#03d Primary Source Work: Analyzing Perspectives on the Black Death (2526)

Causes of the Black Death: Contemporary Views The Black Death was the most terrifying natural calamity of the Middle Ages and affected wide areas of Europe, North Africa, and Asia. People were often baffled by the plague, especially by its causes, and gave widely different explanations. The first selection is taken from the preface to the Decameron by the fourteenth-century Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio. The next three selections are from contemporary treatises that offered widely different explanations for the great plague.

Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron In the year of Our Lord 1348 the deadly plague broke out in the great city of Florence, most beautiful of Italian cities. Whether through the operation of the heavenly bodies or because of our own iniquities which the just wrath of God sought to correct, the plague had arisen in the East some years before, causing the death of countless human beings. It spread without stop from one place to another, until, unfortunately, it swept over the West. Neither knowledge nor human foresight availed against it, though the city was cleansed of much filth by chosen officers in charge and sick persons were forbidden to enter it, while advice was broadcast for the preservation of health. Nor did humble supplications serve. Not once but many times they were ordained in the form of processions and other ways for the propitia- tion of God by the faithful, but, in spite of everything, toward the spring of the year the plague began to show its ravages.

Geoffrey de Meaux on Astrological Causes I was asked by some of my friends to write something about the cause of this general pestilence,showing its natural cause, and why it affected so many countries, and why it affected some countries more than others… Now that the basics have been discussed, you can consider the reasons for such a great mortality in so many countries, and how the illness came through the influence of the stars. The Greek astronomer Ptolemy in the 2nd century wrote in his book: “The important things are the strengths and powers of the hour…eclipses of the sun and moon, and the places the planets cross at that hour.” Wherefore it has been, and is known by all astrologers that in the year 1345 there was a total eclipse of the moon, of long duration, on the 18th of March. At the longitude of Oxford it began an hour after the moon rose and all the time the two planets were in conjunction in Aquarius, and Mars was with them in the same sign, with the light of Jupiter…

On Earthquakes as the Cause of Plague There is a fourth opinion, which I consider more likely than the others, which is that insofar as the mortality arose from natural causes its immediate cause was a corrupt and poisonous earthy exhalation, which infected the air in various parts of the world and, when breathed in by people, suffocated them and suddenly snuffed them out.... It is a matter of scientific fact that earthquakes are caused by the exhalation of fumes enclosed in the bow- els of the earth. When the fumes batter against the sides of the earth, and cannot get out, the earth is shaken and moves. I say that it is the vapor and cor- rupted air which has been vented—or so to speak purged—in the earthquake which occurred on St Paul’s day, 1347, along with the corrupted air vented in other earthquakes and eruptions, which has infected the air above the earth and killed people in various parts of the world; and I can bring various reasons in support of this conclusion.

Herman Gigas on Well Poisoning In 1347 there was such a great pestilence and mortality throughout almost the whole world that in the opinion of well-informed men scarcely a tenth of mankind survived. . . . Some say that it was brought about by the corruption of the air; others that the Jews planned to wipe out all the Christians with poison and had poi- soned wells and springs everywhere. And many Jews confessed as much under torture: that they had bred spiders and toads in pots and pans, and had obtained poison from overseas; and that not every Jew knew about this wickedness, only the more powerful ones, so that it would not be betrayed. As evidence of this hei- nous crime, men say that the bags full of poison were found in many wells and springs, and as a result, in cities, towns and villages throughout Germany, and in fields and woods too, almost all the wells and springs have been blocked up or built over, so that no one can drink from them or use the water for cooking, and men have to use rain or river water instead. God, the lord of vengeance, has not suffered the malice of the Jews to go unpunished. Throughout Germany, in all but a few places, they were burnt. For fear of that punishment many accepted baptism and their lives were spared. This action was taken against the Jews in 1349, and it still continues unabated, for in a number of regions many people, noble and humble alike, have laid plans against them and their defenders which they will never abandon until the whole Jewish race has been destroyed.