What Can We Learn From The Black Death of 1346-1353?

English villagers burying the dead 
 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/Doutielt3.jpg

As I’ve been sitting here at home during this necessary time of self-isolation, I have been thinking a lot about the Black Death that hit the world in 1347. It’s not the numbers. Its very unlikely the COVID-19 pandemic will result in that many deaths, but we may see changes in society and in our general outlook that are similar.

The impact the Black Death had and still has is enormous. An estimated 75-200 million deaths occurred between 1347 and 1353 in Europe and the Middle East. The cluster of diseases probably originated in central Asia, and arrived in Crimea by 1343.  It arrived in Constantinople by 1347. It first entered Europe in 1347 via traders from Crimea in 1347 and it spread like wildfire. It eventually spread to all of Europe including England, Scandinavia and Russia by 1353. At the time the way in which the diseases were transmitted was unknown but it is generally believed that they were transmitted by fleas on infected rats. The rats left ships, were bitten by fleas, which in turn got onto people and transmitted them through flea bites.  There were several forms, one that appears to have been spread through the air, now thought by some to have been anthrax. Bubonic plague caused large black swellings in the groin, armpits and necks as it passed through the victim’s lymphatic system. Death came with a few days, although some survived. Estimates of Europe’s total loss range from 40% to 60% of the population. In some locations, especially England,90% of the population of small villages died. The classic film “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” highlights the devastation of the Black Death, and although it is satirical it’s not far from the truth. Satire is born in truth. The scene in which Eric Idle walks with a cart through the streets of a village calling for people to “Bring out your dead” actually happened, although not in a comical way:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jdf5EXo6I68

The Black Death had an enormous impact. It spelled the end of the feudal system, in which serfs were bound to a lord’s land. With a catastrophic loss of population workers were in great demand, and serfs left their bondage to seek employment elsewhere, and their lords were powerless to stop them. If the lords wanted people to work for them they had to pay them competitive wages.

Another impact was theological. The most common explanation given was that the Black Death was God’s judgment on a corrupt and immoral world. Other communities resorted to anti-Semitism as an explanation, accusing Jews of poisoning wells or practicing witchcraft. 

The theological impact centered around a heightened awareness of mortality. During this time groups of monks and other laypersons processed through streets flagellating themselves in penance. This became a movement even after the plague had subsided. Again, I turn to Monty Python for an illustration. I’m not aware that these penitents hit themselves on the forehead with boards, but it’s as bad as whipping themselves:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4q6eaLn2mY

The Dance of Death (1493) by Michael Wolgemut, from 
the Nuremberg Chronicle of Hartmann Schedel

The theological and social implications remained for centuries. The way that people understood death was altered. We look back at the ways that people processed death and it may appear morbid to our sensitive minds. The contemplation of a human skull to think about one’s own mortality became common, a theme that appears in late medieval and Renaissance art. Mary Magdalene was also commonly depicted with a human skull.

St. Jerome in his Study Joos Van Cleve, Netherlandish, 16th Century
The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College Poughkeepsie, New York
Purchase, Friends of the Vassar College Art Gallery Fund

As a pastor I don't think it's healthy to obsess about death, but at the same time I don't believe we think about it enough. Many shrink from the decline of elderly family members, not wanting to face the reality that that person will soon die. We even use euphemisms to refer to death, such as "passing away" or even now, simply "passing." By living as though we will never die we do not fully live.

I had a conversation with a younger colleague years ago. She commented on how one of her predecessors seemed to have a "theology of death" based on some materials he had left behind, as if that were somehow morbid or unhealthy. I thought to myself, "If you don't have a theology of death then you'd be well served to develop one for yourself."

The process of dying seems to be what people fear the most.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sc85m2mJyL8

The COVID-19 pandemic will certainly change how we view the world. The reaction that the world has had has caused economic chaos and some analysts feel we have already entered a recession. The difficulty about this is we don't know how long it will last. Perhaps China's experience may give us a clue. It started in November 2019 and today, at this writing, the first day has come and gone when not one new diagnosis has been announced in China. The rest of the world is still in the middle of it.  Italy is on its knees. Other European countries have shut down completely. Our own country is still trying to figure out what will work.

The most important thing for all of us to keep in mind is that we need each other. In the U.S. we tend to lift up rugged individualism and pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. That's a thing of the past. We are all connected and we need each other. If some good is going to come out of this, hopefully it will be a rediscovery of the importance of community.

We Can Choose How We Are Going To Live

I’ve been thinking about death a lot lately, for a couple of reasons.  First, because of the Corona virus. The fear of death, reasonably, drives the reaction manifest in the shutting down of public events of any kind, whether they be church services, club meetings, or ordinary days at school. The fear is reasonable. This is a dangerous disease, especially to the elderly. It’s important to remember, though, that is is nothing like the Spanish flu that killed millions of people in 1918-20.

So, I’m thinking about death also because I have started my new job as a hospice chaplain. Ironically, I have been and will be kept from my eventual patients because of the virus. Most of my patients will be in facilities, either nursing homes, assisted living residences, memory care, etc.  They are all in lockdown, reasonably so.

So, I can’t work. I’m at home, philosophizing about the nature of things.

So, death.

One of the most profound experiences I have had repeatedly is doing a burial. I always say the words from the Book of Common Prayer, “ We commit this body of xxxx to the ground in sure and certain hope of the resurrection through Jesus Christ our Lord, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

Pronouncing those profound and final words over a yawning grave never fails to move me.

During the self-quarantine that I have fallen into (an introvert’s paradise, to be sure) I have picked up Boccaccio’s Decameron, a series of stories the author places in a time of plague in early Renaissance Florence. A group of friends with means depart to a relatively remote villa in the countryside which has a quality wine cellar. They sit and entertain one another with stories, many of them bawdy in nature. The contrast between their stories and the reality of what was happening in Florence is not lost. Florence suffered greatly during the Black Death, losing tens of thousands of people.

When I think about time and death I am drawn to two authors, one later than the other. One is my distant cousin, William Shakespeare, and the other, John Donne. Shakespeare often muses about the nature of death, but Donne seems to have dwelt very deeply on the subject, partly because of his own precarious health. Here is a sonnet written in reflection on the nature of mortality;

Thou hast made me, And shall thy work decay?
Repaire me now, for now mine end doth haste,
I runne to death, and death meets me as fast,
I dare not move my dime eyes any way,
Despaire behind, and death before doth cast
Such terrour, and my feeble flesh doth waste
By sinne in it, which it t’wards hell doth weigh;

Donne felt his mortality deeply, and we benefit from his reflections.

Shakespeare also wrote profound words about death. The most familiar, of course, is Hamlet’s soliloquy on death. I quote most, but not all of it:

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die—to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there's the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause—there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th'unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovere'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of? (Hamlet, Act III Scene 1)

Yes, the fear of the unknown. Do we just vanish like the morning fog or are we changed into something we can’t understand? That’s the nature of mortality.

This can lead to despair, or profound beauty. The thing that makes life beautiful also makes it tragic, which is that it doesn’t last forever. We can choose how we are going to live. After all, we die only once but we get to live each day.