The Black Death And The Flagellants

The middle of the fourteenth century was a period of extraordinary

terror and disaster to Europe. Numerous portents, which sadly frightened

the people, were followed by a pestilence which threatened to turn the

continent into an unpeopled wilderness. For year after year there were

signs in the sky, on the earth, in the air, all indicative, as men

thought, of some terrible coming event. In 1337 a great comet appeared

in the heavens, its far-extending tail sowing deep dread in the minds of

the ignorant masses. During the three succeeding years the land was

visited by enormous flying armies of locusts, which descended in myriads

upon the fields, and left the shadow of famine in their track. In 1348

came an earthquake of such frightful violence that many men deemed the

end of the world to be presaged. Its devastations were widely spread.

Cyprus, Greece, and Italy were terribly visited, and it extended through

the Alpine valleys as far as Basle. Mountains sank into the earth. In

Carinthia thirty villages and the tower of Villach were ruined. The air

grew thick and stifling. There were dense and frightful fogs. Wine

fermented in the casks. Fiery meteors appeared in the skies. A gigantic

pillar of flame was seen by hundreds descending upon the roof of the

pope's palace at Avignon. In 1356 came another earthquake, which

destroyed almost the whole of Basle. What with famine, flood, fog,

locust swarms, earthquakes, and the like, it is not surprising that many

men deemed the cup of the world's sins to be full, and the end of the

kingdom of man to be at hand.



An event followed that seemed to confirm this belief. A pestilence broke

out of such frightful virulence that it appeared indeed as if man was to

be swept from the earth. Men died in hundreds, in thousands, in myriads,

until in places there were scarcely enough living to bury the dead, and

these so maddened with fright that dwellings, villages, towns, were

deserted by all who were able to fly, the dying and dead being left

their sole inhabitants. It was the pestilence called the "Black Death,"

the most terrible visitation that Europe has ever known.



This deadly disease came from Asia. It is said to have originated in

China, spreading over the great continent westwardly, and descending in

all its destructive virulence upon Europe, which continent it swept as

with the besom of destruction. The disease appears to have been a very

malignant type of what is known as the plague, a form of pestilence

which has several times returned, though never with such virulence as on

that occasion. It began with great lassitude of the body, and rapid

swellings of the glands of the groin and armpits, which soon became

large boils. Then followed, as a fatal symptom, large black or

deep-blue spots over the body, from which came the name of "Black

Death." Some of the victims became sleepy and stupid; others were

incessantly restless. The tongue and throat grew black; the lungs

exhaled a noisome odor; an insatiable thirst was produced. Death came in

two or three days, sometimes on the very day of seizure. Medical aid was

of no avail. Doctors and relatives fled in terror from what they deemed

a fatally contagious disease, and the stricken were left to die alone.

Villages and towns were in many places utterly deserted, no living

things being left, for the disease was as fatal to dogs, cats, and swine

as to men. There is reason to believe that this, and other less

destructive visitations of plague, were due to the action of some of

those bacterial organisms which are now known to have so much to do with

infectious diseases. This particular pestilence-breeder seems to have

flourished in filth, and the streets of the cities of Europe of that day

formed a richly fertile soil for its growth. Men prayed to God for

relief, instead of cleaning their highways and by-ways, and relief came

not.



Such was its character, what were its ravages? Never before or since has

a pestilence brought such desolation. Men died by millions. At Basle it

found fourteen thousand victims; at Strasburg and Erfurt, sixteen

thousand; in the other cities of Germany it flourished in like

proportion. In Osnabrueck only seven married couples remained unseparated

by death. Of the Franciscan Minorites of Germany, one hundred and

twenty-five thousand died.



Outside of Germany the fury of the pestilence was still worse; from east

to west, from north to south, Europe was desolated. The mortality in

Asia was fearful. In China there are said to have been thirteen million

victims to the scourge; in the rest of Asia twenty-four millions. The

extreme west was no less frightfully visited. London lost one hundred

thousand of its population; in all England a number estimated at from

one-third to one-half the entire population (then probably numbering

from three to five millions) were swept into the grave. If we take

Europe as a whole, it is believed that fully a fourth of its inhabitants

were carried away by this terrible scourge. For two years the pestilence

raged, 1348 and 1349. It broke out again in 1361-62, and once more in

1369.



The mortality caused by the plague was only one of its disturbing

consequences. The bonds of society were loosened; natural affection

seemed to vanish; friend deserted friend, mothers even fled from their

children; demoralization showed itself in many instances in reckless

debauchery. An interesting example remains to us in Boccaccio's

"Decameron," whose stories were told by a group of pleasure-lovers who

had fled from plague-stricken Florence.



In many localities the hatred of the Jews by the people led to frightful

excesses of persecution against them, they being accused by their

enemies of poisoning the wells. From Berne, where the city councils

gave orders for the massacre, it spread over the whole of Switzerland

and Germany, many thousands being murdered. At Mayence it is said that

twelve thousand Jews were massacred. At Strasburg two thousand were

burned in one pile. Even the orders of the emperor failed to put an end

to the slaughter. All the Jews who could took refuge in Poland, where

they found a protector in Casimir, who, like a second Ahasuerus,

extended his aid to them from love for Esther, a beautiful Jewess. From

that day to this Poland has swarmed with Jews.



This persecution was discountenanced by Pope Clement VI. in two bulls,

in the first of which he ordered that the Jews should not be made the

victims of groundless charges or injured in person or property without

the sentence of a lawful judge. The second affirmed the innocence of the

Jews in the persecution then going on and ordered the bishops to

excommunicate all those who should continue it.



Of the beneficial results of the religious excitement may be named the

earnest labors of the order of Beguines, an association of women for the

purpose of attending the sick and dying, which had long been in

existence, but was particularly active and useful during this period. We

may name also the Beghards and Lollards, whose extravagances were to

some extent outgrowths of earnest piety, and their lives strongly

contrasted with the levity and luxury of the higher ecclesiastics. These

societies of poor and mendicant penitents were greatly increased by the

religious excitement of the time, which also gave special vitality to

another sect, the Flagellants, which, as mentioned in a former article,

first arose in 1260, during the excesses of bloodshed of the Guelphs of

northern Italy, and thence spread over Europe. After a period of

decadence they broke out afresh in 1349, as a consequence of the deadly

pestilence.



The members of this sect, seeing no hope of relief from human action,

turned to God as their only refuge, and deemed it necessary to

propitiate the Deity by extraordinary sacrifices and self-tortures. The

flame of fanaticism, once started, spread rapidly and widely. Hundreds

of men, and even boys, marched in companies through the roads and

streets, carrying heavy torches, scourging their naked shoulders with

knotted whips, which were often loaded with lead or iron, singing

penitential hymns, parading in bands which bore banners and were

distinguished by white hats with red crosses.



Women as well as men took part in these fanatical exercises, marching

about half-naked, whipping each other frightfully, flinging themselves

on the earth in the most public places of the towns and scourging their

bare backs and shoulders till the blood flowed. Entering the churches,

they would prostrate themselves on the pavement, with their arms

extended in the form of a cross, chanting their rude hymns. Of these

hymns we may quote the following example:



"Now is the holy pilgrimage.

Christ rode into Jerusalem,

And in his hand he bore a cross;

May Christ to us be gracious.

Our pilgrimage is good and right."



The Flagellants did not content themselves with these public

manifestations of self-sacrifice. They formed a regular religious order,

with officers and laws, and property in common. At night, before

sleeping, each indicated to his brothers by gestures the sins which

weighed most heavily on his conscience, not a word being spoken until



absolution was granted by one of them in the following form:



"For their dear sakes who torture bore,

Rise, brother, go and sin no more."



Had this been all they might have been left to their own devices, but

they went farther. The day of judgment, they declared, was at hand. A

letter had been addressed from Jerusalem by the Creator to his sinning

creatures, and it was their mission to spread this through Europe. They

preached, confessed, and forgave sins, declared that the blood shed in

their flagellations had a share with the blood of Christ in atoning for

sin, that their penances were a substitute for the sacraments of the

church, and that the absolution granted by the clergy was of no avail.

They taught that all men were brothers and equal in the sight of God,

and upbraided the priests for their pride and luxury.



These doctrines and the extravagances of the Flagellants alarmed the

pope, Clement VI., who launched against the enthusiasts a bull of

excommunication, and ordered their persecution as heretics. This course,

at first, roused their enthusiasm to frenzy. Some of them even pretended

to be the Messiah, one of these being burnt as a heretic at Erfurt.

Gradually, however, as the plague died away, and the occasion for this

fanatical outburst vanished, the enthusiasm of the Flagellants went with

it, and they sunk from sight. In 1414 a troop of them reappeared in

Thuringia and Lower Saxony, and even surpassed their predecessors in

wildness of extravagance. With the dying out of this manifestation this

strange mania of the middle ages vanished, probably checked by the

growing intelligence of mankind.