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

by Francis Aidan Gasquet

After speaking of the evidence given by a pilgrim to Santiago, Li Muisis proceeds to relate his own experiences in Tournay in the summer of 1349. This he does in verse and prose. The poem, after speaking of the manifestation of God's anger, describes the plague beginning in the East and passing through France into Flanders. Like other writers, Li Muisis declares that he hesitates to say what he has seen and heard, because posterity will hardly credit what he would relate.[78] The reports of all travellers and merchants as to the terrible state of the country generally give one and the same sad story of universal death and distress. The particulars as to the plague in Tournay, the writer's own city, may best be given from his prose account.

John de Pratis, the Bishop of Tournay, was one of the first to be carried off by the sickness. He had gone away for change of air, and on Corpus Christi Day, June 11th, 1349, he carried the blessed Sacrament in the procession at Arras. He left that city the next day for Cambray, but died the day after almost suddenly.[79] He was buried at Tournay; and "time passed on," says our author, to the beginning of August, up to which no other person of authority died in Tournay. But after the feast of St. John the plague began in the parish of St. Piat, in the quarter of Merdenchor, and afterwards in other parishes. Every day the bodies of the dead were borne to the churches, now five, now ten, now fifteen, and in the parish of St. Brice sometimes twenty or thirty. In all parish churches the curates, parish clerks, and sextons to get their fees, [p052] rang morning, evening, and night the passing bells, and by this the whole people of the city, both men and women, began to be filled with fear.

The officials of the town consequently seeing that the Dean and Chapter, and the clerics generally, did not care to remedy this matter, since it was in their interest it should go on, as they made profit out of it, having taken counsel together, issued certain orders. Men and women who, although not married, were living together as man and wife, were commanded either to marry or forthwith to separate. The bodies of the dead were to be buried immediately in graves at least six feet deep. There was to be no tolling of any bell at funerals. The corpse was not to be taken to the church, but at the service only a pall was to be spread on the ground, whilst after the service there was to be no gathering together at the houses of the deceased. Further, all work after noon on Saturdays and during the entire Sunday was prohibited, as also was the playing of dice and making use of profane oaths.

These ordinances having lasted for a time, and the sickness still further increasing, it was proclaimed on St. Matthew's Day (September 24th) that there should be no more ringing of bells, that not more than two were to meet for any funeral service, and that no one was to dress in black. This action of the city authorities, the writer declares to have been most beneficial. In his own knowledge, he says, many who had hitherto been living in a state of concubinage were married, that the practice of swearing notably diminished, and that dice were so little used that the manufacturers turned "the square-shaped dice" into "round objects on which people told their Pater Nosters."

I have tried, says our author, to write what I know, "and let future generations believe that in Tournay there was a marvellous mortality. I heard from many about Christmas time who professed to know it as a fact that more than 25,000 persons had died in Tournay, and it was strange [p053] that the mortality was especially great among the chief people and the rich. Of those who used wine and kept away from the tainted air and visiting the sick few or none died. But those visiting and frequenting the houses of the sick either became grievously ill or died. Deaths were more numerous about the market places and in poor narrow streets than in broader and more spacious areas. And whenever one or two people died in any house, at once, or at least in a short space of time, the rest of the household were carried off. So much so, that very often in one home ten or more ended their lives together, and in many houses the dogs and even cats died. Hence no one, whether rich, in moderate circumstances, or poor, was secure, but everyone from day to day waited on the will of the Lord. And certainly great was the number of curates and chaplains hearing confessions and administering the Sacraments, and even of parish clerks visiting the sick with them, who died."

In the parishes across the river, the mortality was as great as in Tournay itself. Although death as a rule came so suddenly, still the people for the most part were able to receive the Sacraments. The rapidity of the disease, remarked upon by Petrarch and Boccaccio in Italy, is also spoken of in the same terms by the Abbot of St. Martin's. People that one had seen apparently well and had spoken to one evening were reported dead next day. He specially remarks upon the mortality among the clergy visiting the sick,[80] and speaks of the creation of two new cemeteries outside the walls of the town. One was in a field near the Leper House De Valle, the other at the religious house of the Crutched Friars. Strange to say Li Muisis speaks of the disfavour with which this necessary precaution of establishing new grave-yards was regarded. People, he says, grumbled because they were no longer [p054] allowed to be buried in their own family vaults. The town authorities, however, were firm, and as the pestilence increased deep pits were dug in these two common burying places, and into them numbers of bodies were constantly being thrown and covered up with a slight layer of earth.[81]

It has been supposed by many that the accounts given by contemporary writers of the excessive mortality throughout the countries of Europe must be greatly exaggerated, and that the population in the middle of the fourteenth century was not sufficiently large to allow of the number of deaths. On the one hand it is evident that in the majority of cases the round figures stated can be at most nothing more than a rough approximation of the actual deaths, and that the natural tendency of those who have witnessed a catastrophe as great and as universal as that of the plague of 1348 and subsequent years, is to magnify, rather than to diminish, the disaster. On the other hand, whilst allowing that in most cases the actual figures are little more than guesses at the truth, and can only be taken as evidence of the belief of the age in the magnitude of the mortality, it must be admitted that Italy, France, and other countries of Europe were at the time more teeming with population than is perhaps usually understood.

M. Siméon Luce has made a special study of the conditions of French popular life at this period,[82] and the conclusions at which he has arrived may be here usefully stated in brief. It has been proved by the labours of French antiquaries that the general population of France before the great pestilence of 1348–1349, and the hundred years' war with England, was equal to what it is in the present century. Numerous villages were scattered over the face of the country, every trace of which has now disappeared. The houses, or rather huts, in which the [p055] population of rural France lived were very seldom framed of any kind of masonry, but were for the most part merely four mud, or clay, walls, and sometimes wickerwork lined, and the interstices filled in, with hay and straw. As a rule there was but one storey, although some, chiefly taverns and places of that class, had an upper floor. The roof was thatched or covered with wood or stone; windows were the exception, and where they did exist they were mere slits in the clay walls closed with wooden shutters. Even the coarse, opaque glass then made was beyond the means of the ordinary peasant and farmer, whilst just about this time even a rich bourgeois of Paris recommended the filling of windows with waxen cloth or parchment. The doors were fastened with wooden latches, and over them, according to the general arrangement, a shutter of wood was fixed which was generally left open for air, light, and to allow the smoke of the brushwood fire to pass out of the living room. It will be readily understood how the condition of life in houses such as these would not be such as to put much obstacle to the spread of an epidemic in the rural districts; whilst if such tenements were vacant even for a short time they would readily fall into decay and would present the spectacle of ruin and desolation spoken of by so many writers of the period as caused by the great pestilence.

The furniture of these houses was simple, but very much what it is now in small country houses. The inventories of the period show that most houses had vessels of copper, tin and glass, and that there were few who did not possess some articles of silver. The people for the most part lived on a soup of bread and meal; but even by the fourteenth century white bread was by no means unknown. The principal meat was pork fed in the forests, but most cottages possessed a spit upon which fowls, previously larded, were occasionally roasted. Of condiments, mustard was the chief, and it was much, if not universally, used. Even in the humblest houses a cloth would be spread on [p056] the table at meals. For drink there was the wine of the country, and in Normandy cider was plentiful. With the drink, especially in taverns, which were exceedingly numerous, a little ginger would generally be mixed. In dress fur of various kinds was much used, and, by the time of this pestilence, in France the use of the linen shirt as an undergarment had become almost universal. The sleeping places were dark, airless recesses, in which the people, having divested themselves of all clothing, rested upon straw mattresses, or sometimes on feather beds. Contrary to the opinion entertained by persons of repute there is evidence to show that bathing was common and much used especially among the lower classes, and that even small villages had their public bath places.

This sketch of the epidemic in these regions may be concluded by one or two instances of the agrarian difficulties which followed upon it. On August 16th, 1349, the Emperor Charles IV. issued an order to the tenants of the Abbey of St. Trond, in the diocese of Liège, to return to their obedience. The document says that the holders of the Abbey lands and other dependents are now demanding their own terms and claiming liberty to do what they like, with the result that the Abbot and monastery are so distressed in temporal matters that absolute ruin is impending.[83] The second instance is that of the Abbey of St. John at Laon. A document, addressed by the French King Charles to the Abbot and convent, says that the monastery is so decayed in revenues that it is impossible to keep up the fitting and proper services of the Church. And although the letter was not written till nearly the close of the century—1392–3—the cause assigned for this poverty and decay is "the great mortality which took place about the year 1349," by which the tithes and other revenues were destroyed.