Plague and pestilence in literature and art

by Sir Raymond Henry Payne Crawfurd

These convicts were promised their liberty, to excite them to work—a promise that was never fulfilled in the case of the few who survived the task. Their ignorance of the management of carts and horses, their idleness and lust of robbery rendered them so unfit for the task, that Moustier and the other sheriffs and Chevalier Rose were compelled to be always present on horseback, to superintend the work. By August 21 corpses had already begun to accumulate in old parts of the city, where the streets were too narrow and steep for the carts to go. Accordingly, an order was issued that the vaults of the churches in the upper town should be used for burials in quicklime, and that, when full, they should be sealed up with cement. By the end of August the streets were literally strewn with dead bodies, some in an advanced stage of putrefaction, mingled with cats and dogs that had been killed, and bedding thrown out from the houses. The square in front of the building called the Loge, as also the Palissadoes of the port, were filled with bodies brought ashore from ships in the roadstead, to which whole families had fled in the belief that plague would not reach them on the water.

By September 6 more than 2,000 dead bodies were lying in the streets, exclusive of those in the houses. On the esplanade called La Tourette, lying towards the sea between the houses and the rampart, 1,000 corpses had lain rotting for weeks in the sun and emitting a frightful stench. They were too rotten even to be lifted into carts, and too foul to be carried to distant pits. Chevalier Rose, mindful maybe of Procopius, conceived the idea of throwing them into two huge vaults in the old bastions close to the esplanade, after breaking in their roofs. The task was carried out in fierce haste by 100 galley-slaves, who tied handkerchiefs dipped in vinegar over their mouths and noses. At the same time fishermen netted 10,000 dead dogs floating in the port and towed them out to sea.

In the parish of St. Ferriol, the finest quarter of the city, Michel Serre the painter undertook to see to the burial of the dead, with carts and galley-slaves placed at his disposal, himself providing food and lodging for the workers. A grateful city has repaid him by hanging his two large pictures of Marseilles during the plague close beneath the ceiling of an underground cellar, where it is impossible to decipher their details.

When all the bodies were disposed of, the sheriffs employed the galley-slaves to clear the filth from the streets and throw it into barges, which carried it out to sea.

In the early days of the epidemic, the sheriffs had forbidden the annual procession on August 16, in honour of St. Roch, at which the saint’s bust and relics were carried through the streets; but the people raised such an outcry that the procession was celebrated, the sheriffs attending with their halberdiers to prevent a crowd following. By September 7 even the civil authorities had come to regard the plague as an instrument of God’s wrath, and the magistrates, to appease it, vowed that every year the city should give 2,000 livres to a House of Charity, to be established under the protection of our Lady of Good Help, for orphans of the province.

At the height of the plague many parish priests and some of the monks fled: the services of the Church were mostly suspended. But many secular clergy and monks remained and devoted themselves unflinchingly to the sick. The bishop, Belsunce, nobly played his part. Wherever the poorest lay, there he went confessing, consoling, and exhorting them to patience. To the dying he carried the Sacrament, to the destitute the whole of his money in alms. Though plague invaded his palace and carried off those about him, it spared him. It is of him that Pope[193] asks,

Why drew Marseilles’ good Bishop purer breath When nature sickened, and each gale was death?

On All Saints’ Day, Belsunce headed a procession through the streets from his palace, walking barefoot, as Borromeo of old, with a halter about his neck, and carrying the cross in his arms. He wished to appear among his people as a scapegoat laden with their sins, and as a victim destined to expiate them. Accompanied by the priests and canons of the Church he led the way to a place where an altar had been erected. There, after exhorting the people to repentance, he celebrated Mass before them all. Then he solemnly consecrated the city to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in honour of which he had instituted a yearly festival. The tears coursing down his face as he spoke moved all to cry aloud to the Lord for mercy. On November 16 Belsunce was emboldened to exorcise the waning plague. Calling together all that remained of the clergy to the church of Acoulles, he read all the prayers that the Pope had prescribed for deliverance from plague. Then after an eloquent and moving exhortation he carried up the Holy Sacrament to the cathedral’s roof, and there, under the open sky, with all the city lying before him, uttered a solemn benediction, and performed the full ritual of exorcism according to the forms of the Roman Catholic Church.

Belsunce was not the first human scapegoat to tread the streets of Marseilles in voluntary expiation for its people. In times of pestilence, in the old Greek colony of Massilia, one of the lower orders offered himself on behalf of his fellow citizens. Dressed in sacred garments and decked with sacred boughs he was led through the streets, amid the prayers of the people that their ills might fall on him, and then cast out of the city.

There stands this day on a lofty crest of land in the open square, right in front of the episcopal palace of Marseilles, a statue of Belsunce in bronze, by Ramus. The stone pedestal bears a commemorative inscription and two reliefs in bronze. In one, Marseilles in woman’s form is lying among her stricken children, while Belsunce and his attendant priests implore the Sacred Heart to stay the plague. In the other, Belsunce bears the Sacrament to sick and dying.