The Black Death

by Philip Ziegler

  Vienna was visited from the spring to the late autumn of 1349. Every day, wrote Sticker, five to six hundred people died; once nine hundred and sixty perished in a single day. A third part of the population was exterminated, says one record;{156} only a third survived says another.{157} The population identified the plague as the Pest Jungfrau who had only to raise her hand to infect a victim. She flew through the air in the form of a blue flame and, in this guise, was often seen emerging from the mouths of the dead.{158} In Lithuanian legend the same plague maiden waved a red scarf through the door or window of a house to infect its inhabitants. A gallant gentleman deliberately opened a window of his house and waited with his sword drawn till the maiden arrived. As she thrust in the scarf he chopped off her hand. He died but the rest of the village escaped unscathed and the scarf was long preserved as a relic in the local church.{159} In some areas the plague poison was believed to descend as a ball of fire. One such ball was fortunately spotted while hovering above Vienna and exorcized by a passing bishop. It fell harmlessly to the ground and a stone effigy of the Madonna was raised to commemorate this unique victory of the city’s defensive system.

  The details of the daily horrors are very similar to those in the cities of Italy and France and there is no need to labour them again. One point of difference is the abnormally large number of churchmen who died during the epidemic. It seems indeed that the plague fell with exceptional violence on the German clergy; because, one must suppose in the absence of other explanation, of the greater fortitude with which they performed their duties. Conrad Eubel, basing his calculations almost entirely on German sources,{160} shows that at least thirty-five per cent of the higher clergy died in this period. The figure would not be exceptionally high if it related to parish priests but becomes astonishing when it applies to their normally cautious and well-protected superiors. But so far as the monks were concerned it seems that it was not only devotion to duty which led to a thinning of their ranks. Felix Fabri{161} says that in Swabia many religious houses were deserted: ‘For those who survived were not in the monasteries but in the cities and, having become accustomed to worldly ways of living, went quickly from bad to worse….’ The monks of Auwa are said to have moved in a body to Ulm where they dissipated the monastery’s treasure in riotous living.

  For a variety of reasons, therefore, the German Church found itself short of personnel in 1349 and 1350. One result was a sharp increase in plural benefices. In one area, between 1345 and 1347, thirty-nine benefices were held by thirteen men. In 1350 to 1352 this had become fifty-seven benefices in the hands of twelve men. Another was the closing of many monasteries and parish churches; a third the mass ordination of young and often ill-educated and untrained clerics. As a sum of these factors, the German Church after the Black Death was numerically weaker, worse led and worse manned than a few years before: an unlucky consequence of the losses which it had suffered by carrying out its responsibilities courageously. The many benefactions which it received during the terror ensured that its spiritual and organizational weakness was matched by greater financial prosperity, a disastrous combination which helped to make the church despised and detested where formerly it had been loved, revered or, at least, accepted. By 1350 the Church in Germany had been reduced to a condition where any energetic movement of reform was certain to find many allies and weakened opposition.

  One by one the cities of Germany were attacked. As always, firm statistics are few and far between and, where they do exist, are often hard to reconcile with each other. Reincke{162} has estimated that between half and two thirds of the inhabitants of Hamburg died and seventy per cent of those in Bremen; yet in Lübeck only a quarter of the householders are recorded as having perished. Most country areas were seriously affected, yet Bohemia was virtually untouched. Graus{163} has suggested that this was due to Bohemia’s remoteness from the traditional trade routes yet, in the far milder epidemic of 1380, the area was ravaged by the plague. An impression is left that Germany, using the term in its widest possible sense to include Prussia, Bohemia and Austria, suffered less badly than France or Italy, but such an impression could hardly be substantiated. The Black Death in Germany, however, is of peculiar interest since that country provided the background for two of its most striking and unpleasant by-products: the pilgrimages of the Flagellants and the persecution of the Jews.

  * * *

  The Flagellant Movement,{164} even though it dislocated life over a great area of Europe and at one time threatened the security of governments, did not, in the long run, amount to very much. It might reasonably be argued that, in a book covering so immense a subject as the Black Death, it does not merit considered attention. In statistical terms this might be true. But the Flagellants, with their visions and their superstitions, their debauches and their discipline, their idealism and their brutality, provide a uniquely revealing insight into the mind of medieval man when confronted with overwhelming and inexplicable catastrophe. Only a minority of Europeans reacted with the violence of the Flagellants but the impulses which drove this minority on were everywhere at work. To the more sophisticated the excesses of the Flagellants may have seemed distasteful; to the more prudent, dangerous. But to no one did they seem meaningless or irrelevant – that there was method in their madness was taken for granted even by the least enthusiastic. It is this, the fact that some element of the Flagellant lurked in the mind of every medieval man, which, more than the movement’s curious nature and intrinsic drama, justifies its consideration in some detail.

  Flagellation as a practice seems to be almost as old as man himself. Joseph McCabe has pursued the subject with loving detail through the ages:{165} from the Indians of Brazil who whipped themselves on their genitals at the time of the new moon through the Spartans who propitiated the fertility goddess with blood until finally he arrived at the thirteenth and fourteenth century – the ‘Golden Age of Pious Flagellation’. Most of these exercises were clearly if unconsciously erotic in their nature. As such, they were far removed from the pilgrimages of the Brethren of the Cross. It would be rash to assert that the Flagellants of 1348 did not satisfy, by their self-inflicted torments, some twisted craving in their natures, but ‘erotic’, in its normal sense of awakening sexual appetites, is not a word which can properly be applied to their activities.

  The practice of self-scourging as a means of mortifying the flesh seems to be first recorded in Europe in certain Italian monastic communities early in the eleventh century. As a group activity it was not known for another two hundred years. At this point, in the middle of the thirteenth century, a series of disasters convinced the Italians that God’s anger had been called down on man as a punishment for his sins. The idea that he might be placated if a group of the godly drew together to protest their penitence and prove it by their deeds seems first to have occurred to a Perugian hermit called Raniero. The project was evidently judged successful, at any rate sufficiently so for the experiment to be repeated in 1334 and again a few years later, when the pilgrimage was led by ‘a virtuous and beautiful maid’. This last enterprise ran foul of the authorities and the maid was arrested and sentenced to be burnt at the stake. Either her virtue or her beauty, however, so far melted the hearts of her captors that she was reprieved and ultimately released.

  The pilgrimage of 1260 drew its authority from a Heavenly Letter brought to earth by an angel which stated that God, incensed by man’s failure to observe the Sabbath day, had scourged Christendom and would have destroyed the world altogether but for the intercession of the angels and the Virgin and the altogether becoming behaviour of the Flagellants. Divine grace would be forthcoming for all those who became members of the Brotherhood: anybody else, it was clear, was in imminent danger of hellfire. A second edition of this letter was issued in time for the Black Death by an angel who was said to have delivered it in the Church of St Peter in Jerusalem some time in 1343.{166} The text was identical with the first except for an extra paragraph specifically pointing out that
the plague was the direct punishment of God and that the aim of the Flagellants was to induce God to relent.

  The ‘Brotherhood of the Flagellants’ or ‘Brethren of the Cross’ as the movement was called in 1348, traditionally originated in Eastern Europe, headed, according to Nohl in a pleasant conceit for which he unfortunately fails to quote authority, by various ‘gigantic women from Hungary’.{167} It is to be deplored that these heroic figures quickly faded from the scene. It was in Germany that the Flagellant movement really took root. It is hard to be sure whether this was the result of circumstances or of the nature of the inhabitants. Dr Lea suggests that the German people had had their religious sensibilities stirred by the papal interdict against Louis of Bavaria and the recent earthquakes. But, if such were the causes, there would have been quite as much reason to expect the outbreak in Italy, the original home of collective scourgings, deprived as it was of its Pope and in a mood of striking melancholia.

  The actual mechanism of recruitment to the Brotherhood is still obscure but the appearance of the Flagellants on the march is well attested.{168} They moved in a long crocodile, two-by-two, usually in groups of two or three hundred but occasionally even more than a thousand strong. Men and women were segregated, the women taking their place towards the rear of the procession. At the head marched the group Master and two lieutenants carrying banners of purple velvet and cloth of gold. Except for occasional hymns the marchers were silent, their heads and faces hidden in cowls, their eyes fixed on the ground. They were dressed in sombre clothes with red crosses on back, front and cap.

  Word would travel ahead and, at the news that the Brethren of the Cross were on the way, the bells of the churches would be set ringing and the townsfolk pour out to welcome them. The first move was to the church where they would chant their special litany. A few parish priests used to join in and try to share the limelight with the invaders, but most of them discreetly lay low until the Flagellants were on the move again. Only a handful were so high-principled or foolhardy as to deny the use of their church for the ceremony and these were usually given short shrift by the Brethren and by their own parishioners.

  Sometimes the Flagellants would use the church for their own rites as well as for the litany but, provided there was a market place or other suitable site, they preferred to conduct their service in the open air. Here the real business of the day took place. A large circle was formed and the worshippers stripped to the waist, retaining only a linen cloth or skirt which stretched as far as their ankles. Their outer garments were piled up inside the circle and the sick of the village would congregate there in the hope of acquiring a little vicarious merit. On one occasion, at least, a dead child was laid within the magic circle – presumably in the hope of regeneration. The Flagellants marched around the circle; then, at a signal from the Master, threw themselves to the ground. The usual posture was that of one crucified but those with especial sins on their conscience adopted appropriate attitudes: an adulterer with his face to the ground, a perjurer on one side holding up three fingers. The Master moved among the recumbent bodies, thrashing those who had committed such crimes or who had offended in some way against the discipline of the Brotherhood.

  Then came the collective flagellation. Each Brother carried a heavy scourge with three or four leather thongs, the thongs tipped with metal studs. With these they began rhythmically to beat their backs and breasts. Three of the Brethren acting as cheer-leaders, led the ceremonies from the centre of the circle while the Master walked among his flock, urging them to pray to God to have mercy on all sinners. Meanwhile the worshippers kept up the tempo and their spirits by chanting the Hymn of the Flagellants. The pace grew. The Brethren threw themselves to the ground, then rose again to continue the punishment; threw themselves to the ground a second time and rose for a final orgy of self-scourging. Each man tried to outdo his neighbour in pious suffering, literally whipping himself into a frenzy in which pain had no reality. Around them the townsfolk quaked, sobbed and groaned in sympathy, encouraging the Brethren to still greater excesses.

  Such scenes were repeated twice by day and once by night with a benefit performance when one of the Brethren died. If the details of the ceremonies are literally as recorded then such extra shows must have been far from exceptional. The public wanted blood and they seem to have got it. Henry of Herford{169} records: ‘Each scourge was a kind of stick from which three tails with large knots hung down. Through the knots were thrust iron spikes as sharp as needles which projected about the length of a grain of wheat or sometimes a little more. With such scourges they lashed themselves on their naked bodies so that they became swollen and blue, the blood ran down to the ground and bespattered the walls of the churches in which they scourged themselves. Occasionally they drove the spikes so deep into the flesh that they could only be pulled out by a second wrench.’

  But though, gripped as they were by collective hysteria, it is easy to believe that they subjected their bodies to such an ordeal, it is impossible to accept that they could have repeated the dose two or three times a day for thirty-three days. The rules of the Brotherhood precluded bathing, washing or changes of clothing. With no antiseptics and in such grotesquely unhygienic conditions, the raw scars left by the spikes would quickly have become poisoned. The sufferings of the Brethren would have become intolerable and it seems highly unlikely that any Flagellant would have been physically capable of completing a pilgrimage. The modern reader is forced to the conclusion that, somewhere, there must have been a catch. Possibly the serious blood-letting was reserved for gala occasions, such as that witnessed by Henry of Herford. Possibly two or three victims were designated on each occasion to attract the limelight by the intensity of their sufferings. The Flagellants were not fakes but some measure of restraint there must have been.

  Certainly there was little in their chanting intrinsically likely to lead to total self-abandonment. The celebrated Ancient Hymn of the Flagellants, even in the Latin or vernacular German, was a pitiful little dirge; as remote from ecstatic excitement as a Women’s Institute Choir’s rendering of ‘Abide With Me’:

  Whoe’er to save his soul is fain,

  Must pay and render back again.

  His safety so shall he consult:

  Help us, good Lord, to this result…

  — Ply well the scourge for Jesus’ sake

  And God through Christ your sins shall take…

  Woe! Usurer though thy wealth abound

  For every ounce thou makest, a pound

  Shall sink thee to the hell profound.

  Ye murderers and ye robbers all,

  The wrath of God on you shall fall.

  Mercy ye ne’er to others show,

  None shall ye find, but endless woe.

  Had it not been for our contrition

  All Christendom had met perdition…{170}

  A slightlier livelier refrain is quoted by Nohl:

  Come here for penance good and well,

  Thus we escape from burning hell,

  Lucifer’s a wicked wight,

  His prey he sets with pitch alight.

  but even this lacks something as a stimulant.

  The Flagellant Movement, at first at least, was well regulated and sternly disciplined. Any new entrants had to obtain the prior permission of their husband or wife and make full confession of all sins committed since the age of seven. They had to promise to scourge themselves thrice daily for thirty-three days and eight hours,{171} one day for each year of Christ’s earthly life, and were required to show that they possessed funds sufficient to provide 4d. for each day of the pilgrimage to meet the cost of food. Absolute obedience was promised to the Master and all the Brethren undertook not to shave, bathe, sleep in a bed, change their clothes or have conversation or other intercourse with a member of the opposite sex.

  The entrance fee ensured that the poorest members of society were barred from the Brotherhood; the strict rules, at first at any rate conscientiously observed, kept out the se
nsation-mongers who wished only to draw attention to themselves or to give unbridled scope to their passions. In these conditions, the public were generally delighted to receive the visits of the Flagellants and, at a small charge, to meet their simple needs. Their arrival was an event in the drab lives of the average German peasant; an occasion for a celebration as well as for the working off of surplus emotion. If the plague was already rife then the visit offered some hope that God might be placated, if it had not yet come then the penance of the Flagellants was a cheap and possibly useful insurance policy. Without at first being overtly anticlerical the movement gave the villager that satisfaction of seeing his parish priest manifestly playing second fiddle if not actually humiliated. Ecclesiastics had no pre-eminence in the movement; indeed, in theory, they were forbidden to become Masters or to take part in Secret Councils, and the leaders of the movement prided themselves upon their independence from the church establishment.

  So bourgeois and respectable, indeed, did the movement at first appear that a few rich merchants and even nobles joined the pilgrimage. But soon they had reason to doubt their wisdom. As the fervour mounted the messianic pretensions of the Flagellants became more pronounced. They began to claim that the movement must last for thirty-three years and end only with the redemption of Christendom and the arrival of the Millenium. Possessed by such chiliastic convictions they saw themselves more and more, not as mortals suffering to expiate their own sins and humanity’s, but as a holy army of Saints. Certain of the Brethren began to claim a measure of supernatural power. It was commonly alleged that the Flagellants could drive out devils, heal the sick and even raise the dead. Some members announced that they had eaten and drunk with Christ or talked with the Virgin. One claimed that he himself had risen from the dead. Rags dipped in the blood they shed were treated as sacred relics. All that was lacking to give the movement the full force of a messianic crusade was a putative Messiah. Such a figure had appeared in the thirteenth century but though there may have been one or two local claimants, no major figure emerged on this occasion to lead the Brethren of the Cross into the Millenium.