The Untold Truth Of The Black Death

The Black Death wasn't a singular event, but a plague that decimated entire populations several times. It was described by the Italian poet Giovanni Boccaccio, who wrote (via History), "In men and women alike, at the beginning of the malady, certain swellings, either on the groin or under the armpit... waxed to the bigness of a common apple, others to the size of an egg, some more and some less, and these the vulgar named plague-boils."

The Black Death isn't just fascinating for the devastation it caused, but also for the invaluable look into society it provides: How did people deal with such a terrifying plague that killed a still unagreed-upon number of people? Did it pull communities together, or push them apart? The answer to that is, in some cases, pretty surprising, especially when viewed in the context of a post-COVID world. It's not a far-fetched comparison, especially when it comes to the attempts that were made to control the outbreaks: Two of the best weapons against the plague were quarantine and social distancing.

Did it work? Maybe. Jane Stevens Crawshaw, an Oxford Brookes University lecturer in early modern European history, explained that it wasn't just disease that made the Black Death so dangerous: "There are risks with any sort of epidemic of social breakdown, widespread panic, or complacency, which can be just as dangerous. There are a lot of emotions that need to be acknowledged and preempted and that was part of public health policy 600 years ago as much as it is now."

The devastating plague outbreak we now call the Black Death swept across Europe between 1346 and 1353. The years before are a little hazy, but we do know this wasn't the first time this happened. The first started in A.D. 542 during the reign of Justinian, and it lasted for at least 225 years.

Well, 542 is when it came to Constantinople, at least. It had been lurking in the shadows of the Byzantine Empire for a while, and was traced from northeast India and China to Egypt, moving along the trade routes.

It was mostly bubonic plague, probably with a little septicemic and pneumonic plague mixed in. The devastation and sickness lasted for centuries because of a weird confluence of factors that started in about A.D. 536 with the first of two volcanic eruptions. The air was filled with debris from the eruptions, and it was made even worse when a piece of Halley's comet collided with Earth and kicked up more dust. The climate cooled, crops failed, and people were vulnerable. The planet became the perfect breeding ground for plague. So the 14th century was bad, but the sixth might have been even worse.

The plague had another devastating consequence — it pretty much ruined the reputation of rats, in spite of the fact they've been found to be at least as smart as college students at some tasks. We condemn them as harboring plague and being what scientists call "generally icky," but according to research by the University of Oslo (via the Smithsonian), rats weren't responsible for keeping plague dormant before reintroducing it to humans. 

Researchers looked at pockets and outbreaks of plague during the Black Death. They found plague corresponded with climate fluctuations, even when it came to temporary lulls in the death tolls. Remember how large-scale climate change seemed to exacerbate the plague in the sixth century? The same factors could have been at work later. When the weather gets warmer and wetter, rat populations decline. That means plague-carrying fleas need to find other homes, and even though they would generally prefer rats, they're forced to migrate to domestic animals and ultimately to humans. As if we didn't have enough to worry about with modern-day climate change, now you'll be thinking about how you're becoming the last resort for plague-loving fleas. Good luck not getting itchy while thinking about it.

We have a weird fascination with the post-apocalyptic today, but these folks were actually living through what must have seemed like the End Times. For many, it absolutely was. It's impossible to imagine being in a position of authority and needing to deal with the outbreak, and according to a piece published in the academic journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, one city's leaders developed a now-familiar way of dealing with plague: quarantine.

The idea of separating someone who's ill from the rest of the population dates back to the Old Testament, when lepers were condemned to a life of exile. But a formal sort of quarantine — and the word itself — goes back to the medieval port city of Ragusa, which today is Dubrovnik, Croatia. In 1377, the city's council passed a series of laws that included a month-long isolation period for newcomers to the city. Anyone who wasn't officially tasked with caring for those in isolation was forbidden from visiting them, or they'd need to serve out a 30-day stint there, too. The idea spread to other cities, and eventually the 30-day period ("trentino") became 40 days ("quarantino"), though no one's sure why. It may have had something to do with the biblical significance of 40 days, or the Greek idea that contagious diseases needed 40 days to show symptoms. Raise your hand if you're thankful for antibiotics.

In the 14th century, the plague doctors didn't have that infinitely creepy, bird-like mask we think of today, but they were around. Many doctors realized they were fighting a fight they couldn't win, so they hightailed it out of town. Cities and municipalities hired in others — the plague doctors — to care for the dying. While some were complete frauds and others did it in hopes of swindling devastated families out of everything they owned, they're one of the most iconic symbols of the Black Death.

The creepy costume wasn't designed until the 17th century, and it was the creation of the favorite physician of the Medici family and the French royal court. Charles de Lorme created it in hopes of isolating himself from the plague his patients were carrying, so the entire head-to-toe thing had a waxy coating. Gloves, boots, and the leather hood were tied shut with leather strips, and the eyes were protected by glass domes. Finally, let's talk about that mask. The beak was filled with herbs (usually myrrh, camphor, mint, or cloves) in hopes they would filter the air. The French went a step further, and their herb-filled beaks would be set on fire to produce smoke they thought was even more cleansing.

Most of the time, it didn't work. The plague doctors who didn't die often became outcasts, not to mention the stuff of nightmares.

Sure, 50 million people died during the Black Death, but millions more survived the pandemic. When researchers from the University of South Carolina looked at the skeletons of those who had survived, they found that post-Black Death people were generally healthier and lived longer. The number of people living to at least 70, for example, nearly tripled in the years after the pandemic. There were more people living even past 50, and it was a trend that seemed to continue for the next 200 years.

They aren't entirely sure why the trend is there, but there are a few suggestions. It might be as simple as improvements in diet and standards of living, but it might also be because the Black Death took away the weakest section of the population. According to anthropologists from the University at Albany (via LiveScience), the plague didn't kill everyone. When they looked at skeletons of those who had succumbed to the plague, they found the disease was much more likely to kill the weak, the elderly, and those who were already sick. The population rebounded to be even stronger and healthier after they were gone. Sorry, weak links.

It was the summer of 1665 when the Black Death arrived in the English village of Eyam, having traveled up from London on pieces of cloth carrying infected fleas. The tailor, his assistant, and their families were among the first to die, and while there was arguably still time for the healthy to flee, that's not what they decided to do at all; if they carried the plague to neighboring villages, they would only spread death. So, they did something incredible: They stayed, they buried their dead, and they waited to die. 

Stories from Eyam are chilling, and by the time the plague had run its course, 267 of the village's 344 residents were dead — including the stonemason, which left survivors to etch the names of their loved ones on gravestones themselves. Some buried entire families, like Elizabeth Hancock — she lost and buried her husband and six children over the course of eight days. (Their graves are pictured.) Meanwhile, others erected stones around the village that marked locations for trade. Eyam residents left coins — disinfected with vinegar — in exchange for food.

It was the local rector, William Mompesson, who spearheaded the quarantine movement, and would write of knowing that his wife was soon to join the dead when she reported that to her, the air smelled sweet. That sweet smell? A sign the infection had already begun to spread rot through internal organs. Eyam's sacrifice helped kickstart practices of disinfecting, quarantine, and disease prevention.

The Holocaust remains one of the worst genocides in history, but Europe's Jewish population was targeted with widespread slaughter centuries before the Third Reich rose to power. When the Black Death swept across countries and killed wholesale throughout the 14th century, people wanted answers. Rumors started circulating that the plague was a punishment from God, delivered on a population that had allowed Muslims and Jews to continue to live among them. (The real reason Jewish communities had a lower death rate from the plague were their strict religious guidelines regarding hand-washing, bathing, burials, and sanitation.)

As if that wasn't bad enough, some Jewish communities — particularly in Germany and France — were accused of actively trying to spread the plague to Christians, and the idea that conspirators were poisoning wells and other sources of drinking water spread. The fallout was shocking stuff.

Instances of the wholesale slaughter of entire Jewish communities kicked off across Europe. More than 6,000 people died during one conflict in Mainz, and 2,000 Jewish people were burned alive in Strasbourg. Between 1349 and 1350, nearly all Jews were either killed or forced out of England, Germany, and France. Hundreds of Jewish communities were destroyed, and by 1400, the 19,000-strong Jewish population of Frankfurt had been reduced to just 10.

In 1709, Europe was devastated by a deadly frost that remains largely a mystery today. Temperatures plummeted to well below freezing overnight, and it was one particularly devastating incident in a larger, centuries-long period of cold weather that's been dubbed the Little Ice Age. It's sometimes said to be applied to the period between 1500 and 1850, although some researchers add a century or two on the beginning of that. It was marked by lower-than-normal temperatures, freezing rivers — including the Thames — and mass starvation. There's been all kinds of theories about what caused the Little Ice Age, but it seems perhaps most likely that it was a perfect storm of conditions that included volcanic eruptions and the Black Death.

That's the theory put forward by a research team from Utrecht University in the Netherlands (via the BBC). They examined lake-bed sediment to examine the historical records preserved there, and they found that data — particularly that extrapolated from pollen grains and leaves — suggest that around 1347, there was a massive dip in cereal grains. 1347, of course, marks the beginning of the spread of the Black Death, so what's the connection?

They believe that as the Black Death spread, crops went unharvested then unplanted, farms went untended, and agricultural land ultimately returned to nature. Reforestation happened on such a large scale that more carbon dioxide was absorbed from the atmosphere, helping to lower the temperature and kicking off what would become a centuries-long cold spell.

It's safe to say that the world is still fascinated by the Vikings, even as we continue to dig up ever-more-disturbing details about their raiding practices. Strangely, it turns out that the Black Death may have played a big part in the downfall of the Vikings.  

Greenland was a Viking stronghold for several centuries, starting in around 985. Viking presence there grew to several settlements around 12 churches, and just what happened to them, no one's ever been sure. They started to decline by the end of the 14th century, and by the middle of the 15th, it seems as though everyone was just... gone.

The running theory hinges on two things, and interestingly, the Black Death is involved in both of them. For starters, it seems as though the Little Ice Age changed the area's climate so that, not only were the Vikings unable to raise livestock and farm, but the waters around Greenland also became dangerous. That shut them off from fishing stocks and made it harder to receive and ship goods, including walrus ivory, one of their most lucrative exports. (That said, there wasn't much call for it anymore, since elephant ivory was all the rage.) The Black Death devastated the Norwegian city of Bergen, an important port for ships traveling to and from Greenland, when an English ship carrying the plague ran aground there in 1349. In addition to carrying the Black Death, it effectively severed any ties that may have been able to save Greenland's Viking settlements.

Anyone who follows any history pages on social media has probably seen the images of admittedly strange — and X-rated — metal badges depicting human genitalia. Sometimes those genitalia have wings, sometimes they're on boats or on horseback, and sometimes they're being carried on the shoulders of people who seem to be participating in some kind of parade. Weird? Absolutely.

The badges coincided with one of the most brutal outbreaks of the Black Death, and many were made starting around 1350. At the time, saints who were believed to bestow protection against the plague and illness were all the rage, and honored with not only parades and processions, but also pilgrimages and special masses. Badges were likely handed out at such events, and medieval folklorist Malcolm Jones explains (via Atlas Obscura), "by the exposure of the genital icon, whether male or female, they were intended to disarm that ever present yet vague malevolence known as the Evil Eye."

Research done by Lena Mackenzie Gimbel for the University of Louisville supports this theory, and found the phenomenon has been largely uninvestigated and written off as bizarrely vulgar when it was, in fact, the precise opposite. Well into the 17th century, there was a persistent theory that the plague was spread via eye contact, so it makes sense that these badges might have acted as a protective talisman by giving potentially infected people something interesting to look at. Desperate times, as they say.