GREAT PLAGUE IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.
The early triumphs of Swiss valour were saddened by the breaking out of that great plague, which visited with its ravages the greater part of Europe and Asia, and of which the most vivid delineation ever written (except that of a similar pest by Thucydides) has been preserved in the Decameron of Boccacio. Whole towns were depopulated. Estates were left without claimants or occupiers. Priests, physicians, grave-diggers, could not be found in adequate numbers; and the consecrated earth of the churchyards no longer sufficed for the reception of its destined tenants. In the order of Franciscans alone, 120,430 monks are said to have perished. This plague had been preceded by tremendous earthquakes, which laid in ruins towns, castles, and villages. Dearth and famine, clouds of locusts, and even an innocent comet, had been long before regarded as fore-runners of the pestilence; and when it came it was viewed as an unequivocal sign of the wrath of God. At the outset, the Jews became, as usual, objects of umbrage, as having occasioned this calamity by poisoning the wells. A persecution was commenced against them, and numberless innocent persons were consigned, by heated fanaticism, to a dreadful death by fire, and their children were baptized over the corpses of their parents, according to the religion of their murderers. These atrocities were in all probability perpetrated by many, in order to possess themselves of the wealth acquired by the Jews in traffic, to take revenge for their usurious extortions, or, finally, to pay their debts in the most expeditious and easy manner. When it was found that the plague was nowise diminished by massacring the Jews, but, on the contrary, seemed to acquire additional virulence, it was inferred that God, in his righteous wrath, intended nothing less than to extirpate the whole sinful race of man. Many now endeavoured by self-chastisement to avert the divine vengeance from themselves. Fraternities of hundreds and thousands collected under the name of Flagellants, strolled through the land in strange garbs, scourged themselves in the public streets, in penance for the sins of the world, and read a letter which was said to have fallen from heaven, admonishing all to repentance and amendment. They were joined of course, by a crowd of idle vagabonds, who, under the mask of extraordinary sanctity and humble penitence, indulged in every species of disorder and debauchery. At last the affair assumed so grave an aspect, that the pope and many secular princes declared themselves against the Flagellants, and speedily put an end to their extravagancies. Various ways were still, however, resorted to by various tempers to snatch the full enjoyment of that life which they were so soon to lose, at the expense of every possible violation of the laws of morality. Only a few lived on in a quiet and orderly manner, in reliance on the saving help of God, without running into any excess of anxiety or indulgence. After this desolating scourge had raged during four years, its violence seemed at length to be exhausted.—Ibid.