The Black Death

TH ACK DEA DIANE ZAHLER THE BL

ZAHLER THE BLACK DEATH TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY Printing Press The Iranian Revolution Johannes Gutenberg and the Marco Polo’s Journey to China The Norman Conquest of England The Signing of the Magna Carta The Spanish Conquest of Mexico In the cramped and rat-infested streets of medieval citiesIn the cramped and OULD A FEW FLEAS REALLY A FEW FLEAS OULD the Birth of Modern Japan CHANGE THE WORLD? CHANGE C of change. New was on the brink 1300s, the world In the early with and Asia brought people in contact trade routes in Europe threatened ideas, while war and rebellions different cultures and of millions. Most people lived in crowded,to disrupt the lives tied to the lands of their overlords.dirty cities or as serfs took were the bites of a few plague-infectedand villages, all it that killed roughly half the populationfleas to start a pandemic The bubonic plague wiped out families,of Europe and Asia. buboes regions. Once the swollen, black villages, even entire no way to save them.appeared on victims’ bodies, there was of such devastation,People died within days. In the wake scientific, and religioussurvivors had to reevaluate their social, modern world. Thebeliefs, laying the groundwork for our history’s pivotal moments. Black Death outbreak is one of world The Arab Conquest of the Middle East The Black Death The Conquests of Alexander the Great The Conquests of Genghis Khan The End of the Shoguns and The Fall of Constantinople The Fall of the Roman Empire READ ABOUT THESE PIVOTAL MOMENTS IN HISTORY: THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK The Black Death

Diane Zahler

Twenty-First Century Books Minneapolis For Phil

Consultant: Joseph P. Byrne, Historian and Professor of Honors, Belmont University, Nashville

Acknowledgments: I would like to thank the following people for their invaluable help: Debra Cardillo, for knowing all the right people; Peter Zahler, for knowing all about tarabagans; Stanley Zahler, for knowing all about bacteria; and Philip Sicker, for knowing everything else.

Primary source material in this text is printed over an antique-paper texture.

The image on the jacket and cover is a fourteenth-century fresco from Saint Sebastian’s chapel in Lanslevillard, France, showing a physician lancing a plague-caused bubo.

All rights reserved. International copyright secured. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means— electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

Twenty-First Century Books A division of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc. 241 First Avenue North Minneapolis, MN 55401 U.S.A.

Website address: www.lernerbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Zahler, Diane. The Black Death / by Diane Zahler. p. cm. — (Pivotal moments in history) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–8225–9076–7 (lib. bdg. : alk. paper) 1. Black Death—Europe—History. I. Title. RC178.A1Z34 2009 614.5'732—dc22 2008026878

Manufactured in the United States of America eISBN: 978-1-4677-0375-8 12/31/12 Contents

Chapter One On the Edge of the Abyss...... 4 Chapter Two From Flea to Human...... 20 Chapter Three Death Sails In...... 30 Chapter Four The South Falls...... 46 Chapter Five The Plague Races North. . . . 58 Chapter Six A Devastated World...... 72 Chapter Seven A New Era Begins...... 86 Epilogue The Plagues among Us. . . . 102

PRIMARY SOURCE RESEARCH...... 108 PRIMARY SOURCE: BOCCACCIO’S DECAMERON...... 111 TIMELINE...... 117 GLOSSARY...... 120 WHO’S WHO?...... 123 Source Notes ...... 128 selected Bibliography...... 131 FURTHER READING AND WEBSITES ...... 132 Index...... 134 Chapter One On the Edge of the Abyss

In the year of our Lord 1315, apart from the other hardships . . . hunger grew in the land.

—Johannes de Trokelowe, 1300s

Avian influenza, or bird flu, has been in the news a lot. Scientists fear that the virus that causes it may mutate and create a human pandemic—a worldwide epidemic. If that were to happen, health officials estimate that 2.5 percent of the world’s population might die. That’s two to three people out of every one hundred. Imagine how the world would change if that occurred. Society, economics, and even the way people practice religion would be profoundly affected.

4 On the edge of the abyss 5 he he t ury t urope in E h Cen t een hern t t In the 1300s, the century of the Black Death, the vastIn the 1300s, the century of the Imagine that instead of 2.5 percent of the population dying, percent of the that instead of 2.5 Imagine or N the Middle Ages, or the When people think of Europe in Medieval Period (a.d. 500–1500), they often picture knights velvet gowns, and in gleaming armor, ladies in trailing the marble halls of castles. minstrels singing love poetry in novels and Hollywood This is largely because of romantic really look much like that. movies. The Middle Ages didn’t lived in manors or castles, The wealthiest nobles and kings But even they could not wore fine clothing, and dined well. dangers that went with it. escape the dirt of daily life and the In the north, in modern- majority of Europeans were poor. Belgium, Germany, andday Britain, France, the Netherlands, Austria, 90 percent of the population lived in the countryside. Most lived in small villages in the shadow of a manor house. The lord of the manor was at the top of the local social order. Below him were the freemen—farmers or craftspeople 30 to 60 percent died—thirty to sixty out of every hundred to sixty out percent died—thirty 30 to 60 1347 and in Europe between what happened people. That’s plague. Entire wave of the bubonic years of the first 1352, the to the and even towns succumbed families, neighborhoods, death of days. The effects of such wide-scale disease in a matter and enormous. Manor houses, shops, and devastation were apart and of people, so normal business fell farms were emptied had to Society had to rebuild. People had to be restructured. they thought about life and death. reconsider the way Four 6 The Black Death smoky fromthefirethatconstantlyburnedon hearth. at nightandtoaddwarmthinwinter.Theairindoorswas cattle sharedthespacewithfamilyfortheirprotection shuttered inthecold.Goats,chickens,pigs,andsometimes had noglass.Itwasopentotheairinwarmweatherand grasses, orotherplantmaterial).Iftherewasawindow,it grows inmarshyareas.Theroofwasmadeofthatch(straw, was earth,sometimesspreadwithstraworrushes,aplantthat mixed withstrawandcowmanure.Thefloorofthehouse daub. Thisisawovenframeofbranchescoveredwithclay each weektopayrentonlandfarmforthemselves. own overlord.Theserfshadtoworkforthislordseveraldays which theserfslivedandworked,orhemanageditforhis with fewrightsorpossessions.Thelordownedthelandon social orderwerethelandlessserfs—farmersandcraftspeople blacksmiths, carpenters,andmillers.Atthebottomof who ownedtheirownland.Craftspeoplemightinclude their homeswithlivestock averaged8.2rats. average of9.6ratsperhousehold. Familieswhodidn’tshare Families inthecountry who sleptwiththeiranimalshadan At grew astradecenters.Merchantsandtradespeople livedin exploration, andadvancesinshipbuilding.Nearby towns because ofchangesinthemedievaleconomy,increased Villagers lived in small houses, often built of wattle and Villagers livedinsmallhouses,oftenbuiltofwattleand In thefourteenthcentury,traderouteswereopening

H o m e wi t h A ni m als On the edge of the abyss 7 8 The Black Death for theirfood.Still,houseswerenotclean. wear warm,well-madeclothing;andspendmoneyonspices floors. Awealthyfamilymighthavestrongoakfurniture; to barrels.Livingquarterswouldbefoundontheupper ground floor,makingandsellinganythingfromaletoshoes might liveinafour-storyhousewithbusinessonthe wealthy middleclassdeveloped.Awell-to-dotradesman three totwentythousand.Astradeflourished,asmallbut inhabitants, butthepopulationinothercitiesrangedfrom small. times, theybecamemuddyandimpassible. streets below.Thewereusuallyunpaved,andinrainy often sharingwalls.Theyblockedthesunfromnarrow Within theenclosure,houseswerepressedcloselytogether, and protecttheirinhabitantsfrombanditsinvaders. and supplies.Townscitieshadwallstoenclosethem these townsanddependedononeanotherforbasicservices coastal cities. Bothwereportsandcenters oftrade.Inland, the westonMediterranean Sea,werethemostpowerful Milan, was dividedintoindependent city-states,includingVenice, III, theHolyRomanEmperor.Farthernorth territory prince, andthelargeislandofSicilywasruledby Frederick part ofthepeninsulawasruledbyCharlesII,aFrench Italy inthe1340swasnotaunifiedcountry.The southern L i f Most citiesinnorthernEuropeatthetimewerequite Venice, intheeaston AdriaticSea,andGenoa,in e in London andParishadwelloverfiftythousand Genoa, andFlorence. It aly an d

t he S ou t h On the edge of the abyss 9 y y m ono Ec ieval d Iberian Peninsula—modern-day Spain and Spain and Iberian Peninsula—modern-day The In cities, towns, and villages of medieval Europe, most medieval Europe, most In cities, towns, and villages of production and commerce was controlled by guilds— organizations of masters who hired and trained workers. Guilds appeared in Europe as early as the tenth century. The Me Florence had become the most influential city-state by the city-state by the most influential had become the Florence of banking Venice were centers Florence and 1300s. Both by governed They were republics, of great wealth. and places close to one hundred each boasted They and Milan councils. century. by the end of the thirteenth thousand inhabitants as Bologna and Verona, had populations Other cities, such city at Rome was a much smaller of at least fifty thousand. peninsula rife with crime. The rest of the that time and was the towns, villages, and farms that provided was dotted with food for the cities. Portugal—was divided into five kingdoms in the 1300s. kingdoms in the 1300s. Portugal—was divided into five Castile, Aragon, Navarre, These included the kingdoms of ruled by people Portugal, and the kingdom of Granada Moors. Conflict among and from northern Africa known as continually. Until the within the kingdoms raged almost mid-1200s, the Moors, whose religion—Islam—followed Muslim prophet the teaching of the Quran and the the peninsula. By the mid- Muhammad, had held much of Castile had pushed them thirteenth century, the king of on the continent. Civil to Granada, their only outpost left leaving the people and wars plagued Castile and Aragon, their governments weakened. TH ACK DEA DIANE ZAHLER THE BL