The Black Death [Paperback]

William Naphy (Author), Andrew Spicer (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Tempus Publishing, Limited (March 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0752423088
• ISBN-13: 978-0752423081
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,363,774 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Plague Upon Us, February 18, 2001

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Black Death and the History of Plagues 1345-1730 (Hardcover)

We worry about plagues; AIDS is still scary even though it is being treated with considerable success, and the recent (although unfounded) scare about a woman with ebola virus entering Canada made headlines. There may have been bigger plagues before and since, but _The Black Death_ (Tempus Publishing) by William Naphy and Andrew Spicer is about _the_ plague, the one that is commemorated in countless paintings and woodblocks and in literature. It is still a mysterious and scary illness, and while the authors skimp on some of the horrors and medical explanations, they describe the atmosphere around the disease and the changes it wrought in fascinating detail. Christians and Muslims were agreed that the new arrival of the plague was sent upon humans by Divine Will, but Muslim clerics interpreted their Koran as insisting that no one should try to flee a plague deliberately sent from Allah. Bear it with humility, was the advice, and when you die, you get straight admittance to Paradise. Being sent straight from Allah precluded the understanding of the plague as contagious. The fairly monolithic Catholicism of the time could not see the plague as a blessed ticket to paradise. It did not insist that parishioners remain to stick out an infection, but it did insist that people consider their sins and those of their societies.

The decrease in population meant that it was harder to get priests, and that apprenticeships were shortened and younger men became masters; guilds recruited outside of the families that had been their historic sources. Women entered trades which had never welcomed them before. Attempts were made to hold wages down and agricultural workers were forbidden to leave their lands for better prospects. "Sumptuary laws" were instituted to make it illegal for one class to dress like the ones above it, implying that luxury goods were more available to the reduced market. Mere shopkeepers gave fine banquets. The plague is historically significant for bringing a sort of populism. Society was also turned upside down by people fleeing the communities that had nurtured them. People took solace from their saints. Mary was often depicted as wounded by arrows of grief for her son, so she became somewhat of a specific saint for those fearing plague; similarly, Saint Sebastian who was martyred by being an archery target was held to be particularly good for deflecting the arrows of the plague. Just how these secondary religious figures managed to thwart the marksmanship of God was never explained. Then the flagellants came to town, traveling to whip their bodies bloody to appease God's wrath and make the plague go away. They would go to the church, surround it, and start whipping themselves with cruel barbed whips. The clergy were horrified not by the blood, but by the threat to their monopoly on spiritual power, and Pope Clement VI quickly condemned the flagellants in 1349. A frequent recourse of religious people was scapegoating, and as usual the Jews got blamed as the cause of everything. It is nice to think that we have risen above such behavior, and of course we do have enormous technical expertise in dealing with diseases now, as well as refusing to accept that they are simply manifestations of angry deities. However, human nature is not really any different than it was seven centuries ago. Although the plague quite mysteriously collapsed in virulence, there will someday be a new one, I believe, to take a big chunk of us away. (What if ebola transformed into an illness that could be caught as simply as colds are?) _The Black Death_, with its descriptions of the plague process and many illustrations, gives a fine, sobering review of what happened before, and while it makes no attempt at prognostication, I think we may just see such things again.