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by Molly Edmonds
The Black Death moved through Europe astonishingly fast. Take a look at some of the stops on its path.
Because Europe was trading with the East, some medieval Europeans were aware of a mysterious disease sweeping
through Asia in the 1330s. From Central Asia, the disease moved along an established trade route, passing through
Turkestan and the Black Sea Region (Crimea and the Byzantine Empire).
In 1347, Kaffa, a town in modern-day Ukraine that was a Genoese trading post, came under attack by a Tartar army.
When the Tartars were killed by the plague, the Genoese at first rejoiced: God had answered their prayers and
punished their enemy. But that celebration ended when the Tartars began launching the corpses of plague victims
over the walls of the city, hoping that the smell of rot would kill everyone in town. The smell didn't kill the
Genoese, of course, but the disease did. The panicked Genoese threw the corpses back or submerged them in
water. But it was no use; they were already exposed. As the dying Tartars retreated, the Genoese fled by ship to
Sicily, taking the deadly disease with them to Europe.
Kaffa wasn't the only eastern trading port on the Black
Death's path, but Genoa's ships took the blame for
Why is it called the Black Death?
bringing the pestilence. Once it hit Europe, the Black
Many think that the Black Death got its name from the
Death moved fast, traveling at an average speed of 2.5
blackened tumors that covered the victims' bodies. But
miles per day (4 km per day) [source: Duncan, Scott].
it's more likely a mistranslation of the Latin term for
From the Mediterranean ports, the disease took two
the plague, Atra mors. "Atra" can be translated as
paths; one through France that eventually made its way
either "terrible" or "black."
to England and Ireland, and one through Italy that went
section.
When people began dying in France, King Philip VI turned to the Paris College of Physicians, the most highlyregarded medical authorities of the time, to learn the cause. The physicians produced a report that blamed the mass
deaths on an event that occurred at 1 p.m. on March 20, 1345 -- the triple conjunction of the planets Saturn, Jupiter
and Mars in Aquarius. The report explained that Jupiter, a wet and hot planet, soaked up evil vapors from Earth.
And Mars, a dry planet, ignited the vapors and spread them through the air, which is how Europe got enveloped in
a fog of death.
Imagno/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Procession of the flagellants
The Brotherhood of the Flagellants had appeared earlier in Europe, but rose up in great numbers in Germany in
late 1348. They believed the Black Death was the punishment of God and took it upon themselves to try to appease
him. The Flagellants marched barefoot throughout Europe, whipping themselves with scourges, or sticks with
spiked tails. Enormous crowds gathered to watch the ritual beatings, complete with hymns and prayers for God's
forgiveness. The pope was initially tolerant of the movement, but he denounced them in 1349, and the Flagellants
disappeared, seemingly overnight.
The Flagellants were also extremely anti-Semitic, but they weren't the only ones. While anti-Semitism was already on
the rise in Europe, it reached a fever pitch when many came to believe that Jews were poisoning the wells and
causing the Black Death. Because Jews at this time usually lived apart from Christians in separate quarters, they were
in effect already quarantined when the Black Death hit the towns, so they had high survival rates.
Vengeful Christians burned Jews at the stake or set buildings filled with entire communities on fire. Some Jews
responded by setting their own homes on fire before the angry mobs did it for them. Others converted to
Christianity on the spot to save themselves. While the attacks on Jews were widespread throughout Europe, some
of the highest casualties were in Germany. Few Jews were left in that country by the time the plague ended.
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answer to the plague, and the church had been able to offer no help. Additionally, priests, who, along with doctors,
had the highest rate of contact with the diseased, also had one of the highest rates of fatalities. Several new
heretical movements sprang up. Those who still clung to their faith were more likely to do so in a very personal
manner. Many began to build private chapels.
If the Black Death was caused by the bubonic plague, then the mortality rate was much higher than it should have
been, they argue. The bubonic plague is fairly curable; even untreated, bubonic plague has a mortality rate of about
60 percent [source: Kelly]. If mostly everyone affected died, some feel that a hemorrhagic fever, with no cure, was
the more likely culprit.
Proponents of these new theories also point out that bubonic plague usually
moves very slowly. But the Black Death swept across Europe at enormous
DNA Evidence
speed, especially given the fact that transportation was pretty undeveloped at
In an attempt to determine if Yersinia
the time. A hemorrhagic fever, in comparison, has a longer incubation period, pestis was to blame for the Black
in which people are contagious, but not yet symptomatic. People might have
Death, scientists have been turning to
spent that incubation period traveling, inadvertently spreading the fever more
DNA evidence. In the late 1990s, a
rapidly. Writings from the Black Death also indicate that people were extremely group of paleomicrobiologists was
contagious, so much so that people were scared to be in the same town as the
able to remove dental pulp from
corpses buried in mass gravesites in
infected. But modern-day plague outbreaks are nowhere near as contagious.
France. They reported finding the
Virus advocates find other problems with the rat-and-flea bacterial infection
DNA of Y. pestis in the samples,
theory. Since fleas only attack humans after all rat hosts have died, then there
seeming to confirm the plague
should have been a large die-off of rats before the Black Death. There's no
theory. However, in a later study,
evidence for a rat disappearance. Additionally, fleas require high temperatures
samples from five gravesites from all
and humidity to survive, which means that the plague should have essentially
over Europe were used, and scientists
died out in winter months. It did not.
were unable to confirm these results.
None of this reasoning has won over the scientific community yet. It's difficult The teeth exhumed from other
gravesites did not contain elements
to truly know what the Black Death was like. The only evidence we have are
of Y. pestis.
the written accounts of the time, and these accounts provide few details.
Obviously, the people who wrote them didn't use our technical language for
diagnosing and describing diseases. What they described as a tumor may not
have been a tumor at all, by our modern-day medical standards.
Sources:
Barris, Colin. "Black Death casts a genetic shadow over England." New Scientist, August 2007. (Feb. 4, 2008)
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn12393.
"Black Death." Encyclopedia Britannica. 2008. Encyclopedia Brittanica Online Library Edition. (Feb. 4, 2008)
http://www.library.eb.com/eb/article-9015473.
Cohn, S.K. and L.T. Weaver. "The Black Death and AIDS: CCR5-
http://history.howstuffworks.com/middle-ages/black-death6.htm