Historical Parallels, vol. 2 of 3)

by Arthur Thomas Malkin

The relaxation of morals consequent upon this pestilence is more fully described by Villani.

“In this season of the deadly pestilence, Pope Clement VI. made great general indulgences of the punishment of all sins to those who on repentance and confession requested it of their confessors, and died; and in this mortality every Christian, thinking that he was dying, set himself well in order, and with much contrition and repentance they gave up their souls to God. And the few wise men who remained alive expected many things, which through the corruption of sin, turned out otherwise, the very contrary most marvellously coming to pass. For they thought that such as God by his favour had kept alive, having seen the extermination of their nearest connexions, and having heard the like tidings of all the nations of the world, would have become of better condition, humble, virtuous, of the true faith, and would have kept themselves from iniquities and sins, and would have been full of love and charity one towards another. But now that the mortality was at an end, the contrary appeared; for men finding themselves few and rich by their heirships and successions to earthly goods, forgetting things past as if they had never been, gave into a more unhandsome and disorderly life than they had used before. For wandering about at leisure they dissolutely indulged in the sin of gluttony, banquets, taverns, delicate food, gaming, running without bridle into luxury, which they sought in strange clothing, and unusual fashions, and unseemly manners, changing the forms of all household goods. And the people, men and women, because of the exceeding abundance which they found of all things, would not labour at their accustomed trades, and would have the dearest and most delicate viands for their subsistence, and married at will; the maid-servants and all the lowest women dressing themselves in all the beautiful and valuable attire of the honourable ladies who were dead. And almost all our city, without any check, ran into a discreditable course of life, and so, and worse, did the other cities and provinces of the world. And according to all the accounts we have received, there was no place where the living kept themselves in continence, when they had escaped from the divine wrath, supposing that the hand of God was weary. But, according to the prophet Isaiah, the wrath of God is not shortened, neither is his hand weary: but he has much pleasure in his mercy, and labours in long-suffering, that he may bring back sinners to conversion and repentance; and he punishes temperately.

“It was supposed that, through the failure of the people, there would for a long time be abundance of every thing which the earth produces; and, on the contrary, through the ingratitude of men, every thing came to unusual scarcity, and so continued a long time. In some countries there were several unusual famines. So also it was expected that there would be abundance of clothing, and of all other things which are of service to the human body beyond subsistence: and, in fact, the contrary came to pass for a long time; for most things were worth twice as much as they used to be before the aforesaid mortality, and more. And labour, and manufactures of all sorts, rose regularly to more than twice the ordinary rate. Lawsuits, disputes, controversies and riots arose on every side among the citizens of every country, on account of their inheritances and successions. And our city of Florence long filled her courts with them, with great expenditure and unusual charges. Wars were stirred up, and various scandals throughout all the universe, contrary to the common expectation of men.”

These Italian accounts might be suspected of exaggeration, but they are fully supported by ultramontane authority; and though the pestilence of 1348 is usually known as the plague of Florence (a distinction which it owes probably to Boccaccio), it raged even more destructively beyond the Florentine territory, and beyond the Italian peninsula. The French and English historians in particular bear testimony to the extent of misery produced by it. “Never in old times was it heard or seen that such a multitude of people lay dead: the evil seemed to grow by imagination and contagion, for if a whole man visited a sick man, it was very seldom that he escaped. Thus in many towns and villages the priests fled to avoid attending upon the dying: in many places, out of twenty persons, not two remained alive. At Paris, in the hospital of the Hôtel Dieu, the mortality was such, that for a long time five hundred corpses were carried in carts daily to the burial-ground of the Innocents.”[118] “In Provence and Languedoc two-thirds of the people were estimated to have perished; in the rest of France one-third. Allowing for the inclination which all men have to magnify those calamities, the naked facts of which are terrible enough, there is here evidence of a mortality hardly to be equalled.”[119]

In England the same pestilence raged with destructive energy among the poor, but spared the higher orders. Hardly any of the nobility or bishops died, with this remarkable exception, that the see of Canterbury was thrice vacated by death in one year. It is also recorded that there was a great murrain among the cattle, and that neither beast nor bird of prey would touch their carcasses. Meat in consequence became exceedingly scarce, and the harvest having failed, not so much for deficiency of crops, as for want of hands to get it in, the distress was very great. About harvest-time a reaper was not to be had for less than eight-pence, nor a mower for less than twelve-pence a day, besides victuals, “which in those days was excessive wages, money having then a tenfold value to what it hath now.”

Another celebrated pestilence is that which desolated Milan in the year 1630. The duchy was then subject to Spain, and, like all the foreign dependencies and conquests of that once powerful kingdom, had reason to rue the day that gave it such a master. Domestic misrule, the licensed insolence of the nobles, the supine indifference of the government to all but political crimes, combined with the miseries of almost constant war to destroy the husbandman’s hopes and paralyse his industry. At length natural causes seemed to unite with political ones to work evil to this unhappy country. In the year 1627 an unfavourable season and defective harvest produced an alarming scarcity, which was aggravated into famine by a second failure in the succeeding year. The consequences of this scarcity were soon evident in the vast number of persons without employment or means of subsistence, who were congregated in the streets of Milan. It was the pernicious fashion of that time for the gentry to maintain a number of idle and dissolute followers—men regardless of obligations human or divine, who owned no law except their master’s will, chosen and valued for their readiness to undertake and dexterity to execute his orders, alike unmindful of their guilt or danger. The rich walked the streets followed by a train of these bravoes (the Italian name is naturalized in our language), swords were drawn upon the slightest pretence, and their brawls openly insulted and defied the law. These men were the first to be turned adrift when vice and luxury began to feel the pressure of want.—”It would have been laughable,” says a contemporary, “had such a feeling been consistent with the consciousness of our own danger, to see the change in those persons who used to be bugbears to all. The nobles now walked unattended, civilly, hanging their ears (demissis auribus), as if to bespeak peace by their demeanour. No less striking was it to see their domestic bullies, who used to perfume the very air, reduced to beg half naked through the city.”[120] The sufferings of these ruffians would excite little sympathy, but the famine pressed equally upon the honest and industrious. The rich being compelled by increasing scarcity to contract their expenses, artificers and tradesmen, one after another, were thrown out of employ; and thus the streets were filled with a starving crowd, daily increased by those who flocked from the country and from neighbouring towns, reduced to depend upon charity, and allured to the capital by its superior wealth.

So great was the evil, such the scenes of misery presented to the eye in every street, that the municipal authorities resolved on opening two vast establishments—the lazaretto, or hospital for persons with infectious disorders, and a building usually appropriated to the reception of foundlings. To these places all mendicants and persons without means of subsistence were taken by the police, and maintained at the public expense. At one of these establishments 3000 persons were admitted within a few days, and fresh inmates were continually presenting themselves. Private munificence materially lightened the heavy charge thus laid upon the public treasury. But, then as now, numbers were so devoted to a vagabond life, that rather than accept food, clothing, and shelter, under the moderate restraints necessary to preserve order in such a multitude, they would have remained in rags, exposed to the inclemency of the weather, and dependent even for the bread of life upon casual relief. To quicken the diligence of the police, a small reward was given for each person whom they brought in. At length the discontent among those who were shut up, generated by the restrictions on their liberty, and heightened by a mortality far less probably than that which took place among them while scattered abroad, but more alarming because brought all at once into view, became so great, that the magistrates broke up these establishments, and the misery of unbounded beggary again prevailed throughout Milan.

During this period the pestilence lurked in the Grison mountains: it had even appeared in the capital; but the deaths were few, the disease spread not, and both magistrates and people, with a common infatuation, were eager to deny the existence of danger until it was too late to guard against it. In the autumn of 1629 a further evil visited this unhappy country. The Spanish governor had granted a free passage to a German army, intended to oppose the French interest in the duchy of Mantua. These men, with the brutal licentiousness which preeminently disgraced the mercenary soldiers of that age, inflicted all the miseries of war upon a friendly population. Blood, rapine, and fire marked their path; the inhabitants concealed their property, and abandoned their houses, but it was often in vain; their persecutors spread over the country, and if discovered they were compelled by torture to reveal their stores. And as the first of these locusts left nothing for those who followed, the latter often vented their wrath and disappointment upon those poor people, whose only crime was having lost their all. Thus all who could fly, took shelter in the most retired fortresses, and there endured extreme hardship, until the last of these ill-omened allies had disappeared. And such was the devastation, that the miseries of their temporary shelter were little worse than those endured after their return home.[121]

Still further to increase the terrors of these troops, it was reported that they bore the plague along with them, from which indeed the German armies were said seldom to be entirely free. Superstition added to the general alarm. A comet appeared in 1628; another in 1630. Belief in the malign influence of these bodies was then general. Prophecies were current, said to be of ancient date, denouncing plague and famine in these years. It will be evident to the reader that no place could be better fitted to receive and nourish a pestilential disorder than Milan was at this time. Scarcity of food and want of cleanliness, inseparable from a poor and crowded population, and a summer of unusual heat, combined to favour the reception of the enemy. In November, 1629, a soldier quartered at Chiavenna returned to his home at Milan. He was taken ill, removed to the hospital, and died; and on examination the signs of plague were found on his body, and the subsequent death of all persons who had been under the same roof made it evident that the plague had gained entrance. But at first the progress of the disease was slow, so slow that doubts were entertained whether it were really the plague; and while the magistrates were dilatory and remiss in taking the usual precautions, the common people were especially unwilling to admit so unpalatable and alarming a report. Fear of the sufferings, and disgust at the restrictions and discipline of an infected city, made them furious against all who warned them of their danger. The first physician in Milan, a man eminent for charity in the exercise of his profession as well as skill, and therefore highly venerated even by the populace, was assaulted by a mob, and obliged to fly for his life, upon no other provocation than his belief in the reality of the disease.