The Great Pestilence (A.D. 1348-9), Now Commonly Known as the Black Death

by Francis Aidan Gasquet

From another source some corroboration of the mortality, described by the writer of this letter, can be obtained. The 11,000, stated by the anonymous canon to have been buried in the Pope's new cemetery from March 13th to April 27th may appear excessive; still more, the 62,000 reported to have died in the three months between the [p043] first outbreak, on January 25th, and the date when the letter was written. The statements of the writer are, however, so circumstantial and given with such detail, that, allowing for the tendency in all such catastrophes to exaggerate rather than minimise the number of the victims, it is probable that his estimate of the terrible destruction of life at Avignon and in the neighbourhood is substantially accurate. Writing, as he does, on the Sunday after Easter, 1348, he evidently points to the time of Lent as the period during which the epidemic was at its height. This is borne out by a statement in a German chronicle, which says: "In Venice, in the whole of Italy and Provence, especially in cities on the sea-coast, there died countless numbers. And at Avignon, where the Roman Curia then was, in the first three days after mid-Lent Sunday, 1,400 people were computed to have been buried."[61] Mid-Lent Sunday, in 1348, fell upon March 30th, and, consequently, according to this authority, on the last day of March and the first two days of April the death-rate was over 450 a day.

No account of the plague at Avignon would be complete without some notice of Gui de Chauliac, and some quotations from the work he has left to posterity upon this particular outbreak. De Chauliac was the medical attendant of Pope Clement VI. He devoted himself to the service of the sick during the time of the epidemic, and, although he himself caught the infection, his life was happily spared to the service of others, and to enable him to write an account of the sickness. The mortality, he says, commenced in the month of January, 1348, and lasted for the space of seven months. "It was of two kinds; the first lasted two months, with constant fever and blood-spitting, and of this people died in three days.

"The second lasted for the rest of the time. In this, together with constant fever, there were external carbuncles, or buboes, under the arm or in the groin, and the [p044] disease ran its course in five days. The contagion was so great (especially when there was blood-spitting) that not only by remaining (with the sick) but even by looking (at them) people seemed to take it; so much so, that many died without any to serve them, and were buried without priests to pray over their graves.

"A father did not visit his son, nor the son his father. Charity was dead. The mortality was so great that it left hardly a fourth part of the population. Even the doctors did not dare to visit the sick from fear of infection, and when they did visit them they attempted nothing to heal them, and thus almost all those who were taken ill died, except towards the end of the epidemic, when some few recovered."

"As for me, to avoid infamy, I did not dare to absent myself, but still I was in continual fear." Towards the end of the sickness de Chauliac took the infection, and was in great danger for six weeks, but in the end recovered.[62]

It was according to the advice of this same Gui de Chauliac that Pope Clement VI. isolated himself and kept large fires always alight in his apartments, just as Pope Nicholas IV. had done in a previous epidemic. In the whole district of Provence the mortality appears to have been very great. In the Lent of 1348 no fewer than 358 Dominicans are said to have died.[63] Even by the close of the November of this year the terror of the time had not passed away from Avignon and the Papal Court. Writing to King Louis of Hungary, on the 23rd of that month, the Pope excused himself for not having sent before, "as the deadly plague, which has devastated these and other parts of the world by an unknown and terrible mortality, has not only, by God's will, carried off some of our brethren, but caused others to fly from the Roman Curia to avoid death."[64] [p045]

In the early summer of the same year, 1348, just as the plague was lessening its ravages at Avignon, the Pope addressed a letter to the General Chapter of the Friars Minor then being held at Verona. He laments the misery into which the world has been plunged, chiefly "by the mortal sickness which is carrying off from us old and young, rich and poor, in one common, sudden and unforeseen death." He urges them to unite in prayer that the plague may cease, and grants special indulgences "to such among you as, during this Chapter, or whilst returning to your homes, may chance to die."[65] Of these Franciscans it is said that, in Italy alone, 30,000 died in this sickness.

From its first entry into France in the early days of 1348, the plague was ever spreading far and wide. The letter from Avignon, already given, speaks of the ravages of the mortality in the whole of Provence, and of its having, before the end of April, reached Toulouse on its journey westward. In the August of this year (1348) Bordeaux was apparently suffering from it, since in that month the Princess Joan, daughter of Edward III., who was on her way to be married to Pedro, son of the King of Castille, died suddenly in that city.

In a northerly direction the epidemic spread with equal virulence. At Lyons evidence of the pestilence is afforded by an inscription preserved in the town museum. It relates to the construction of a chapel in 1352 by a citizen, "Michael Pancsus," in which Mass should be said for the souls of several members of his family "who died in the time of the mortality, 1348."[66] The anonymous cleric of Bruges, who preserved the Avignon letter, writing probably at the time, gives the following account of its progress: "In the year of our Lord 1348, that plague, epidemic, and mortality, which we have mentioned before, by the will of God has [p046] not ceased; but from day to day grows and descends upon other parts. For in Burgundy, Normandy, and elsewhere it has consumed, and is consuming, many thousands of men, animals, and sheep."[67]

It arrived in Normandy probably about the feast of St. James (July 25th), 1348. A contemporary note in a manuscript, which certainly came from the Abbey of Foucarmont, gives the following account: "In the year of grace 1348, about the feast of St. James, the great mortality entered into Normandy. And it came into Gascony, and Poitou, and Brittany, and then passed into Picardy. And it was so horrible that in the towns it attacked more than two-thirds of the population died. And a father did not dare to go and visit his son, nor a brother his sister, and people could not be found to nurse one another, because, when the person breathed the breath of another he could not escape. It came to such a pass that no one could be found even to carry the corpses (to the tomb). People said that the end of the world had come."[68] In another manuscript, M. Delisle has found a further note, or portion of a note, referring to the terrible nature of the malady in Normandy. It never entered a city or town without carrying off the greater part of the inhabitants. "And in that time the mortality was so great among the people of Normandy that those in Picardy mocked them."[69]