Which seized the lungs, and made the breast its throne;
Four days it tyrannized with dreadful sway,
When life in purple streams broke out and fled away.”
This malady was accompanied by fever, difficulty of breathing, and spitting of blood; the respiration was so laborious that the sick were obliged to be always in an upright posture; deglutition was difficult, attended with flushed countenance and great restlessness: at the onset the cough was violent, but without loss of blood; after a short time, the expectoration becoming bloody, hemorrhage succeeded, when death ensued in three days: spots and abscesses sometimes formed when the disease was protracted unto the fifth day. After the disease had persisted for some months, the lungs were no longer affected, but the glands of the axillæ and of the groins, and the parotids, swelled and suppurated. In England it lasted nine years. There were 50,000 buried in one year in the Charterhouse churchyard in London. A murrain among the cattle succeeded this pestilence, and there was a great scarcity of all sorts of provisions. Greenland was entirely depopulated by this pestilence.
During the year 1348, the island of Cyprus was also visited by a most terrific pestilence; a tremendous earthquake shook the foundations of the island, and was accompanied by so frightful a hurricane, that the inhabitants who had slain the Mahometan slaves, in order that they might not themselves be subjugated by them, fled in dismay in all directions. The sea overflowed,—the ships were dashed to pieces on the rocks, and few outlived the dreadful event, whereby this fertile and blooming island was converted into a desert. Before the earthquake, it is recorded by Deguignes (p. 225) that a pestiferous wind spread so poisonous an odour, that many, being overpowered by it, fell down suddenly and expired in dreadful agonies. This phenomenon resembles many such noticed by ancient authors. This peculiar condition of the atmosphere was evident to the senses; borne by the winds, it spread from land to land, carrying disease over whole portions of the earth. It has been further recorded that, during this period, 1348, an unexampled earthquake, on the 25th of January, shook Greece, Italy, and the neighbouring countries. Naples, Rome, Pisa, Bologna, Padua, Venice, and many other cities suffered considerably; whole villages were swallowed up; castles, houses, and churches were overthrown, and thousands of people were buried under their ruins. In Carinthia, thirty villages, together with all the churches, were demolished; more than a thousand corpses were drawn from under the rubbish: the city of Villach was completely destroyed, and very few of its inhabitants were saved; when the earth ceased to tremble, it was found that mountains had been moved from their position, and that many hamlets were left in ruins. It is recorded that during this earthquake the wine in casks became turbid,—a statement which may be considered as furnishing a proof that changes causing a decomposition of the atmosphere had taken place; similar destructive earthquakes extended as far as the neighbourhood of Basle, and recurred from time to time until 1360 throughout Germany, France, Silesia, Poland, England, and Denmark also, much further north. In the month of August, 1349, says Walsingham, black death broke out at Southampton, destroying half the population. According to another estimate, (Rymer, Fœdera,) A.D. 1348–49, and 1350, one-tenth part of the people did not survive. In a royal edict, issued December, 1349, it is said, “Non modica pars populi est defuncta;” in another, 1350, “Magna pars populi est defuncta.” This pestilence spread over France and Germany, and invaded the northern parts of Europe in the year 1349.
In the years of our Lord 1350 and 1351 sore disease prevailed in Ireland, Holland, and in England; its infallible signs were, a great fever, vomiting, and spitting of blood, hemorrhage from the nose, mouth, ears, eyes, stomach, and bowels, indicating an universal disorganization of the system. Here we have the worst symptoms observable in the bilious remittent or yellow fever of the West Indies and other parts. It traversed all Germany, Russia, Hungary, Spain, and Gaul. In Denmark it spread terror and dismay, and it decimated Iceland; it persisted during the summer, autumn, winter, and spring of those years; and for several years after, violent peripneumoniæ raged in Asia, Egypt, and various other parts of the globe.—A.D. 1352. During this year scarcely one-fourth part of the Oxford students survived the plague. (A. Wood, Ath. Oxon., A.D. 1349–52.) It fell with redoubled violence on workmen and servants. The same year great numbers were carried off by pestilence in Montpelier. A great many of the lower orders of society died of the plague in England. This disease caused great ravages in Denmark, and also in Iceland; the Greenland merchants were all destroyed by it: it seized the monks and regular clergy of all descriptions; 133 out of 140 members died of one society in Montpelier. A similar mortality happened in the Magdalen Society; not one out of 140 in Marseilles survived; 66 Carmelites perished in Avignon. This plague began in a monastery of crowded, idle, voluptuous monks. Cattle suffered greatly in many countries; 6000 sheep died in one pasture in England. Pestilence and famine, it is supposed, carried off in China, about this period, at least 900,000 of its inhabitants: in London, 50,000 bodies were interred in one graveyard. The following estimate of deaths during the above awful period was considered below the actual number of victims: in Venice 100,000 died; Basle, 14,000; Erfurt, 16,000; Strasburgh, about the same number; Paris, 50,000; Norwich, in England, 50,000; Marseilles, in one month, 56,000! Florence, 60,000; Avignon, 62,000; London, 100,000; in Lubeck, 90,000; in Spain, two-thirds of the population were destroyed; and Ireland was nearly depopulated.
A.D. 1355, a peculiar kind of madness was epidemic in England; those affected fled into the woods, and wandered about the fields. (Hecker.) Three years after, epidemic pestilence ravaged England, Africa, Cyprus, and also Italy and Florence, which last city, says Petrarch, lost 100,000 citizens. The same kind of pestilence also afflicted Gaul, Ireland, and Scotland. Stow, in his Chronicle, gives a very graphic description of the foregoing pestilential period from 1348 up to 1357. The pestilence he describes as a new disease. He says: “There began amongst the East Indians and Tartarians a certain pestilence, which at length waxed so general, infecting the middle regions of the air so greatly, that it destroyed the Saracens, Turks, Syrians, Palestinians, and the Grecians with a wonderful or rather incredible death; insomuch that those people being exceedingly dismayed with the terror thereof, consulted among themselves, and thought it good to receive the Christian faith and sacraments; for they had intelligence that the Christians which dwelt on this side of the Greek Sea were not so greatly troubled with sickness and mortality more than common.” “At length this terrible slaughter passed over into those countries which are on this side the Alps, and thence to the parts of France which are called Hesperia, and so on, by order, along into Germany and Dutchland; and the seventh year after it began, it came into England, and first began in the towns and ports joining on the sea-coasts, Dorsetshire, where, even as in other countries, it made the country quite void of inhabitants, so that there were almost none left alive. Thence it passed into Devonshire and Somersetshire, and even into Bristol, and raged in such sort that the Gloucestershire men would not suffer persons from Bristol to have any access unto them or into their country by any means; but at length it came to Gloucester, yea, and to Oxford and London, and finally it spread over all England, and so wasted and spoiled the people, that scarce the tenth person of all sorts was left alive; churchyards were not sufficient and large enough to bury their dead in: they chose certain fields appointed for the purpose, amongst which was the piece of ground denominated the Churchyard of the Holy Trinity, near East Smithfield, opened by one John Cory. One Walter Manny also purchased a piece of ground called Spital Croft, containing thirteen acres, in which were interred during the next year 50,000 bodies; in Norwich, no less than 37,104 persons, besides Mendicants and Dominicans, and in Yarmouth 7502; so that the living which was previously worth 700 marks was reduced to £40 per year.” “What time this pestilence had wasted all England, the Scots, greatly rejoicing, mocked and swore ofttimes, ‘By the vile death of the Englishmen;’ but the sword of God’s wrath slew and consumed the Scots in no less numbers than it did the other. It also wasted the Welshmen, and within a while passed over into Ireland, where it destroyed a great number of English people that dwelt there; but such as were right Irish-born, that dwelt in the hilly country, it scarcely touched, so that few of them died thereof.”
A.D. 1360. Thunder-storms, accompanied by heavy rains and lightning, did much damage in various parts of England; houses were set on fire, crops and cattle were destroyed, and pestilence, in the shape of fevers and disorder of the bowels, carried off numbers.
On the 21st of January, two years after, A.D. 1362, a feast was instituted, and a solemn mass celebrated in Scio, with divine worship in all the churches, convents, and other public places, at which all the clergy of the place assisted; and on the 15th of February a papal jubilee was published for the repose of the souls of all those who had perished by the pestilence, which had recently carried off vast numbers.
A.D. 1363, a dreadfully severe winter presaged noxious seasons in Europe. Andalusia was afflicted with a terrible pestilence, which having seized an almost incredible number of its inhabitants, is marked among the ancient writings as the second mortality, in order to distinguish it from the first of 1350, during which King Don Alonso died in the neighbourhood of Gibraltar. This pestilence made such an impression on the minds of all Spaniards, that in a sepulchral inscription in the church of St. Pablo, we read that it was erected during the second mortality, A.D. 1363. Two years after, A.D. 1365, pestilence carried off 20,000 of the inhabitants of Cologne and its vicinity.