A.D. 1206, on the last day of the month of February, there was an eclipse of the sun, which lasted six hours—the darkness was as great as at midnight. This phenomenon was followed by abundant and continued rains, inundations, and severe epidemic pestilence in Spain.
The years 1210–1213, 1217, 1218, and 1220, were marked by ordinary seasons, except in Spain, Italy, and Friesland. In the former place, Spain, 1217, the drought was so great as not only to destroy the harvests, but the pasture had the appearance of having been burnt up; famine was the consequence, with disease both in men and cattle. In Italy the plague, it is said, scarcely left a tenth part of the inhabitants alive, and in Damietta it is asserted that only three persons out of 70,000 survived. In Friesland, A.D. 1218, there was an inundation which destroyed cattle, houses, and many persons. In 1221, excessive rains, floods, frosts, and inclement heats induced a famine and pestilence, which almost desolated the whole of Europe; in some countries, the living were exhausted burying the dead, and in some cities scarcely a person survived the terrible destruction.
A.D. 1222, there was a severe thunder-storm in England with lightning, which destroyed several churches; the summer was excessively dry; frost and deep snow in April had destroyed the blossoms of the fruits; the country was deluged with rains in autumn, and swept with tempestuous winds; and the plague raged with uncontrollable fury in Germany, Hungary, Gaul, Egypt, and other countries: the animals also suffered from disease. The winter of 1225 was rigorous, following the great drought. In 1224 a dearth ensued, and there was a great mortality among sheep.
A.D. 1228, abundant rains, followed by a hot summer, the subsequent winter being a severe one, induced fatal disease, and an inundation at Friesland destroyed 100,000 persons.
The inundation of the Tiber, which happened A.D. 1230, drowned all the lower city of Rome, the river rising even to the stairs of St. Peter’s church: July and August following were exceedingly hot; famine ensued, and afterwards pestilence commenced and continued until A.D. 1235. England suffered also from pestilence, which decimated the population; in that year 20,000 persons, it is supposed, died of starvation alone in London. About this period, leprosy became so common in England that it was made the subject of several legislative enactments.
During this year, 1230, when King Don Jayme seized on the island of Mallorca, a frightful and lethal pestilence prevailed not only among the poor and wretched, but also among the higher orders; in the course of only one month, several nobles and individuals of the first families of Aragon and Catalonia died. The desolation which this dire pestilence caused was such that it almost depopulated the island, and forced the king to send galleys to Catalonia in search of colonists, he having given an order to Don Pedro Cornel for 100,000 reals to bring from Aragon 150 gentry,—caballeros or nobles. This pestilence increased with another no less fatal disease, viz., ‘the Sacred Persian or St. Anthony’s fire;’ so that this great monarch, anxious for the safety of his people, established in the island, by his mandate of 13th September of the same year, the hospital of St. Anthony for the reception and treatment of all suffering from so terrible a malady, as appears in the history of the kingdom of Mallorca written by the chronicler or historian Don Vincente Mut. In imitation of this establishment, and of that founded in Castro Xerez in 1214, other hospitals were erected for the same purposes in Madrid, Saragossa, and in various other provinces of the kingdom. Twenty-three years after, another hospital, called after St. Lazarus, was established in the city of Seville, similar to that which was built in the city of Valencia in the year 1067. The Annals of Seville, written by Zurita and Don Alonso Melgado, state that this hospital was founded by King Alonso the Wise. About this time, 1230, Denmark, Italy, and Gaul were visited by a severe epidemic pestilence, as also were various other parts of Europe; it continued until 1236.
A.D. 1233 it thundered and lightened for thirteen days, with heavy rains, which destroyed all vegetation in England, when famine and disease were the consequences. At this time most of the houses in London were built of wood and wattles, and thatched with straw; the windows were without glass, and there were neither chimneys nor boarded floors; common straw was used for the king’s bed. The Mediterranean was frozen over; loaded waggons also crossed the Adriatic in front of Venice. A.D. 1234 and the year following, 1235, the Thames rose so high at Westminster, that the lawyers and other members of the court were brought out of the Hall in boats. A.D. 1237, the dancing disease, similar to that which was rife A.D. 1027 at Kolbig, broke out amongst upwards of 100 children at Erfurt; they were said to have been suddenly seized with this singular malady, and to have proceeded dancing and jumping along the road to Armstadt; when they arrived at that place they fell exhausted to the ground, and, according to the account of an old chronicle, many of them died, after they were taken home by their parents, and the rest remained afflicted to the end of their lives with a permanent tremor. The years 1238 and 1239 were also destructive years in Europe.
A.D. 1240, the fish died on the coast of England; inclement seasons prevailed, and pestilence appeared in various parts of that country. Two years after, A.D. 1242, excessive rains swelled the river Thames, and inundated the country round about Lambeth on the Surrey side. The year following was remarkable for the appearance of meteors and drought; deadly pestilence prevailed in various parts of England. A.D. 1247, pestilence again occurred in England; it broke out in the month of September. A.D. 1249, an earthquake threw down St. Michael’s on the Hill without Glastonbury; a severe shock was felt also about the same period in Somersetshire.
In the same year, 1249, a dreadful pestilence ravaged the armies of St. Louis the Crusader, caused, says Joinville, his historian, by the decomposition of the dead bodies of those who had been slain in two great battles fought a few days previously. They had been thrown into the river by the Saracens, and when they floated, were arrested by the low bridge, which was the means of communication between the two divisions of the French troops. The river was covered with them from bank to bank, so that the water could not be seen a good stone’s-throw from the bridge upwards. The pious king caused the bodies of the Christians to be removed from the river and buried in deep graves; those of the Saracens were thrust under the arch of the bridge, and floated down to the sea. This occurred during Lent, and all that time, being obliged by their creed to live on fish, the soldiers could get no other than eelpouts,—a gluttonous fish, which fed on the dead bodies. The disease which broke out among them, Joinville says, dried up the flesh on their legs to the bone, and the skin became tanned as black as the ground, or like an old boot that has long lain behind a coffer (evidently a kind of dry gangrene). In addition to this miserable disorder, those affected by it had another sore complaint in the mouth, from eating such fish, that rotted the gums, and caused a most stinking breath: very few escaped death that were thus attacked; and the surest symptom of its being fatal was a bleeding at the nose; when that took place, none recovered. Starvation was soon added to their miseries, for the enemy was enabled so to blockade them, that the provision-boats could not reach them. The disorder so increased in the army, that the barbers were forced to cut away very large pieces of flesh from the gums to enable their patients to eat. The mortality was very great indeed, but what number thus perished miserably is not mentioned by Joinville.
In the year 1250 the summer was rainy and tempestuous, and a hard winter followed. The old town of Winchelsea was swallowed up by the sea, and an earthquake was felt at St. Albans, that did much damage. The summer of 1251 was intolerably hot; there was a famine in Italy, and epidemic pestilence traversed all England, and was attended with great mortality; a thunder-storm occurred, during which the chimney of the chamber where the queen and her children lay at Windsor was struck down, and the whole apartment violently shaken; large oaks in the park were torn up by the roots: the lightning was so terrible as to surpass any that had occurred in the memory of man. A.D. 1252, the late frost in spring, succeeding drought, destroyed the vegetation; there were heavy rains in July; at Michaelmas the plague began to rage in London, and pervaded all England, continuing until August in the following year, thus affording an instance of this disease beginning in autumn, running through the winter, and terminating in the summer. The winter of 1254 was severely cold; a murrain appeared among sheep, and a mortal disease among horses called ‘the evil of the tongue.’