Chapter 9: The Black Death
The Black Death was a bubonic plague pandemic that swept across Asia, Europe and North Africa in numerous waves from 1347 to 1353. Originating in Asia and spreading along trade routes, including the Silk Road, the plague caused massive depopulation, with cities in the Middle East and China recording high daily death tolls and rural areas being abandoned. In Europe, where the documentation was more extensive, it is estimated that one-third of the population perished. Caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, it was initially spread by fleas on rats and later through person-to-person contact in a pneumonic form that was even more deadly than the original strain. Symptoms included fever, body aches, and painful, blackened, pus-filled lymph nodes (buboes, hence bubonic). In Europe, the plague caused profound societal changes, impacting labor, trade, and art.
While the causes of the Black Death are well understood today through modern science and medicine, people living during the fourteenth century lacked this knowledge and often interpreted the plague through spiritual or divine frameworks. Many viewed the outbreak as a form of divine punishment or a test of faith, which shaped a wide range of religious responses aimed at halting or mitigating its devastating effects. As you read the following sources, pay close attention to how religious beliefs and practices influenced these responses. Though this is not to say that there were not also those who saw more secular reasons for the disease and its spread. Consider, in particular, how religious identity shaped interpretations of the plague and the actions taken by different communities. Additionally, reflect on how these reactions were shaped by the dynamics of daily life in multi-religious societies, where interactions between diverse faith groups were both complex and deeply interconnected. Finally, examine the contemporary secular understanding of the plague and what people did to stave off infection from a non-religious perspective.
The first three sources all give us a Christian European perspective. The first source, that of Jean de Venette, is given from a primarily religious viewpoint, while the next two, by Giovanni Boccaccio and Matteo Villani, though informed by their Christian faith, are predominantly secular in nature. The fourth source also comes from a Christian, the chronicler Jacob von Königshofen, however, a careful reading of the passage can give us both a Christian as well as a Jewish perspective of the plague. Finally the last source comes from the medieval traveler Ibn Battuta, where we get insight into a Muslim perspective.
9.1 Jean de Venette: Chronicle: The Plague in France (mid-Fourteenth Century)
Jean de Venette (c. 1307 – c. 1370) was a French Carmelite friar and chronicler. Serving as prior of the Carmelite convent in Paris, Jean lived through and recorded some of the most tumultuous events of his time, including the Hundred Years’ War, the rise of popular revolts, and, important for this chapter, the Black Death. His chronicle is particularly valuable because it reflects the perspective of a cleric closely connected to the experiences of ordinary people rather than solely the elite. Jean offers insight into how contemporaries understood the crises that shaped their world, blending eyewitness observation with spiritual interpretation. In this excerpt he discusses the spread of the plague, along with how people reacted to it.
The following excerpt has been adapted from “The Plague in France” Richard A. Newhall, ed., Jean Birdsall, trans., The Chronicle of Jean de Venette (New York: Columbia University Press, 1953).
In 1348 C.E., the people of France and of almost the whole world were struck by a blow other than war. …
This plague, it is said, began among the unbelievers, came to Italy, and then crossing the Alps reached Avignon, where it attacked several cardinals and took from them their whole household. Then it spread, unforeseen, to France, through Gascony and Spain, little by little, from town to town, from village to village, from house to house, and finally from person to person. It even crossed over to Germany, though it was not so bad there as with us. During the epidemic, God of His accustomed goodness deigned to grant this grace, that however suddenly men died, almost all awaited death joyfully. Nor was there anyone who died without confessing his sins and receiving the holy viaticum. To the even greater benefit of the dying, Pope Clement VI through their confessors mercifully gave and granted absolution from penalty to the dying in many cities and fortified towns. Men died the more willingly for this and left many inheritances and temporal goods to churches and monastic orders, for in many cases they had seen their close heirs and children die before them.
Some said that this pestilence was caused by infection of the air and waters, since there was at this time no famine nor lack of food supplies, but on the contrary great abundance. As a result of this theory of infected water and air as the source of the plague, the Jews were suddenly and violently charged with infecting wells and water and corrupting the air. The whole world rose up against them cruelly on this account. In Germany and other parts of the world where Jews lived, they were massacred and slaughtered by Christians, and many thousands were burned everywhere, indiscriminately. The unshaken . . . constancy of the men and their wives was remarkable. For mothers hurled their children first into the fire that they might not be baptized and then leaped in after them to burn with their husbands and children. It is said that many bad Christians were found who in a like manner put poison into wells. But in truth, such poisonings, granted that they actually were perpetrated, could not have caused so great a plague nor have infected so many people. There were other causes; for example, the will of God and the corrupt humors and evil inherent in air and earth. Perhaps the poisonings, if they actually took place in some localities, re-enforced these causes. The plague lasted in France for the greater part of the years 1348 and 1349 and then ceased. Many country villages and many houses in good towns remained empty and deserted. Many houses, including some splendid dwellings, very soon fell into ruins. Even in Paris several houses were thus ruined, though fewer here than elsewhere.
Source: “The Plague in France” is from Richard A. Newhall, ed., Jean Birdsall, trans., The Chronicle of Jean de Venette (New York: Columbia University Press, 1953), pp. 48-51. Found on Internet Archive:
9.2 Giovanni Boccaccio: The Decameron: A Most Terrible Plague (mid-Fourteenth Century)
Giovanni Boccaccio (1313 – 1375) was an Italian writer, poet, and humanist whose works reflect the intellectual and cultural transformations of late medieval Europe. Living through the devastation of the Black Death, Boccaccio witnessed firsthand the social and moral upheavals caused by the plague. His most famous work, The Decameron, is a collection of one hundred tales framed by the story of a group of young Florentines who flee plague-ridden Florence (where over two-thirds of the population died) to seek refuge in the countryside. His stories offer a vivid depiction of life during the deadly pandemic and reflect the emerging humanist ideals that would later define the Renaissance. Here Boccaccio provides us a window into the cultural and emotional responses as the plague devastated fourteenth-century Italy.
The following passage is from Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, in Stories of Boccaccio, trans. John Payne (London: Bibliophilist Library, 1903).
In the year then of our Lord 1348, there happened at Florence, the finest city in all Italy, a most terrible plague; which, whether owing to the influence of the planets, or that it was sent from God as a just punishment for our sins, had broken out some years before in the Levant, and after passing from place to place, and making incredible havoc all the way, had now reached the west. There, in spite of all the means that art and human foresight could suggest, such as keeping the city clear from filth, the exclusion of all suspected persons, and the publication of copious instructions for the preservation of health; and notwithstanding manifold supplications offered to God in processions and otherwise, it began to show itself in the spring of the aforesaid year, in a sad and wonderful manner. Unlike what had been seen in the east, where bleeding from the nose is the fatal prognostic, here there appeared certain tumours in the groin or under the armpits, some as big as a small apple, others as an egg; and afterwards purple spots in most parts of the body; in some cases large and but few in number, in others smaller and more numerous-both sorts the usual messengers of death. To the cure of this malady, neither medical knowledge nor the power of drugs was of any effect; whether because the disease was in its own nature mortal, or that the physicians (the number of whom, taking quacks and women pretenders into the account, was grown very great) could form no just idea of the cause, nor consequently devise a true method of cure; whichever was the reason, few escaped; but nearly all died the third day from the first appearance of the symptoms, some sooner, some later, without any fever or accessory symptoms. What gave more virulence to this plague, was that, by being communicated from the sick to the healthy, it spread daily, like fire when it comes in contact with large masses of combustibles. Nor was it caught only by conversing with, or coming near the sick, but even by touching their clothes, or anything that they had before touched ….
These facts, and others of the like sort, occasioned various fears and devices amongst those who survived, all tending to the same uncharitable and cruel end; which was, to avoid the sick, and every thing that had been near them, expecting by that means to save themselves. And some holding it best to live temperately, and to avoid excesses of all kinds, made parties, and shut themselves up from the rest of the world; eating and drinking moderately of the best, and diverting themselves with music, and such other entertainments as they might have within doors; never listening to anything from without, to make them uneasy. Others maintained free living to be a better preservative, and would balk no passion or appetite they wished to gratify, drinking and revelling incessantly from tavern to tavern, or in private houses (which were frequently found deserted by the owners, and therefore common to every one), yet strenuously avoiding, with all this brutal indulgence, to come near the infected. And such, at that time, was the public distress, that the laws, human and divine, were no more regarded; for the officers, to put them in force, being either dead, sick, or in want of persons to assist them, every one did just as he pleased. A third sort of people chose a method between these two: not confining themselves to rules of diet like the former, and yet avoiding the intemperance of the latter; but eating and drinking what their appetites required, they walked everywhere with [fragrances and nose-coverings], for the whole atmosphere seemed to them tainted with the stench of dead bodies, arising partly from the distemper itself, and partly from the fermenting of the medicines within them. Others with less humanity, but . . . with more security from danger, decided that the only remedy for the pestilence was to avoid it: persuaded, therefore, of this, and taking care for themselves only, men and women in great numbers left the city, their houses, relations, and effects, and fled into the country; as if the wrath of God had been restrained to visit those only within the walls of the city ….
I pass over the little regard that citizens and relations showed to each other; for their terror was such, that a brother even fled from his brother, a wife from her husband, and, what is more uncommon, a parent from his own child. Hence numbers that fell sick could have no help but what the charity of friends, who were very few, or the avarice of servants supplied; and even these were scarce and at extravagant wages, and so little used to the business that they were fit only to reach what was called for, and observe when their employer died; and this desire of getting money often cost them their lives ….
It fared no better with the adjacent country, for . . . you might see the poor distressed labourers, with their families, without either the aid of physicians, or help of servants, languishing on the highways, in the fields, and in their own houses, and dying rather like cattle than human, creatures. The consequence was that, growing dissolute in their manners like the citizens, and careless of everything, as supposing every day to be their last, their thoughts were not so much employed how to improve, as how to use their substance for their present support.
What can I say more, if I return to the city, unless that such was the cruelty of Heaven, and perhaps of men, that between March and July following, according to authentic reckonings, upwards of a hundred thousand souls perished in the city only; whereas, before that calamity, it was not supposed to have contained so many inhabitants. What magnificent dwellings, what noble palaces were then depopulated to the last inhabitant! What families became extinct! What riches and vast possessions were left, and no known heir to inherit them! What numbers of both sexes, in the prime and vigour of youth . . . breakfasted in the morning with their living friends, and supped at night with their departed friends in the other world!
Source: “A Most Terrible Plague'” is from Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, in Stories of Boccaccio, trans. John Payne (London: Bibliophilist Library, 1903), pp. 1-6. Found on Internet Archive.
9.3 Matteo Villani: God’s Hand was Unstrung (mid-Fourteenth Century)
Matteo Villani (c. 1283 – 1363) was an Italian chronicler and historian from Florence, best known for continuing the monumental historical work begun by his brother, Giovanni Villani. Giovanni’s Nuova Cronica offered a detailed account of Florentine and European history up to the time of his death during the Black Death in 1348. After Giovanni’s passing, Matteo took up the task of continuing the chronicle. He himself succumbed to the disease in 1363, Through his chronicle, we gain insight into how contemporaries understood the catastrophic effects of the Black Death and the challenges of rebuilding society in its wake.
The following excerpt was adapted from G.G. Coulton, “‘God’s Hand Was Unstrung'” from The Black Death (London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1929).
Those few discreet folk who remained alive expected many things, all of which, by reasons of the corruption of sin, failed among mankind, whose minds followed marvelously in the contrary direction. They believed that those whom God’s grace had saved from death, having beheld the destruction of their neighbors, and having heard the same tidings from all the nations of the world, would become better-conditioned, humble, virtuous, and Catholic; that they would guard themselves from iniquity and sins, and would be full of love and charity one towards another. But no sooner had the plague ceased than we saw the contrary; for, since men were few, and since, by hereditary succession, they abounded in earthly goods, they forgot the past as though it had never been, and gave themselves up to a more shameful and disordered life than they had led before. For, mouldering in ease, they dissolutely abandoned themselves to the sin of gluttony, with feasts and taverns and delight of delicate foods; and again to games of hazard and to unbridled lechery, inventing strange and unaccustomed fashions and indecent manners in their garments, and changing all their household stuff into new forms. And the common folk, both men and women, by reason of the abundance and superfluity that they found, would no longer labour at their accustomed trades, but demanded the dearest and most delicate foods for their sustenance; and they married at their will, while children and common women clad themselves in all the fair and costly garments of the ladies dead by that horrible death. Thus, almost the whole city, without any restraint whatsoever, rushed into disorderliness of life; and in other cities or provinces of the world things were the same or worse. Therefore, according to such tidings as we could hear, there was no part of the world wherein men restrained themselves to live in temperance, when once they had escaped from the fury of the Lord; for now they thought that. God’s hand was unstrung ….
Again, men dreamed of wealth and abundance in garments and in all other things . . . beyond meat and drink; yet, in fact, things turned out widely different; for most [luxury] commodities were more costly, by twice or more, than before the plague. And the price of labour, and the work of all trades and crafts, rose in disorderly fashion beyond the double. Lawsuits and disputes and quarrels and riots arose everywhere among citizens in every land, by reason of legacies and successions; the law-courts of our own city of Florence were long filled with such [cases], to our great expense and unwanted discomfort. Wars and . . . scandals arose throughout the world, contrary to men’s expectation.
Source: “God’s Hand Was Unstrung” from G. G. Coulton, The Black Death (London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1929). Found on Internet Archive.
9.4 Jacob von Königshofen: Chronicle (late-Fourteenth Century)
Jacob von Königshofen (c. 1346 – 1420) was a German chronicler and historian from Strasbourg, known for writing one of the earliest chronicles in the German language. His most famous work, the Chronik, provides a sweeping narrative of world history, beginning with biblical events and continuing through his own time. Writing in the vernacular rather than Latin, he made history accessible to a broader audience beyond the clergy and scholarly elites. His account offers valuable insights into how people in the late Middle Ages understood the past, including major events such as the Black Death, the Hundred Years’ War, and the shifting political dynamics of the Holy Roman Empire.
The following excerpt is from Jacob Marcus, The Jew in the Medieval World: A Sourcebook, 315-1791, (New York: JPS, 1938)
The Cremation of Strasbourg Jewry St. Valentine’s Day, February 14, 1349
In the year 1349 there occurred the greatest epidemic that ever happened. Death went from one end of the earth to the other, on that side and this side of the sea, and it was greater among the Saracens than among the Christians. In some lands everyone died so that no one was left. Ships were also found on the sea laden with wares; the crew had all died and no one guided the ship. The Bishop of Marseilles and priests and monks and more than half of all the people there died with them. In other kingdoms and cities so many people perished that it would be horrible to describe. The pope at Avignon stopped all sessions of court, locked himself in a room, allowed no one to approach him and had a fire burning before him all the time. [This last was probably intended as some sort of disinfectant.] And from what this epidemic came, all wise teachers and physicians could only say that it was God’s will. And as the plague was now here, so was it in other places, and lasted more than a whole year. This epidemic also came to Strasbourg in the summer of the above mentioned year, and it is estimated that about sixteen thousand people died.
In the matter of this plague the Jews throughout the world were reviled and accused in all lands of having caused it through the poison which they are said to have put into the water and the wells-that is what they were accused of-and for this reason the Jews were burnt all the way from the Mediterranean into Germany, but not in Avignon, for the pope protected them there.
Nevertheless they tortured a number of Jews in Berne and Zofingen [Switzerland] who then admitted that they had put poison into many wells, and they also found the poison in the wells…The result was that they were burnt in many cities, and wherever they were expelled they were caught by the peasants and stabbed to death or drowned. . . .
The Jews are Burnt
On Saturday – that was St. Valentine’s Day-they burnt the Jews on a wooden platform in their cemetery. There were about two thousand of them. Those who wanted to baptize themselves were spared. [Some say that about a thousand accepted baptism.] Many small children were taken out of the fire and baptized against the will of their fathers and mothers. And everything that was owed to the Jews was cancelled, and the Jews had to surrender all pledges and notes that they had taken for debts. The council, however, took the cash that the Jews possessed and divided it among the working-men proportionately. The money was indeed the thing that killed the Jews. If they had been poor and if the feudal lords had not been in debt to them, they would not have been burnt. After this wealth was divided among the artisans some gave their share to the Cathedral or to the Church on the advice of their confessors.
Thus were the Jews burnt at Strasbourg, and in the same year in all the cities of the Rhine, whether Free Cities or Imperial Cities or cities belonging to the lords. In some towns they burnt the Jews after a trial, in others, without a trial. In some cities the Jews themselves set fire to their houses and cremated themselves.
Source: Jacob Marcus, The Jew in the Medieval World: A Sourcebook, 315-1791, (New York: JPS, 1938), 43-48 Later printings of this text (e.g. by Atheneum, 1969, 1972, 1978) do not indicate that the copyright was renewed)
This text is part of the Internet Jewish History Sourcebook. The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted texts for introductory level classes in modern European and World history. Unless otherwise indicated the specific electronic form of the document is copyright. Permission is granted for electronic copying, distribution in print form for educational purposes and personal use. If you do reduplicate the document, indicate the source. No permission is granted for commercial use of the Sourcebook. © Paul Halsall, July 1998
9.5 Ibn Battuta: The Plague in Damascus (1348)
Ibn Battuta (1304–c. 1369 CE) was a scholar and traveler from the region that is now Morocco. Trained in Islamic law, he set out at the age of 21 on a pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca, which turned into nearly three decades of travel across Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, India, Southeast Asia, and even China. Upon returning home, Ibn Battuta dictated an account of his adventures known as the Rihla (“The Journey”), which provides a detailed picture of the interconnected Islamic world of the 14th century. His observations describe not only trade and politics but also the cultures, religions, and daily lives of the people he encountered.
Ibn Battuta was in Damascus in 1348–1349, during the outbreak of the Black Death. His account provides a valuable eyewitness description of how the epidemic affected the city and its religious and social life. He also records the extraordinary mortality produced by the disease. Ibn Battuta reports that thousands were dying each day, leaving the city overwhelmed by funerals and burials. The sheer number of deaths disrupted normal social and religious practices and demonstrated the inability of existing institutions to cope with the catastrophe. Rather than describing the plague simply as a medical phenomenon, he presents it within a worldview in which disease, suffering, prayer, and divine providence were closely connected. The collective response of Damascus therefore reveals how medieval Muslims understood and confronted a catastrophe that they could not explain through modern epidemiology.
This excerpt is from Ibn Battuta, Travels in Asia and Africa 1325-1354, trans. and ed. H. A. R. Gibb (London: Broadway House, 1929).
The Plague of 1348
I saw a remarkable instance of the veneration in which the Damascenes hold this mosque during the great pestilence on my return journey through Damascus, in the latter part of July 1348. The viceroy Arghun Shah ordered a crier to proclaim through Damascus that all the people should fast for three days and that no one should cook anything eatable in the market during the daytime… So the people fasted for three successive days, the last of which was a Thursday, then they assembled in the Great Mosque, amirs, sharifs, qadis, theologians, and all the other classes of the people, until the place was filled to overflowing, and there they spent the Thursday night in prayers and litanies. After the dawn prayer the next morning they all went out together on foot, holding Korans in their hands, and the amirs barefooted. The procession was joined by the entire population of the town, men and women, small and large; the Jews came with their Book of the Law and the Christians with their Gospel, all of them with their women and children. The whole concourse, weeping and supplicating and seeking the favour of God through His Books and His Prophets, made their way to the Mosque of the Footprints, and there they remained in supplication and invocation until near midday. They then returned to the city and held the Friday service, and God lightened their affliction; for the number of deaths in a single day at Damascus did not attain two thousand, while in Cairo and Old Cairo it reached the figure of twenty-four thousand a day.
Source: Ibn Battuta, Travels in Asia and Africa 1325-1354, trans. and ed. H. A. R. Gibb (London: Broadway House, 1929)
This text is part of the Internet Medieval Sourcebook. The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted texts related to medieval and Byzantine history. Unless otherwise indicated the specific electronic form of the document is copyright. Permission is granted for electronic copying, distribution in print form for educational purposes and personal use. If you do reduplicate the document, indicate the source. No permission is granted for commercial use.© Paul Halsall, January 2023