i iiiiii inn mil iiiii urn iniyiiii mi mi Retrieve/^ Your Records Within Rcach^k CUSTOMER: 10446 W0#: 1026670 PARENT: 12143285 LOCATION: 23-18-24-18 Rett: Ref2: Ref3: Ref4: Ref5: 34226-TH E BLACK DEATH X02749930 "film (Tatbolia" (p. C. & V. D. SlLB') (Rati} a lie ^ookszllzrs ^zcanii-l}anh & Rzixs 16, JpEatijerstonE IBiulMnjjs. (TbI. : irolirant l7-2'2 Q^ r>;uf ?Z^ — — OTHER WORKS BYABBOT GASQUET, D.D., O.S.B. Demy 8vo, 125. net. HENRY III. AND THE CHURCH. A Study of his Eccle- siastical Policy, and of the Relations between England and Rome. "It is written with no desire to defend the Papacy from the charges which were made even by the faithful at the time, and it may fairly claim to represent an unbiassed survey of the evidence. He has gone carefully through a large body of evidence which English historians have too much neglected, and that his investigations serve rather to confirm than to upset generally received opinions, is, perhaps, additional reason for gratitude. His book will be indispensable to the student of the reign of Henry III.— Times. Crown 8vo, 6s. net. THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION. Studies in the Reli- gious Life and Thought of the English People in the Period preceding the Rejection of the Roman Jurisdiction. Fourth Edition. " Dr. Gasquet has produced a book which will set many men thinking. He has done an excellent piece of work, and has offered to students of history a highly interesting problem. He writes as usual in a lucid and attractive style. The controversial element is so subordinated to the scholady setting forth of simple facts and the adroit marshalling of evid- ence, that one might read the volume through without being tempted to ask what the author's creed is, or whether he has any, and when one gets to the end one is inclined to wish that there were a little more. " A thenceum. Demy 8vo, 8s. 6d. net. HENRY VIII. AND THE ENGLISH MONASTERIES. "The work of Abbot Gasquet on the dissolution of the English Monas- teries is so well known and so widely appreciated that little may be said to commend a new and cheaper edition. The criticism of nearly twenty years has served only to show that the views, expressed by the author in the original edition, are shared by every candid student of the events of that period." Scottish Historical Review. Crown 8vo. THE LAST ABBOT OF GLASTONBURY, and other Essays. Cc-ntents.— I. The Last Abbot of Glastonbury.— II. English Biblical Criticism in the Thirteenth Century.— III. English Scholarship in the Thirteenth Century.—IV. Two Dinners at Wells in the Fifteenth Century. —V. Some Troubles of a Catholic Family in Penal Times. —VI. Abbot Feckenham and Bath. — VII. Christian Family Life in Pre-Reformation Days. —VIII. Christian Democracy in Pre-Reformation Times. — IX. The Layman in the Pre-Reformation Parish. —X. St. Gregory the Great and England. LONDON: GEORGE BELL AND SONS THE BLACK DEATH LONDON : GEORGE BELL AND SONS PORTUGAL ST. LINCOLN'S INN, W.C. CAMBRIDGE : DEIGHTON, BELL & CO. NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN CO. BOMBAY: A. H. WHEELER & CO. THE BLACK DEATH OF I 348 AND I 349 BY FRANCIS AIDAN GASQUET, D.D. ABBOT PRESIDENT OF THE ENGLISH BENEDICTINES SECOND EDITION V nc 7% sc^ LONDON GEORGE BELL AND SONS 1908 A' ,GSV BOSTON COLLEGE CHISWICK PRESS : CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO, TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION THIS essay, published in 1893, nas l° ng been out of print, and second-hand copies are difficult to procure, as they very rarely find their way into booksellers' catalogues. For this reason it has been thought well to reprint this account of the greatest plague that has probably ever devastated the world in historic times. Al- though the subject is necessarily of a doleful and melancholy character, it is of importance in the world's history, both as the account of a universal catastrophe and in its far-reaching effects. Since the original publication of The Great Pestilence additional interest in the subject of bubonic plague has been aroused by the alarming mortality recently caused by it in India, and by the threatened outbreaks in various parts of Europe, where, however, the watchful care of the sanitary authorities has so far enabled them to deal with the sporadic cases which have appeared during the past few years, and to prevent the spread of the terrible scourge. vi PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION From the researches made in India and else- where into the nature and causes of the disease, many new facts have been established which assist us to understand the story of the great epidemic of the fourteenth century, now commonly known as "The Black Death," which is related in some detail in these pages. The accounts of the ravages of the disease in India, which have ap- peared in the newspapers, are little less than appalling, and would probably have attracted more attention were it not for the fact that few Europeans have succumbed to a malady which has been so fatal to the natives of the country. The present bubonic plague in India assumed the nature of an epidemic in the Punjab in Octo- ber, 1897, an d> m spite of the drastic precautions of the sanitary authorities, it so far seems to baffle their endeavours to stamp it out, notwith- standing all the resources of modern science which they possess. In April, 1907, a telegram from Simla announced that the total number of deaths from plague in India during the week ending April 13th was seventy-five thousand; all but five thousand of these having taken place in the United Provinces and the Punjab. At this time the total number of victims from the epi- demic in the Punjab alone, during the nine years PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION vii it had existed, was estimated at about a million and a half. So far as it can be traced, the origin of the Indian plague, as indeed that of the great pesti- lence of 1348-9, is China, the great breeding ground of epidemics. It is supposed to have been imported from Hong Kong to Bombay, and the disease had already made great headway before investigation established the fact that the infection was conveyed by means of the ships' rats. From January to August, 1903, the estimated mortality in India from plague was 600,000, and in 1904 the total rose to the appalling figure of 938,000. Even this was exceeded in 1905; and it is stated that from 1897 to 1904 the plague claimed three and a quarter millions of victims. The campaign against the plague-carrying rats has been waged with comparatively little result, owing, in great measure, to the religious suscepti- bilities of the native peoples, and their aversion to leaving their insanitary homes, leading ob- viously to concealment of infection. Moreover, the rat is regarded by the natives as somewhat of a domestic animal. Its destruction is thus resented and its facilities for spreading the disease greatly increased. Curiously enough it would appear that it has long been recognised by the native inhabit- viii PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION ants of India that some connection did in fact exist between the rat and the bubonic plague. " When the rats begin to fall it is time for people to leave the houses," is an old and common saying in India; in which sentence was registered the popular belief that an outbreak of plague was preceded by a mortality among the rats. It is now certain that this connection does exist. The special commission appointed in 1905 to examine into this matter has established, by a series of experiments, that bubonic plague is due to the rat-flea, called pulex cheopis, which not only carries the plague germ from rat to rat, but is almost certainly the means by which it is communicated to man. It may be taken for granted, as an established fact, that malarial diseases are produced by the bites of the mosquito, and that sleeping sickness follows from that of a blood-sucking fly which transmits to maa the bacilli of the disease. In the same way it is now known that the plague is passed on from the infected rat through the agency of rat-fleas, which, when biting man, im- pregnate him with the bacillus of the deadly bubonic plague. It has even been suggested as by no means impossible that the plague may at any time be reintroduced into Europe by means PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION ix of the rat parasite, and modern research has made it certain that want of cleanliness is a fertile cause of disease and its dissemination. In particular, it is proved that the fleas and bugs which exist in the poorer quarters of cities and villages may be the means of communication of many various forms of disease. As a suggestion to explain the rapid spread of "The Great Pestilence" of 1348-9, these re- sults of modern research are of interest and im- portance. The houses which sheltered the people in the fourteenth century were only too well cal- culated to assist the spread of the contagion, if it was carried, as now appears certain, by the agency of blood-sucking parasites. The account of French rural life at this period, given by M. Simeon Luce, and reproduced in Chapter III of this volume, is probably true, in the main, in regard to our own country, and the insanitary state and habitual dirt in which our ancestors lived, would have provided an ideal field for the indefinite multipli- cation of fleas, and possibly of other plague-bearing insects.