The Bubonic Plague, also known as the Black Plague, was really messed up, and everyone
knows it.
One of the worst parts had to be, well, the death.
And there was a lot of that, but it may not have been the worst part.
Here are the most disturbing things about the Black Plague.
First, it’s important to understand exactly how the black plague qorks.
According to Real Clear Science, because the plague’s bacteria mimics another molecule
in the human body, the body doesn’t realize something is wrong until the disease has spread
to the lymph nodes.
Once the bacteria reaches your lungs, the body goes into overdrive, triggers septic
shock, and vital organs begin to fail.
Historians say the Black Plague was likely both strains of plague: bubonic and pneumonic.
The pneumonic version is airborne, has a kill rate of almost 100 percent, and usually kills
those who contract it within 24 hours.
Alternately, the bubonic plague was spread by fleas from rats and followed a different
pattern.
An infected person took between three to five days to show signs of any illness, and another
three to five days to succumb to the disease.
According to historians, the 14th-century edition of the Black Plague killed around
60 percent of Europe's entire population.
Subsequently, areas affected by the plague experienced a massive shortage of laborers
and skilled workers.
While supply and demand might suggest that able-bodied survivors would benefit from this,
the labor shortage only gave the upper class another opportunity to step on the less-fortunate.
In 1349, English rulers issued an Ordinance of Labourers, making it illegal for workers
to demand higher wages.
According to the BBC, the ordinance became law in 1351, and it was quickly followed by
other laws designed to help keep the lower classes in their place.
In fact, the laws enacted post-plague were so restrictive that they led to the Peasants
Revolt of 1381 and the beheading of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon Sudbury.
Before the plague swept through Europe, religion was at the center of life.
While passing was inevitable, it wasn’t entirely something to be feared.
Scores of faithful Christians believed passing was simply a gateway to be passed through
on the way to their final, heavenly reward.
While faith allowed people to take comfort in their eventual, mortal end, the spreading
plague made many feel as if God had abandoned them all.
As the Black Plague took its toll, many people began to see passing as ugly and irrational,
rather than as a divine reward for the faithful and devout.
Because of this change in the collective mindset, the church began to weaken, as many who had
witnessed the Black Plagues’s horrors no longer felt the need to have bishops or priests
communicate with God on their behalf.
When the Black Plague came again in the 17th century, grisly tasks were assigned to townspeople
to contain the disease.
Women known as searchers were employed by city parishes.
They would visit families, examine the lost and the suffering, and report back with the
names of those who had been infected.
The families would then be sealed inside their homes, and a red cross would be painted on
the doors of those affected.
Each home was also assigned a watcher, whose job was to ensure no goods were passed from
the inside to the outside, no one entered the home, and no one left.
Finally, people known as bearers would collect bodies at night, loading them onto a cart
and wheeling them away to be buried.
According to historians, those with the bearer title were largely uneducated, often-inebriated,
and had a reputation for searching the pockets of the dead before dumping them off in a burial
pit.
In an attempt to make sense of the sheer amount of mass passings and suffering, rumor was
spread that the plague was a Jewish conspiracy, unleashed upon Christians with hopes of destroying
an entire faith.
Once it was alleged that a group of Jews had confessed to the plot, a massive campaign
of retribution commenced.
Hundreds of towns and hamlets were burned to the ground, and thousands of Jews were
chased by the angry masses.
The terror was so widespread and brutal that it would be another three centuries before
those of the Jewish faith had recovered and rebuilt enough of their culture that they
could once again be an active presence in the countries where they lived.
Because large-scale passings can be almost incomprehensible, individual accounts are
so important to understanding what life was like during one of the most terrifying times
in history.
One chronicler from Florence wrote of carrying the lost to the church, describing deep pits
where the poor who had died were stacked on top of each other during the night and covered
with dirt in the morning.
In another individual account, the great poet and humanist Petrarch recorded the story of
his brother, a monk, who survived the plague.
However, Petrarch still referred to his brother’s story as a tragedy, as he was forced to watch
every other monk in his monastery passed and was burdened with the task of burying their
bodies by himself.
Brother John Clyn of the Friars Minor in Kilkenny, Ireland described the horrors he witnessed
in one of the country’s few complete records from the black plague, writing:
"I [am] waiting among the passed for passing to come.
[I] have committed to writing what I have truly heard and examined…
I leave the parchment for continuing the work, in case anyone should be alive in the future."
His chronicle ends there, except for a single line in different handwriting which reads:
"Here, it seems, the author passed."
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