Published: November 12, 2009 11:04 pm         

When death knocked down humanity’s door

No event in recorded history has had greater effect on the world as did the Black Death, which decimated Europe from 1348-1350, killing between 25 and 50 percent of the continent’s population.

It is believed by many historians to have begun in China earlier in the century, and spread from fleas to rats – and eventually to humans – and carried by trade ships to Europe, where the great pandemic spread like wildfire.

It also affected large areas around the Mediterranean Sea, from Spain and North Africa to the Middle East.

Here is a brief description of the pestilence by a man who lived through the ordeal, noted author Giovanni Boccaccio, of Florence, Italy:

“The symptoms were not the same as in the East, where a gush of blood from the nose was the plain sign of inevitable death; but it began both in men and women with certain swellings in the groin or under the armpit. They grew to the size of a small apple or an egg, more or less, and were vulgarly called tumours. In a short space of time these tumours spread from the two parts named all over the body. Soon after this the symptoms changed and black or purple spots appeared on the arms or thighs or any other part of the body, sometimes a few large ones, sometimes many little ones. These spots were a certain sign of death, just as the original tumour had been and still remained.”

Death for those contracting plague was agonizing and usually within three days of the first symptoms. Medicine was in its infancy and of little use to sufferers. That it did not wipe out all of humanity may be the greatest miracle that came from the depths of the Dark Ages. Social order was shaken to its foundation as it ravaged rich and poor, gentry and commoner, nobility to street beggars.

It in fact knew no bounds.

Yet humankind somehow endured, as it always has.

Last week I wrote of the fragility of life. This week, I marvel at mankind’s ability to endure through the absolute depths of death and despair.

Black Death mass burials were the rule rather than the exception, as dead bodies completely overwhelmed the system of the day that handled burials. For at least three long years, many of our forebears awoke each morning as if it were their last day on Earth. For many millions it was, and they were powerless to do anything about it.

And people looked for scapegoats for the pestilence. Throughout Europe, Jews and other minorities were blamed for the plague, and thousands were burned alive or massacred as retribution.

Ignorance, it seemed, was and always has been at the forefront of humankind’s attempt to answer unanswerable questions. If you have no answer, blame your neighbor or the person down the road you don’t like. It’s as old a tale as any you’ll find.

And the Black Death was not the end of it. From the mid-1300s until the 1700s, plague revisited the human race about every generation.

As bad as this period in world history was, it is a testament to those who survived that civilization was able to right itself and carry on.

Social order changed, however. With the loss of so many workers and peasants, the landed gentry were forced out of their manors, having to work the land themselves. People with no means before the Black Death, now had worth as a workforce, and increasingly were able to acquire land and improve their station in life. Before the pestilence arrived, Europe’s peasantry was horrendously overpopulated, allowing the wealthy a vast sea of inexpensive manpower from which to draw.

The Black Death ended that in just a few short years.

Thus, an unintended consequence of the suffering was the rapid improvement of lives across the social spectrum, eventually leading society out of the Middle Ages (or Dark Ages) and into the Renaissance – the rebirth. The old social order, which provided the rich with wealth vastly beyond their need, and the poor scratching out a hand-to-mouth daily existence which offered a very short and extremely hard life, began to come to an end. The old world, in the blink of history’s eye, was turned upside down.

It makes you wonder how our modern world, with instant communication and uninhibited travel, would handle such a pandemic. Would social order and economic status change in a few short years? Would entire nations be decimated and go from great wealth to great poverty, virtually overnight?

Maybe that is why every outbreak of swine flu, every SARS virus, every avian flu, every ebola virus, is taken so seriously by the powers that be. And we, as the general population, should not be dismissive of warnings and precautions.

We rightly should take the bitter lessons learned by our forebears and keep the door of pestilence shut ... it’s at our peril to do otherwise.



Christy is news editor at the News & Eagle, and can be reached at davidc@enidnews.com.