The Great Pestilence (A.D. 1348-9)

The same striking result of the plague, which cannot but have had a very serious effect upon the Church at large, is manifested elsewhere. The Ely registers, for example, show that the average number of all those ordained, for the seven years before 1349, was 101–1/2; whilst for the seven years after that date it was but 40–1/2. In 1349 no ordinations whatever apparently were held, and the average number of priests ordained yearly, from 1374 to 1394, was only 14. In fact the total number ordained in that period was only 282, whilst of these many entered the priesthood for other dioceses, and more than half, namely 161, were members of the various religious orders; so that the ranks of the diocesan clergy of Ely appear to have received but few recruits during the whole of this time.

In the diocese of Hereford, to take another example, previously to 1349, there were some very large ordinations. Thus, in 1346, on the 11th of March, 438 people were ordained to various grades in the sacred ministry. Of these some 89 received the priesthood, 49 of them being ordained for the diocese of Hereford. Again, on the 10th of June in the same year, Bishop Trileck conferred orders, in the parish church of Ledbury, upon 451 candidates, of whom 148 were made priests; 56 being intended for his own diocese. Altogether, in that year, some 319 priests were ordained by the Bishop; half of the number being his own clergy.390 About the same numbers were ordained in the year of the plague itself, 1349, and 371 in the following year. In fact, till 1353 the number remains large, but the greater portion of those ordained were intended for other dioceses. The subjects of the Bishop of Hereford at once show a falling off similar to that noticed in Winchester and Ely. Thus, from 1345 to 1349, the average number of subjects ordained by the Bishop for his own diocese was 72. In the next five years it was only 34, whilst in no subsequent year during Bishop Trileck's pontificate did it rise above 23.

The above three examples will be sufficient to show how seriously the great pestilence affected the supply of clergy. The reason is not difficult to divine. The great dearth of population created a proportionate demand upon the services of the survivors to carry on the business of the nation, and the greater pressure of business thus brought about, and the higher wages to be, in fact, obtained, in spite of royal prohibitions, were not favourable to the development of vocations to the clerical life. The void thus caused by the overwhelming misfortunes of the great mortality was enlarged by the exigencies of the English war with France, whilst popular disturbances, and the subsequent Wars of the Roses, maintained the same causes in operation till far into the reigns of the Tudor sovereigns.

To some extent, the dearth of students at Oxford and Cambridge, which has already been referred to, was brought about by the same causes, and it certainly followed immediately upon the fatal year of 1349. At Oxford, no doubt, the serious disturbances, which took place at this time between the students and townsfolk, contributed to aggravate the evil. So serious, indeed, had the state of the great centre of clerical education in England become, in less than six years after the pestilence, that the King was compelled to address the Bishops on the subject. He begs them to help in the task of renewing the University; "knowing," he says, "how the Catholic faith is chiefly supported by the learning of the clergy, and the State governed by their prudence, we earnestly desire that, particularly in our kingdom of England, the clerical order may be increased in number, morals, and knowledge." But, "in the city of Oxford, in which the fount and source of clerical knowledge" has long existed, owing to the disturbances, students have forsaken the place, and Oxford, once so renowned, has become "like a worthless fig-tree without fruit."391 It has already been pointed out how, nearly half a century later, the University had not recovered from the great blow it had received at this period.392

There seems, indeed, a prevalent misunderstanding in regard to the relation, or proportionate numbers, of secular and regular clergy at this period, and as to the decline in popularity of the regulars, as presumed to be evidenced in the number of those who joined them after the middle of the fourteenth century. It is assumed that up to that period the regular clergy were, both in numbers and influence, the chief factors in the ecclesiastical system of England, and that after that date they greatly declined in importance, public estimation, and numbers. As evidence, not only is an actual diminution in mere numbers adduced, but also the fact that, after this time, the new religious institutions took the form of colleges, not of monasteries. The misconception lies first of all in this – that there never was a period of the middle ages in England, nor for the matter of that abroad, when the regular clergy was the great mainstay of the Church, so far, at least, as numbers, external work, and the cure of souls are concerned. Writers have allowed their imaginations to be influenced by the magnitude of the great monastic houses, or by the prominent part taken in the government of the Church by individuals of eminence, belonging to the ranks of the regular clergy; and have not remembered how comparatively few in fact were these great monastic centres, and how small a proportion their inmates bore to the great body of clergy at large.

It is necessary to refer, perhaps, to figures to bring this home to those who have not devoted special attention to the mediæval period, or who, having studied it, still somehow fail to realise facts as distinct from theories, and to rid themselves of the imaginative prepossessions with which they entered upon their investigations. Thus, even after the institution of the mendicant orders, and in the flow of their popularity, the ordinations for the diocese of York, in the year 1344–45, show that, whilst the number of priests ordained was 271, only 44 were regulars. In the same way, the register of Bishop Stapeldon gives the ordinations in the diocese of Exeter from 1301 to 1321. During this period 703 seculars were made priests, against 114 regulars. In both these instances, therefore, more than six seculars were ordained for every regular.

This has its importance in estimating the change in the direction given to religious foundations noticed above. During the course of the thirteenth century, when so strong a current of intellectual activity and speculation had set in, the importance of education to the working clergy – at least to a considerable proportion of them – forced itself upon those who were the responsible rulers of the Church. The religious houses were in existence, and, either great or small, were spread all over the land; indeed, after the pestilence of 1349, greatly more than sufficed for the number of vocations in the reduced population. Further, by their foundation they were not calculated to furnish the means of meeting the new want that was pressing, aggravated as it was by the sudden diminution of the pastoral clergy in the sickness. The formation of collegiate institutions, whether of the University type or of country colleges for secular priests, such as Stoke-Clare, Arundel, and the very many others which arose in the century and a half from 1350 to 1500, is explained by the very circumstances of the case; and there is no need to have recourse to a supposition as to the wane in popularity of the religious orders, and the prevalent sense that their work was over, to explain the diminution in their numbers, and the absence of new monastic foundations. If the relative proportion between the numbers of secular and regular clergy ordained before and after the middle of the fourteenth century be taken as a test of the truth of this supposition, the statistics available do not bear it out. Thus the ordinations to the priesthood, registered in the registers of the diocese of Bath and Wells, for the 80 years, 1443 to 1523, number 901; of these 679 were those of seculars and 222 those of regulars. In this instance, consequently, the ordination of seculars to regulars was in the proportion of 8·5 to 2·7, or rather more than three to one.393

In common with those in worldly professions and businesses the survivors among the clergy appear to have demanded larger stipends than they had previously obtained for the performance of their ecclesiastical duties. Looking back upon the times, and considering how even the small dues of the clergy had been reduced by the death of a large proportion of their people, till they became wholly inadequate for their support, it is impossible to blame them harshly, and not to see that such a demand must inevitably follow upon a great reduction in numbers. At the time, however, by the direction of King and Parliament, the Archbishops and Bishops sought to restrain them from making these claims, in the same way as the King tried to prevent the labourers from demanding higher wages. In his letter to the Bishops of his province Archbishop Islip refers "to the unbridled cupidity of the human race," which ever requires to be checked by justice, unless "charity is to be driven out of the world." "General complaints have come to me," he writes, "and experience, the best teacher of all things, has shown to me that the priests who still survive, not considering that they are preserved by the Divine will from the dangers of the late pestilence, not for their own sakes, but to perform the ministry committed to them for the people of God, and the public utility," like other workmen, through cupidity, neglect the burdens of curates, and take more profitable offices, for which also they demand more than before. If this be not at once put a stop to "many, and indeed most of the churches, prebends, and chapels of our and your diocese, and indeed of our whole Province, will remain absolutely without priests." To remedy this not only were people urged not to employ such chaplains, but the clergy were to be compelled under ecclesiastical censures to serve the ordinary cures at moderate and usual salaries. It seems not improbable that this measure may have contributed to draw the sympathies of the clergy at large more closely to the people in their struggle for freedom at this period of English history, when both in the civil and ecclesiastical sphere there was the same attempt by public law to impose restraints on natural liberty.

To the great dearth of clergy at this time may, partly at least, be ascribed the great growth of the crying abuse of pluralities. Without taking into account the difficulty experienced on all hands in finding fit, proper, and tried ecclesiastics to fill posts of eminence and responsibility in the Church, it is impossible to account for the great increase in the practice just at this time. The number of benefices, for example, held by William of Wykeham himself, who entered the Church in consequence of the great mortality among the clergy in 1361, may be explained, if not excused, by the prevalent and in the circumstances inevitable dearth of subjects of training and capacity equal to the arduous and delicate duties devolving on the higher clergy.

Notwithstanding all the great difficulties which beset the Church in England in consequence of the great mortality, there is abundant evidence (which is no part of the present subject) of untiring efforts on the part of the leading ecclesiastics to bring back observance to its normal level. This is evidenced in the institution of so many pious confraternities and guilds, and in a profuse liberality to churches and sacred places.

The consequences of the mortality, so far as the monastic establishments of the country are concerned, have already in the course of the narrative frequently been pointed out. The same reasons which militated against the recruiting for the ranks of the clergy generally after the plague are sufficient explanation of the fact that the religious houses were never able to regain the ground lost in that fatal year. Over and above this, moreover, the sudden change in the tenure of land, brought about chiefly by the deaths of the monastic tenants, so impaired their financial position, at any rate for a long period, that they were unable to support the burden of additional subjects.

To the facts showing how the monasteries were depopulated by the disease already given may be added the following: – In 1235 the abbey of St. Albans is supposed to have counted some 100 monks within its walls. In the plague of 1349 the abbot and some 47 of his monks died at one time, and subsequently one more died whilst at Canterbury, on his way with the newly-elected abbot to the Roman Curia. Assuming, therefore, that the community had remained the same in number as in 1235, St. Albans was at most left with only 51 members. At the close of the century, namely, in 1396, some 60 monks took part in election, and as this number includes the priors of the nine dependent cells, it would seem that the actual community still remained only 51. In 1452 there were only 48 professed monks in the abbey, and at the dissolution of the monastery, nearly a century later, the number was reduced to 39. This instance of the way in which the numbers in the monastic houses were diminished by the sickness, and by its effect on the general population of the country were prevented from ever again increasing to their former proportions, may be strengthened by the case of Glastonbury. This great abbey of the west of England has ever been regarded as in many respects the most important of the English Benedictine houses. It is not too much to suppose that in the period of its greatest prosperity it must have counted probably a hundred members. In 1377 the number, as given on the subsidy-roll, is only 45. In 1456 they stand at 48, and were about the same at the time of the dissolution of the abbey. A similar effect upon the members at Bath has already been pointed out.

It need hardly be said that the scourge must have been most demoralising to discipline, destructive to traditional practice, and fatal to observance. It is a well-ascertained fact, strange though it may seem, that men are not as a rule made better by great and universal visitations of Divine Providence. It has been noticed that this is the evident result of all such scourges, or, as Procopius puts it, speaking of the great plague in the reign of the Emperor Justinian, "whether by chance or Providential design it strictly spared the most wicked."394 So in this visitation, from Italy to England, the universal testimony of those who lived through it is that it seemed to rouse up the worst passions of the human heart, and to dull the spiritual senses of the soul. Wadding, the Franciscan annalist, has attributed to this very plague of 1348–9 the decay of fervour evident throughout his own order at this time. "This evil," he writes, "wrought great destruction to the holy houses of religion, carrying off the masters of regular discipline and the seniors of experience. From this time the monastic orders, and in particular the mendicants, began to grow tepid and negligent, both in that piety and that learning in which they had up to this time flourished. Then, our illustrious members being carried off, the rigours of discipline relaxed by these calamities, could not be renewed by the youths received without the necessary training, rather to fill the empty houses than to restore the lost discipline."395

We may sum up the results of the great mortality in the words of a recent writer. "For our purpose," writes Dr. Cunningham, "it is important to notice that the steady progress of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was suddenly checked in the fourteenth; the strain of the hundred years' war would have been exhausting in any case, but the nation had to bear it when the Black Death had swept off half the population and the whole social structure was disorganised."396

In dealing with this subject it is difficult to bring home to the mind the vast range of the great calamity, and to duly appreciate how deep was the break with then existing institutions. The plague of 1349 simply shattered them; and it is, as already pointed out, only by perpetual reiteration and reconsideration of the same phenomena that we can bring ourselves to understand the character of such a social and religious catastrophe. But it is at the same time of the first importance thoroughly to realise the case if we are to enter into and to understand the great process of social and religious re-edification, to which the immediately succeeding generations had to address themselves. The tragedy was too grave to allow of people being carried over it by mere enthusiasm. Indeed, the empiric and enthusiast in the attempts at social reconstruction, as may be found in the works of Wycliff, could only aggravate the evil. It was essentially a crisis that had to be met by strenuous effort and unflagging work in every department of human activity. And here is manifested a characteristic of the middle ages which constitutes, as the late Professor Freeman has pointed out, their real greatness. In contradistinction to a day like our own, which abounds in every facility for achievement, they had to contend with every material difficulty; but in contradistinction, too, to that practical pessimism which has to-day gained only too great a hold upon intelligences otherwise vivacious and open, difficulties, in the middle ages, called into existence only a more strenuous and more determined resolve to meet and surmount them. And here is the sense in which the hackneyed, and in a sense untrue, phrase, "the Ages of Faith," has a real application, for nothing can be more contrary to the spirit and tone of mind of the whole epoch than pessimism, nothing more in harmony with it than hope. In this sense the observation of a well-known modern writer on art, in noting the inability of the middle ages to see things as they really are and the tendency to substitute on the parchment or the canvas conventional for actual forms, has a drift which, perhaps, he did not perceive. In itself unquestionably this defect is a real one, but in practice it possessed a counterbalancing advantage by supplying the necessary corrective to that bare literalism and realism which, in the long run, is fatal no less to sustained effort than it is to art.

The great mortality, commonly called the Black Death, was a catastrophe sudden and overwhelming, the like of which it will be difficult to parallel. Many a noble aspiration which, could it have been realised, and many a wise conception which, could it have attained its true development, would have been most fruitful of good to humanity, was stricken beyond recovery. Still no time was wasted in vain laments. What had perished was perished. Time, however, and the power of effort and work belonged to those that survived.

Two of the noblest churches in Italy typify the twofold aspect of this great visitation – the Cathedral of Siena and the Cathedral of Milan. The former, the vast building that crowns the Tuscan Hill, is but a fragment of what was originally conceived. It was actually in course of erection, and would have been hardly less in size than the present St. Peter's had it been completed. The transepts were already raised, and the foundations of the enormous nave and choir had been laid when the plague fell upon the city. The works were necessarily suspended, and from that day to this have never been resumed.

Little more than a generation had passed from the fatal year when the most glorious Gothic edifice on Italian soil was already rising from the plain of Lombardy – a symbol of new life, new hopes, new greatness, which would surpass the greatness of the buried past. And this, be it observed, was no creation of Prince or Potentate; it was essentially the idea, the work, the achievement of the people of Milan themselves.397

What gives, perhaps, the predominant interest to the century and a half which succeeded the overwhelming catastrophe of the Black Death is the fact of the wonderful social and religious recovery from a state almost of dissolution. It is not the place here even to enter upon so interesting and important a subject. It must suffice to have indicated the point of view from which the history of the immediately succeeding generations must be regarded. In spite of wars and civil commotions it was an age of distinct progress, although the very complexity and variety of current and undercurrent is apt at times to daze the too impatient inquirer, who wishes to reduce everything to the simple result of the definitely good, or the definitely bad.

THE END

1

Green, Short History of the English People, p. 216.

2

Muratori, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, xiv, col. 14.

3

The Epidemics of the Middle Ages, translated by B. G. Babington (Sydenham Society), p. 21.

4

Marinus Sanutus, Liber secretorum Fidelium crucis super Terræ Sanctæ recuperatione et conversatione, in Bongars, Gesta Dei per Francos, vol. ii.

5

The most southern part of Asiatic Turkey.

6

Probably Mahe, on the Malabar coast.

7

Now Cambay, in the Baroda Dominion to the north of Bombay.

8

Otherwise Kus, now Koos, in Upper Egypt, not far from Thebes.

9

Sometimes known as S. Feodosia. This port was by the beginning of the 14th century a most important trading settlement of Genoese merchants. In 1316 Pope John XXII issued a Bull making it the cathedral city of an extensive diocese. By the time of the outbreak of the great plague it had become the centre of almost all commerce between Asia and Europe (Cf. M. G. Canale, Della Crimea, del suo commercio et dei suoi dominatori, i, p. 208 et seq.)

10

The account of Gabriele de' Mussi, called Ystoria de morbo seu mortalitate qui fuit a. 1348, was first printed by Henschel, in Haeser's Archiv für gesammte Medicin (Jena) ii, 26–59. The editor claims that De' Mussi was actually present at Caffa during the Tartar siege, and came to Europe in the plague-stricken ships which conveyed the infection to Italy. Signor Tononi, who in 1884 reprinted the Ystoria in the Giornale Ligustico (Genoa) vol. x (1883), p. 139 seqq., has proved by the acts of the notaries of Piacenza that De' Mussi never quitted the city at this time, and his realistic narrative must have been consequently derived from the accounts of others. From the same source Tononi has shown that De' Mussi acted as notary between A.D. 1300 and 1356, and was consequently born probably somewhere about 1280. He died in the first half of the year 1356.

11

Tana was the port on the north-western shore of the sea of Azor, which was then known as the sea of Tana. The port is now Azor.

12

De' Mussi says the siege lasted "three years." Tononi shows that this is clearly a mistake, and adduces it as additional evidence that the author was not himself at Caffa.

13

Gabriele de' Mussi, Ystoria de Morbo, in Haeser, ut supra.

14

K. Lechner, Das grosse Sterben in Deutschland (Innsbruck, Wagner, 1884), p. 8.

15

J. J. Pontanus, Rerum Danicarum Historia (1631), p. 476.

16

See Lechner, Das grosse Sterben, p. 15. De' Mussi gives the same account.

17

"Chi cominciavano a sputare sangue, morivano chi di subito." The contemporary chronicle of Parma by the Dominican John de Cornazano also notes the same: "Et fuit talis quod aliqui sani, si spuebant sanguinem, subito ibi moriebantur, nec erat ullum remedium" (Monumenta historica ad provincias Parmensem et Placentinam pertinentia, vol. v, p. 386).

18

Anglada, Étude sur les Maladies Éteintes (Paris, 1869), p. 416. The idea that this peculiar malady was altogether novel in character is confirmed by its specially malignant nature. According to a well-recognized law new epidemics are always most violent and fatal. The depopulation of the Fiji Islands by the measles is an instance of the way in which a comparatively mild disease may in its first attack upon a people prove terribly destructive. It is commonly thought that it has been the action of some new disease whereby the races which built the great prehistoric cities of Africa and America have been completely swept away.