The Black Death

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The switch in chapter 13 to what was essentially historical fiction was really jarring and out of place. I've never seen this done in a history text before - that said, it was the most enjoyable chapter in the book. I couldn't help thinking though, that the author could have found more primary accounts to detail rather than crafting his own - of course, he wanted to focus on the rural villein and there are presumably few, if any, accounts from them, but it seemed it would have been more appropriate to use such primary accounts as there are. de Corbeil G (1907) [1200]. Valentin R (ed.). Egidii Corboliensis Viaticus: De signis et symptomatibus aegritudium (in Latin). Harvard University: In aedibus B.G. Teubneri. Shrewsbury JF (2005). A History of Bubonic Plague in the British Isles. Cambridge Univ Pr. ISBN 978-0-521-02247-7.

One of my favorite parts was the chapter reconstructing life in a semi-fictionalized medieval English village during the plague, woven from various pieces of known information to bring village life *to life* as the Death descended on country life in England. A work of magisterial ambition, magisterially fulfilled.”—Tom Holland, author of Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind Sadek N (2006). "Rasulids". In Meri J (ed.). Medieval Islamic Civilization: An Encyclopedia – Volume II: L–Z. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-351-66813-2. Archived from the original on 27 July 2020 . Retrieved 8 May 2020. The only records we have for the population are church records. Priests died just like anyone else. As soon as the priest was dead the various christening, marriage and burial registers could not be held any more. We would have to wait for a new priest to arrive in the parish. This is a scholarly account of the bubonic and pneumonic plague which ravaged Europe between 1348 and 1350. Most historians agree that 1/3 of the European population perished from it.

Causes & Pathology

Samia NI, Kausrud KL, Heesterbeek H, Ageyev V, Begon M, Chan KS, Stenseth NC (August 2011). "Dynamics of the plague-wildlife-human system in Central Asia are controlled by two epidemiological thresholds". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 108 (35): 14527–14532. Bibcode: 2011PNAS..10814527S. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1015946108. PMC 3167548. PMID 21856946.

Payne SG (1973). A History of Spain and Portugal, Volume 1. University of Wisconsin Press. Archived from the original on 27 March 2017 . Retrieved 3 January 2009. This could have been done better. In fact, I think a similar concept was applied when Barbara Tuchman wrote 'A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century'. She created a very cohesive narrative by selecting a relatively obscure figure out of history and tracing the events of the century as they had happened to him, on both a grand and a very personal level. The difference here is that her figure, Enguerrand de Coucy, was a very real person, as opposed to Hatcher's Master John, who is a work of invention. What is this, a joke again? Where is the image, on Internet? Lol It must be the same image that was introduced in an-other work of the same author: "Renaissance." An interesting book because it brings together a lot of information that is generally scattered around and it updates that information at all levels, particularly the medical level. The plague never really ended and it returned with a vengeance years later. But officials in the port city of Ragusa were able to slow its spread by keeping arriving sailors in isolation until it was clear they were not carrying the disease—creating social distancing that relied on isolation to slow the spread of the disease.I'd been listening to a news report on the Covid-19 pandemic, with special emphasis on people refusing to follow medical expert guidelines. I wondered if there were parallels in the Great Plague. I had learned in college that 1/3 of the population of Europe died in the first wave in the middle of the 14th century, but now I wondered if the high numbers could be blamed on people's behavior in the face of a swiftly moving disease. I discovered that the answer is complex. John of Fordun's Scotichronicon ("there was a great pestilence and mortality of men") Horrox 1994, p.84 More interesting was the analysis towards the end, regarding the long-term consequences of the plague and the arguments for and against it being the catalyst for long-term political and economic changes across Europe. There is a good discussion of the change in the sociology of religion in this work as well as an extensive examination of the economic impact as the Plaque raced through Europe leaving workers in a favorable position as their numbers shrank. New opportunities to climb into the artisan and clergy were available for the first time.

Rascovan N, Sjögren KG, Kristiansen K, Nielsen R, Willerslev E, Desnues C, Rasmussen S (January 2019). "Emergence and Spread of Basal Lineages of Yersinia pestis during the Neolithic Decline". Cell. 176 (1–2): 295–305.e10. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2018.11.005. PMID 30528431. So, if this account is true, it will be really possible for us today to live with the COVID-19 pandemic as well. Then it won't be considered like a "pandemic" any more, but only like the mere cold virus.Naturally, there is pandemonium when the villagers first hear of the oncoming pestilence. They reassess their religious lives and force impossible questions upon the parish priest: 'Why is god tormenting us? We have not sinned. We have done everything you have asked of us. We are following gods wishes.' The priest explains that the pestilence is gods anguish at their sins, and encourages them to repent more than ever before. He consults his elders, particularly one monk at Bury St. Edmunds who has spent his life looming over Tomes getting a rounded view on things. The monk seems excited to tell Master John about a similar description to the pestilence in an ancient Greek book by Thucydides, but ultimately offers no practical advice leaving John majorly disheartened. According to medieval historian Philip Daileader, it is likely that over four years, 45–50% of the European population died of plague; [125] [g] Norwegian historian Ole Benedictow suggests it may have been as high as 60%. [126] [h] Symptoms of the plague include fever of 38–41°C (100–106°F), headaches, painful aching joints, nausea and vomiting, and a general feeling of malaise. Left untreated, 80% of victims die within eight days. [112]

I do wonder what this author - who writes with a certain wistful admiration about the English spirit during the Great War and the Blitz (the latter clearly somewhat recent in memory at the time he wrote this book), and ascribed English medieval peasants a certain stolid Carry On mentality that supposedly helped them cope with the plague better than mainland Europe - would think about current events and British policies, especially regarding certain pandemics. (I assumed he was dead but apparently he isn't, oops.) The priests' remedy was to hold barefoot processions through towns and villages and to declare days of fast to placate the angry God. The course of the plague was very similar in Italy, France, Germany and England, since all of Europe shared similar socio-economic structures and belief systems. Kraut AM (1995). Silent travelers: germs, genes, and the "immigrant menace". Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-5096-7. Ravilious, Kate (27 February 2006). "Europe's chill linked to disease". BBC News. Archived from the original on 27 April 2006 . Retrieved 28 February 2006.

But this short book could be very useful as an introduction to the historical reflection on the impact of a pandemic on human society. They know that the bacillus travels from person to person through the air, as well as through the bite of infected fleas and rats. Both of these pests could be found almost everywhere in medieval Europe, but they were particularly at home aboard ships of all kinds—which is how the deadly plague made its way through one European port city after another. Baggaley, Kate (24 February 2015). "Bubonic plague was a serial visitor in European Middle Ages". Science News. Archived from the original on 24 February 2015 . Retrieved 24 February 2015. Early Christians considered bathing a temptation. With this danger in mind, St. Benedict declared, "To those who are well, and especially to the young, bathing shall seldom be permitted." St. Agnes took the injunction to heart and died without ever bathing. [73] Territorial origins By this logic, the only way to overcome the plague was to win God’s forgiveness. Some people believed that the way to do this was to purge their communities of heretics and other troublemakers—so, for example, many thousands of Jews were massacred in 1348 and 1349. (Thousands more fled to the sparsely populated regions of Eastern Europe, where they could be relatively safe from the rampaging mobs in the cities.)