This brief review of the progress of the plague in Europe will be sufficient to show that the mortality and consequent distress were universal. The northern countries of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden received the infection from England. As will be seen subsequently, the northern parts of England were troubled with the epidemic in the late summer and autumn of 1349, and either from a port on the eastern coast, or from London, the plague was brought over in a ship. Lagerbring, a Swedish historian of repute, says that a ship with a cargo of woollen cloth sailed out of the port of London early in the summer of 1349.[112] The plague had been very great in the English capital, and all the crew died whilst the ship was at sea. Driven about by the winds and currents the fatal bark was cast on the shore at Bergen, in Norway. The epidemic spread quickly over the entire country. The Archbishop of Drontheim and all his Chapter, with one single exception, died, and the survivor was nominated Archbishop. Most of his suffragans were also carried [p068] off.[113] Several families who had fled from Bergen to avoid the infection died in the mountains to which they had retired.
Another Swedish historian states that in the country of West-Gotland alone 466 priests were swept away by the plague. In that district then there were about 479 churches, many of which were served by more than one priest, so that the number given may not be altogether improbable.[114] It is stated that in Norway there long existed what were called Find-dale—wildernesses—in which were unmistakable traces of cultivation, and after the plague there is evidence of a state of exhaustion and a dearth of inhabitants, which lasted for several generations, so that forests grew where there had once been churches and villages.
Some interesting particulars may be gathered about the town of Wisby, on the Isle of Gotland. The annals of the Franciscan convent note that the plague raged in 1350. In the necrology of the same house are entered the names of a great number of friars and many novices who died in this fatal year, and the comparison of one portion of the necrology with another, in which the names are collected into groups, shows that the worst time at Wisby was in July, August, and September, 1350.[115] In all twenty-four friars, a very large proportion of the convent, appear to have been carried off by the epidemic. In [p069] the Cathedral of Wisby five sepulchral slabs are still preserved with the date 1350, whilst of such memorials as have escaped destruction not more than a single one remains for any other year.
The King of Sweden, Magnus II., in 1350 addressed letters patent to his people, wherein he says that "God for the sins of man has struck the world with this great punishment of sudden death. By it most of the people in the land to the west of our country (i.e., Norway) are dead. It is now ravaging in Norway and Holland, and is approaching our kingdom of Sweden." The king therefore summons them to abstain on every Friday from all food but bread and water, or "at most to take only bread and ale," to walk with bare feet to their parish churches, and to go in procession round about the cemeteries attached to them, carrying with them the holy relics.
In the capital of Sweden, when the plague burst upon the country, it is recorded that "the streets were strewn with corpses," and among the victims are named Hacon and Knut, two brothers of the king.
Denmark and Sleswig Holstein suffered from the pestilence at the same time as Norway and Sweden. In one chronicle it is called "a most grievous plague of buboes;" in another it is recorded that in the year 1350 "a great plague and sudden death raged both in the case of men and in that of cattle."[116] The accounts of the Bishopric of Roskild, on the Isle of Zealand, about the year 1370, or twenty years after this plague had passed, show the state of universal desolation to which the country was reduced. Lands are described as lying idle and uncultivated, villages and houses desolate and uninhabited. Property that formerly used to bring in four marks, or 48 "pund," now produced only 18 "pund." The same story is repeated on almost every page throughout these long accounts.[117]
A few words only need now be said of the desolation [p070] which everywhere throughout Europe was naturally the consequence of the great pestilence. Of North Italy John of Parma writes that "at the time (1348) labourers could not be got, and the harvest remained on the fields, since there was none to gather it in."[118] Twenty years after the pestilence, in 1372, it is said of Mayence that "it is indubitable and notorious that because of the terrible character of the pestilence and mortality which suddenly swept away labourers, copyholders (parciarios) and farmers, even the most robust, labourers are to-day few and rare, for which reason many fields remain uncultivated and deserted."[119] Again, in 1359, Henry, Bishop of Constance, impropriated to the monastery of St. Gall, in Switzerland, the Church of Marbach and others, to enable the abbey "to keep up its hospitality, bestow alms, and fulfil its other duties," and he assigns as a reason why it cannot now do this "that by the epidemic or mortality of people, which by permission of God has existed in these parts, the number of farmers and other retainers of both sexes of this abbey, belonging by law of service to the said monastery, which has passed from this life to the Lord (has been so great) that many of the possessions of this monastery have remained, on account of the said death, uncultivated, and no proper return comes from them."[120]
FOOTNOTES:
[85] Phillippe, Histoire de la Peste Noire, p. 54.
[86] Ibid., pp. 54–56.