The Black Death

Such admirable common sense was the exception. The European, in the face of the Black Death, was in general overwhelmed by a sense of inevitable doom. If the plague was decreed by God and the inexorable movement of the planets, then how could frail man seek to oppose it? The preacher might counsel hope, but only with the proviso that the sins of man must first be washed away by the immensity of his suffering. The doctor might prescribe remedies, but with the tepid enthusiasm of a civil-defence expert advising those threatened by imminent nuclear attack to adopt a crouching posture and clasp their hands behind their necks. The Black Death descended on a people who were drilled by their theological and their scientific training into a reaction of apathy and fatalistic resignation. Nothing could have provided more promising material on which a plague might feed.

3. ITALY

THE Black Death arrived in Sicily early in October 1347, about three months before it reached the mainland. According to Michael of Piazza,^{69} a Franciscan friar who wrote his history some ten years later, twelve Genoese galleys brought the infection to the port of Messina. Where they came from is unknown; possibly also from the Crimea, though they must have left the area several months before the galleys which bore the Black Death from Caffa to Genoa and Venice. Nor can one now know whether the disease was borne by rats and fleas or was already rampant among members of the crew; the chronicler’s description of ‘sickness clinging to their very bones’ suggests the latter.

Within a few days the plague had taken a firm grasp on the city. Too late to save themselves, the citizens turned on the sailors who had brought them this disastrous cargo and drove them from the port. With their going, the Black Death was scattered around the Mediterranean but Messina’s sufferings were no lighter for its dispersion. With hundreds of victims dying every day and the slightest contact with the sick seeming a guarantee of rapid infection, the population panicked. The few officials who might have organized some sort of measures to mitigate the danger were themselves among the first to perish. The people of Messina fled from their doomed city into the fields and vineyards of southern Sicily, seeking safety in isolation and carrying the plague with them through the countryside.

When the first victims reached the neighbouring city of Catania they were lodged in the hospital and kindly treated. But as soon as the Catanians realized the scale and nature of the disaster they concluded that, by accepting the refugees, they were condemning themselves to the same fate. Strict control over immigration was introduced and it was decreed that any plague victim who had already arrived and subsequently perished should be buried in pits outside the walls. ‘So wicked and timid were the Catanians,’ wrote Michael of Piazza, ‘that they refused even to speak to any from Messina, or to have anything to do with them, but quickly fled at their approach.’ What was wickedness in the eyes of the doomed of Messina must have seemed elementary prudence to the menaced of Catania. The same pattern of behaviour was to be repeated all over Europe but rarely did it do any good to those who sought to save themselves by cutting themselves off from their neighbours. The Black Death had already breached the walls of Catania and nothing could stop it running riot through the population.

The Messinese now appealed to the Patriarch Archbishop of Catania to allow the relics of St Agatha to be taken from Catania to Messina. The Patriarch agreed but the Catanians, not unnaturally feeling that charity began at home and that St Agatha should remain at her post in her own cathedral, rose in protest. ‘They tore the keys from the sacristan and stoutly rebuked the Patriarch, saying that they would rather die than allow the relics to be taken to Messina.’ The Patriarch, who must have been a man of singular courage, accepted the mob’s decision but insisted at least on dipping some of the relics in water and personally taking the water with him to Messina.

‘The aforesaid Patriarch,’ reads Michael of Piazza’s account,