The Chronicle of Jean de Venette
[Jean de Venette, died c. 1368; a Carmelite monk who witnessed the ravages of the Black Death in France, he wrote this account in the late 1350s. Compare with
Ibn Khaldun: The Plague in the Middle East, below, in terms of how the plague was understood and what its consequences were perceived as being. Although our focus is the Latin West this week, the comparative perspective is a useful one -- as well as reminding us that the Black Death was NOT only a Latin West phenomenon.]…
Some said that this pestilence was caused by infection of the air and waters, since there was at this time no famine nor lack of food supplies, but on the contrary great abundance. As a result of this theory of infected water and air as the source of the plague the Jews were suddenly and violently charged with infecting wells and water and corrupting the air. They whole world rose up against them cruelly on this account. In Germany and other parts of the world where Jews lived, they were massacred and slaughtered by Christians, and many thousands were burned everywhere, indiscriminately. The unshaken, if fatuous, constancy of the men and their wives was remarkable. For mothers hurled their children first into the fire that they might not be baptized and then leaped in after them to burn with their husbands and children. It is said that many bad Christians were found who in a like manner put poison into wells. But in truth, such poisonings, granted that they actually were perpetrated, could not have caused so great a plague nor have infected so many people.
…
After the cessation of the epidemic, pestilence, or plague, the men and women who survived married each other. There was no sterility among the women, but on the contrary fertility beyond the ordinary. Pregnant women were seen on every side. Many twins were born and even three children at once. But the most surprising fact is that children born after the plague, when they became of an age for teeth, had only twenty or twenty-two teeth, though before that time men commonly had thirty-two in their upper and lower jaws together. What this diminution in the number of teeth signified I wonder greatly, unless it be a new era resulting from the destruction of one human generation by the plague and its replacement by another. But woe is me! The world was not changed for the better but for the worse by this renewal of population. For men were more avaricious and grasping than befgore, even though they had far greater possessions. They were more covetous and disturbed each other more frequently with suits, brawls, disputes, and pleas. Nor by the mortality resulting from this terrible plague inflicted by God was peace between kings and lords established. On the contrary the enemies of the king of France and of the Church were stronger and wickeder than before and stirred up wars on sea and on land. Greater evils than before pullulated everywhere in the world. And this fact was very remarkable. Although there was an abundance of all goods, yet everything was twice as dear, whether it were utensils, victuals, or merchandise, hired helpers or peasants and serfs, except for some hereditary domains which remained abundantly stocked with everything. Charity began to cool, and iniquity with ignorance and sin to abound, for few could be found in the good towns and castles who knew how or were willing to instruct children in the rudiments of grammar…
[ For more information on the Carmelite order to which he belonged, click here.]
IBN KHALDUN: THE PLAGUE IN
THE MIDDLE EAST
"Al-Masudi was succeeded by al-Bakri who did something similar for
routes and provinces, to the exclusion of everything else, because, in his
time, not many transformations or great changes had occurred among
the nations and races. However, at the present time -- that is, at the end
of the eighth century [A.H.; this is fourteenth century C.E.] -- the
situation in the Maghrib, as we can observe, has taken a turn and
changed entirely. The Berbers, the original population of the Maghrib,
have been replaced by an influx of Arabs, (that began in) the fifth
[eleventh] century. The Arabs outnumbered and overpowered the
Berbers, stripped them of most of their lands, and (also) obtained a share
of those that remained in their possession. This was the situation until, in
the middle of the eighth [fourteenth] century, civilization both in the
East and the West was visited by a destructive plague which devastated
nations and caused populations to vanish. It swallowed up many of the
good things of civilization and wiped them out. It overtook the dynasties
at the time of their senility, when they had reached the limit of their
duration. It lessened their power and curtailed their influence. It
weakened their authority. Their situation approached the point of
annihilation and dissolution. Civilization decreased with the decrease of
mankind. Cities and buildings were laid waste, roads and way signs were
obliterated, settlements and mansions became empty, dynasties and
tribes grew weak. The entire inhabited world changed. The East, it seems,
was similarly visited, though in accordance with and in proportion to
(the East's more affluent) civilization. It was as if the voice of existence in
the world had called out for oblivion and restriction, and the world had
responded to its call. God inherits the earth and whomever is upon it.
When there is a general change of conditions, it is as if the entire creation
had changed and the whole world been altered, as if it were a new and
repeated creation, a world brought into existence anew. . . ."