Calamity And Crisis In The Late Middle Ages

Calamity and Crisis in the Late Middle Ages
 
Man and Natural Disaster in the Late Middle Ages: The Earthquake in Carinthia and Northern Italy on 25 January 1348 and its Perception
CHRISTIAN ROHR
Environment and History , Vol. 9, No. 2, Coping with the Unexpected — Natural Disasters and their Perception (May 2003), pp. 127-149
Published by: White Horse Press
Article Stable URL:http://www.jstor.org/stable/20723281

During the late XIV and early XV centuries, Europe experienced a series of disasters. Poor harvests led to famine, the Black Death reduced the population by as much as one third, and war raged between France and England for over one hundred years. The Church itself, which had been the single unifying factor in Europe, experienced schism and corruption. To the people ofthe time, who frequently mixed religion with superstition and belief that the End of Time was imminent, they saw in these difficult times the Signs of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: conquest, war, famine, and death. 
The Black Horse: Famine.  Early in the fourteenth century, Europe experienced the “Little Ice Age,” which brought cooler weather and torrential rains. The wet climate ruinedharvests of wheat, oats and hay. One harvest out of four would likely fail. Long distance delivery of food was not feasible, and as a result, humans and animals starved. Contemporary scholars likened the crisis to a recurrence of the biblical “seven lean years” (Genesis 42).  Reduced calorie intake led to increased susceptibility to disease. The young and elderly were particularly vulnerable.Otherwise healthy people were unable to work as vigorously as before which caused even lower grain production.  Famine was followed by epidemics of typhoid and anthrax, the last of which killed thousands of cattle, pigs, and sheep. Homesteads were mortgaged to buy food. Others were abandoned, leading to a great increase in the number of beggars, called “vagabonds.”
The Pale Horse: Death. In October,1347, rat infested ships carrying goods from Asia docked at the port of Messina, Italy. The rats were Asian black rats, not native to Europe, but which carried parasitic fleas infected with Bubonic Plague (Pasteurella pestis). The disease was called in Latin astra mors (“dreadful death”) which was later interpreted “Black Death.” Those who suffered through the plague never referred to it as theBlack Death.
The precise origin of the Plague is not known, although most scholars agree that it originated in Asia. One legend states that it appeared in the Tatar Army of Khan Djani-Beg who was besieging the city of Caffa in the Crimea. The Khan presumably ordered the heads of those who died from the disease catapulted into the city in an attempt to infect the residents there.
Pathology: ThePlague bacillus thrives in the stomach of fleas which in turn lived on Asian black rats. Ships of the day were typically infested with rats, and thus the disease traveled easily throughout Europe. The plague took three forms: Bubonic plague, and Septicaemic plague, which could only be spread by flea bites; Pneumonic, or pulmonary plague, was an airborne variant that could be spread from person toperson, and was especially fast and lethal. The total lack of sanitation in European cities and close quarters (it was not uncommon for poorer families to sleep six to eight people in one bed; even hospitals placed two patients in the same bed). The first symptom of the disease was a swelling the size of a walnut or apple in the armpit, groin, or neck. This was the buba, or boil. (If it were lanced andthe pus thoroughly drained, the victim had a slight chance of recovery.) Later, black spots appeared under the skin, followed by violent coughing and spitting up blood. At this stage, death could be anticipated in two to three days.
A contemporary description of a plague victim by a French scientist is hardly compassionate:
All the matter which exuded from their bodies let off an...