How We Survived The Plague? Joking Helped.
What can disruption teach us? Does it destroy or transform? How do we survive at the moment? The 14th Century shares its secrets.
Twelve Genoese merchant ships arrived at Messina, Sicily, in October 1347, and the dockworkers immediately noticed something had gone terribly wrong. It was practically a ghost ship as the majority of the sailors on board were dead. The Sicilians gave it a name, calling it the “Black Death,” and we are not sure if that was because they were coming from the Crimean seaport of Caffa on the Black Sea or because of the black sores that covered their bodies. The name didn’t matter. How they got infected did.
The contagion was brought to Caffa by Mongolian warriors who planned to lay siege to the city. As the frightened citizenry hid from danger, or so they thought, the Mongols hurled plague-infected bodies over the walls. By the time the Genoese sailors arrived, the infection had spread and turned into an epidemic. The ships left port with the Plague on board and spices and goods, and the disease soon landed in Sicily. From there, it spread all over Europe. Before it would run its course, the disease would kill 35 percent of the known world and nearly half the population of England.
The Plague was an equal opportunity disruptor, sparing neither king nor queen, and particularly not children. It would only be a matter of years before the disease altered the world in ways no one could have predicted. As life recovered following a period of social and economic upheaval, survivors employed well-known strategies of retreat, renewal, and perhaps most importantly, recreation.
Gabriele De’ Mussi, a lawyer living near Genoa writing in about 1348, recorded the account in his journals:
“The dying Tartars (Mongols), stunned and stupefied by the immensity of the disaster brought about by the disease, and realizing that they had no hope of escape, lost interest in the siege (of Caffa) on the Black Sea.
But they ordered corpses to be placed in catapults and lobbed the bodies into the city hoping that the intolerable stench would kill everyone inside. Among those who escaped from Caffa were a few infected sailors.
Some boats were bound for Genoa and to other Christian areas. When the sailors reached these places, it was as if they had brought evil spirits with them: every city, every settlement, and their inhabitants, both men and women, died suddenly. We Genoese bear responsibility for revealing the judgments of God, (because) to our anguish, as we hugged and kissed we were spreading poison from our lips.”
The Genoese lawyer accused his country folk of causing the disease. Soon others would get the blame.
A World Caved In
The setting for mass devastation began long before rats and fleas hopped aboard European merchant vessels.
The medieval agricultural economy could not provide food for a growing population, forcing farmers to plant on barren land with inferior results. Food shortages worsened every decade. By the time the Plague reached Marseille in the mid 14th Century, it had spread rapidly through cities and towns. The most effective protection against disease, our own bodies’ natural immunity response, was dormant due to extreme famine.
The impact of the Plague became so lethal that within two years of exposure, the small village of Digne declined from over 10,000 population to 1,500. Within two centuries, the population growth of France from all previous centuries was wiped out and would not reach pre-Plague levels until well after the French Revolution in 1789. The Romans built walls to protect the city against the spread of infection that still stands today.
The Plague was followed by the first global anti-immigrant and anti-trade movement. Naturally, a force so destructive required someone to blame. Ignorance found flammable tinder. The melange of fear, Christian beliefs that held onto powerful remnants of pagan witchcraft, and the lingering resentment against minority groups such as foreigners and Jews turned minorities into objects of persecution. Fear was matched by viciousness as the desire to eradicate the disease intensified. As people died, the bonds of civil society loosened like a ragged collar. The trauma suffered by innocents was no less tragic than the disease itself.
The Booboo
The symptoms of the Bubonic Plague are swollen glands and small, open sores or “buboes,” the Medieval origin of a child’s cry of “booboo,” referring to swollen glands (technically called buboes) that ooze into body sores, and where we get the name, bubonic Plague. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention notes, “patients develop sudden onset of fever, headache, chills, and weakness, and one or more swollen, tender and painful lymph nodes.” When a mother asks her child if a ‘booboo’ hurts, she has no idea how she recalls Renaissance history.
Before it would run its course, the Plague killed as many as 200 million people or 50% of the population in Europe. According to medieval historian Philip Daileader, “In Mediterranean Europe, areas such as the south of France, where the Plague ran for about four years consecutively, it was probably closer to 75–80%.”
The irony is that the virus kills its host so quickly that an infected person has only a few days to live. The chance of an epidemic under these circumstances should be minimal, but scientific ignorance played a role in spreading the disease far and wide. The cause would not be discovered until 1671, when a Dutch lens grinder, Antony van Leeuwenhoek, built a simple microscope. The combination of the instrument and his naturally superb vision enabled him to see bacteria and single-cell organisms with his naked eye. His microscope revealed Oriental Rat fleas from Central Asia preyed on the local rat population, which lived on merchant ships. However, no one suspected back in the 14th Century was when the rats died, the fleas wouldn’t die with them but wander onto human hosts. Voila, the Plague. A person contracting the disease had a useful life of less than a week. Even today, there is no cure.
Withdrawal
Except it could have been avoided
The Plague led to a series of complex and social changes in addition to economic consequences.
The Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio, who lived through the Plague as it ravaged Florence in 1348, wrote, “One citizen avoided another, hardly any neighbor troubled about others, relatives never or hardly ever visited each other. What is even worse and nearly incredible is that fathers and mothers refused to see and tend their children, as if they had not been theirs.”
Those who lived fled their villages seeking safety, and those who stayed buried the dead behind. That was the rhythm of life. People believed that touching someone would spread the disease, so friends, family, and even children kept distant. People were shunned for safety. Physical affection was forbidden. The most pernicious sense, however, wasn’t touch but smell. The odor of death was so suffocating that walking the streets required perfume as they walked the streets. The idea that fragrance can enhance our sensory pleasure persists to the present day.
The Plague had a profound emotional effect on medieval society and led people to worry about their ability to withstand the lingering presence of death. It provoked a variety of reactions, some unfortunate while others demonstrated the ability to transform.
Acceptance
In France, the Black Death was a time of unimaginable anguish, but in many ways, it improved. As society turned on its head, life changed in countless ways, which, if you survived, turned out to be a better thing. Why? It has something to do with our power to transform in the face of total disruption.
The scarcity of labor meant that wages rose, and an abundance of cheap land allowed more competition for production. Estates inherited by a handful of survivors were b like a medieval version of condos. Spreading wealth became a much more common theme during the Middle Ages. Today, we would call this the rise of the middle class.
The Plague disrupted a cherished tradition of the Medieval caste system. It liberated the serfs and peasants by increasing wages. They could spend more on luxuries such as meat, reducing their pure grain diet, which gave them strength and vitality. The landowners had no choice but to put up with these changes as the population dwindled and tenant farms were abandoned.
Villages became ghost towns, forcing people to move to places they weren’t welcome, so they had to learn new languages and customs. Locals who had never before met anyone outside of their village had to overcome their fear of strangers. They would confront someone by touching the passerby’s hand to detect the presence of a weapon. Today, we refer to this customary greeting like a handshake.
Families thrived under these dire circumstances. The roles of men and women began to equalize as there were no extra hands to do chores. Working the family farm and raising children required everyone on deck.
Estates inherited by a handful of survivors created more widespread wealth. A surplus of empty land and farms made bargains available to those who had the cash to spend, for survivors inherited their entire family holdings in many cases. In our terms, the great Medieval estates became tear-downs.
The newest status symbol wasn’t the coachman and a fancy carriage but life itself. Hierarchical society flattened out. Not only was life mobile, but people’s status became mobile, too. You were no longer bound by where you were born but who you might become and where you might move. Imaginations were ready for a new era.
Control
As the great German philosopher Nietzsche pointed out, “what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”
It did both to the Europeans living in the 14th Century. We need to weigh this against the devastation they suffered if we have a complete picture of medieval society. The Plague wasn’t anything one would wish on civilization, but great suffering brought useful changes. Some of these will surprise you.
For instance, if you like the barbed skits on Saturday Night Live, you can thank the Plague or, more accurately, Boccaccio, as he was inspired to write The Decameron — the first medieval sitcom which allowed people momentary escape from the troubles. His message wasn’t aimed at courtiers either, but at commoners, as they were the ones suffering. This is why he broke with tradition and wrote in the language of the day, Florentine, and not Latin, so that everyone could enjoy it. Bawdy skits were acted out on the street, the kind of humor anyone could enjoy.
If you enter a hospital with pneumonia, the Plague began the medical practice of isolating people with specific symptoms long before we understood infectious disease. Before then, everyone was lumped together in the same room or even the same bed where they passed germs.
If you enjoy reading things books in English (vs. Latin) or being middle class, even democracy, which teaches us to rearrange humankind’s priorities to lead better lives, then you owe a debt of gratitude to the Plague. It brought the world down to the level of the average person who mattered now more than ever and who became a vital part of restoring it.
Next Time
We don’t worry about the Bubonic Plague any longer (although there are still a few hundred reported cases in the world each year). Now, there is a new contagion that has our undivided attention. But as the medievals proved, the remedies are mostly common sense along with a bit of scientific genius. Although they took many years to recover, those painful years produced the science that helps us today.
The challenges of survival take time to understand, analyze, and persevere. Like the medievals, we are in two fights, one against disease. The other waged against ignorance, arrogance, and resistance to the truth. We must always remember, how we react to disruption can have dire consequences more significant than the cause. By learning the troubling lessons of the past, perhaps we can skip a few.
