So swift was the onslaught of the Black Death that Boccaccio famously quipped that those struck down by the 14th century plague “had lunch with their friends but dinner with their ancestors in paradise.”
The Black Death, the Bubonic Plague, the Great Mortality, The Pestilence and more recently (and scientific) the Yersinia pestis, all different names to describe the horrible deaths of 75 million souls in Europe and 200 million people worldwide.
It was certainly a black and bleak period in world history.
Here are some grisly facts about the Black Death.
Death Ships
Twelve Genoese trading ships landed at Messina, Sicily, in 1347 with an important, albeit deadly, stowaway onboard.
The crew of the ships never got a chance to meet the transfer passenger for they were either dead or dying, their bodies covered with strange lesions oozing blood and pus.
As Europe welcomed foreign ships, did they also unknowingly welcome their own annihilation?
The Black Death had set foot in Europe on that October day to the horror and dismay of the residents of the Sicilian city.
From there, the Black Death made its way to the rest of Europe claiming the lives of millions.
A Recurring Theme
The Black Death of 1347 wasn’t the first time Europe had been visited by the pandemic.
Even with prior experience, societies can be caught off guard by the ferocity of certain diseases.
Europe had its first taste of mass killings by this disease in the sixth century with Justinian’s Plague, which sprouted in Constantinople in 541 and was just as deadly and widespread but not as hungry for souls as the 1347 pandemic—it only killed 25 million people worldwide.
Even after the second pandemic, the Black Death continued to visit Europe on a mass scale at least until the 18th century.
European Travel
After devastating Sicily, the Black Death spread across the breadth of Europe in 3 years.
It got as far North as Iceland and Greenland, tore through France, which saw 3,000 villages emptied, and Germany and then made its way to the British Isles.
No place was beyond its reach.
Similar numbers of “ghost towns” were left as shells in other parts of Europe and Britain.
Lost towns, overgrown streets, and silent echoes: did the shadows of the past warn future generations? Or were they simply forgotten whispers in the wind?
In these places, every single person died, and forests grew over the streets.
Depopulated Europe forgot they ever existed.
Many of them were not rediscovered until the rise of aerial photographic surveys in the years after World War I ended in 1918.
The world population as a whole did not recover to pre-plague levels until the 17th century.
Cats and Rats
The plague was caused by Yersinia pestis, a bacillus carried by fleas that live primarily on rats and other rodents that were common in medieval dwellings.
The bacillus infects the flea by blocking its stomach.
The flea tries repeatedly to feed, but the blockage causes it to regurgitate bacilli into its host.
The combination of fleas, rats, and the Yersinia pestis bacillus created the perfect storm for the Black Death's proliferation.
When the host dies, the flea and its offspring seek a new host, infesting humans when necessary.
A papal edict in 1232 declaring cats to be diabolical triggered a massive slaughter of the felines (and sometimes their owners!) clearing the way for the uncontrolled expansion of infested rats.
Variety is the Spice of Life
“Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all.”
Seneca
There are three varieties of plague: bubonic plague, caused by bites from infected fleas, in which the bacteria moves to the lymph nodes and quickly multiplies, forming growths, or buboes, with a 30%-75% mortality rate; pneumonic plague, a lung infection that causes its victim to cough blood and spread the bacteria from person to person with a 90%-95% mortality rate; and septicemic plague, a blood infection that is 100% fatal and there’s still no cure today.
The high mortality rates across its forms underscored the plague's ruthless efficiency.
No matter which one befell a person, the odds were not good.
The Equalizer
“Death is the great leveller.”
Samuel Butler
Both the poor and the nobility were equal under the threat of death from the plague.
King Alfonso XI of Castile and León was the only reigning monarch to die, but many members of royal families from Naples to England were killed.
The Black Death did not discriminate based on social status, affecting both the nobility and the commoners.
Other nobles felled by the plague include Edward III’s daughter Joan who caught the plague in Bordeaux on her way to marry Pedro of Castille; Catherine of Austria, Lady of Coucy; Philip I, Duke of Burgundy; Joan II of Navarre; Louis, King of Sicily; Louis I of Naples; Eleanor of Portugal, Queen of Aragon, among many others.
The Black Death was truly the great equalizer.
Continuity
The 1890s saw a third pandemic spread throughout China and India and eventually reach the United States, with infections being especially dangerous in the San Francisco Bay Area.
It was during this pandemic that the real cause (Y. pestis) was discovered, along with a cure.
History's horrors revisited: but this time, armed with knowledge, did humanity finally get the upper hand?
The plague still ravages the modern world, with Y. pestis foci in Asia, Russia, the American Southwest, and other areas where the host rodents and fleas live.
However, it is rarely fatal today.
Toasting to modern medicine, not medieval misery!
The Black Death, history’s most infamous party crasher, turning European soirées into somber funerals faster than you can say “Yersinia pestis.”
From the high seas of Sicily to the lofty halls of European nobility, this pandemic was the ultimate social climber, never discriminating based on class or creed.
It was the original influencer, trending across continents and leaving a trail of ghost towns as its viral footprint.
And let’s not forget its penchant for variety—bubonic, pneumonic, septicemic—because why settle for one form of horrific death when you can have a sampler?
Whenever you complain about your Wi-Fi being slow, remember: at least it’s not 1347, and you’re not a flea-bitten rodent.
A toast to antibiotics!
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