanseatic trading cities of the Empi re. Th e plague raged through th e m all, killing anywhere from one third to two thirds oF their inhabi- tants. It aly, with a total population of 10 to II million , probab ly suFfered the heaviest toll. Followi n g the Florentine bankruptcies, the crop fa ilures a nd workers ' riots of 1346-4 7, the revolt of Cola eli Hi e nzi that p lun ged Rome into a narchy, th e plague came as th e peak of successive ca lamit ies . As if the world were indeed in the grasp of th e Evi l One , its first ap pearance o n the E uropea n mainland in J an ua ry 1348 coincided with a fearsome eart hqu ake th at ca rve d a path of wr ec kage from Naples up to Venice . Houses co llap sed, c h urch towers toppled , vi ll ages were crus hed, a nd the destruct ion reached as far as Germany and Gre ece. Emotional response, du lle d by horrors, und erwent a kind of atro- phy epitom ized by the chron icler wh o wrote, "And in these days was burying without sorrowe a nd wed din g withou t friendsc hipp e. "

In Siena, w h e re more than h alf t he inh ab itants died of th e pl ague, wo rk was abandon ed on the g reat cathed ra l, planned to be th e largest in the wor ld , and n ever resumed, owing to loss of workers and master masons and ''the melancholy an d g rief " of the survivo rs. The cathedra l's truncat e d transept sti ll sta nds in permanent witn ess to the sweep of cl eat h 's scythe. Agnolo di Tura, a chronicl er of Siena, recorded th e fear of contag ion tha t Froze eve ry other in- stin ct. "Fath e r abandoned c hild, wife husb a nd , one brother anot he r, " he wro te, Hfor thi s p lague seemed to strike through th e breath and s ight. And so they died. And no one cou ld be found to bury the dead for money or friend- ship .... And ! , Ag n olo eli Tura, ca lled the Fat, buried my five children with my own hand s, and so did many othe rs likewise. "

There were ma n y to echo his account of inhum a nity and few to ba lanc e it, for the p lag ue was not the kind of calamity that inspired mutual he lp. I ts loat hsomeness and deadlines s did not herd peop le toget her in mutual distress, but o nly prompted the ir desire to esca pe each o th er. "Mag istrates and nota rie s

15

784 BARilAHA Tuc!J~IAN

refu sed to come a nd ma ke th e wills of the dying," reported a Franciscan fr iar of Piazza in Sicily; what was worse, "eve n t he pri ests did not co me to hear th e ir co nfession s." A clerk of the Archbishop of Canterbury re ported the same of English priests who ''turned away fr om the care of their bene f1 ces from fear of dea th ." Cases of parents dese rtin g chi ldren and c hildre n th eir parents we re rep orted across Europe from Scotland to Ru ss ia. The ca lam ity c hill ed the hearts of me n , wrote Boccacc io 3 in his famous accou nt of th e plague in Flo- re nc e that serves as introdu c tion to the Decawwron . "One man shunn ed a n- other ... kin sfo lk held a loof, broth e r was forsaken by brother, oftentimes hu sban d by wife; nay, what is more, and sca rcely to be beli eved, fathers and moth ers were found to abandon their own children to their fate, unte nd ed, unvi s ited as if th ey had bee n strangers." Exaggeration and lite rary pess imism we re co mmon in th e 14th ce ntury, but the Pope's physician, Guy de Chau li ac, was a sober, careful observer who repo rt ed th e sa me pheno meno n : "A fat h er did not visit his so n , nor the so n his father. Charity was dead."

Yet not e ntirely. In Paris, acc ording to the chronicler J ea n de Venette, th e nun s of th e H ote l Die u or municipal ho spital, "h avi n g no fear of death , tended the sick with a ll sweetness and humility. " New nun s repeatedly too k the pl aces of tho se who di e d, until th e majority "many times renewed by death no w res t

in peace with Christ as we may piou sly beli eve." When th e plag ue e ntered north e rn France in Jul y 1348, it se ttled f1rst in

Normandy and, checked by winter, gave Picard y a dece pti ve inte rim until the n ex t summ e r. Either in mourning or warning, black flag s we re flown from church tower s of the worst-stricken vi ll ages of Normandy. "And in that tim e," wrote a monk of th e abbey of Fourcarment , "th e mortality was so great among the peo ple of Normandy that tho se of Picardy mo cked them ." The same un- n e ighbor ly reaction was repo rte d of the Scots, se para ted by a wi nt er's immu- nity from th e E nglish. Deli ghted to h ea r of the di sease that was sco urgin g the "so uthrons ," they gathered for ces for a n invasion , " laughing at their e n e mi es ." Before they co ul d move, the savage mort ality fell upon them too, scattering some in d ea th a nd the res t in panic to spread th e infec tion as they fled .

In Picardy in the summer of 1349 th e pestilence pen et rated the castle of Co uey to kill Enguerrand's4 moth er, Catherine, and he r n ew husband. Whether h e r nin e -yea r-old so n esca ped by chan ce or was perhaps livin g else- where with one of his guardians is unrecorded. In nea rby Amiens, tannery workers, responding quickly to loss es in the labor force, co mbin ed to bargain for hi gher wages. In another place vi ll agers were see n dancing to drum s and trump e ts , and on being as ked the reaso n , answered that, seeing th ei r ne igh- bors di e day by day whi le th eir village remained immune, th ey believed they could kee p the plague from e nterin g "by th e jollity th a t is in u s. That is why we

3. Giova nni Boccaccio ( 13 13- 1375), Italian writer best kn ow n for hi s co llecti on of sto- ries , Tiw Decamerott, in wh ic h seven yo un g ladi es and three yo un g men f-l ee fro m Flo- rence to escape th e Black Death an d tell stor ies to whil e away th e tim e. 4. E nguerrand de C oue y, a French nobl e man, is the hi storica l figure around whom Tuchman constructs her acco unt o[ the fourteenth centu ry.

"TI-IIS Is THE ENo OF THE VVoRLo' ': THE BLACK DEATII 785

danc e." Further n ort h in Tournai o n the border of Fla nd ers, Gil les li Muisi s, Abbot of St. Martin 's, kep t o n e of the ep idemic's most vivid acco unts . The passing bell s rang all day and all night, he recorded, because sex ton s were anx- ious to obtain th e ir fees while they could. Filled with th e so und of mourning, the city became oppressed by fea r, so th a t the authorit ies forb ade the tolling of bells a nd the weari n g of black an d res trict ed funer al services to two mourners. Th e silencing of funeral bells a nd of crie rs ' announcements of deaths was ordained by most citi es . Siena imposed a fine on the wea rin g of mourning clothes by all except wido ws.

Flight was the c hief recourse of th ose who could affo rd it or arra nge it. The ri ch fled to th e ir country places like Boccaccio's yo ung patri cians of Flo- rence , who se ttl ed in a pastoral palace "removed on every s ide fro m th e roads" with "we lls of cool water and va ults of rare wi n es." The urban poor died in their burrows, "a nd on ly th e s tench of their bodies infor med neighbors of th eir death ." That the poor were more heavily affl ic ted than the rich was clearly re - marked a t th e tim e, in the north as in th e so uth. A Scottish chronicler, John of Fordun , stated flatly that the pes t "attacked especia ll y th e m ea n er sor t and common people-seldo m the magnates. " Simon de Covi no of Montpelli er made the sa m e observation. He ascribed it to the misery and want an d ha rd lives th at made th e poor more susce ptible, which was ha lf the tr uth. Close contact a nd lack of sanitation was the unrecognized other half. It was noti ced too th a t th e young died in grea ter proportio n than th e old; Sim on de Covino compared the dis appea rance of yout h to the wit herin g of flowers in the field s .

In th e countryside peasants dropped dea d on th e roads, in th e fields, in their hous es . Survivors in growing help lessness fell into apa th y, leav in g rip e wheat uncut and lives tock untended . Oxen and asses, sh eep and goats, pigs and chickens ran wi ld a nd th ey too, accord in g to local reports , s uccumb ed to the pes t. English sheep, beare rs of the precious wool, di ed throughout th e country. The chronicler H enry Knighton, ca non of Leices ter Abbey, reported 5,000 dead in one field alone , "th eir bodies so cor rupt ed by th e plague th at neither beas t nor bird wo uld touch them," and sp reading a n appa llin g ste nch . In the Austrian Alps wolves came do wn to prey upon sheep and then, "as if alarm ed by some invisible warning, turned a nd fled bac k into th e wilderness." In remote Dalmatia bolder wolves descended upon a plague-stricken city and attacked human survivors. For wa nt of h erdsme n, cattle strayed from place to place and die d in h edgero ws and ditches. Dogs and cats fe ll like th e rest.

The dearth of la bor held a fearful prospect because the 14th century lived close to th e annual ha rvest both for food and for nex t year's seed. "So few ser- vants a nd laborers were left," wrote Knighton , "th a t n o one knew where to turn for help. " The se n se of a va ni shin g future created a kind of dem e ntia of despair. A Bava rian chronicler of Neuberg on the Danube recorded that "M e n and women . .. wandered around as if mad " and let their ca ttl e stray ''beca use no one h ad any inclination to conce rn th emse lves abo ut the futur e." Fields went un c ultiva ted , spri n g seed unsown. Second growth with nat ure's awfu l e n- ergy crept back over cleared land , dikes crumb led, salt water reinvaded a nd soured th e lowlands. With so few hands remaini ng to restore the work of cen-

20

2o

786 BARBARA TucH~IAN

turies, people felt, in Walsingham's words, that ''th e world could never again

regain its former prosperity." Though the death rate was higher among the anonymous poor, th e known

and the great di ed too. King Alfonso XI of Castile was the only reigning monarch killed by the pest, but his neighbor King Pedro of Aragon lost his wife, Queen Leonora, his daughter Marie, and a niece in the space of six months. John Cantacuzene, Emperor of Byzantium, lost his son. In France the lame Queen Jeanne and her daughter-in-law Bonne de Luxemburg, wife of the Dauphin, both died in 1349 in the same phase th a t took the life of Enguer- rand 's mother. J ea nne , Queen of Navarre, daughte r of Louis X, was another victim. Edward III's second daughter, Joanna , who was on her way to marry Pedro, the heir of Castile, died in Bordeaux. Women appear to have been more vulnerable than men, perhaps because, being more housebound , they were more exposed to Aeas. Boccaccio's mistress Fiammetta, i ll egitimate daughter of the King oF Naples, died, as did Laura, the beloved-whether real or fic- tional--of Petrarc h. Reaching out to us in the future, Petrarch cried, ''Oh happy posterity who will not experience such abysmal woe and will look upon

our testimony as a fable." In Florence Giovanni Vil lani, the great historian of his time, di ed a t 68 in

the midst of an unfin ished sentence: " ... e dure questa pistolenzafi.no a . . . (in the midst of this pestilence there came to an end ... )." Siena 's master painters, the broth e rs Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti , whose names never ap- pear after 1348 , presumably perished in the plagu e, as did Andrea Pisano, ar- chitect and sculptor of Florence. William of Ockham and the English mys tic Richard Rolle of Hampo le both disappear from mention after 1349 . Francisco Datini, mercha n t of Prato, lost both his parents and two siblings. Curious sweeps of mortality aHlicted certain bodies of merchants in London. All eight wardens of th e Company of Cutters, all six wardens of the Hatters , and four wardens of the Goldsmiths di ed befo re Ju ly 1350. Sir John Pulteney, master draper and four t imes Mayor of London, was a victim, likewise Sir John Mont-

gomery, Governor of Calais. Among the c lergy and doctors t he mortality was naturally high because of

the nature of th e ir professions. Out of 24 physicians in Venice, 20 were said to have lost their lives in the plague , although, according to another account, some were believe d to have Red or to have shut themse lves up in their houses. At Montpellier, s ite of the leading medieval m edica l school, the physician Si- mon de Covino reported that , despit e the great numb er of doctors , "hardly one of t hem escaped." ln Avignon, Guy de Chauliac confessed that he performed his medical vis its on ly because he dared not stay away for fear of infamy, but " I was in continual fear." He cla imed to have contracted the dis ease but to have cured himse lf by his own treatment; if so, he was one of the few who

recovered. C lerical mortality varied with rank. Although the one-third toll of cardi-

nals reflects th e same proportion as the whole, this was probably due to their concentration in Avignon. In England, in strange and almost sinister proces- s ion, the Archbishop oF Canterbury, John Stratford, died in August 1348, his appoi nted successor died in May 1349, and the n ext appointee three months

" THIS Is TilE E N D oF TII E WoBLo": TH E 13L AC K DEATII 787

later, all thre e within a year. Despite such weird vagaries, prelates in general managed to s ustain a high e r survival rate than the lesser clergy. Among bish- ops the deaths have been estimated at about one in twenty. Th e loss of priests, even if many avoi ded their fearful duty of attend in g the dyin g, was about the same as among the popul at ion as a w hole .

Government officials, whose loss contributed to th e general chaos, found, on the whole, no special shelter. In Siena four of th e nine members of the gov- erning oligarchy died, in France one third of th e royal notaries , in Bristol 15 out of the 52 members of the Town Council or almost one third. Tax-collecting obviously suffered, with the result that Philip VI was unable to co ll ect more than a fraction of the subsidy granted him by the Estates in the winter of 1347-48.

Lawlessn ess and debauch ery accompa nied the plague as they had during the great plagu e of Athens of 430 B.C . , when according to Thucydides, men grew bold in the indulgence of pleasure: "For seeing how th e rich died in a moment and those who had n othing immediately inherited their property, they reflected that life a nd riches were a like tran sitory and the y reso lved to enjoy themselves w hil e they could." l-Iuman beh av ior is timeless. When St. John had his vision of plague in Revelation, he knew from some experience or race memory that those who survived "repented not of th e work of their hands .... Neither rep e nted they of their murders, nor of their so rceries, nor of their for- nication , nor of th eir thefts."

Ignorance of the cause augmented the sense of horror. Of the real carriers, rats and Aeas, the 14th century had no suspicion, perhaps because they we re so fami liar. F leas, though a common househo ld nuisance, are not once men- tioned in co ntemporary plague writings, and rats only incidentally, altho ugh folklore commonly associated them with pestilence. The legend of the Pied Piper arose from an outbreak of 1284. The actual plague bacillus, Pasturella pestis, remained undiscovered for anot her 500 years. Living a lter nat e ly in the stomach of the Rea and th e bloodstream of the rat who was the flea 's host , the bacillus in its bubonic form was transferred to humans and animals by the bite of either rat or Rea. It traveled by virtue of Rattus rattus, the small medieval black rat that live d on ships, as we ll as by the heav ie r brown or sewer rat. What precipitated the turn of the bacillus from innocuous to virul e nt form is unknown, but th e occurrence is now believed to h ave taken place not in China but somewhere in central Asia and to have spread a long the caravan routes. Chinese origin was a mistak en notion of the 14th ce ntury based on real but belated report s of huge death tolls in China l'rom drought, famine, and pesti- lence which have since been traced to the 1330s, too soon to be responsible for the plagu e th at appeared in In dia in 1346.

The phantom ene my had no name. Called the Black Death only in later recurrences, it was known during the first epidem ic simply as the Pestilence or Great Mortality. Reports from the East, swollen by fearful imaginin gs, told of strange temp ests and "sheets of fire" mingled with huge hail stones that ''s lew ahnost all," or a

11 vast rain of flre" that burned up n1en, beasts, stones, trees ,

villages, and cities. In another version, "fo ul blasts ol' wind" from the f-Ires car-

30

788 BAnB ,\ HA Tuctti\lt\N

ri e d the infection to Europe "and no w as some s uspec t it co met h round the seacoast." Accura te observa tion in this case cou ld not make th e mental jump to ship s and rats because no idea of an im al- or ins ec t-borne contagion exis ted.

The earthquake was blamed for rel eas ing sulfurous and foul fumes fro m the ea rth 's interior, or as evid ence of a titanic s tru ggle of planets a nd oceans ca u sing waters to rise and vaporize until fish died in mass es a nd co rrupt ed th e air. All these exp lanations had in common a factor of poisoned a ir, of miasmas and thick , stinki ng mists traced to every kind of n a tural or imagined age ncy from stagnant la kes to malign conjunction of th e p la ne ts, from th e hand of the Evil One to the w rath of God. Med ica l thinking , tra pped in th e theory of astra l influences , stressed air as th e co mmuni cato r of dis ease, ignorin g san itation o r visi ble carriers. The existence of two carriers confused the tra il , th e more so be- cause the fle a could live and travel ind ependently of the rat for as long as a month and, if infec ted by th e pa rticul a rly virulent septicemic for m of th e baci l- lu s, cou ld infec t human s without reinfecting itself from th e rat. T h e simulta- n eou s presence of the pn e umonic form of th e dis ease, whi ch wa s indeed co m- munic a ted through the air, blurred th e problem further.

T he myste ry of the co ntagi on was "the most terribl e of a ll the te rror s," as an anonymous Flemish cle ric in Avignon wrote to a corresponden t in Bru ges. Plagues had bee n known before , from th e plague of Athens (be li eved to h ave been typhus ) to the prolonge d epid emic of th e 6th ce ntu ry A.D., to th e rec ur- renc e of sporad ic outbreaks in th e 12th and 13th cent uries, but they had left no acc umula ted store of und ers tandin g. That th e infection came from co ntac t with the sick or with their hous es, clothes , or corpses was quickly observed but not comp reh ended. Gentil e da Foligno, renowned physicia n of Peru gia and doctor of me dicine at th e universiti es of Bologna and Padua , came close to respiratory infection when he surmised that poisonous material was "co mmu- nicat ed by me a ns of a ir brea thed out a nd in ." Having no id ea of microscopic carriers, h e h ad to assum e that the a ir was corrupted by planetary influ en ces. Pla nets, however, co uld not expla in the ongoing co ntagion. The agonize d search for a n a ns wer gave rise to su ch th eories as tra nsference by sight. People fell ill, wrote G uy de Chauliac, not on ly by remaining with th e sick but "even by looking at them. " Three hundred years later Jo shua Barn es, the l 7th ce n- tury biographer of Edward Ill , could write that th e power of infe ction ha d en - te red into beams of light and "darted dea th from th e eyes ."

Doctors struggling with the evide nc e could not break away from th e terms of as trology, to whi ch th ey believed all human physiology was subj ec t . M edicine was th e one aspect of medi eva l life, perhaps beca use of its links with th e Arabs, not shap ed by C hristian do ctrin e. C le ric s de te sted as trology, but co uld not di s- lodge its influ e n ce. Gu y de Chauliac, physician to three popes in succ ess ion, practiced in obedience to th e zodiac. While hi s C irurgia was th e major tre<l tise on surgery of its time, whi le he understood the usc of an es th es ia made from the juice of opium , mandrake, or hemlock, h e neverthel ess prescribed bleed in g an d purgatives by th e plan e ts a nd divid ed c hronic from ac ute dis eases on the basis of one being und er the rul e of th e sun a nd the other of th e moon .

In October 1348 Philip VI asked th e medi cal faculty ol' th e Unive rs ity of

"TH I S Is T HE ENu oF THE 'vVoHLD.' : THE BLACK DEATH 789

Pari s for a report on the affliction th at see med to threaten hum an s urvival. With careful thes is, a ntithesis, an d proo fs, the do c tors ascribed it to a t ripl e conju nction of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars in the 40th degre e of Aquarius sa id to h ave occurred on March 20, 1345 . They ac kn ow ledged , ho wever, effects "wh ose cause is hidd e n from even the most highly trained inte ll ects." The ver- dict of the mas ters of Paris became th e offic ia l vers ion. Borrowed, copied by scribes, ca rried abroad, trans la ted from Lati n into vario us vernaculars, it was ~vef)'\vhere accepted, even by th e Arab physicians of Co rdo va an d Granada, as the sc ie ntific if not the popular an swer. Because of th e terrib le interes t of th e subject, the translations of the plague tracts stimul ate d us e of na tion a l lan- guages. In that one respect, life ca m e from death.

To th e people at large there could be but one explanation-the wra th of Cod. Planets might satisfy the learned doctors, but God was closer to th e average man . A sco urge so sweepin g an d unsp a rin g without any vis ibl e ca use could only be seen as Divin e punishm ent upon mankind for its si n s. It mig ht even be God's te rminal di sappointme nt in his crea ture. Matteo Villani compa red th e plag ue to the Flood in ultim ate purpose a nd believed he was record in g "th e ex- termina tion of m an kind. " Efforts to appease Di vi n e wrath took man y forms , as wh e n th e city of Rouen ordered that everythi ng that co uld anger God, such as gambling, cursing, a nd drinkin g, must be stopped. More ge n eral were th e pen- itent process ion s a uthorized at first by th e Pope, so me las ting as long as three days , so m e attended by as m any as 2,000, w hich everywhere accompanied th e plagu e a nd help e d to spread it.

Barefoot in sac kcloth , sp rinkled with as hes , weep ing, pray in g, te arin g their ha ir, carrying ca ndl es and relics, some time s with rop es around their necks or bea tin g th e msel ves with whip s, th e penite nts wound through the streets, imploring t h e mercy of the Vi rgin a nd saints at th eir shri nes . In a vivid illustra tion for th e Tri!s Riches 1-feures of th e Due de Berry, th e Pope is shown in a pe nitent proc ess ion a tt end ed by four cardinals in sca rlet from ha t to hem. He ra ises both arms in supplication to the a ngel on top of th e Cas te l Sa nt ' Angelo, w hil e white-robed priests bea rin g banners and relics in go ld e n cases turn to look as one of their numb er, stricken by th e plag ue , falls to the ground, his fac e co ntort ed with anxiety. In the rear, a gray-c lad monk falls bes ide an- other victim already o n the ground as th e townspeople gaze in horror. (No mi- nall y the illustration represents a 6t h cent ury plag ue in the time of Pope Gregory the Great, but as m edi eva l arti s ts made no di stinctio n be tween past and present, the scene is shown as the a rti st would h ave seen it in the 14th century.) vVhe n it became evi de nt that th ese processions were so urces of in- fection , C le ment VI ha d to pro hibit them.

In Messina, where the pl ag ue first appeared, th e people begge d th e Arch- bishop of neighborin g Catania to lend them the reli cs of St. Agatha. When th e Catanians refused to let th e relics go, th e Arc hbisho p clipped them in holy wa- ter and took the water himself to Messina, whe re he carried it in a proc ess ion 11~th p raye rs and litan ies throu gh t he streets . The de mo nic, whi ch s ha red the medieva l cosmos with God, appeared as "demo ns in the shape of dogs" to ter-

35

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Penitential procession led by th e Pope durin g the plague (pi ctured in 14th century Rome a lth ough it purports to illustrate the 6t h century plague under Gregory th e Great). By Pol de Lim bourg for the Tl·es Riches Heures of the Due de Berry, c. 1410.

rify the peop le. "A black dog with a drawn sword in his paws appeared among them, gnashing his teeth and ru sh in g upon them and breaking al l the silver vesse ls and lamps and candlesticks on the a ltars and cast in g them hither and thither. ... So the people of Messina , terrified by this prodigious vision, were

all strangely overcome by fear." The apparent abse nc e of eart hly cause gave th e plague a supernatural and

sinister quality. Scand in avians believed that a Pest Maiden emerged from the m outh of the dead in the form of a blue flame and flew through the air to in·

"TiltS I s THE END OF TilE vVot<LD": TttE i:lLt\CK DEXt'tt 79t

feet the next house. In Lithuania the Maiden was said to wave a red scarf through the door or window to let in the pest. One brave man , according to legend, deliberately waited a t his open window with drawn sword and, at the fluttering of the scarf, chopped off the hand. He died of his deed, but his vil- lage was spared and the scarf long preserved as a relic in the local church.

Beyond demons and superstition the final hand was God's . Th e Pope ac- knowledged it in a Bull of September 1348, speakin g of th e "pestilence with which God is afflicting the Christian people." To the Emperor John Canta- cuzene it was manifest that a malady of such horrors , stenches, and agonies, and espec ially one bringing th e dismal despair that sett led upon its victims be- fore they died, was not a plague " natural" to mankind but "a chastisement from Heaven." To Piers Plowman' "these pestilences were for pure sin."

The general acceptance of this view created an e>•panded sense oF guilt, for if the plague were punishment there had to be terrible sin to have occasioned it. vVhat sin s were on the 14th century conscience? Primaril y greed, the sin of avarice, fo llo wed by usury, worldliness, adultery, blasphemy, fa ls ehood, luxury, irreligion. Giovanni Vill ani, attempting to account for the cascade of calamity that h ad fallen upon Florence, concluded that it was retribution f'or the si ns of avarice and usury that oppressed the poor. Pity and anger about the condition of the poor, especially victimizatio n of the peasantry in war, was often expressed by writers of the time and was certainly on the conscience of the century. Be- neath it a ll was the daily condition of medieval life, in wh ich hardl y an act or thought, sexual, mercantile, or military, did not contravene the dictates of the Church. Mere failure to fast or attend mass was sin. The result was an under- ground lake of g uilt in the soul that the plague now tapped.

That the mortality was accepted as God's punishment may exp la in in part the vacuum of comment that followed the Blnck Death. An investigator has noticed that in the arch ives of Perigord references to the war arc in numerab le, to the plague few. Fro issart mentions the great death but once , Chaucer gives it barely a glance. Divine anger so great that it contemplated the extermination of man did not bear close exami nat ion .

5. The main character (and title) of a fourteenth-century poem by the English poet William Langland (c. 1330-c. 1386).

QUESTIONS

!. Why does Tuchman begin with the account oF the Cenoesc trading ships)

2. What ways does Tuchman find to group related facts together-in other words. what categories does she develop) Suggest other categories that Tuchm<ln might have us ed in arranging her facts. What would she have gained or lost by using such catcgorics 0

3. Can you determine a basis for Tuchman's de c isi on so metimes to quote i.! source.

sometimes to recount it in her own wo rd s?

4. VVrite a brieF acco un t of a modern disaster, based on research from sever;.ll sources.

.JO