Life Is Pretty Good After All

Sure, we have to worry about cancer, heart disease, AIDS, al-Queda, and urban sprawl. But maybe those things aren't quite as bad as we sometimes think. At least, they probably wouldn't appear so to the Europeans of 1350. The roughly two thirds of the 1347 population who were still alive, at any rate.

It's difficult to imagine an epidemic of this magnitude. For reference, the 1918 "Spanish Flu" epidemic killed about as many people, but spread all over the world in a time when the world's population was significantly higher than 14th century Europe's. Remember the old saw about the college dean who tells the assembled freshman class, "Look to your left and your right; in four years, one of you will be gone." Look down your street or apartment hallway and think about EVERY home or apartment losing at least one person, and the occasional home losing everyone.

Though the tone and approach of this book reflects the full bore modernism in fashion in the year of its publication (1969), it still tells a compelling, if horrifying story. A few excerpts are in order.

An interesting commentary on historical records is the extensive use made by the author of church records; a source of spirited scholarly debate has been whether clergy deaths, of which there are generally decent records, are over- or under-representative of the death rate of the general population. Perhaps clergy died at a faster rate than the lay people since their duties put them in close proximity to the sick and dying, but perhaps they died at a slower rate if they were hesitant to perform those noxious duties (plague victims smelled repulsive and obviously created great fear of infection in any who came near) and otherwise benefitted from their relatively better material circumstances. So how did the churchmen acquit themselves? The author gives us a few insights:

On the whole the churchmen of Avignon seem to have behaved creditably during the plague; churchmen in the widest sense that is, from papal councillor to penniless and itinerant monk. "Of the Carmelite friars in Avignon," wrote Knighton uncharitably, "sixty-six died before the citizens knew the cause of the calamity; they thought that these friars had killed each other. Of the English Austin friars at Avignon not one remained, nor did men care." Knighton had all the contempt of a Canon Regular for these turbulent and often embarrassing colleagues. "At Marseilles, of one hundred and fifty Franciscans, not one survived to tell the tale; and a good job too!" was another of his still harsher commitments. Yet in fact there is no reason to doubt that the mendicant orders behaved at Avignon with as much courage and devotion as they did elsewhere and that their reputation rose accordingly.

Pope Clement VI himself played a slightly less forthright part. There is no doubt that he was preoccupied by the horrors of the plague and genuinely disturbed and distressed for his people. Though by no means celebrated as an ascetic he was good-hearted and honourable, anxious to do what was best for his flock. He did all he could to ease the path of the afflicted by relaxing the formalities needed to obtain absolution and ordered "devout processions, singing the Litanies, to be made on certain days each week". Unfortunately, such processions tended to get out of hand; at some, two thousand people attended, "amongst them, many of both sexes were barefooted, some were in sack cloth, some covered with ashes, wailing as they walked, tearing their hair, and lashing themselves with scourges even to the point where blood was drawn." At first the Pope made a habit of being present at these processions, at any rate when they were within the precincts of his palace, but excesses of this kind revolted his urbane and sophisticated mind. He also realised that large concourses, attended by the devout from all over the region, were a sure means of spreading the plague still further, as well as providing a breeding ground for every kind of hysterical mob outburst. The processions were abruptly ended and the Pope from then onward sought to discourage any kind of public demonstration.

Not unreasonably, Pope Clement VI calculated that nothing would be gained by his death, and that, indeed, it was his duty to his people to cherish them as long as possible. He therefore made it his business to stay alive. On the advice of the Papal physician Gui de Chauliac, he retreated to his chamber, saw nobody, and spent all day and night sheltering between two enormous fires. For a time, he took refuge in his castle on the Rhone near Valence but by the autumn he was again at his post in Avignon. It does not seem that the Black Death died out in the Papal capital much before the end of 1348.

--page 66-67