Prior to the arrival of the plague, Europe was in a cooling period with great crop failure. The Little Ice Age had begun. The Great Famine struck Northern Europe. Food shortages, crop failure and high prices spread the hunger and malnutrition. The typhoid epidemic then hit and acted a precursor to what lay ahead for Europe: THE BLACK PLAGUE.
The Black Death spread rapidly along all of Europe’s seaports and inland trade routes. There is new evidence that may prove that the plague did not start in central Asia as we have believed for years but possibly in Africa or Northern India. Nevertheless, it was carried out from Central Asia along the Silk Road, by Tartars armies and traders using the free passage. It is believe that it first entered Europe in the trading city of Caffa in the Crimea. After a siege, the infected Tartar army threw their dead, diseased corpses over the walls of the city Tana and infected the populace. They fled and the plague began to spread.
The governments were unable to handle the crisis and rumors spread. Rumors that Jews poisoned the wells. They were then exterminated out of cities such as Cologne and Strasbourg. People with skin diseases were hunted and killed. Beggars, friars, lepers, Romas and even man’s best friend, dog, was hunted down and exterminated all in the name of stopping the Black Death.
The Church began to lose power because people were unable to believe that their creator could bestow such horrible punishments on the even the innocent. The Church had no answers and no cures and the monks in monasteries and the nuns who nursed those sick died along with everyone else. The Church would not offer the people a reason as to why the plague has come. This opened the door for many vile reactions of a desperate people.
The doubt of the Church and the clergy caused people to follow other religious groups, such as the flagellants.
The Church found them a fanatical and heretical sect .
map courtesy of http://www.ucalgary.ca/HIST/tutor/imagemid/blackdeath.gif
From a fifteenth century woodcut.
The Flagellants would enter the villages, singing vigorously, attracting people into the center of town square. The Jews would go into hiding because the movement was violently anti-Semitic. Word has gotten around how they would exterminate hundreds and thousands in the areas they visited.
The Flagellants' white robes, garnished with a cross on the back and the front would gain the people’s attention. The crowds were heard screaming for salvation from this most terrible time. After gaining the town’s attention, The Flagellants would violently fall to the ground, each representing a sin of man, such as adultery. Murderers would lie on their backs, adulterers on their stomachs. Each man with his own sin. Each man destined to take on the punishment to stop the plague.
They would chant and begin collective flagellation. Their weapons decorated with spikes and needles would cut at their flesh. Wounds gaped and poured blood and after the erotic ceremony was over, the people touched their wounds, put the Flagellants' blood on their handkerchiefs, others on their faces, looking for God’s salvation.
Although they were banned by the Church in 1262, the German wing made it appearance in almost every major disaster. They preached that priests were no longer needed for salvation. Their message spread. They continued killing Jews and anyone who got in their way. In 1349, Pope Clement VI announced for their dispersal and arrest. Local rules could now arrest and execute the fanatics.
After the plague was over, there were Flagellant-free zones and Sicily threatened to kill any that stepped onto their land. Eventually, a younger generation took over and they were fueled by hatred and crime. Eventually, their numbers died out.
Burning of Jews, Hartmann Schedel, 1493
Burning of Jews during the Black Death epidemic, 1349
