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Title: Plague and pestilence in literature and art

Author: Sir Raymond Henry Payne Crawfurd

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Language: English

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Transcriber’s Notes:

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    in the original text.
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            PLAGUE AND PESTILENCE
                     IN
             LITERATURE AND ART

           OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
    LONDON  EDINBURGH  GLASGOW  NEW YORK
         TORONTO  MELBOURNE  BOMBAY
            HUMPHREY MILFORD M.A.
         PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY

[Illustration: FRONTISPIECE S. SEBASTIAN. BY SODOMA]




                 PLAGUE
                   AND
               PESTILENCE
                   IN
           LITERATURE AND ART

                   BY
            RAYMOND CRAWFURD
       M.A., M.D. OXON., F.R.C.P.
    FELLOW OF KING’S COLLEGE, LONDON

                 OXFORD
         AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
                  1914




PREFACE


This volume represents substantially the FitzPatrick Lectures which I
had the privilege of delivering at the Royal College of Physicians in
1912. Originally I intended to do no more than gather together into a
succinct record the various memorials and reminders of Pestilence that
I had met with in my wanderings at home and abroad and in my casual
incursions into general literature. Insensibly the desire to understand
supplanted the desire merely to record, and the desire to explain
superseded the endeavour to understand. I have turned my attention,
as far as practicable, only to the literary and artistic associations
of Pestilence, but these have inevitably overlapped the confines of
history and of medical science. The latter territory has been invaded
only so far as was necessary to ensure a correct orientation to the
inquiry. I have thought it wise to let the curtain fall at the end
of the eighteenth century, leaving it to my readers to decide what
vestiges of the mentality of distant centuries have survived into this
twentieth. A little reflection on this will afford a most salutary
lesson to all of us.

_January 1914._




LIST OF PLATES


    S. Sebastian. By Sodoma      _Frontispiece_

    PLATE I:
        Apollo with Bow and Mouse. Bronze coin of
          Alexandria Troas. _c._ 250 B.C. × 2.
        Asclepius with Serpent. Bronze coin of Pergamon.
          Time of Antoninus Pius. × 2.
        Serpent and Galley. Medallion. Time of Antoninus Pius.
        Pest-Thaler, struck at Wittenberg, A.D. 1528.
             Christ on the Cross.
             The Brazen Serpent                         _To face p._   4

    PLATE II. Plague of Ashdod. By N. Poussin           _To face p._  18
    PLATE III. Plague of David. By P. Mignard           _To face p._  19
    PLATE IV. Gregory and the Angel                     _To face p._  93
    PLATE V. Fresco in S. Pietro in Vincoli, Rome       _To face p._  95
    PLATE VI. La Peste à Rome. By Delaunay              _To face p._  96
    PLATE VII. Sebastian as Protector against
        Pestilence. By Benozzo Gozzoli                  _To face p._  99
    PLATE VIII. Sodoma’s Sebastian Plague Banner
        (Reverse). SS. Roch and Sigismund, and
         Brethren of Compagnia di S. Sebastiano         _To face p._ 100
    PLATE IX. SS. Mark, Sebastian, Roch, Cosmas,
         and Damian. By Titian                          _To face p._ 102
    PLATE X. S. Roch. By Ambrogio Borgognone            _To face p._ 108
    PLATE XI. S. Roch tended by an Angel. By Niklaus
         Manuel. Intercessory plague picture            _To face p._ 109
    PLATE XII. Madonna and Child, S. Anna and Saints.
         By G. Francesco Caroto                         _To face p._ 110
    PLATE XIII. Dance of Death, at Basle                _To face p._ 135
    PLATE XIV. Madonna della Misericordia.
         By Bonfigli                                    _To face p._ 138
    PLATE XV. Madonna del Soccorso.
         By Sinibaldo Ibi                               _To face p._ 138
    PLATE XVI. Plague Banner. Christ and Saints.
         By Bonfigli                                    _To face p._ 139
    PLATE XVII. Pest-Blätter:
         1. The Almighty with SS. Sebastian and Roch.
         2. The Almighty, Madonna and Suppliants. The
            Virgin and Child, S. Anna and Suppliants    _To face p._ 142
    PLATE XVIII. The Impruneta Virgin                   _To face p._ 146
    PLATE XIX. S. Tecla liberates Este from Plague.
         By Giovanni Battista Tiepolo                   _To face p._ 147
    PLATE XX. Plague. A drawing by Raphael              _To face p._ 148
    PLATE XXI. Procession to S. Maria della Salute,
         Venice. From a seventeenth century engraving   _To face p._ 172
    PLATE XXII. Carlo Borromeo.
         By Annibale Carracci                           _To face p._ 173
    PLATE XXIII. Borromeo leading a Plague
         Procession. By Pietro da Cortona               _To face p._ 174
    PLATE XXIV. Borromeo interceding for the
         Plague-stricken. By P. Puget.
         A marble bas-relief                            _To face p._ 175
    PLATE XXV. Torture and Execution of the Anointers   _To face p._ 179
    PLATE XXVI. Plague of Naples, 1656.
         By Micco Spadara                               _To face p._ 184
    PLATE XXVII. Plague Scenes in Rome, 1656.
         From an old engraving                          _To face p._ 186
    PLATE XXVIII:
         1. Dress of a Marseilles Doctor, 1720.
         2. German Caricature of the same               _To face p._ 200
    PLATE XXIX. Peste de Marseille.
         By François Gérard                             _To face p._ 206
    PLATE XXX. La Peste dans la Ville de Marseille
         en 1720. By J. F. de Troy                      _To face p._ 207
    PLATE XXXI. Les Pestiférés de Jaffa. By Baron Gros  _To face p._ 208




CHAPTER I


The scattered records of literature afford a valuable, but neglected,
contribution to the study of epidemic pestilence. They show us
pestilence as an affair of the mind, as medical literature has shown
it as an affair of the body. They teach us too the humiliating
lesson that, in spite of the progress of civilization, in spite of
the apparent growth of humanity, in spite of the development and
dissemination of scientific knowledge, human nature has again and again
reverted to the primitive instincts of savagery in face of the crushing
calamity of epidemic pestilence. The superficial student of psychology
may find it difficult to believe that, so late as 1630 in Milan, so
late as 1656 in Naples, so late as 1771 in Moscow, the blood-lust of
a maddened populace sought and found a sedative in an orgy of human
sacrifice. But so it was. And in this homing instinct of the human mind
is to be found the clue to much in the records of literature and art
that else is wholly meaningless. It is a grim chapter of history that
lies before us, but maybe we shall find here and there some spiritual
Bethel reared out of the hard stones on which suffering humanity has
lain its weary head.

The mind of primitive man conceives no power over nature higher than
his own: so is his attitude conditioned to disease. He sees in disease
only some evil magic, exercised by man on man. The Australian native
believes that the assailant transmits disease by pointing some object
at his victim, who in turn looks to magic to free him from the disease.
In the New Hebrides the idea still persists that the aggressor shoots
some charmed material at the victim by means of bow and arrow. Medicine
has not yet emerged from magic. The human mind, as it passes to higher
stages of enlightenment, does not wholly discard its primitive beliefs:
of this we find abundant testimony in early records of pestilence.
In Pharaoh’s plagues mark the importance of the manual acts, the
stretching out of the rod, the smiting of the dust, the sprinkling of
ashes. Again, when the Philistines of Ashdod ask for deliverance from
plague, the diviners enjoin them to make images of their emerods, or
swellings. This is crude magic—imitative magic—the essence of which
is that any effect may be produced by imitating it. It is the spirit in
which a savage sprinkles water when he wishes rain to fall.

As his own impotence is borne in on man, he comes to look beyond
himself alike for the cause and cure of his disease; but human agency
still bounds his whole horizon. He looks to those likest himself in
nature, the imperishable spirits of his own departed dead. Endued with
bodily form, their ghosts need offerings of food and drink, and humble
homage of prayer. Neglect of these is recompensed by the sending of
sickness and death. This cult prevailed in the religion of young Rome
and in the Greek worship of beings of the underworld (χθόνιοι), and
may be found to-day in Oceania. Such a deified spirit of the dead
might exert his influence in dreams to those who slept over his abode.
Such is the germ of the incubation ritual of the demigod Asclepius,
who revealed remedies for sickness, and was invoked for deliverance
from pestilence. Strabo says that Tricca in Thessaly was the oldest
sanctuary of Asclepius, who was the deified ancestor of the Phlegyae
and Minyae, the ruling family of Tricca.

With the emergence of the idea of a separable soul came the belief in
its assumption after death of animal forms, and chief of these the
mysterious earth-dwelling serpent, darting pestilence from his barbed
tongue. The association of the serpent with disease and pestilence is
wellnigh world-wide. The Vedas teem with it: classical and Christian
literature and art are full of it. We find it in Ovid,[1] in Gregory of
Tours,[2] in Paul the Deacon,[3] and in many other writers. The Book
of Numbers too (xxi. 6 seq.) retains this imagery of pestilence: ‘And
the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people;
and much people of Israel died. Therefore the people came to Moses, and
said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord, and against
thee; pray unto the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us. And
Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee
a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass,
that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live. And
Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to
pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent
of brass, he lived.’ Imitative magic—the healing of like by like—is
still the weapon with which Moses counters the pestilence.

In Fernando Po,[4] when an epidemic breaks out among children, it is
customary to set up a serpent’s skin on a pole in the middle of the
public square, and the mothers bring their infants to touch it. In
Madagascar, Sibree[5] found that Ramahavaly, the god of healing, was
also the patron of serpents, and was able to employ them as agents
of his anger. In many parts of India also it is customary to make a
serpent of clay or metal, and offer sacrifices to it on behalf of the
sufferer.[6] Apollonius of Tyana also is said to have freed Antioch
from scorpions by making a bronze image of a scorpion and burying it
under a small pillar in the middle of the city. So the serpent has
power not only to excite pestilence, but also to avert it.

From these spirits of the nether world, human or animal in form, it
is a short passage to the conception of supernatural beings above the
earth, but still in human shape and still with human attributes. Such
are Apollo, Asclepius, and Rudra. Traces of the evolution of these
deities are usually to be found in the attributes with which they are
endowed in later literature and art. The usual symbol of Asclepius
is a serpent coiled round a staff. Sacred snakes were kept in his
temples,[7] and applicants for healing fed them with cakes.[8] Cures
were frequently effected in the sanctuaries of Asclepius by serpents
stealing out and licking the wounds of patients. The god-man finally
supersedes the serpent, but conservative religious sentiment retains
the older object of worship as the symbol and associate of the new. In
Greek legend it is the serpent from which Asclepius learns the art of
healing: true, Homer makes Chiron his teacher. Numerous other legends
of the serpent origin of medicine survive. Polyindus the seer is said
to have learnt the herbs that can restore men to life by observing how
the serpents raised their dead to life. In Cashmere[9] the descendants
of the Naga (serpent) tribes attribute their special skill in healing
to knowledge bestowed on their ancestors by serpents: and the Celts
acquired their medical lore from drinking serpent broth. As with
Asclepius, so also we shall see with Apollo. Apollo in very truth
slays the man-killing Python, and himself becomes also the sender of
pestilence. He not only smites with disease the doer of evil, but wards
it off from the upright. His are the arrows that scatter plague: but he
is also the best of physicians. Such is the Apollo of the _Iliad_.

[Illustration: PLATE I (Face Page 4)

    Apollo with Bow and Mouse      Asclepius with Serpent
    Serpent and Galley
    Christ on the Cross      The Brazen Serpent]

Homer’s[10] aged priest Chryses, when he calls upon Apollo to avenge
the ravishing of his daughter, invokes him as God of the Silver Bow
(Ἀργυρότοξος). Apollo hears his prayer, and

    Down from Olympus’ heights he passed, his heart
    Burning with wrath: behind his shoulders hung
    His bow and ample quiver: at his back
    Rattled the fateful arrows as he moved:
    Like the night-cloud he passed: and from afar
    He bent against the ships and sped the bolt:
    And fierce and deadly twanged the silver bow:
    First on the mules and dogs, on man the last,
    Was poured the arrowy storm; and through the camp
    Constant and numerous blazed the funeral fires.
    Nine days the heavenly Archer on the troops
    Hurled his dread shafts.[11]

Homer’s picture of the Archer Apollo has inspired one at least of the
masterpieces of Graeco-Roman sculpture. Apollo the Avenger sends the
pestilence in punishment of sin. Homer sets it as a signal evidence
of divine displeasure in the forefront of his epic, as does Sophocles
after him in the greatest of his tragedies. Apollo is pictured as the
god who spreads the plague by arrows shot from his bow. He swoops down
with impetuous onset, like the sudden fall of night in Mediterranean
lands, as the ‘pestilence that walketh in darkness’ and ‘the arrow
that flieth by day’. The plague is first epizootic, falling on mules
and dogs, then epidemic among the Greek host. A council is called, and
Achilles advises that some prophet or priest be summoned to say what
propitiatory sacrifices have been neglected:

    If for neglected hecatombs or prayers
    He blames us: or if fat of lambs and goats
    May soothe his anger and the plague assuage.

The seer Calchas shows them that it is sent rather as a punishment
for flagrant sin, the sin of Agamemnon in carrying off Chryseis. It
is for no neglect of honorific sacrifices nor for neglected prayers
that pestilence has come upon them. Chryseis must be sent back, and
expiation be made to Apollo with sacrifices, after the whole host has
been purified in the doubly cleansing water of the sea. So Chryseis is
sent back and

    Next proclamation through the camp was made
    To purify the host; and in the sea,
    Obedient to the word, they purified:
    Then to Apollo solemn rites performed
    With faultless hecatombs of bulls and goats,
    Upon the margin of the watery waste:
    And wreathed in smoke the savour rose to heaven.

Thus they offer the sacrifice of atonement for sin, with the ablutions
meet for a solemn lustration of the people. Then when the plague is
stayed, and not till then, may they join in the glad eucharistic feast
of meat-offerings and libations of red wine, the whole assemblage
taking it in company with the god, crowning the cups with flowers and
chanting hymns of praise.

The Apollo of the _Iliad_, like the serpent of old, is not only the
sender but also the averter of pestilence.

Homer’s plague marks a stage at which prayer and sacrifice have
displaced magic in the struggle with pestilence. From this time on the
study of pestilence is inextricably blended with that of the evolution
of religion. Prayer and sacrifice follow inevitably from the conception
of the majestic man-god. He must be approached on bended knee with
request for help: his is by right the homage of prayer. His worshipper
approaches him as he would an earthly potentate: he cleanses himself,
he begs for grace in humble posture, he gives him of his best. Hence
arise purification, prayer, and sacrifice. At first, as in Homer, it is
the body that is purified: the offering of a clean heart and a right
spirit is of later growth. So long as the god is humanly conceived,
food and drink will be the meet offerings of sacrifice. Later with the
conception of a god dwelling aloft, as in the Homeric verse, the sweet
savour of the sacrifice, or of the scented smoke of incense rising to
heaven, will find peculiar favour in his sight. Primitive sacrifice is
essentially social: it is a banquet in which the worshippers join in
communion with the god: it is the true parent of the _lectisternium_.
Early religion has no doubts of the god’s good-will, if duly solicited:
hence the joyousness of dance and song attendant on the eucharistic
feast, the worshippers being convinced that the sacrifice has restored
them to the favour of the god. The stern god, the God of the Old
Testament, slow to forgive, has no place in primitive theology. Hymns,
such as the Greek warriors sang in jubilant unison to Apollo, are
the first dim gropings of language into the domains of literature.
Paeans of this kind were chanted in the sanctuaries of Asclepius after
successful acts of healing.

In early Indian myth Rudra is the god who lets fly the arrows of
pestilence. Read this prayer to Rudra from the _Atharvaveda_[12]:
there are many like it in the older _Rig-Veda_, which reached near its
present form as early as 1500 B.C.

_Prayer to Bhava_[13] _and Sava_[14] _for protection from dangers._

           1. O Bhava and Sava, be merciful, do not attack us: ye
        lords of beings, lords of cattle, reverence be to you twain!
        Discharge not your arrow even after it has been laid (on
        the bow) and has been drawn! Destroy not our bipeds and our
        quadrupeds.
                   *       *       *       *       *
           7. May we not conflict with Rudra, the archer with the
        dark crest, the thousand-eyed powerful one, the slayer of
        Ardhaka!
                   *       *       *       *       *
          12. Thou, O crested god, earnest in (thy hand) that smites
        thousands, a yellow golden bow that slays hundreds: Rudra’s
        arrow, the missile of the gods, flies abroad: reverence be
        to it, in whatever direction from here (it flies).
                   *       *       *       *       *
          19. Do not hurl at us thy club, thy divine bolt: be not
        incensed at us, O lord of cattle! Shake over some other than
        us the celestial branch!
                   *       *       *       *       *
          26. Do not, O Rudra, contaminate us with fever, or with
        poison, or with heavenly fire: cause this lightning to
        descend elsewhere than upon us!

Other gods than Rudra can stem the pestilence. ‘Vayu [the wind] shall
bend the points of the enemies’ bows, Indra shall break their arms,
so that they shall be unable to lay on their arrows: Aditya [the sun]
shall send their missiles astray, and Krandramas [the moon] shall bar
the way of the enemy that has not started.’[15] Like the Madonna of the
Christian Church Aditya staves off the arrows of pestilence. The Aryan
warrior certainly, the primitive Greek probably, used poisoned arrows.

The language of the 91st Psalm reveals the same imagery as do the
Homeric epic and the Vedic hymns.

        ‘I will say unto the Lord, Thou art my hope, and my
    stronghold: my God, in him will I trust. For he shall
    deliver thee from the snare of the hunter: and from
    the noisome pestilence. He shall defend thee under his
    wings, and thou shalt be safe under his feathers: his
    faithfulness and truth shall be thy shield and buckler.
    Thou shalt not be afraid for any terror by night: nor
    for the arrow that flieth by day: For the pestilence
    that walketh in darkness: nor for the sickness that
    destroyeth in the noonday. A thousand shall fall beside
    thee, and ten thousand at thy right hand: but it shall
    not come nigh thee.’

The arrows of pestilence have sunk deep into the tissue of many
languages. Practically all the Hebrew words for plague (_Maggefah_,
_Negef_, _Naga_, _Makkah_) indicate a blow. Our English ‘plague’ is
derived through the Latin _plaga_ from the Greek πληγή, a blow: so too
the German _plage_. The French _fléau_—a flail or a plague—embodies
the same idea of a blow, and is derived from the Latin _flagellum_ and
the Greek θλίβω. To-day even physicians must needs call the poisons
of pestilence ‘toxines’, as though they were arrow-poisons discharged
from a bow (τόξον from τυγχάνω = I hit). The Arabians speak of being
‘stung’ or ‘pricked’ with plague, recalling respectively the serpents
and the arrows of pestilence.

Passing allusion has been made above to the plagues of Pharaoh: it
remains only to be said that there is now pretty general agreement
that these ten plagues represent merely the seasonal variations, to
which Egypt is peculiarly liable, magnified in Jewish oral tradition.
Perhaps the last plague, the death of the first-born, at the April of
the exodus (_circa_ 1220 B.C.) may have been a true _pestis puerorum_,
falling with chief severity on those who lacked the immunity afforded
by a previous epidemic. It was the incursion of Libyans and of the
nations of the Greek seas into Egypt, at least as much as the Biblical
plagues, that enabled the Israelitish serfs to make good their escape.

During the period of wandering in the wilderness Korah, Dathan,
and Abiram revolted against the ascendancy of Moses and Aaron, and
God caused them to be swallowed up with all their households by an
earthquake. Some of the children of Israel murmured against their
fate. Those that did so were visited with a plague, that carried off
14,700 persons. The plague was stayed by Aaron offering incense as an
atonement on the altar—sacrifice still, but the sacrifice only of a
sweet savour to a God dwelling in heaven. The juxtaposition, if it be
not permissible to say the association, of earthquake and pestilence in
this narrative is noteworthy, in view of the widespread belief in their
causal relationship, in later times.

All through the Old Testament plague is regarded, as here, as a direct
consequence of God’s anger. In the New Testament it figures but
little, and then rather as corrective than punitive. The God of the
Old Testament is a God of vengeance: only in the later Prophets do
we find even a foreshadowing of the God of love and forgiveness, the
God of the New Testament. In portraying pestilence Art has retained
this conception of God as a stern punisher of wrongdoing, but in the
personality of Christ, approached through the mediation of the Madonna
and Saints, has recognized the New Testament conception of God.

The entrance into Canaan was the beginning to the Israelites of a long
period of warfare with surrounding tribes. At last, in the pitched
battle of Eben-ezer, the Philistines crushed the army of Israel,
captured the ark of the covenant, and carried it off to Ashdod, where
they placed it in the temple of their own national god, Dagon. On two
successive nights the image of Dagon was mysteriously thrown down from
its pedestal. ‘The hand of the Lord was heavy upon them of Ashdod, and
he destroyed them, and smote them with emerods, even Ashdod and the
coasts thereof.’ The men of Ashdod made haste to send away the ark to
Gath, another Philistine city, but here, too, God ‘smote the men of
the city, both small and great, and they had emerods in their secret
parts’. From Gath it was sent to Ekron with like result: ‘for there
was a deadly destruction throughout all the city; the hand of God was
very heavy there. And the men that died not were smitten with the
emerods: and the cry of the city went up to heaven.’ After seven months
of pestilence, the Philistines called for the priests and diviners,
to inquire in what way they should send back the ark. These told them
that, if they wished for deliverance from the plague, the ark must on
no account be sent back empty, but with a trespass-offering of five
golden emerods and five golden mice, ‘images of your emerods, and
images of your mice that mar the land.’ The ark was to be sent in a new
cart, drawn by two milch kine, while their calves were kept at home.
If the kine took the straight way by the coast to Beth-shemesh, they
would know that it was God that had smitten them, ‘but if not, then we
shall know that it is not his hand that smote us: it was a chance that
happened to us. And the men did so: and took two milch kine, and tied
them to the cart, and shut up their calves at home: And they laid the
ark of the Lord upon the cart, and the coffer with the mice of gold and
the images of their emerods. And the kine took the straight way to the
way of Beth-shemesh, and went along the highway, lowing as they went,
and turned not aside to the right hand or to the left; and the lords of
the Philistines went after them unto the border of Beth-shemesh. And
they of Beth-shemesh were reaping their wheat-harvest in the valley:
and they lifted up their eyes, and saw the ark, and rejoiced to see
it. And the cart came into the field of Joshua, a Beth-shemite, and
stood there, where there was a great stone: and they clave the wood of
the cart, and offered the kine a burnt-offering unto the Lord. And the
Levites took down the ark of the Lord, and the coffer that was with
it, wherein the jewels of gold were, and put them on the great stone:
and the men of Beth-shemesh offered burnt offerings and sacrificed
sacrifices the same day unto the Lord ..., which stone remaineth unto
this day in the field of Joshua, the Beth-shemite.’ Fifty thousand and
seventy of the people of Beth-shemesh were smitten with the plague,
‘because they had looked into the ark of the Lord.’

In its essential features the narrative of this plague of Ashdod is
a mere replica of the Homeric plague. The manifest cause is God’s
displeasure, but when it falls on Israelites, God’s chosen people, as
well as on Philistines, it is perplexing, for knowledge of contagion
or communicability is as yet unborn. But an explanation is ready to
hand—the Israelites _also_ have offended God by looking into the ark.
The sin-offerings are to be representations in gold of the disease,
akin to the votive offerings of diseased parts dedicated in the
sanctuaries of Asclepius, and representations of mice, which then and
after were generally associated with pestilence—imitative magic again
in its simplest form. The sacrificial stone is left as a commemorative
altar for all time. Religion has now appeared to reinforce magic.
The Philistine diviners do indeed hazard the thought that the plague
may have been a mere ‘chance that happened to us’, and so faintly
foreshadow a belief in the natural causation of epidemic disease.

Have we sufficient data to establish the identity of this contagious
pestilence? It broke out on the sea-coast among a race of maritime
traders, and spread from the coast to other inland towns. It lasted
more than seven months. It took on two forms, a severe type with early
death, and a less fatal type, in which swellings (so-called emerods)
developed in the secret parts, a comprehensive term which habitually
included the whole area adjacent to the genitals, and therein the
groins. On these data alone it is difficult to avoid the conclusion
that it was true oriental plague, with a proportion of bubonic cases, a
disease that throughout its recorded history has hugged this corner of
the Levant.

Votive offerings for the healing of disease generally portrayed the
part diseased, rather than the actual disease, the latter so often
defying plastic representation. But, in the case of a simple swelling,
it is natural that the disease itself should be modelled.

It is tempting to assert with confidence a direct causal connexion
between the morbid swellings and the mice, for rats and mice were ill
distinguished from each other until recent times. The matter is further
complicated by the fact that there is considerable doubt as to the
authenticity of parts, at least, of the narrative. The composition of
the Books of Samuel ranged over some seven centuries, from 900-200
B.C., and the mouse story is believed to be a late interpolation,
of which it is impossible to fix the date. But in the text, as it
stands, the mice are designated ‘mice that mar the land’, and ancient
literature abounds in records of appalling devastation of crops by
the agency of field-mice. Aelian,[16] Aristotle,[17] Strabo,[18]
Theophrastus, Pliny, and others testify to this. Loeffler[19] gives
an account of a Thessalian corn-harvest destroyed by a horde of
field-voles, a field being completely devastated in a single night.
Mice were, in fact, one prominent cause of the famine-plagues[20]
of history. Viewed in this light, it helps us to understand another
Biblical pestilence, that fell on the army of Sennacherib, in 701 B.C.,
at Pelusium. This campaign of Sennacherib was undertaken to quell a
general revolt of the western states against Assyrian supremacy and
the payment of tribute to the Assyrian king. The revolt was fomented,
seemingly, by Merodach-Baladan, whom Sargon had ousted from the
kingship of Babylon, and who now drew Hezekiah into the revolt. He
sent an embassy with gifts to Hezekiah, nominally to congratulate
him on his recovery from a severe illness, which the Bible narrative
terms ‘a boil’. This may perhaps indicate true pustular plague, but
forms of boil (e. g. Baghdad boil), quite distinct from plague, are
familiar occurrences in several regions of the East. Sennacherib first
crushed Merodach-Baladan, and then advanced against Hezekiah, who at
once called on Tirhaquah, the Ethiopian viceroy of Egypt, for help.
At the pitched battle of Altaku Sennacherib defeated Tirhaquah, and
shut up Hezekiah in Jerusalem, to which he proceeded to lay siege.
Meantime Tirhaquah rallied his army and again advanced to the aid of
Hezekiah, so that Sennacherib was compelled to march south against him.
At Pelusium, on the border of Egypt, Sennacherib’s army was suddenly
destroyed by a pestilence, that compelled him to withdraw the remnant
at once to Assyria. ‘And it came to pass that night, that the angel of
the Lord went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred
fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning,
behold, they were all dead corpses.’[21] Isaiah confirms in detail the
narrative of the Book of Kings, and the Chaldaean chronicler, Berosus,
in a fragment preserved by Josephus, states also that Sennacherib was
driven back by pestilence. The prism inscriptions of Sennacherib are
characteristically silent on the subject: they tell only how he shut up
Hezekiah in Jerusalem, like a bird in a cage.

Pelusium has an evil reputation in the annals of pestilence. Procopius
cites it as the starting-point of Justinian’s plague. There, too, one
of the Crusading expeditions developed plague; and again, in A.D. 1799,
the army of Napoleon was infected there and carried the disease into
Syria. The explanation is not far to seek. The eastern and southern
coasts of the Mediterranean, and more particularly Syria, Egypt, and
Libya, were the points to which the merchants of the East brought their
merchandise for exchange with that of the West. From time immemorial
Arab caravans and camels had traversed well-worn trade routes from
the East abutting on the Mediterranean at Tyre, Sidon, and Pelusium,
and later at Alexandria. In these meeting-places of East and West, as
also at Constantinople, plague would most readily, and actually did,
find a footing. Possibly the eastern Delta may have been an endemic
centre, but more likely, as was believed in the late Chinese plague, a
distributing centre was an original source.

Byron in his lines in the _Hebrew Melodies_ on the ‘Destruction of
Sennacherib’ has caught the passionate note of fervid patriotism, on
which the chosen race celebrated their deliverance from the heathen
enemy by the might of their own God, and has retained the imagery and
simple diction of the Bible story:

    For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
    And breathed on the face of the foe as he passed:
    And the eyes of the sleepers wax’d deadly and chill,
    And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still.
          *       *       *       *       *
    And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
    Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord.

Herodotus[22] relates that the tradition of this wonderful deliverance
lived on in Egypt also. His cicerone in the temple of Ptah at Memphis
told him the following tale. ‘The next king was a priest of Vulcan,
called Sethos. This monarch despised and neglected the warrior class of
the Egyptians, as though he did not need their services. Among other
indignities which he offered them, he took from them the lands which
they possessed under all the previous kings, consisting of twelve
acres of choice land for each warrior. Afterwards, therefore, when
Sennacherib, king of the Arabians and Assyrians, marched his vast army
into Egypt, the warriors one and all refused to come to his aid. On
this the monarch, greatly distressed, entered into the inner sanctuary,
and before the image of the god bewailed the fate that impended over
him. As he wept he fell asleep, and dreamed that the god came and stood
at his side, bidding him be of good cheer, and go boldly forth to meet
the Arabian host, which would do him no hurt, as he himself would send
those who should help him. Sethos then, relying on the dream, collected
such of the Egyptians as were willing to follow him, who were none of
them warriors, but traders, artisans, and market people, and with these
marched to Pelusium, which commands the entrance into Egypt, and there
pitched his camp. As the two armies lay here opposite one another,
there came in the night a multitude of field-mice, which devoured all
the quivers and bow-strings of the enemy and ate the thongs by which
they managed their shields. Next morning they commenced their flight,
and great multitudes fell, as they had no arms with which to defend
themselves. There stands to this day in the temple of Vulcan a stone
statue of Sethos, with a mouse in his hand, and an inscription to this
effect: “Look on me and learn to reverence the gods.”’

Strabo[23] has a story of mice eating up the bow-strings, and a variant
of it appears also in Chinese annals,[24] so that it may be regarded as
merely a figurative expression for some providential deliverance from
an enemy, and in the case of Sennacherib the medium of deliverance was
pestilence.

It is impossible to say whose was the statue Herodotus ascribes to
Sethos, for no king Sethos is known in Egyptian history. Perhaps it was
a statue of Horus, the Egyptian equivalent of Apollo, or not impossibly
of Apollo himself, for we have abundant evidence of the association of
the mouse with Apollo. In the pestilence of the _Iliad_,[25] Chryses
addresses him as Mouse-God (Σμινθεύς). Strabo says that the statue of
Apollo Smintheus in Chrysa, a town of the Troad, had a mouse beneath
his foot: so also has a bronze coin now in the British Museum. De
Witte[26] has figured coins of Alexandria, the more ancient Hamaxitus,
in the Troad, in which Apollo Smintheus is represented with his bow,
and a mouse on his hand. Aelian[27] says that an effigy of the mouse
stood beside the tripod of Apollo. An ancient bas-relief, of uncertain
date, illustrating the Homeric plague and the offerings of the Greeks
to Apollo Smintheus, also shows a mouse on a tripod. Another shows
Apollo with a mouse beneath his chin: so, too, does a coin of Tenedos.
White mice were actually kept beneath the altar in the temple of Apollo
Smintheus at Hamaxitus, and were fed at the public expense. Strabo[28]
says that the worship of Apollo Smintheus extended to the whole coast
of Asia Minor and to the neighbouring islands.

Many votive offerings in the form of mice have been found, at
Alexandria Troas,[29] in Palestine,[30] and elsewhere, and Strabo
suggests that the worship of mice originated in a desire to propitiate
mice, so as to induce them not to ravage the cornfields. The
propitiation of animals,[31] and particularly of those that infest
the crops, is common in the worship of primitive men. The Philistines
are said to have made images of the mice that marred their land, and
sent them out of their country, so as to induce the real mice to
depart also. In a later stage of worship, when a god has supplanted
the animal, the god is propitiated instead of the pest itself: hence
Mouse Apollo,[32] Locust Apollo,[33] Wolf Apollo,[34] and Zeus Averter
of Flies.[35] Even lowlier pests are absorbed into the godhead, so
that we have Apollo Erythibius[36] (ἐρυσίβη = mildew), and the Romans
personified it and worshipped it as Robigus[37] (_robigo_ = mildew).
The Chams of Indo-China offer sacrifices to a rude pillar-idol, called
Yang-tikuh (god-rat), when swarms of rats infest the fields.[38] Thus
Apollo seems to stand in the same relation to the mouse, as Asclepius
to the serpent. He not only sends pestilence, but also wards it off
both from man and from crops. And viewing all the facts we may conclude
with some certainty that the association of mice with famine-pestilence
was well recognized, but of any knowledge at this time of the
association of rats with plague there is little evidence.

Plutarch[39] asserts that the Persian Magi killed all their mice and
rats, because they and the gods they worshipped entertained a natural
antipathy to them, a feeling which, he says, they shared with the
Arabians and Ethiopians. One is curious to know what may have been
the real ground of this antipathy, for which Plutarch advances the
current explanation. More than likely it was that experience had taught
these nations the relation of these animals to famine and perhaps to
pestilence as well.

Nicholas Poussin (1593-1665) painted a picture, now in the Louvre,
of the plague of Ashdod. An inferior replica hangs in the National
Gallery, and yet another in the Academy at Lisbon. Horror is the
dominant note of a composition that is full of movement. High up
between the columns of a temple stands the ark of God. Beside it the
body of Dagon lies prostrate on its pedestal, with head and hands lying
below. A priest points out with his hand the mutilated image to a group
of awe-stricken men, who from their air of authority seem to be elders
of the people. A swarm of rats has invaded the town. The streets are
strewn with dead and dying of each sex and of every age, and bearers
carry away the corpses. Broken columns, lying here and there among the
plague-stricken, heighten the sense of death and destruction. In the
centre of the foreground is a group that Poussin has borrowed from
Raphael. A woman with bared breasts lies dead between her two infants:
one is dead, the other is approaching the dead mother’s breast. The
father stoops down with hand stretched out to hold it back: with his
other he muffles his mouth and nose to shut out infection. To the
right another man holds back an older child who is coming towards
the dead woman. One man is huddled up in a dying convulsion, another
lies exhausted on a broken pillar. On the steps a sick man implores
assistance from one who hurries past him to avoid infection. To the
left a man with pity depicted on his face regards another writhing in
agony. The whole scene is set in the centre of the town in an open
space surrounded by massive buildings in the classical style that
Poussin acquired among the ruined monuments of Rome. None of the bodies
show any distinctive signs of plague, the disease clearly indicated by
the presence of swarms of rats.

[Illustration: PLATE II

PLAGUE OF ASHDOD. BY N. POUSSIN

Photograph by Giraudon, Paris (Face Page 18)]

[Illustration: PLATE III

PLAGUE OF DAVID. BY P. MIGNARD (Face Page 19)]

One other Biblical[40] pestilence, the plague of David, presents to
us another and more enduring image of pestilence, and represents also
a stage at which religion has superseded magic. David, in punishment
for his presumption in numbering the people, is given the choice of
seven years of famine, three months of fleeing before his enemies, or
three days of pestilence. He chose the last, and seventy thousand of
his people perished. ‘And David lifted up his eyes, and saw the Angel
of the Lord stand between the earth and the heaven, having a drawn
sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem.’ ‘And when the angel
stretched out his hand upon Jerusalem to destroy it,’ God checked him
by the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite. ‘And the Lord commanded
the angel; and he put up his sword again into the sheath thereof.’ Then
the prophet Gad told David to set up an altar in the threshing-floor of
Araunah. So David bought it and set up an altar and offered sacrifice
to God, and the plague was stayed: on the site of this altar Solomon
built the Temple.

Here again pestilence figures as a signal evidence of God’s
displeasure. An angel is the agent by which He spreads the plague,
and the drawn sword, Israel’s favourite weapon, replaces the bow and
arrow. The sheathing of the sword is the sign that the pestilence is
ended. This imagery appears again and again in Christian literature and
art, and seems to have its origin here. Angels are a beautiful fancy
of all religions of the East. So vivid is the primitive conception of
pestilence, that we find it personified from earliest times: now as
an archer-god: now as one walking in darkness: now as an angel with
drawn sword. David offers the same expiatory sacrifice and rears a
commemorative altar, as was done in the plague of Ashdod.

Pierre Mignard (1610-95) has painted the plague of David. The original
is lost, but an engraving by Audran is to be had at the Chalcographie
of the Louvre. As with Poussin, the scene is set with a background
of classical architecture, but the rendering of the figures shows
little trace of classical feeling. The central theme is the idea of
devotion in the presence of suffering. An angel in the sky is pouring
forth sulphurous fumes from two vessels, as brimstone and fire were
rained down upon Sodom and Gomorrah. On the peristyle of a temple King
David offers sacrifices of atonement to stay the plague, while the
people prostrate themselves in attitudes of supplication around the
steps of the temple. In the background is a cascade of water falling
into a basin, beside which one man lies dying, while others endeavour
to slake their thirst. Two men hasten forward to drive them from the
basin, before they pollute its water. This incident is derived with
some licence of interpretation from the narrative of Thucydides. In the
centre of the picture, reminiscent of Raphael, a young woman lies dying
in her husband’s arms, her dead child still stretched across her knees.
In the foreground is a charcoal brazier giving off purifying fumes.
Near it a doctor, who has just incised a bubo in a woman’s armpit,
falls back in a state of collapse, dropping his bistoury and bowl,
while his assistant, who is still holding the woman’s arm away from her
side, grasps at his master to prevent him falling. A bystander makes
off in horrified dismay. Compassion and cowardice are here ranged side
by side. To the right two men are distributing food and medicine to the
sick. An attendant kneels to offer a stricken man a cup of water, while
a torch-bearer follows with a lighted torch to disinfect the air. Close
beside them lies a dog dead. To the left one young woman is giving some
remedy in a spoon to another stretched on the ground, while behind them
stand a woman and child, both in tears. Detached incidents fill in the
picture. A woman grasps a delirious man as he escapes from his house.
A man carries off a girl in his arms. A woman tears her hair over the
dead body of her child. A woman draws up food to her window with basket
and cord.

With the exception of the plague of Ashdod, it is difficult to hazard
a guess at the nature of these Biblical plagues. All through the
Old Testament, sword, famine, and pestilence are habitually linked
together. As plague has followed the flag of commerce, so famine and
typhus have followed the flag of war. During the Thirty Years’ War the
whole of Central Europe was devastated by famine and typhus. They were
rampant in the wake of Napoleon’s armies, and thousands perished of
typhus during the retreat from Moscow. In the Crimea typhus decimated
the ill-fed army of the French, and only to-day, as it were, have
we learnt that the body-louse stands as the connecting link between
famine and typhus. The eighteenth century in Ireland, even when war was
absent, was an almost unbroken record of famine and typhus, and Ireland
was quit of epidemic typhus only when she had so widened her area of
supplies as to ensure immunity from famine. For her deliverance from
typhus Ireland is beholden to her potatoes, not to her physicians. In
the light then of the evidence of modern history, typhus may well have
figured prominently in the list of Biblical plagues. Still there are
not wanting many instances in which true plague has followed hard on
the heels of famine; and in India cholera and dysentery only too often
appear, to complete the work that famine has but half done.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Metamorphoses_, vii. 520.

[2] _Hist. Francorum_, x. 1.

[3] _De Gestis Langobardorum_, iii. 24.

[4] A. Bastian, _Ein Besuch in San Salvador_, p. 318; and Frazer,
_Commentary on Pausanias_, ii. 10. 3.

[5] _The Great African Island_, p. 268.

[6] Gordon Cumming, _In the Hebrides_, pp. 53 seq.

[7] Aristophanes, _Plutus_, 733.

[8] Frazer, _Pausanias_, ii. 2. 8.

[9] Gordon Cumming, _loc. cit._

[10] _Iliad_, i. 44 seq.

[11] Derby, Homer’s _Iliad_.

[12] VII. xi. 2, tr. Bloomfield.

[13] Synonym for Rudra.

[14] Synonym for Rudra.

[15] _Atharvaveda_, V. xi. 10.

[16] xvii. 41.

[17] _Hist. Anim._ vi. 37. 580 B.

[18] _Geographica_, xiii. 1. 48, and iii. 104.

[19] _Zoologist_, September 1892.

[20] Strabo, _Geographica_, iii. 104.

[21] 2 Kings xix. 35.

[22] ii. 141; and Rawlinson’s _Herodotus_, ed. 1880, vol. ii. 219-20.

[23] _Geographica_, xiii. 64.

[24] _Journal Asiatique_, 1st series, iii. 307.

[25] i. 39.

[26] _Revue Numismatique_, N.S. iii.

[27] _Nat. Anim._ xii. 5.

[28] _Geographica_, xiii. 1. 64.

[29] Newton, _Travels and Discoveries in the Levant_, i. 130.

[30] Thomas, _Two Years in Palestine_, p. 6.

[31] Frazer, _Golden Bough_, ed. 1900, ii. 423.

[32] _Iliad_, i. 39.

[33] Strabo, _loc. cit._

[34] Aeschylus, _Theb._ 145.

[35] Pausanias, v. 14. 1.

[36] Strabo, _loc. cit._

[37] Varro, _Rerum rusticarum_ i. 1. 6.

[38] Aymonier, _Revue de l’histoire des religions_, xxiv (1891) 236.

[39] _Morals: Essay on Envy and Hatred._

[40] 2 Samuel xxiv; and 1 Chronicles xxi.




CHAPTER II


The conception of pestilence as a punishment for sin is as prominent in
Greek as in Hebrew literature. We have seen it in the Homeric story,
and we see it again, where we should less expect it, in Sophocles.
Pestilence still centres round the personality of Apollo, but whereas
in Homer Apollo stays the plague, in Sophocles he is appealed to only
for knowledge, whereby to stay it. Homer endows him with special power,
Sophocles only with special knowledge. In Homer he is the god of the
bright light (φοῖβος), that dispels the darkness of pestilence: in
Sophocles his is the light that illumines the dark places of mind.

The _Oedipus Tyrannus_ seems to have been first publicly performed
between 429-420 B.C., possibly therefore before the plague of Athens
had finally died out. Sophocles is certainly not describing the plague
of Athens in the guise of a Theban plague, but it must needs have
coloured his thoughts as well as those of his audience. His description
of the pestilence blighting the crops, and causing murrain among cattle
and disease and death among men, suggests one of the famine plagues
common in ancient history. Hesiod[41] was not unaware of them (λιμὸν
ὁμοῦ καὶ λοιμόν). Sophocles is the first writer to attempt even in
outline a description of pestilence, and in doing so he has drawn the
picture of pestilence sent by the gods for the punishment of sin. The
way of atonement is sought for at Delphi, and pending this knowledge
supplication is made to Athena, Artemis, and Apollo, the deities who
control pestilence and have the plague-stricken city in their special
keeping. Here is the invocation to Apollo, the Delian Healer:

        Shower from the golden string
        Thine arrows, Lycian King.
        O Phoebe, let thy fiery lances fly
        Resistless, as they rove
        Through Xanthus’ mountain-grove!
    O Theban Bacchus of the lustrous eye,
    With torch and trooping Maenads and bright crown,
    Blaze on the god whom all in Heaven disown.[42]

Set in this archaic atmosphere the _Oedipus Tyrannus_ reads strange
beside the realistic record of Thucydides, published only a few years
later. But Sophocles has given only in outline what Thucydides has
given in arresting detail.

       *       *       *       *       *

To the historian, the physician, and the man of letters, the account
given by Thucydides of the plague of Athens, in the course of the
Peloponnesian War, must stand for all time as one of the most
remarkable documents in the whole annals of pestilence. In view of
the much greater strength of the Lacedaemonian land-force, it was the
unwavering policy of Pericles to keep the Athenians within their walls,
allowing the Lacedaemonians to exhaust themselves in devastating Attic
territory, while retaliating on the coasts of Peloponnesus by the
Athenian fleet. Each year, at the approach of the Lacedaemonian army,
the inhabitants of Attica flocked within the walls of Athens, bringing
with them all their movable property, after sending their sheep and
cattle to Euboea and the neighbouring islands, so that the added horror
of a great epizootic was averted. The greater number encamped in the
vacant spaces of the city and Piraeus, and in and around the numerous
temples. Some housed their families in the towers and recesses of
the city walls, or in sheds, cabins, tents, or even tubs, disposed
throughout the course of the long walls. This was the overcrowded state
of beleaguered Athens, when pestilence broke out in the second year of
the Peloponnesian War (430 B.C.), putting the policy of Pericles to a
crucial test.

After ravaging the plain, the Peloponnesians devastated the coastlands
of Attica, first on the south coast, and then on the north. Pericles
forthwith equipped an Athenian naval squadron, and launched his
counterstroke against the Peloponnese. This fleet carried 4,000
hoplites and 300 cavalry, who ravaged the district round Epidaurus,
and other towns on the adjacent coast. It seems, however, despite the
rumour to the contrary, which Thucydides faithfully records, that
neither the pestilence nor the operations of this expeditionary force
actually accelerated the departure of the Lacedaemonians, for they
stayed 40 days, which was longer than any other stay. Pestilence broke
out in this expeditionary force, and is doubtless the reason that it
returned without accomplishing more. Plutarch indeed says that the
Athenians would have captured Epidaurus, but for this outbreak of
sickness.

The Athenians also sent another fleet this same summer against Potidaea
in Thrace, which was already undergoing a siege at the hands of an
Athenian army. Pestilence worked fearful havoc in this supplementary
force and spread from it to the troops who were already there,
involving a mortality of 1,050 out of a total of 4,000 hoplites, so
that the expedition was compelled to return and leave the siege to the
troops that were there before them.

In their despair the Athenians vented their angry feelings on Pericles,
just as persons in a delirium, says Plutarch,[43] turn on their
physician or their father. They urged that the pestilence was due to
cooping up in the city in stifling huts a rural population accustomed
to an open-air existence, so that they conveyed infection to one
another. But popular resentment subsided as quickly as it arose. In a
noble speech, which Thucydides reproduces at length, Pericles weaned
them to a better mind. His own domestic sufferings may have stirred
their sympathy. He lost of the pestilence his only two legitimate sons,
Xanthippus and Paralus, his sister, and many relatives and friends.
The death of his favourite son, Paralus, left him with no legitimate
heir to maintain the family and the hereditary sacred rites. ‘That
blow’, says Plutarch,[44] ‘crushed him to earth. He struggled indeed to
preserve his wonted impassiveness and to maintain his serene composure.
But, as he laid a wreath upon the body and looked upon his dead, the
anguish of it all overwhelmed him, and he burst out wailing and sobbing
bitterly—a thing which in all his life he had never before done.’ The
spectacle of this proud, reserved man, this man who had stood firm as
a rock amid the rising tide of popular resentment, humbled before God,
humiliated before man, as the iron seared his innermost soul, is one of
the most moving pictures in all history and literature.

    My God has bowed me down to what I am,
    My solitude and grief have brought me low.

‘Shortly after this, it appears, the pestilence laid hold on Pericles.
The attack was not, as in other cases, sharp and severe. It took the
form of an ailment, slight but protracted through a variety of phases,
which slowly wasted his strength and undermined the vigour of his
mind.’ But if we may judge by the accounts of his death-bed given by
Plutarch himself, and by Theophrastus in his _Ethics_, his mind was
free from any taint of insanity.

The first outbreak of pestilence lasted for two years, from the
spring of 430 B.C. to that of 428 B.C., then came a partial, but not
complete, abatement for one and a half years, followed by another
outbreak in 427 B.C. which lasted a year. ‘To the power of Athens’,
says Thucydides, ‘certainly nothing was more ruinous. Not less than
4,400 Athenian hoplites, who were on the roll, died, and also 300
horsemen, and an incalculable number of the common people’, estimated
by Diodorus Siculus[45] at 10,000 freemen and slaves. Bury[46] puts the
total number of Athenian burghers (of both sexes and all ages) at the
commencement of the Peloponnesian War at 100,000, and this total was
reduced by the pestilence to some 80,000 or less. The metic class and
the slaves he estimates roundly at 30,000 and 100,000 respectively,
but beyond the unreliable statement of Diodorus Siculus, we have no
index of their reduction. In accepting the verdict of Thucydides on the
disastrous effects of the pestilence on the power of Athens, we must
not forget that there were other influences at work, conspiring to this
same result, the consequences of which Pericles had pointed out clearly
in his speech before the war. Had it not been for these, Athens would
beyond doubt have rallied quickly from the blow, as we shall see that
other cities have habitually done in like case with hers.

The circumstances under which the epidemic broke out a second time in
Athens cannot have differed greatly from those prevailing at its first
onset, for though it was winter and the Lacedaemonian army was not in
the field, the surrounding country had been devastated, and most of the
peasantry must still have been cooped up, in a state of overcrowding,
within the walls. As the pestilence lingered on in Athens, superstition
laid fast hold on the populace, under the stress of their protracted
sufferings. On the advice of the oracle, they decided to purify
the island of Delos, which formerly had been dedicated to Apollo,
but latterly had been used as a burial-ground. All the dead were
transferred to a neighbouring island Rhene, and a law was passed
forbidding henceforth the burial of a corpse or the birth of a child
in Delos. The neglected panegyric festival of Apollo was also revived
in the island. No stone was left unturned to appease the god, who, the
Athenians now were persuaded, had sent them the distemper.

Earthquakes and inundations lasted, as did the pestilence, throughout
the summer of 426 B.C. Diodorus Siculus seems to suggest that the
earthquakes were sent by Apollo, who had been duly propitiated, to
divert the Lacedaemonians from the invasion of Attica. Actually they
did effect this, for Agis, King of Sparta, though already arrived
at the isthmus, accepted the omen and led his army back. Neither
Thucydides nor Diodorus Siculus asserts any direct causal relation
between the earthquakes and the pestilence—a belief, which if now
vaguely foreshadowed, took definite form only at a later date.

The following is the full narrative[47] of the pestilence, as given by
Thucydides:

        ‘As soon as summer returned, the Peloponnesian
    army, comprising as before two-thirds of the force
    of each confederate state, under the command of the
    Lacedaemonian king Archidamus, the son of Zeuxidamus,
    invaded Attica, where they established themselves and
    ravaged the country. They had not been there many days
    when the plague broke out at Athens for the first time.
    _It_ is said to have previously smitten many places,
    particularly Lemnos, but there is no record of _so
    great_ a pestilence occurring elsewhere, or of _such_
    a destruction of human life. For a while physicians,
    in ignorance of the nature of the disease, sought to
    apply remedies; but it was in vain, and they themselves
    were among the first victims, because they oftenest
    came into contact with it. No human art was of any
    avail, and as to supplications in temples, enquiries of
    oracles, and the like, they were utterly useless, and
    at last men were overpowered by the calamity and gave
    them all up. The disease is said to have begun south of
    Egypt in Ethiopia: thence it descended into Egypt
    and Libya, and after spreading over the greater part
    of the Persian empire, suddenly fell upon Athens. It
    first attacked the inhabitants of the Piraeus, and it
    was supposed that the Peloponnesians had poisoned the
    cisterns, no conduits having as yet been made there.
    It afterwards reached the upper city, and then the
    mortality became far greater. As to its probable origin
    or the causes which might or could have produced such a
    disturbance of nature, every man, whether a physician
    or not, will give his own opinion. But I shall describe
    its actual _character_, and the symptoms by which
    any one who knows them beforehand may recognize the
    disorder, should it ever reappear. For I was myself
    attacked, and witnessed the sufferings of others.

        The season was admitted to have been remarkably
    free from ordinary sickness; and if anybody was already
    ill of any other disease, it was absorbed in this.
    Many who were in perfect health, all in a moment, and
    without any apparent reason, were seized with violent
    heats in the head and with redness and inflammation of
    the eyes. Internally the throat and the tongue were
    quickly suffused with blood, and the breath became
    unnatural and fetid. There followed sneezing and
    hoarseness; in a short time the disorder, accompanied
    by a violent cough, reached the chest; then fastening
    lower down, it would move the stomach and bring on all
    the vomits of bile to which physicians have ever given
    names; and they were very distressing. An ineffectual
    retching producing violent _straining_ attacked most of
    the sufferers; some as soon as the previous symptoms
    had abated, others not until long afterwards. The body
    externally was not so very hot to the touch, nor yet
    pale: it was of a livid colour inclining to red, and
    breaking out in pustules and ulcers. But the internal
    fever was intense: the sufferers could not bear to have
    on them even the finest linen garment. They insisted on
    being naked, and there was nothing which they longed
    for more eagerly than to throw themselves into cold
    water. And many of those who had no one to look after
    them actually plunged into the cisterns, for they were
    tormented by unceasing thirst, which was not in the
    least assuaged whether they drank little or much. They
    could not sleep: a restlessness which was intolerable
    never left them. While the disease was at its height
    the body, instead of wasting away, held out amid these
    sufferings in a marvellous manner, and either they died
    on the seventh or ninth day, not of weakness, for their
    strength was not exhausted, but of internal fever,
    which was the end of most; or, if they survived,
    then the disease descended into the bowels and there
    produced violent ulceration; severe diarrhoea at
    the same time set in, and at a later stage caused
    exhaustion, which finally with few exceptions carried
    them off. For the disorder which had originally settled
    in the head passed gradually through the whole body,
    and, if a person got over the worst, would often seize
    the extremities and leave its mark, attacking the privy
    parts and the fingers and the toes; and some escaped
    with the loss of these, some with the loss of their
    eyes. Some again had no sooner recovered than they were
    seized with a forgetfulness of all things and knew
    neither themselves nor their friends.

        The malady took a form _beyond description_, and
    the fury with which it fastened upon each sufferer
    was too much for human nature to endure. There was
    one circumstance in particular which distinguished it
    from ordinary diseases. The birds and animals which
    feed on human flesh, although so many bodies were
    lying unburied, either never came near them, or died
    if they touched them. This was proved by a remarkable
    disappearance of the birds of prey, who were not to be
    seen either about the bodies or anywhere else: while in
    the case of the dogs the fact was even more obvious,
    because they live with man.

        Such was the general nature of the disease: I
    omit many strange peculiarities which characterized
    individual cases. None of the ordinary sicknesses
    attacked any one while it lasted, or if they did, they
    ended in the plague. Some of the sufferers died from
    want of care, others equally who were receiving the
    greatest attention. No single remedy could be deemed a
    specific: for that which did good to one did harm to
    another. No constitution was of itself strong enough
    to resist or weak enough to escape the attacks: the
    disease carried off all alike and defied every mode of
    treatment. Most appalling was the despondency which
    seized upon any one who felt himself sickening: for he
    instantly abandoned his mind to despair and, instead of
    holding out, absolutely threw away his chance of life.
    Appalling too was the rapidity with which men caught
    the infection: dying like sheep if they attended on one
    another: and this was the principal cause of mortality.
    When they were afraid to visit one another, the
    sufferers died in their solitude, so that many houses
    were empty because there had been no one left to take
    care of the sick; or if they ventured they perished,
    especially those who aspired to heroism. For they went
    to see their friends without thought of themselves and
    were ashamed to leave them, even at a time when the
    very relations of the dying were at last growing weary
    and ceased to make lamentations, overwhelmed by the
    vastness of the calamity. But whatever instances there
    may have been of such devotion, more often the sick
    and the dying were tended by the pitying care of those
    who had recovered, because they knew the course of the
    disease and were themselves free from apprehension.
    For no one was ever attacked a second time, or with
    a fatal result. All men congratulated them, and they
    themselves, in the excess of their joy at the moment,
    had an innocent fancy that they could not die of any
    other sickness.

        The crowding of the people out of the country into
    the city aggravated the misery; and the newly-arrived
    suffered most. For, having no houses of their own, but
    inhabiting in the height of summer stifling huts, the
    mortality among them was dreadful, and they perished
    in wild disorder. The dead lay as they had died, one
    upon another, while others hardly alive wallowed in the
    streets and crawled about every fountain craving for
    water. The temples in which they lodged were full of
    the corpses of those who died in them: for the violence
    of the calamity was such that men, not knowing where to
    turn, grew reckless of all law, human and divine. The
    customs which had hitherto been observed at funerals
    were universally violated, and they buried their dead
    each one as best he could. Many, having no proper
    appliances, because the deaths in their household
    had been so frequent, made no scruple of using the
    burial-place of others. When one man had raised a
    funeral pile, others would come, and throwing on their
    dead first, set fire to it; or when some other corpse
    was already burning, before they could be stopped would
    throw their own dead upon it and depart.

        There were other and worse forms of lawlessness
    which the plague introduced at Athens. Men who had
    hitherto concealed their indulgence in pleasure now
    grew bolder. For seeing the sudden change—how the rich
    died in a moment, and those who had nothing immediately
    inherited their property—they reflected that life and
    riches were alike transitory, and they resolved to
    enjoy themselves while they could, and to think only
    of pleasure. Who would be willing to sacrifice himself
    to the law of honour when he knew not whether he would
    ever live to be held in honour? The pleasure of the
    moment and any sort of thing which conduced to it took
    the place both of honour and of expediency. No fear
    of God or law of man deterred a criminal. Those, who
    saw all perishing alike, thought that the worship or
    neglect of the Gods made no difference. For offences
    against human law no punishment was to be feared: no
    one would live long enough to be called to account.
    Already a far heavier sentence had been passed and was
    hanging over a man’s head: before that fell, why should
    he not take a little pleasure?

        Such was the grievous calamity which now afflicted
    the Athenians: within the walls their people were
    dying, and without, their country was being ravaged. In
    their troubles they naturally called to mind a verse
    which the elder men among them declared to have been
    current long ago:

         A Dorian war will come and a plague with it.

        There was a dispute about the precise expression:
    some saying that _limos_, a famine, and not _loimos_,
    a plague, was the original word. Nevertheless,
    as might have been expected, for men’s memories
    reflected their sufferings, the argument in favour of
    _loimos_ prevailed at the time. But if ever in future
    years another Dorian war arises which happens to be
    accompanied by a famine, they will probably repeat
    the verse in the other form. The answer of the oracle
    to the Lacedaemonians when the God was asked “whether
    they should go to war or not”, and he replied “that if
    they fought with all their might, they would conquer,
    and that he himself would take their part”, was not
    forgotten by those who had heard of it, and they quite
    imagined that they were witnessing the fulfilment of
    his words. The disease certainly did set in immediately
    after the invasion of the Peloponnesians, and did not
    spread to the Peloponnesus in any degree worth speaking
    of, while Athens felt its ravages most severely, and
    next to Athens the places which were most populous.
    Such was the history of the plague.’

A careful study, line upon line and word by word, of the description
which Thucydides has given of the clinical features of the Athenian
pestilence, viewing it on the one hand in the light of the medical
knowledge of the time, and on the other in the light of the revelations
of modern pathology, can hardly fail to bring home to an unbiased
judgement the conviction that we have to do with typhus fever. It is
true that it bears a close resemblance to Oriental plague, but whereas
the objections to this diagnosis seem to us to be insuperable, we
shall hope to show that those which hitherto have appeared obstacles
to the diagnosis of typhus fever, are either artificial or based upon
an incorrect interpretation of the text. The confusion of typhus fever
and Oriental plague prevailed down to comparatively modern times even
among medical writers; not only is there a striking resemblance in the
clinical picture of the two diseases, but they have been constantly
commingled in one and the same epidemic. This is no matter for
surprise, when we remember that the flea is the chief agent in the
propagation of one disease, and the body-louse of the other.

There is scarcely a single writer of the sixteenth, seventeenth, or
eighteenth centuries on the subject of fevers, who has not commented on
the concurrence of malignant fevers with epidemics of Oriental plague.
It is true that they do not all identify the malignant fevers as
typhus, simply because typhus, though distinguished as a morbid entity
by Fracastorius as early as 1546, did not become generally recognized
throughout Europe until the eighteenth century, and even then its
identity was obscured under a multiplicity of synonyms. Ambroise Paré,
in 1568, described a pestilential fever as prevailing in France along
with true plague, in which the skin was marked with spots, like the
bites of fleas or bugs. Vilalba says that on several occasions during
the sixteenth century a spotted fever called Tabardiglio, which is
now known to have been typhus, was rife in Spain at the same time as
plague, and was much confused with it. According to Lotz a malignant
spotted fever was present in London in 1624, which turned to plague
in 1625, and back again to spotted fever in 1626. Similarly Sydenham
states that the Great Plague of London was preceded and followed by a
pestilent fever, which from his description was clearly typhus, and he
remarks that it differed from the plague only in the milder character
of its symptoms. According to Diemerbroeck spotted fever (typhus)
preceded plague in Holland in 1636, and its malignity increased
progressively, until finally it became converted into true plague. The
same is true of the plague of Marseilles in 1720, of the plague of
Aleppo in 1760, and of the plague of Moscow in 1771. Hancock, in 1821,
asserted that nearly all the most remarkable plagues of the last two
centuries had been preceded by typhus. So much for the confusion of
these two diseases, due to their concurrence.

Murchison, whose treatise on typhus stands out as a monument of acute
and accurate observation, traces out in detail the resemblance of the
two diseases. It is no matter only of a general clinical resemblance,
such as is common to most acute infectious fevers, though that is
striking enough, but beyond this there is a remarkable similarity in
particular symptoms, in clinical course, and in complications. There
is a tendency to regard buboes as a distinctive feature of plague, but
these are found in a small moiety of cases of typhus fever. On the
other side of the picture, the petechial eruptions of typhus, its most
distinctive feature, are common enough in plague.

It is tempting to shirk the difficulty of a differential diagnosis
by assuming that in Athens, as so often elsewhere, there was a
simultaneous outbreak of typhus and plague, but the whole evidence
points strongly to the presence of typhus, and typhus only. We will
endeavour to present the evidence fairly and simply, so that every
reader may form his own conclusion, by reference to the appended
narrative of Thucydides.

Starting in Ethiopia rumour had it that the disease spread northwards
to Egypt and Libya, and thence over the greater part of the Persian
Empire, which at that time included almost all of Western Asia, then
suddenly it swooped down upon Athens. The same disease was said to have
previously attacked Lemnos and many other places, but with much less
severity. With Lemnos Thucydides will have had close acquaintance, for
it lay in the direct route to Thrace, where he owned property. He is
careful to say that he gives this information as well as that of its
starting-point and lines of extension only on hearsay evidence. If it
were really part of one vast pandemic, it is surprising that he should
have no more certain knowledge of its incidence. True, pestilence
was raging this self-same year in Rome, but it must not be assumed
that it was necessarily of the same character as that at Athens. All
through the fifth century Rome was seldom without pestilence, and
Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus record a succession of epidemics,
some of several years’ duration, following hard one upon another. If
the origin in Ethiopia and the subsequent lines of advance are to
be accepted, this would certainly constitute a weighty argument in
favour of Oriental plague. Of late years an endemic focus of plague
has been located in Central Africa, and in its spread the disease
was following established routes of commerce, as has habitually been
the case. Pandemicity too is an inherent tendency of plague. Typhus
has followed for the most part the march of armies, and in the wake
of famine, and has shown but little tendency to adhere to the beaten
routes of commerce. Typhus has in some instances extended at one and
the same time over a wide region, but for the most part it has been
over contiguous tracts of land. Thus Hildebrand recorded an epidemic
spreading to the whole of Germany, Galicia, Hungary and the Austrian
crown-lands.

Thucydides has laid it down that the plague of Athens was an unknown
disease. Now there is a good deal of evidence to suggest that bubonic
plague was recognized, in its sporadic form, as a clinical entity at
the time of Thucydides. The language of a passage in the 2nd Book of
the Epidemics, a treatise of the Hippocratic school, seems hardly
susceptible of any other interpretation: ὁι ἐπὶ βουβῶσι πυρετοὶ κακόν,
πλὴν τῶν ἐφημέρων, καὶ οἰ ἐπὶ πυρετοῖσι βουβῶνες κακίονες (‘fever
supervening on buboes is a bad sign, except they be ephemeral: but
buboes supervening on fever still worse’). The allusions also to
buboes in Aristophanes are so numerous as almost to preclude any other
conclusion: and it cannot be argued that these were an aftermath of
the epidemic, for Thucydides[48] implicitly asserts the complete
disappearance of the disease.

The outbreak of the pestilence first in the Piraeus suggests
importation by sea. Sea-carriage is far more characteristic of plague
than of typhus, though typhus has been imported often enough from
Ireland into England, and was also brought back to England by the
troops from Corunna, and to France by the French troops from the
Crimea. On the other hand, it was in Piraeus chiefly that the displaced
peasantry were crowded together promiscuously in small stifling
habitations, affording just those conditions in which typhus has
habitually arisen and become epidemic.

Among those epidemic diseases, that in past times have devastated
beleaguered cities, typhus unquestionably holds pride of place. Granada
in 1489, Metz in 1552, Montpellier in 1623, Reading in 1643, Genoa
in 1799, Saragossa in 1808, Dantzig and Wilna in 1813, and Torgau in
1814 all tell the same tale. With our lately acquired knowledge of the
transmission of typhus fever by the agency of body-lice, it is easy to
understand the prevalence of the disease in epidemic virulence among a
beleaguered and overcrowded garrison. Murchison, whose knowledge and
experience of typhus were unequalled, unhesitatingly identified the
plague of Athens as typhus, both because of this special circumstance
of its occurrence and because of the clinical picture as a whole.

The passing remarks of Thucydides on the causation of the pestilence
show him not only superior to the superstitious credulity of some of
his fellow countrymen, but far in advance of the most enlightened
medical opinion of his day. There were still some in Athens, who put
their faith in supplications in temples and inquiries of oracles: but
these measures were now weighed in the balance and found wanting. The
stern probation of the Persian wars had taught the lesson, that victory
was the reward of the strong, not the recompense of the devout; and
with this knowledge perished the whole fabric of Greek polytheism. So
now most of the populace ascribed the pestilence to natural causation:
the Lacedaemonians surely had poisoned the wells. From this day
onwards, right down to modern times, this phantom of poison dogs the
footsteps of pestilence.

Thucydides leaves no doubt whatever as to his own views: he has done
for good and all with supernatural causation, though he confesses his
inability to identify the precise cause, leaving that for others to
speculate about. He states and accepts without reserve contagion from
man to man. In this his great contemporary, Hippocrates, lags far
behind him. The mind of the Father of Medicine was still in bondage
to the early Greek physicists. Conceiving disease to be caused in man
by bodily disturbance, referable either to the character of the air
inspired or of the food and drink ingested, it was inevitable that,
in the causation of epidemic disease, Hippocrates should assign chief
importance to changes in the atmosphere, to which all alike would
be equally exposed. He does indeed recognize the possibility of its
contamination with alien putrid effluvia, but for all that it is the
mere physical changes in its constitution, which in his view are of
paramount importance. Of contagion from man to man he had not the
vaguest conception, and to him, as well as to Galen, and even to our
own Sydenham, the sole criterion of epidemicity was the incidence of
disease on a large number of persons at the same time.

To the student of the history of medicine it will be no matter for
surprise that Thucydides should have seen with undimmed vision, what
Hippocrates saw as yet only through a glass darkly. Medicine in every
age has been the bond-servant of plausible preconceptions, and it is
humiliating to professional self-complacency to scan the long array
of lay writers from Thucydides onwards, who accepted contagion as a
proven fact, before the scales fell from the eyes of obscurantist
Science. Out of many we may enumerate Aristotle, Lucretius, Diodorus
Siculus, Vergil, Ovid, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Livy, Seneca, Silius
Italicus, the elder Pliny, and Plutarch: while not till Aretaeus of
Cappadocia, in the second century after Christ, do we meet clear and
unequivocal acceptance in any medical author. Science, untempered by
letters, is apt to induce a mental myopia, and we men of medicine would
do well to reflect on the story of Archimedes, who, while drawing
mathematical figures in the sand, overlooked to the cost of his life
the fact, that the city had fallen into the hands of the enemy.

Though Thucydides was the first of extant writers to enunciate clearly
the doctrine of contagion, there is reason to think that Oriental
medicine had already grasped the idea. The Levitical ordinances seem
to recognize it in the case of leprosy. It is true that these had not
reached their final recension till after the time of Thucydides, but at
the same time they represent a body of much older tradition.

Thucydides is careful to state that the season was not a sickly one,
for Hippocrates himself attributed pestilence to heat and south winds
distempering the atmosphere, and following the example of Acron and
Empedocles of Agrigentum, essayed to alter the constitution of the
atmosphere, in a season of pestilence, by kindling large fires. Acron
aimed only at reducing its humidity, but Hippocrates may have sought
to destroy by fumigation putrid effluvia, engendered by the heat
in the air. His example was scrupulously followed in the Plague of
London in 1666, and in that of Marseilles in 1720. A comparison of
Thucydides with Diodorus Siculus redounds but little to the credit of
the latter. Diodorus submits three distinct agencies as producing the
plague of Athens by their concerted action. First, that so much rain
had fallen in the preceding winter, that the soil had become saturated
and waterlogged: following upon this an unusually hot summer led to
the exhalation from the soil of putrid effluvia, that contaminated the
air. In fact pestilence was a product of the marsh miasma. Empedocles
of Agrigentum was reputed to have delivered Selinus from a pestilence,
in the fifth century B.C., by draining its marshes, and an extant
coin commemorates the event: and Hippocrates clearly recognized the
association of periodic (i. e. malarial) fevers with marshes.

Secondly, he cites lack of good food as a contributory cause, for
the rain had also damaged the grain. This was not an unreasonable
proposition, for the prevalence of the ergot fungus in rye grain
after a wet season has given rise to many and widespread epidemics of
ergotism.

Thirdly, the Etesian winds did not blow, so that the air became
superheated, inflaming men’s bodies with all sorts of burning
distempers. It is enough for Diodorus that Hippocrates, Lucretius, and
others had postulated these causes of pestilence, to secure for them
acceptance in the sober record of his history. Thucydides declines
even to discuss such vague hypotheses, and chooses for himself the
better part of describing the actual symptoms of the disease, as he
had experienced them in his own person, and witnessed them in the
sufferings of others, so that any one familiar with them might be able
to recognize the disorder at once, in the event of its reappearance.

To Thucydides then is due the credit not only of the first detailed
description of an actual visitation of pestilence, but of a description
that breathes in every line the true spirit of history, the recording
of past events as a medium for the surer forecasting of the future—the
spirit that animates him in all his historical writing to give ‘a true
picture of the events which have happened, and of the like events which
may be expected to happen hereafter in the order of human things’—the
whole duty of the historian, which not even Herodotus had recognized
to the full before him. So anxious is he that his readers shall see
things as he saw them, and learn the same lessons from them as he has
learnt, that he is willing on occasion to manipulate his narrative,
as when he brings forward the great Funeral Speech of Pericles into
immediate juxtaposition to the narrative of the pestilence, assuredly
so as to heighten the dramatic effect. So vivid and so forcible is
his picture of the plague, that it is difficult to believe that some
ten years had elapsed before he set pen to paper, and some thirty or
more before the whole attained its present form. It is no matter for
surprise that Lucretius, Procopius, Boccaccio, and Froissart should
have paid the homage of conscious imitation to this virile narrative.
(See Appendix.)[49]

Thucydides was the first to draw a picture of the demoralization
of society in the presence of pestilence—a theme that became a
commonplace with later historians of plague. The futility of the
physicians, the merciless march of the pestilence, the sufferings
of the sick, the neglect of the dead, the pollution of temples, the
sacrilegious funeral rites, these scenes and the like throng the
kaleidoscope of human misery. The sacred ties of kinship yielded under
the cruel emotion of fear. Lawlessness prevailed everywhere, for men
seeing the uncertainty of life and riches resolved to enjoy themselves,
while they could. Those who saw all perishing alike thought that
worship or neglect of the gods made no difference.

It is difficult to determine what traces of the pestilence are to be
found in contemporary Greek art and architecture. By some the statue
of Health Athena, set up by the Athenians just outside the eastern
portico of the Propylaea, is believed to have commemorated the passing
of the plague of Athens. Her cult was much older than this, and perhaps
derives from some primitive conception of an Earth Mother, the great
protectress of all her children, as in Christian hagiology the Madonna
of Health shelters them from plague and pestilence.

Pausanias[50] regards the romantic temple of Apollo at Bassae as
a memorial of the deliverance of Phigalia from an offset of this
plague of 430 B.C. He seems to infer this from the dedication of the
temple to Apollo, under his surname the Helper (Ἐπικούριος). On the
other hand, we know from Thucydides[51] that the plague scarcely
touched Peloponnesus. It is unlikely also that an Athenian architect,
Ictinus, who as Pausanias says built it, would have worked for the
Peloponnesians during the war with Athens.

The same doubt attaches to the attribution of the temple of Apollo
the Helper at Elis, and that of Pan the Deliverer in Troezen, and the
tradition appears in each case to be referable to the surname of the
god, coupled with the dates at which they were erected.

Pausanias[52] says that a statue of Apollo, Averter of Evil
(Ἀλεξίκακος), by Calamis, was erected in Athens as a memorial of
deliverance from the plague, but this cannot be the case, as Calamis
was dead before the plague commenced.

Such dedications were, however, common enough. When Epimenides freed
Athens from pestilence he cleansed the city and set up a shrine to
the Eumenides, and the people of Tanagra[53] similarly showed their
gratitude to Hermes the Ram-bearer (Κριοφόρος) by entrusting to Calamis
the erection of a statue in his honour.

Poussin painted a ‘Plague of Athens’, a much cherished picture now in
the gallery of Sir Frederick Cook at Richmond. It is a dull wooden
composition, and compares most unfavourably with his ‘Plague of
Ashdod’, in spite of the close similarity of incident and episode that
it depicts.

FOOTNOTES:

[41] _Works_, 243.

[42] Tr. L. Campbell.

[43] _Life of Pericles._

[44] Tr. W. R. Frazer.

[45] xii. 58.

[46] _History of Greece._

[47] Jowett’s _Thucydides_. We have ventured to introduce one or two
slight modifications into Professor Jowett’s translation, indicating
them by italics. In medicine it makes a world of difference, whether
a disease is the _same_ or _similar_: its _course_ too, is something
quite distinct from its character.

[48] ii. 48 end.

[49] The discussion of clinical details has been relegated to an
Appendix, as they are rather of medical than of literary or artistic
interest. They are, nevertheless, essential to a full appreciation of
the merits of the description that Thucydides gives of the pestilence.

[50] viii. 41. 7.

[51] ii. 54.

[52] i. 3. 3.

[53] Pausanias, ix. 22. 1.




CHAPTER III


Unlike Greece, young Rome was subject to repeated pestilence: plagues
punctuate the pages of her history. We shall see how deep an imprint
they left on the nascent religion, literature, and art of Rome.

At first these plagues must needs have been endemic, and bred no doubt
in the extensive swamps that lay within the city and around it for many
miles, for Rome was not then a commercial city. Her corn she derived
from Italy and Sicily, and held little or no intercourse with Egypt,
until after the conquest of Carthage. Yet, in spite of the numerous
records of her pestilences that have survived, there is not one the
nature of which can be identified before the true Plague of Gregory the
Great.

According to Plutarch[54] there was pestilence in Italy and Rome in
the eighth year of Numa Pompilius (707 B.C.), forty-six years after
the foundation of the city: the legend of it is full of interest.
During its course a brazen buckler fell from heaven into the hands
of Numa. Egeria and the Muses told him its meaning. It had been sent
from heaven for the preservation of the city, and to prevent its theft
eleven more were to be made so exactly like it, that no thief should be
able to distinguish it from the rest. The immediate cessation of the
pestilence seemed to verify this interpretation. One Veturius Mamurius
successfully produced the eleven copies, and Numa gave charge of all
the bucklers to the Salii, so-called from the dance they led up the
streets, when, in the month of March, they carried the sacred bucklers
through the city. ‘On that occasion’, says Plutarch, ‘they are habited
in purple vests, girt with broad belts of brass: they wear also brazen
helmets, and carry short swords, with which they strike upon the
bucklers, and to those sounds they keep time with their feet. They move
in an agreeable manner, performing certain involutions and evolutions
in a quick measure, with vigour, agility, and ease.... The reward that
Mamurius had for his art was, we are told, an ode, which the Salii sung
in memory of him, along with the Pyrrhic dance. Some, however, say that
it was not Veturius Mamurius, who was celebrated in that composition,
but _vetus memoria_, the ancient remembrance of the thing.’ The legend
affords unmistakable evidence of some expiatory ceremony, first
introduced for relief of a definite plague, but subsequently, in view
of the constant recurrence, performed twice a year. Plutarch omits one
significant feature of the Salic ritual, the driving of a skin-clad
man, called Mamurius Veturius (the old Mars), through the streets,
while the Salii showered blows on him, and drove him out of the city.
The examples in ancient folk-lore[55] of animal and human scapegoats,
for the exorcising of pestilence are so numerous, that we may well seek
the interpretation of this Salic ceremony in the persistence of this
conception. The dancing, singing, and clashing of shields was perhaps
intended to drive out the evil demon from the city as a preliminary to
transferring it to the scapegoat Mamurius. At Tanagra, the youth who
annually carried a ram on his shoulders round the walls of the city,
did so as a representative of the Ram-bearing Hermes, who averted a
plague in this same fashion.[56]

Plutarch discusses the meaning of these bucklers, called Ancilia, so it
was said, from their curved form (ἀγκύλον). He suggests as alternative
derivations, ἀνέκαθεν = from on high: or ἄκεσις = healing of sick: or
αὐχμῶν λύσις = putting an end to drought: or ἀνάσχεσις = deliverance
from calamities. But whatever the etymological significance, their
ritual purpose would seem to have been to ward off the darts and
arrows of pestilence, and the Salic ceremonial was dedicated to the
honour of the sender. God he was not, for the religion of Numa’s Rome
knew no gods of human form: these were a later importation from the
anthropomorphic religion of Greece. He was some _numen_, some power
less personal than a god, but more personal than a spirit. It was he
that engendered pestilence by his evil machinations. The legend brings
us back again close to the confines of imitative magic. True, it is not
the agent of pestilence that is fashioned, not the brazen serpent, not
the mice, not the emerods, but the agent of deliverance, ‘thy shield
and buckler.’

In later years the Salii figure as colleges of priests, dedicated
first to the worship of Mars, and later of Quirinus as well. The
transformation served to obscure their true origin, which Plutarch
asserts and which there is every reason to accept. Mars was not
originally a god of war, but an agricultural god, and, like Apollo, a
guardian of the crops. Coincidently with the transformation the ritual
assumed a more martial character, the Salii performing the war-dance
in full fighting panoply, as the procession moved through the city
twice a year, in March and October. The beginning and end of the season
of pestilence had faded insensibly into the beginning and end of the
campaigning season. Horace[57] recounts the aldermanic magnificence of
their festive repast.

The hymn of the Salii was written in archaic Saturnian verse, fragments
of which have come down to us. Quintilian[58] says that, by the first
century B.C. the primitive language, passed down with verbal exactitude
from generation to generation, had become unintelligible to those
who ceremoniously recited it. One fragment is instructive in its
significance:

    Cumé tonas, Leucésie, prae tet tremonti,
    Quom tibei cunei dextumúm tonárent.

(‘When thou thunderest, thou god of Light, they tremble at thy
presence, when the lightning shafts have thundered from thy right
hand.’) These lines recall the figure of Apollo the Far-Darter in the
_Iliad_, and his invocation in the _Oedipus Tyrannus_.

Pestilence was in Rome again just before the death of Tullus
Hostilius[59] in 640 B.C. Tullus himself fell ill, and in his illness
revived every superstitious usage, though when in health he had
affected to scorn religion. The people also cherished the conviction
that only by obtaining pardon of the gods would they be rid of the
pestilence. So Tullus consulted the commentaries of Numa, and finding
that certain sacrifices should have been paid to Jupiter Elicius
(_elicere_ = to elicit information), he set about their performance.
But as he failed to conduct them in due form, he not only failed of
his purpose, but so roused the anger of Jupiter, that he struck him
with lightning and reduced him and his whole household to ashes. Livy’s
story of Tullus illustrates well the relation of a Roman to his god:
it was a practical, not a spiritual relation, a bargain, not an act
of grace. If the Roman paid all his dues of worship to the god he had
a claim to repayment in full. Again and again, under the stress of
pestilence, failure of the god to honour his bond drove the Roman to
try his luck with alien gods. This is the spirit in which Tarquinius
Superbus,[60] during another plague, in 514 B.C., sent his sons to
Greek Delphi to inquire of the god how to be rid of it. Pestilence, in
this manner, was destined to forge many a link in the chain that bound
Rome to Greece.

In the fifth century B.C., Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus record
a constant succession of plagues in Rome. Eight visitations, at least,
are mentioned, and as some of these lingered over several years, Rome,
in the fifth century, can seldom have been free from pestilence. And
yet all this time she was not only growing, but actually sending out
colonies.

Of a plague in 473 B.C. we have an interesting recital by Dionysius of
Halicarnassus.[61] ‘In the beginning of the year’, he writes, ‘many
prodigies and omens happened, which filled the city with superstition
and fear of the gods: and all the augurs and the interpreters of
holy things declared that these were signs of divine anger, because
some rites had not been performed with sanctity and purity. Not long
after, a distemper, supposed to be pestilential, attacked the women,
particularly such as were with child, and more of them died than had
ever been known before. For as they miscarried and brought forth
dead children, they died together with their infants. And neither
supplications at the statues and altars of the gods, nor expiatory
sacrifices performed on behalf of the public and of private families
gave the women any relief.’ Thereupon a slave came forward and
denounced Urbinia, one of the Vestal Virgins, who tended the perpetual
fire, for impurity. The pontiffs at once removed her from her ministry,
brought her to trial, convicted her, and condemned her ‘to be whipped
with rods, to be carried through the city, and buried alive’. One
of her guilty lovers killed himself: the other was ordered to be
publicly whipped like a slave, and then put to death. After this, ‘the
distemper, which had attacked the women and caused so great a mortality
among them, presently ceased.’ Again, the pestilence is attributed
to the imperfect performance of some detail of ritual, which must be
expiated forthwith, if the sender of the pestilence is to be appeased.
Its special incidence on women seemed to bring home the guilt to them.
It was meet therefore that a woman’s life should be its expiation. Such
is the earliest detailed record of human sacrifice for deliverance
from plague, but we shall meet it again and again in the history of
epidemic pestilence. Surely the tiger in man is but lightly prisoned in
his human cage.

Human sacrifice was probably world-wide in the earliest ages of
nations. The Phoenicians[62] resorted to it in times of national
calamity, such as epidemic pestilence. There is abundant evidence from
the Bible[63] and elsewhere, that human sacrifice was habitual in
primitive Semitic religion. The Israelites were apt to assert that they
learnt these practices from the peoples whom they superseded in the
land of Canaan, but it must be remembered that they came of the same
stock as these races. Pausanias[64] refers to the legend of Leos, who
is said to have sacrificed his daughters, at the bidding of the oracle,
to save Athens from a famine; and in speaking of the ruined city of
Potniae[65] he says that the oracle of Delphi told them that they would
get rid of a pestilence only by the sacrifice of a blooming boy to
Dionysus, who had sent it for the murder of his priest. At the Athenian
feast of Thargelia in May, a man and a woman were led through the city
and stoned to death outside its walls, a man for the men, and a woman
for the women: and a similar practice maintained in the Saturnalia at
Rome. But with the advance of civilization animal substitutes came to
replace the human victims.

Philostratus[66] cites another notable instance of human sacrifice for
deliverance from pestilence. The Ephesians had summoned Apollonius
(first century A.D.) to come and check the plague. On his arrival he at
once set himself to encourage the citizens, and gathered them together
to the theatre ‘where now stands the statue of Averruncus. Here they
found an ill-looking old beggar, whom Apollonius ordered them to
stone to death, as being the enemy of the gods. As soon as they set
to stoning him, fire darted from the old beggar’s eyes, so that they
knew him for a demon. After they had killed him, Apollonius ordered
them to remove the stones from the corpse, and they found instead of a
human body a fierce dog vomiting foam, as if mad.... The form this dog
assumed was like that given to the statue of Averruncus.’

The blood-lust of panic terror, which found its gratification in the
slaying of Urbinia, is the lineal descendant of the cold-blooded ritual
of human sacrifice: no human passion is so cruel as fear. But we shall
fail to find even this palliation for the torture and killing of the
‘unctores’, both in Genoa and Milan, and for the wholesale massacre of
Jews at the time of the Black Death, carried through by legal process
far more deliberate, far more lengthy, far less impassioned than any
rite of human sacrifice.

In the pestilence of 461 B.C. the mortality was so great that it became
necessary to throw the dead bodies into the Tiber. Livy[67] says that
a cattle epizootic preceded the epidemic, and that the necessity of
admitting the cattle within the walls, owing to the invasion of Roman
territory by the Aequans and Volscians, increased the malignity of the
distemper. In this crisis of calamities, the Senate ordered the people
to supplicate the protection of the gods. These ‘supplications’ took
the form of expiatory processions, and seem to have been introduced
from Greece to Rome. Like the Salic processions they moved to the sound
of music and singing, as they visited the sanctuaries of the gods,
prostrating themselves before their statues, clasping their knees and
kissing their hands and feet. Livy[68] holds that the guardian gods
and the city’s good fortune saved Rome at this juncture, as fear of
the pestilence induced the enemy to divert their attack to the richer
and healthy Tusculan territory. Just before this outbreak Livy[69]
says that the sky seemed to be lit up by an exceeding bright light.
It is not clear what celestial phenomenon he has in mind, but it is
noteworthy as perhaps anticipating the fixed belief of later days in
comets, as harbingers of pestilence.

The belief in astral influence over terrestrial phenomena and on the
affairs of humanity was general and dates from prehistoric times.
Hippocrates held that every physician should be versed in astrology.
The dependence of season on the heavenly bodies, and the seasonal
prevalence of epidemic disease were facts patent to every one, so that
it was seemingly reasonable for the ancients to assert the influence of
the heavenly bodies on disease, though when pushed to excessive lengths
it became absurd. When pestilence was seldom absent, it must needs at
times coincide with certain conjunctions of planets. How deeply the
belief took root in medicine is shown by the words of the preface of
the German _Herbarius_,[70] first published in A.D. 1485.

        ‘Many a time and oft have I contemplated inwardly the
    wondrous works of the Creator of the universe: how in the
    beginning He formed the heavens and adorned them with
    goodly, shining stars, to which He gave power and might
    to influence everything under heaven. Also how He formed
    afterwards the four elements: fire, hot and dry—air, hot
    and moist—water, cold and moist—earth, dry and cold—and
    gave to each a nature of its own: and how after this the
    same Great Master of Nature made and formed herbs of many
    sorts and animals of all kinds, and last of all Man, the
    noblest of all created things. Thereupon I thought on the
    wondrous order, which the Creator gave these same creatures
    of His, so that everything, which has its being under
    heaven, receives it from the stars, and keeps it by their
    help.’

Dionysius of Halicarnassus[71] records another fearful pestilence
in 451 B.C., which carried off all the slaves and half the citizens
of Rome. The pollution of the Tiber by the dead bodies seemed to
intensify its ravages. Men and cattle perished alike, in and around
Rome, and famine followed, because the land was left untilled. As long
as the people had any hopes in the assistance of their own gods, they
approached them with sacrifices and all manner of expiation. But when
these proved of no avail, they set themselves to introduce foreign
innovations into the established religion of Rome. We shall see in the
succeeding visitation, in what direction the disillusioned Romans first
cast their eyes.

From 435-430 B.C. pestilence,[72] following on a drought and cattle
epizootic, raged in Rome and the surrounding country beyond the power
of human endurance. Frequent earthquakes preceded a great access
of virulence in 431 B.C.: the very powers of nature seemed to have
declared war on Rome. The people offered a general supplication to
the gods, repeating the formulas word for word after the duumvirs, so
that no mistake of word or syllable might invalidate the office: but
in vain. So the worship of Apollo was brought from Greece to Rome, and
a temple erected in his honour in 431 B.C. Apollo cannot have been
a wholly unfamiliar god, for the Sibylline books must at least have
introduced his name to Rome. But from this time he becomes naturalized
as a leading Roman god. From his temple, in times of pestilence,
expiatory processions paraded the streets of the city; and as plague
succeeds plague, he supplants step by step the older native gods.

In 395 B.C. pestilence[73] worked such havoc, that the Senate ordered
the Sibylline books to be consulted. This collection of oracular
utterances in Greek, given forth by inspired prophetesses or Sibyls
(Σίβυλλα = Doric Σιὸς βόλλα = Διὸς βουλή = will of the god), had found
its way from the Troad to Cumae. Thence Tarquinius Superbus transferred
part to Rome, and laid it up in sacred custody, to be used by order of
the Senate, in times of national emergency. As these books recognized
the gods and ritual of the Asiatic Greeks, they played a leading part
in the introduction of Greek gods and Greek ritual into the religion of
Rome. On this occasion the Sibylline books prescribed the celebration
of a _lectisternium_.

The _lectisternium_, which now first appeared in Rome, was a festival
of Greek origin. A public banquet of great magnificence was set before
the deities, whose images were placed on couches. The exhibition of
three pairs of alien gods, Apollo and Latona, Diana and Hercules,
Mercury and Neptune, betrayed its foreign origin. The imaginative
populace saw them accept the food or turn away from it in anger.
Meantime domestic feasts were spread throughout the city, to which
strangers and friends alike, and even liberated prisoners, came each
to have his share. Doors lay open everywhere, offering a home to every
casual comer. All things were had in common. No sound of discord marred
the perfect peace. The people were admitted to solemn communion with
the gods, as the Greek warriors before Troy shared with their gods in
the eucharistic feast, in token that the plague was stayed.

Coincidently with this epidemic at Rome, Diodorus Siculus[74] describes
with some clinical detail a pestilence that attacked the Carthaginian
army, while besieging Syracuse. The Lacedaemonians were assisting
Dionysius and the Syracusans against the Carthaginians. The record is
of interest as exhibiting Diodorus in the rôle of a flagrant plagiarist
of Thucydides.

      ‘But as to the Carthaginians, after they had ruined
    the suburbs and rifled and plundered the temples of
    Ceres and Proserpine, a plague seized upon the army,
    and to intensify and sharpen the vengeance of the
    gods upon them, both the season of the year and the
    multitudes of men crowded together contributed greatly
    to the aggravation of their misery: for the summer was
    hotter than ordinarily, and the locality itself
    occasioned the distemper to rage beyond all control.
    Not long before the Athenians were swept away in the
    self-same place by a plague, for it was marshy and
    low-lying ground. At the commencement of the distemper,
    before the sun rose, their bodies would fall a-shaking
    and trembling, through the coldness of the air that
    came off the water: but about noon they were stifled
    with the heat, because they were pent up so closely
    together. The south wind brought in the infection
    among them, and swept them away in heaps, but for a
    while they buried their dead. But when the number of
    the dead increased to such an extent that even those
    in attendance on the sick were cut off, none durst
    approach the infected, for the distemper seemed to
    be incurable. For first catarrhs and swellings about
    the neck (περί τὸν τράχηλον ὁἰδήματα) were caused by
    the stench of the bodies that lay unburied, and by the
    putrefaction of the soil. Then followed fever, pain
    in the muscles of the spine, heaviness of the limbs,
    dysentery and pustules (φλύκταιναι) over the surface of
    the whole body. The majority suffered in this manner,
    but others became raving mad and forgot everything,
    and rushing about distracted struck every one that
    they met. All the help of the physicians was in vain,
    both by reason of the violence of the distemper and
    the suddenness with which it carried many off: for in
    the midst of terrible suffering they commonly died on
    the fifth or at latest the sixth day: so that those
    who died in battle were accounted fortunate by all.
    And it was further a matter of observation, that all
    who attended on the sick died of the same distemper,
    and what aggravated the misery was that none would
    willingly come near the distressed and exhausted, to
    minister to them. For not only strangers, but even
    brothers and familiar friends were driven by fear of
    infection to forsake one another.’

Diodorus seems to have drawn on the clinical symptoms of several
different diseases, to heighten the effect of his description. The
combination of pustules on the body with swellings about the neck
suggests true plague, but there the likeness ends. There are other
descriptions of pestilence in Diodorus Siculus, that exhibit this same
eclectic tendency.

In 363 B.C., after one or two intervening milder outbreaks, another
period of pestilence[75] set in in Rome. Plutarch says that it carried
off a prodigious number of the people, most of the magistrates and
Camillus himself. When all else failed to appease the gods, scenic
plays were imported from Etruria. Hitherto the Roman people had had
only the games of the circus. Livy describes their introduction to
Rome in minute detail, tracing the development of regular stage plays
from these rude scenic shows. ‘Actors’, he says, ‘were sent for from
Etruria, who without any song or imitative gestures regulated their
movements by the measures of the music, and exhibited in Tuscan fashion
by no means ungraceful dances.’ To the ancients the movements of the
body spoke a language as familiar as the movements of the tongue. ‘It
seemed to me’, he continues, ‘that the first origin of plays should be
noticed, that it might appear how from a modest beginning they have
reached their present extravagance. However, the first introduction of
plays, intended as a religious expiation, neither relieved their minds
from religious awe, nor their bodies from disease.’ Indeed the Tiber
inundated the circus and interrupted a performance, as though the gods
despised their efforts at atonement. So popular amusement had come at
last to supplant popular atonement, giving birth in the process to
dramatic entertainment. In this respect we shall find history repeat
itself with striking similarity in the plague times of the Middle Ages.

Such was the origin and the evolution of the scenic plays (_ludi
scenici_), introduced in the first place to divert the mind and
distract the spirit from the crushing catastrophe of pestilence. The
visitation was followed by an earthquake, which is said to have opened
a gaping abyss in the Forum, into which Manlius Curtius hurled himself
in full armour—a willing human scapegoat sacrificed to the angry gods.

When these various measures failed to allay the pestilence, an old
custom of driving a nail into the temple of Jupiter was solemnly
revived. This practice in its inception purposed to make a calendar
of years. But once when a dictator had driven in the nail, forthwith
a pestilence had ceased. So now it was urged that, if a dictator and
no common magistrate drove in the nail, the pestilence would cease.
So says Livy, but there is abundant evidence, both from ancient
literature and from modern folk-lore, that he has missed the real
significance of the act. We find traces of a world-wide belief in
the possibility of transferring the evils of the body, as well as
the evils of the soul, to some other being or animal, or thing. The
scapegoat is familiar to all, and we know from Leviticus,[76] that at
the cleansing of a leper the Jews let a bird fly away. Pliny[77] too
tells us, that a Roman cure for epilepsy was to drive a nail into the
ground, where the epileptic’s head had struck it on falling: a similar
cure for toothache was practised in France and Germany, and for ague
in Suffolk.[78] In each instance the idea was to nail fast the evil
thing, and so hinder it from returning to trouble its former host. A
story given by L. Strackerjan,[79] and quoted by Frazer, comes even
more closely to the point. During the Thirty Years’ War pestilence came
from Neuenkirchen, in Oldenburg, to a neighbouring farmhouse in the
semblance of a blue vapour, and entering the house found its way into a
hole in the door-post. The farmer seized a peg and hammered it into the
hole, so that it should not come out. After a time he drew out the peg,
believing the danger was past, but out came the blue vapour once more.
Every member of the unhappy household fell a victim to the pestilence.

In 348 B.C. pestilence[80] was again rife, and a _lectisternium_ was
observed at the instance of the Sibylline books.

In 331 B.C. Rome was again in the grip of a devastating pestilence.[81]
Numbers of the Senate had already perished, when a female slave came
to the aediles and declared that the victims had died of poison. She
would show them matrons actually engaged in compounding poisons, and a
store laid up in readiness for use. Sure enough, drugs were found in
the possession of two women of patrician rank, Cornelia and Sergia, and
in spite of their protest that these were harmless, they were compelled
to swallow them, and fell victims to their own nefarious devices. One
hundred and seventy matrons were implicated in their guilt, and paid
the penalty with their lives. Rome offered a human holocaust to the
spirit of panic fear.

The grim suspicion of poison was not now formulated for the first time,
for the Athenians had suspected the Lacedaemonians of poisoning their
wells. But now the charge appears as a deadly and insidious weapon,
ready to the hand of every infamous or ill-disposed informer. The
hideous catalogue of cruelties inflicted on innocent victims, under the
spell of this illusion, forms a dark chapter in the history of epidemic
pestilence.

In the face of another pestilence[82] in 312 B.C., a dictator was again
appointed to drive a nail into the temple of Jupiter.

We have seen the succession of Rome’s epidemics almost unbroken
throughout the fourth and fifth centuries. We are accustomed to think
of Roman character as trained in the school of interminable warfare,
but we are apt to forget that there was another, a sterner and more
desolating enemy, almost always alert within her gates, ‘the pestilence
that walketh in darkness.’ In the perpetual struggle for existence on
the stricken fields of battle and of pestilence, young Rome had found,
as yet, no leisure for the loftier pursuits of the human intellect, and
had developed no literature and no art of her own, worthy of either
name. As Greek and Roman were alike children of one common stock, some
strong abiding influences must have been at work, leading development
along widely divergent paths: and perhaps in epidemic pestilence, with
which Greece was but little familiar till the end of the fifth century
at least, we may look for one such agency.

In 295 B.C., during a fierce pestilence, Livy[83] says that the
consul’s son built a temple to Venus, close to the circus out of fines
inflicted on some matrons convicted of adultery, as though their sin
was believed to be its cause. In the Middle Ages likewise we shall find
many churches built in commemoration of particular plagues.

Only two years later a violent pestilence[84] drove the magistrates
to consult the Sibylline books, and in obedience to their instruction
ambassadors were sent from Rome to Epidaurus to demand the serpent of
Aesculapius, in which the god seemed to be incarnate. At first nothing
was done beyond devoting one day to the supplication of Aesculapius.
But in the following year ambassadors set out under the leadership of
Quintus Ogulnius[85] and on arrival at Epidaurus were taken to the
temple of Aesculapius, and invited to carry away whatever was needed to
rescue their city from pestilence. Thereupon the serpent, which rarely
appeared to the Epidaurians, presented itself for three days in the
most public parts of the city, and then of its own accord made its way
to the Roman galley, in which it was transported to Antium, after the
ambassadors had been instructed how to pay honour to the god. After a
brief sojourn there it re-entered the Roman galley, and scarce had they
reached the Tiber, when it swam to the island in mid-stream, where a
temple was dedicated afterwards to Aesculapius. A coin of Commodus[86]
and a medallion of Antoninus (see Plate I, p. 4) survive to commemorate
the event. To this day there may be seen on some large blocks of stone,
moulded to the shape of the poop of a ship, on the Isola Tiberina, the
head of an effigy of Aesculapius in relief, with the serpent twined
round his staff.

So it was pestilence that brought Aesculapius to Rome, as it had
brought Apollo before him. In this temple in the Tiber the healing
ritual of the god flourished for some centuries, and in recent
excavations many votive emblems of diseased parts of the body have been
brought to light. With few intervals, and those of no long duration,
the island has been dedicated to works of healing down to the present
day. Claudius ordained that sick slaves should be exposed on the
island, and those that recovered were to receive their freedom. The
hospital of S. Giovanni Calabita, founded in 1575, stands there still.
In 1656 the whole island was converted into a lazaretto for the victims
of the plague.

It was the constant custom of the priests of Epidaurus, in founding a
new shrine to send out one of the sacred snakes from the sanctuary.
Pausanias[87] describes the coming of Aesculapius from Epidaurus to
Sicyon, in the form of a snake, in a car drawn by a pair of mules.

Before his transference to Rome, Aesculapius had already attained all
the attributes of divinity. He had ceased to be a mere god-man by the
time that his worship reached Athens from Epidaurus (420 B.C.). So
far was his serpent origin forgotten, that the Greeks explained his
association with the serpent by the suggestion that medicine, like the
serpent, reappeared annually in a fresh integument.

In computing the number of epidemics that visited Rome Livy is the
chief authority, and in doing so it must be borne in mind that his work
is incomplete. Epitomes only survive of the books dealing with the
years from 293 to 219 B.C., and of those again from 167 B.C. to the end
of his history in the middle of the reign of Augustus. That there was
no cessation of the frequent recurrence of pestilence may reasonably
be inferred from the regularity of appearance in those intervening
years, of which his complete histories survive.

In 212 B.C. Livy[88] describes simultaneous pestilence at Syracuse
and at Rome. The Roman general, Marcellus, was besieging Syracuse,
when pestilence fell both on besiegers and besieged. The Carthaginian
and Sicilian armies, however, suffered more than the Romans, who
retired within the walls to recruit their health. The Sicilians also
shook it off by dispersing to their cities, but it continued to rage
among the Carthaginians, who had no place to which to retire. Livy’s
description of the neglect of the dead recalls that of Thucydides, but
the similarity of expression is not so close as to make it certain
that he has borrowed directly from Thucydides. He writes: ‘At last
their feelings had become so completely brutalized by being habituated
to these miseries, that they not only did not follow their dead with
tears and decent lamentations, but they did not even carry them out and
bury them: so that the bodies of the dead lay strewn about, exposed to
the view of those who were awaiting a similar fate. And thus the dead
were the means of destroying the sick, and the sick those who were in
health, both by fear and by the filthy state and the noisome stench of
their bodies. Some, preferring to die by the sword, even rushed upon
the outposts of the enemy.’ Livy might well have been describing the
scenes in the streets of Marseilles during the plague of A.D. 1720.
Silius Italicus[89] has described this pestilence, as well as Livy, but
his is a mere poetic picture of its fancied incidence first on dogs,
next on birds, then on wild beasts, and finally on man.

The Ludi Apollinares also were instituted in 212 B.C., but Livy states
that they were instituted in commemoration of the victory in arms,
and not because of the restoration of a state of healthiness, as is
commonly supposed. In the circumstances the one proposition need hardly
exclude the other.

For three full years, from 183 to 180 B.C., pestilence[90] raged in
Rome, carrying off both high and low. The people saw in it a sign of
celestial anger, and the Pontifex Maximus ordered that the Sibylline
books should be consulted. Gilded statues and offerings were duly vowed
to the healing deities, Apollo, Aesculapius, and Hygieia, who for long
years in the person of Athena had stood as protectress of the health
of Athens. Pestilence had now brought her to Rome. A supplication was
celebrated in town and surrounding country by all above the age of
twelve, the suppliants wearing chaplets on their heads and carrying
in their hands boughs of the laurel, sacred to Apollo. Suspicions of
poison were freely bruited in the city, and Valerius of Antium says
that an investigation actually resulted in the condemnation of two
thousand persons, and among them Quarta Hostilia, wife of the consul
who had died of the pestilence. So splendid an atonement must needs
appease the angered gods.

In 176-175 B.C. pestilence was again severe in Rome. Livy’s[91] account
of it is interesting, because he states that, in spite of the great
mortality among cattle and men, there were no vultures to be seen in
either year of the pestilence. Taking the observation in its context
it reads as though the vultures were the first to suffer, so that
they were exterminated locally, then the cattle, and afterwards man,
and with him probably his dog. Thucydides had already drawn attention
to the absence of vultures during the plague of Athens, and with the
passage of years the observation crystallized into an article of faith
pertinent to all and every pestilence. In the case of the plague of
Aleppo Russell definitely negatives the observation.

With the conclusion of Livy’s history we enter on a barren period in
the history of Roman pestilence, and we may turn for a while to some
aspects of pestilence presented by ancient Latin poetry.

FOOTNOTES:

[54] _Life of Numa._

[55] Frazer, _Golden Bough_.

[56] Pausanias, ix. 22. 1.

[57] _Odes_, I. 37.

[58] I. vi. § 40.

[59] Livy, i. 31.

[60] Livy, i. 56, and Dion. Halic. _Antiq. Rom._ iv. 68.

[61] _Antiq. Rom._ ix. 40.

[62] Porphyry, _De Abstinentia_, ii. 56.

[63] Deuteronomy xii. 31; Leviticus xviii. 21; 2 Kings ii. 5-17.

[64] I. v. 2.

[65] IX. viii. 2.

[66] _Vita Apollonii_, iv. 10.

[67] iii. 6.

[68] iii. 8.

[69] iii. 5.

[70] Agnes Arber, _Herbals_, 1912.

[71] _Antiq. Rom._ x. 53; and Livy, iv. 32.

[72] Livy, iv. 21-5.

[73] Livy, v. 13.

[74] xiv. 70.

[75] Livy, vii. 2.

[76] Leviticus xiv. 7, and 53.

[77] _Nat. Hist._ xxviii. 63.

[78] Frazer, _Golden Bough_, and E. C. Gurdon, _County Folk-lore,
Suffolk_, p. 14.

[79] _Aberglaube und Sagen aus dem Herzogthum Oldenburg_, ii. 120, §
428.

[80] Livy, vii. 27.

[81] Livy, viii. 18.

[82] Livy, ix. 28.

[83] x. 31.

[84] Livy, X. 47, and _Epit. Lib._ xi.

[85] Valerius Maximus, i. 8.

[86] See Duruy, _History of Rome_, i. 555.

[87] ii. 10. 3.

[88] xxv. 26-8.

[89] _Punic War_, v. 580-626.

[90] Livy, xxxix. 41; xl. 19; xl. 37.

[91] xli. 21.




CHAPTER IV


Into his great poem ‘On the Nature of Things’ (_De Rerum Natura_)
Lucretius has grafted a description of the plague of Athens, converting
the record of Thucydides into Latin hexameter verse. His prime motive
in its introduction is to show that the chief phenomena of nature,
and pestilence as one of these, all harmonize with the atomic theory,
that he has adopted from Democritus and Epicurus. Lucretius indeed
propounds an atomic explanation of pestilence, consonant in its main
features with the doctrines of his contemporary Asclepiades. We can
reason of the imperceptible, he argues, only from our knowledge
of the perceptible. Our eyes see clouds descend from the sky, and
noxious vapours rise as mists from the land. Our minds then may not
unreasonably infer, that pestilence also either comes down from heaven
by the medium of clouds, or rises up from the rain-sodden earth by the
medium of mist. In each manner the atmosphere becomes impregnated with
noxious atoms that distemper it. These particles enter our bodies,
either by the air we breathe, or by the food and drink they have
contaminated, and thus provoke infection. Such, he holds, was the cause
of the plague of Athens.

The views of Lucretius as to the proximate causes of pestilence are
almost identical with those of his contemporary, Diodorus Siculus.
With each of them moisture, as cloud or mist, distempers the air or
damages food, and so finds entry into lungs or stomach. With each an
ill wind may engender pestilence: with Lucretius, by bringing a harmful
to replace a beneficent atmosphere: with Diodorus Siculus, by failing
to cool the air to an appropriate temperature, thus causing fever. To
Lucretius clouds, mists, and winds are carriers of noxious particles.
In this atomic theory of infection he faintly foreshadows the doctrine
of particulate poisons, that held the field of scientific speculation
within the memory of living men. But even so Lucretius came less near
the truth than his great contemporary Varro,[92] who actually ascribes
disease in animals to living organisms beyond the range of human vision
(‘crescunt animalia quaedam minuta, quae non possunt oculi consequi, et
per aera, intus per os ac nares perveniunt atque efficiunt difficiles
morbos’).

To Lucretius pestilence is a purely natural process, in which there
is no place for the handiwork of gods. Of this theme, in varying
applications, he is a fierce exponent throughout the length and breadth
of his poem. Perhaps it is for this reason that he chose the narrative
of Thucydides as the basis of his poem, for Thucydides, too, referred
epidemic pestilence to natural causation, not to the special act of
any god. Like Thucydides, too, Lucretius accepts without reserve the
doctrine of contagion:

     Qui fuerant autem praesto contagibus ibant
     Atque labore.

    (Those who had stayed near at hand would die of contagion
     and the toil.)

Pestilence, too, affords Lucretius a rare text for the exposure of the
hollow sham of state-worship, which represented now all that survived
of religion in Rome. We have seen how much of Roman religion had its
origin from time to time in the necessity of exorcising pestilence:
and we have seen how popular superstition revivified the ritual of
popular atonement. Now the Sibylline books are consulted. Now a nail is
driven into the temple of Jupiter. Now Apollo is brought to Rome, and
a temple erected in his honour. Now Aesculapius comes in the form of a
serpent to deliver Rome: now Hygieia. Now sacrifices are offered and
feasts set out before the statues of the gods. This is the fabric that
Lucretius, fired with iconoclastic zeal, would fain demolish, not as
the enemy of religion, but as the ruthless enemy of religious sham.

In literary form this part of the great Lucretian poem falls far below
the rest. The poem as a whole possesses a rugged grandeur of its own,
but this terminal portion, while retaining all the ruggedness, has lost
most of the grandeur. It gives the impression of having been merely
rough cast, to await the polishing, which, owing to the premature death
of the poet in 55 B.C., it never received. Fault also may be found with
the literary substance, for in places he misunderstands the language
of Thucydides, and misrepresents his meaning. Again, he incorporates
here and there fragments of Hippocrates and fancies of his own into the
record of Thucydides, as though all disease presented a single clinical
facies. For example, he reproduces as _cor_ the καρδία of Thucydides,
which the latter used, as did Hippocrates, for the cardiac end of
the stomach. Again, he misinterprets Thucydides with regard to the
effect of the disease on the extremities. He represents στερισκόμενοι
τούτων as _ferro privati_, whereas clearly Thucydides means that
the parts sloughed off, not that they were amputated. It would seem
that Lucretius was versed in the Greek language of his day, but that
language was no longer the Greek of Thucydides and Plato. Nor does
Lucretius scorn the full licence that Horace accords to the poet, and
exigencies of metre sometimes compel him not to adhere strictly to his
model: thus he transforms the critical days into the eighth and ninth.
One long passage beginning

    Multaque praeterea mortis tum signa dabantur

consists of various excerpts from Hippocrates turned into Latin verse.
These are gathered from such diverse parts of the Hippocratic writings,
as to indicate considerable acquaintance with them. The lineaments
of the Hippocratic facies are reproduced in detail. The fact is
that Lucretius was more anxious for the picturesqueness than for the
accuracy of his description, provided always that the logical soundness
of the main thesis and its didactic purpose were not compromised
thereby.

In his picture of the mythical plague that afflicted the people
of Aegina, Ovid[93] exacts contributions alike from Thucydides,
Lucretius, and Vergil, while there are certain features that bear
a strong resemblance to Diodorus Siculus. His story is that Minos,
King of Crete, the second king of the name, goes in quest of allies
to the island of Aegina, and courts unsuccessfully the aid of its
king Aeacus. As soon as he has departed, Cephalus comes as ambassador
from Athens and obtains help from Aeacus, who gives him an account of
the pestilence that had formerly raged in Aegina, and dwells on its
marvellous repeopling. Ovid maintains sufficient independence of his
models for us to be able to gather something at least of current ideas
of pestilence, set though it is in an atmosphere of antiquity. At first
the disease was referred to natural causation and so was combated by
medicines:

    Dum visum mortale malum tantaeque latebat
    Causa nocens cladis, pugnatum est arte medendi.
    Exitium superabat opem, quae victa iacebat.

The tendency was now to regard pestilence as a natural process, until
it overstepped habitual limitations, and triumphantly defied the
resources of orthodox medicine. Then popular imagination saw in it the
hand of a god, and forthwith set it outside the confines of recognized
pathology. So now Ovid ascribes the Aeginetan plague to the anger of
Juno, because the island was named after her adulterous rival Aegina,
who was carried there by Jupiter, and by him became the mother of
Aeacus, King of Aegina. But side by side with this Ovid lays stress
on various meteorological phenomena, that accompanied or preluded the
pestilence—the earth encompassed with gross darkness, a drowsy heat
in the clouds, and persistent hot winds, as though he believed in some
close causal connexion. He conceives the virus to be communicable in
water, for fountains and lakes were deemed to be infected, and the
rivers tainted with the venom of innumerable snakes. He dwells at
length on the epizootic, and elaborates this feature far more even than
Livy, and true to the habitual character of Roman pestilence, he makes
it precede the human epidemic. He holds fast the doctrine of contagion,
which he conceives to be transmitted by the dead as well as the living.
Ovid’s description of pestilence unmasks his shallow nature. He shows
himself to be no more and no less than an elegant literary trifler.
One feels in the easy flow of his verse and the light vagaries of his
picturesque imagination an unconcern and indifference to the horrible
realities he handles. He has no power, like Thucydides, to plumb the
depths of pathos, and the reader turns from his catalogue of sufferings
with no emotion of horror, still less with one of sympathy. One looks
in vain for some vestige of the moral earnestness of Lucretius. Even
for his deities the springs of action reside in the lowlier human
passions. Caprice and jealousy move Juno to send the pestilence:
humanity is the sport of these infirmities. When man’s conception of
Divine Providence had sunk so low, it was well that Imperial Rome
should be without religion.

Manilius, in his _Astronomica_,[94] composed about the Christian era,
asserts with confidence, that comets presage pestilence. The belief
is probably far older than Manilius, though it is difficult to cite
exact authorities. Livy[95] speaks of a bright light in the sky before
the plague of 462 B.C.; ‘coelum ardere visum est plurimo igni’: and
Dionysius of Halicarnassus[96] recounts the lighting up of a fire in
the heavens before that of 450 B.C.: ἐν οὐρανῷ σέλα φερόμενα καὶ πυρὸς
ἀνάψεις. Allusions such as these would seem to signify the appearance
of a comet. Vergil[97] is even more explicit:

    Non secus ac liquida si quando nocte cometae
    Sanguinei lugubre rubent, aut Sirius ardor,
    Ille sitim morbosque ferens mortalibus aegris
    Nascitur, et laevo contristat lumine coelum.

Of their supposed malign influence on human affairs in general there is
no doubt. Tacitus[98] assigns to them even a political significance,
for he says that in popular opinion they always portend a revolution to
kingdoms.

Seneca,[99] in his _Physical Science_, makes the specific statement
that ‘after great earthquakes it is usual for a pestilence to
occur’. The concurrence of the two had been mentioned previously by
Thucydides, Diodorus Siculus, Livy, and others, but Seneca would seem
to be the first to attempt to define the exact relation of the one
to the other. In the Campanian earthquake of A.D. 63 a flock of 600
sheep had perished mysteriously, near Pompeii. Seneca conceives that
earthquakes liberate poisonous fumes imprisoned in the earth, or pent
up in marshes, which serve to taint the air. Flocks suffer most, he
thinks, because they live in the open, and also drink the poison-laden
water. They feed too with heads close to the ground and so receive the
concentrated venom, before it has become diluted: and then he adds: ‘If
it had issued in greater volume, it would have injured man too, but
the abundant supply of pure air counteracted it, before it could rise
high enough to be breathed by any human being.’ And he proceeds: ‘The
better is ever conquered by the worse. Even that pure air of heaven
changes then to pestilential. Thence come sudden and continuous deaths,
and portentous forms of disease, that spring from unexampled causes.
The disaster is long-or short-lived according to the strength of the
sources of infection. Nor does the plague cease, until the freedom of
heaven and the tossing of the winds have banished that fatal air.’

Seneca had probably stumbled on the true explanation of the death of
the Campanian sheep, for Geikie says that after an eruption of Mount
Vesuvius the escape of carbonic acid gas has been known to suffocate
hundreds of hares, partridges, and pheasants. Seneca, in conformity
with the learned opinion of his time, regards volcanoes and earthquakes
as closely allied phenomena. Earthquakes were regarded as the product
in the main of violent commotion of the air. Niebuhr, like Seneca,
expressed a firm belief in earthquakes and volcanic eruptions as causes
of pestilence, a thesis that many writers have sought to substantiate.
It is tempting, even to-day, to speculate on migrations of rats set in
motion by subterranean activity. But a careful survey of a sufficient
series of earthquakes and plagues lends little support to such a
proposition. Each may occur alike before or after, with or without the
other, and their frequent concurrence in ancient history denotes no
more than that the eyes of historians were focused, almost exclusively,
on a narrow tract of land around the shores of the Mediterranean, in
which earthquakes were and are notoriously of frequent occurrence.
Two years after the great earthquake Campania was devastated by a
hurricane, and Rome desolated by pestilence. Tacitus[100] says that the
pestilence swept away ‘all classes of human beings without any such
derangement of the atmosphere as to be visibly apparent. Yet the houses
were filled with dead bodies and the streets with funerals.’ Tacitus
declares unhesitatingly for the production of pestilence by natural and
not by supernatural agency.

The year A.D. 79 is ever memorable for the destruction of Herculaneum
and Pompeii. It was followed by pestilence, which Dion Cassius
attributes to ashes from Vesuvius. Dust had been suspect from the
remotest ages of antiquity. At the time of the Exodus Moses was told to
sprinkle dust before heaven. ‘And it shall become dust in all the land
of Egypt, and shall be a boil breaking forth with blains upon man.’
Livy and Plutarch each attributed the plague that broke out among the
Gauls, when besieging Rome under Brennus, to the dust and ashes of the
houses they had burnt. Philo, too, ascribes a pestilence of about the
year A.D. 92 to hot dust irritating the skin.

Dion Cassius[101] mentions a plague that broke out in the reign of
Domitian (A.D. 81-96), and which may be the same as that mentioned
by Philo. ‘Certain individuals’, he says, ‘poisoned needles and set
to work to prick whomsoever they wished: several who were pricked
died without knowing anything about it: but some of the scoundrels
were denounced and punished; and that happened not only in Rome, but
over all the world so to say.’ Some initial punctiform eruption may
perhaps have simulated a needle-prick. Belief in the dissemination
of pestilence by the cutaneous inoculation of poison was destined to
flourish for many centuries. Dion Cassius[102] himself repeats the
statement in the case of another pestilence in the reign of Commodus
(A.D. 187): ‘In the reign of Commodus occurred the most violent
sickness I have ever known: at Rome two thousand persons often died in
a single day. But many died, not only in Rome, but in all parts of the
empire, in another manner: scoundrels, poisoning little needles with
certain noxious substances, transmitted the disease in this way for
pay: this had been done already in the reign of Domitian.’ For three
years then famine and pestilence worked hand in hand to ruin Rome, and
the people in their fury clamoured for a victim. A pleasant sacrifice
was handy in the Phrygian freedman Cleander, the greedy and infamous
minister of Commodus. It was eagerly bruited that Cleander had hoarded
wheat, and the maddened populace, surging to the palace of Commodus,
clamoured for the head of the hated favourite. The Emperor, fearful
for his own life, at the instance of the women of his court demanded
that the head of Cleander should be thrown from the palace to the
people. The spectacle of this bloody expiation appeased the fury of
the rabble. On the advice of his physicians[103] Commodus himself beat
a hasty retreat to Laurentum, to seek an antidote in the scent of its
abundant laurels. Those who remained in Rome filled their noses and
ears with sweet ointments, to neutralize the pestilential exhalations
from infected bodies and from the contagious atmosphere. At last a
Roman emperor is found, in presence of pestilence, consulting—not the
Sibylline books, not the oracle, not the omens—but a physician, and
obeying his instruction. Medicine has tardily come into her own, and
Pliny’s sarcasm, that Rome prospered for 600 years without physicians,
has lost its sting. But we shall see presently that the hour for
professional exaltation is not yet.

The great Antonine plague—the long plague, as Galen calls it, for
it lasted no less than fifteen years[104]—was brought to Rome from
the East by the Syrian army of Verus, about A.D. 165. Ammianus
Marcellinus[105] sets its commencement in the sacrilegious folly of
some Roman soldiers at the sack of the city of Seleucia. These men
wrenched from its site a statue of Apollo, and from a narrow aperture
beneath its pedestal the pestilence escaped, carrying death wherever
it went. Julius Capitolinus (_c._ A.D. 300) confirms the statement of
Ammianus Marcellinus, except in that he traces the source of origin to
a small golden coffer in this same temple of Apollo. Carried thence by
the victorious army to Rome, it found there conditions favourable to
its propagation in an already existing famine, in the accumulation of
the soldiery, and in the concourse of spectators, who had come to see
the triumph of the joint emperors duly celebrated. Of the mortality
at Rome no figures exist, but it is said to have been very great.
Dead bodies were so numerous, that they were carried to burial heaped
up in carts. Aurelius[106] paid the dead the tribute of a public
funeral, and erected statues to the memory of many men of high estate.
His philosophy, though proof against religious belief, showed itself
not proof against religious superstition. The whole pagan ritual of
expiation was paraded on behalf of the distracted city. The neglected
worship of the gods was revived with renewed vigour, and the aid of
those most powerful to help in such circumstances was eagerly invoked.
A lustration was solemnly performed for the purification of the city,
and a _lectisternium_ celebrated for seven whole days. The people were
readily infected with the contagion of their sovereign’s superstition,
and from this time may be dated a brief revival of the worship of the
effete pagan deities. Aurelius sought even to appease the anger of the
national gods by a persecution of the Christians, whose religion was
an insult to their majesty. The Christian chronicler, Orosius,[107]
attributes the pestilence actually to the persecution of the Christians
that had broken out in Asia and Gaul before its commencement. All that
is known for certain is, that such a persecution was a consequence, if
not a cause as well. An engraved blood-coloured jasper, preserved in
Paris, and figured in the _Histoire de l’Académie des Inscriptions et
Belles-Lettres_, survives to commemorate the sacrifices by which Marcus
Aurelius sought to charm away the plague. Duruy[108] describes its
features:

       ‘Marcus Aurelius as sovereign pontiff: on his veiled
    head a globe, symbol of his sovereign power: behind
    him an augur’s staff: facing the Emperor Rome helmeted
    and Aesculapius with horns: under Aurelius, Hygieia or
    Health: lastly the head of Faustina. The Sagittarius,
    who occupies the centre, marks the time of the
    sacrifices, offered in November or December.’

Some have inferred from a passage of Julius Capitolinus that Marcus
Aurelius himself died of this pestilence in A.D. 180. In describing his
death-bed, Capitolinus says that he took a hasty farewell of his son,
for fear of communicating his malady to him.

Niebuhr considers that the ancient world never recovered from the havoc
of this pestilence. To it he traces the decadence of Roman literature
and art in the years that followed, and points to analogous results
in Greece from the plague of Athens, and in early German and early
Florentine literature from the Black Death of A.D. 1348. But the seeds
of decay in the empire of Rome had already been sown, as they had been
in the empire of Athens before the Peloponnesian War. Pericles himself
had warned the Athenians at the outset of the far-reaching consequences
of failure. We shall see too hereafter that in the case of the early
Florentine literature other more potent influences than pestilence were
concerned in its temporary effacement. The lesson to be learnt from a
comprehensive survey of the history of pestilence would seem rather to
be this, that with the community, as with the individual, the sound
constitution throws off the effects of a sickness that strikes right
home, when the resisting power is impaired. Such was assuredly the
case with the interminable sequence of plagues that assailed Rome in
adolescence as well as in adult life. But as decadence and decrepitude
beset the body politic, the wounds of pestilence went deeper and left
abiding scars.

The Antonine plague bequeathed one ill-starred legacy to the profession
of medicine. Every sovereign has the physicians he deserves, and Galen
was physician to Marcus Aurelius. At the first onset of the pestilence
Galen made off to Campania, and finding no safety there took ship
to Pergamus. Thence, after two years’ absence, he returned at the
summons of the emperors, and after a brief stay in Rome joined them at
Aquileia, where pestilence tracked him down again.

    Cowards die many times before their death.

Courage, however, and medical acumen are by no means constant
companions, and for many centuries, in face of pestilence, physicians,
and among them Morgagni and Sydenham, were doomed to follow the example
of Galen as faithfully as they cherished his precepts.

Galen has been regarded generally as the leading authority on the
medical aspects of the Antonine plague, but the value of Galen’s
testimony is not enhanced by the investigation of these attendant
circumstances. The physician who takes flight at the outset is little
likely subsequently to observe the disease carefully, constantly,
and at close quarters: nor is it surprising to find that much of
his symptomatology is borrowed directly either from Thucydides or
Hippocrates. The striking picture of Thucydides must needs dominate
the mind of the man who studies medicine in his arm-chair, so that
we are prepared to find Galen asserting the identity of the Antonine
pestilence with the plague of Athens. Here and there passages are
lifted almost _verbatim_ from Thucydides. For example, Galen[109] says
that the sick man’s body did not seem hotter than normal to the touch,
but that he suffered an intolerable inward burning. The skin was not
yellow, but reddish and livid. The transference of οὔτε χλωρόν from
Thucydides shows that he is copying Thucydides, and is not describing
what he himself saw. Again, the description of the eruption, though
far more precise and complete than that by Thucydides, shows his
influence closely, and now and again falls into his actual words, as
in ἐξήνθησεν ἕλκεσιν ὅλον τὸ σῶμα. The same also is true of the more
general symptoms[110] of the disease, such as the insistence on the
characteristic appearance of the inflamed eyes, and the redness of
mouth, tongue, and fauces.

There is the ring of the charlatan, too, in Galen’s use and advocacy of
Armenian bole as an antipestilential specific, in striking contrast to
the crude disavowal of all remedies by Thucydides. Galen[111] says that
‘all those who used it were promptly cured’—one wonders at Galen’s
flight—‘those who felt no effect from it died: no other remedy could
replace it’—and then he sublimely concludes, ‘that those, with whom
the remedy failed, were incurable.’ This Armenian bole was merely an
argillaceous earth brought from Persia and Armenia, which owed its red
colour to oxide of iron. Galen used it as an astringent for wounds and
ulcers before he vaunted it as a specific for pestilence. Internally,
at any rate, it must have been almost inert in medicinal doses, and as
Galen adduces no evidence in support of his crude dictum, we need be at
no pains to justify our incredulity.

There is reason to think that the Antonine plague was not one and
the same disease throughout its course. Had it been so, we should
have expected from Galen something in the nature of a single clinical
picture, rather than casual references scattered throughout his
voluminous writings.

In describing the character of the eruption and its transformations,
Galen[112] certainly seems to have small-pox in mind. At a certain
stage the eruption broke out all over the body in the form of
ἐξανθήματα μέλανα (a dark efflorescence), probably of haemorrhagic
type. When it ulcerated, a crust (ἐφελκίς) formed on the surface,
which became detached, and then everything proceeded to a cure. A
scar remained after the separation of the crust, comparable to the
‘pitting’ of small-pox. In some cases ulceration did not occur, but
the exanthem was rough and scaly and became detached like a skin: in
this condition all got well. Galen gives some indication of the course
of the disease in one who recovered. ‘A young man on the ninth day had
his whole body covered with ulcers, as had most of those who recovered.
Then he was seized with a cough, and three days after the ninth he
was in a condition to go into the country for convalescence.’ The day
after the cough set in, he expelled during a paroxysm of coughing a
crust just like those of the cutaneous ulcers. Galen had previously
examined his mouth and fauces, and had detected no signs of ulceration.
He could also swallow both liquids and solids without any difficulty.
To determine whether the crust came from his gullet or no, Galen
administered a draught of vinegar and mustard; and from the absence of
pain attending this drastic procedure he concluded that it must have
come from the larynx and not from the gullet. Destructive ulcerations
of the larynx have been recorded in rare instances in the course of
small-pox, but such a condition would certainly preclude a journey to
the country after the lapse of two days. It would be less impossible
after the expulsion of a diphtheritic membrane.

It would be unprofitable to follow Galen further into the features of
the pestilential fever he details, for, as we have said, it is quite
uncertain that these are the features of a single disease. Indeed,
apart from the evidence of Galen’s writings, it would be reasonable to
presume the reverse from such knowledge as we have of other prolonged
periods of pestilence.

Before leaving Galen we may say that he postulates a dual causation
of pestilence: on the one hand, great irregularity of the seasons
inducing a pestilential state of the atmosphere: on the other, a
vitiated condition of the human body, due to contaminated food,
rendering it liable to fever from very slight causes. The atmospheric
factor, no doubt, would seem to be confirmed by the universality of
the disease, while the greater severity of the disease and perhaps its
special incidence as well among the ill-fed and destitute would seem to
incriminate the resisting power of the individual.

The plague of A.D. 252, during the joint imperialty of Gallus and
Hostilian, rivalled the Antonine pestilence both in virulence and
duration. Hostilian was one of the first victims, though his death was
commonly ascribed to the hand of Gallus. Eusebius[113] says that the
disease had already worked havoc in Alexandria and Egypt, before it
reached Rome. In some cities of Rome and Greece the daily mortality
rose as high as 5,000,[114] and with greater or less virulence the
disease spread over the whole known world.[115] Eusebius attributes the
pestilence to moulds deposited from the air, a belief that we shall
meet again in the course of the Great Plague of London.

Cyprian, the Christian bishop of Carthage, has left us some details
of the symptoms in his eloquent homily ‘De Mortalitate’, which St.
Augustine admired so greatly. Eusebius and Cyprian are both intent on
extolling the self-sacrificing zeal with which the Christians laid
down their lives in the service of the sick. Their writings help us to
appreciate the contempt of suffering generated in the mind of the early
enthusiasts of Christianity by living perpetually in the presence of
persecution and in the fear of death. We know from the manner in which
Cyprian[116] yielded himself to the sword of the executioner that the
spirit of the ‘Sermo de Mortalitate’ permeated his whole being. In this
sermon we may still read the glowing appeal of Cyprian to his hearers
to seek courage and consolation in repentance for their sins.

Cedrenus[117] was so impressed with the infectiveness of the disease
that he believed it might be communicated by a look, as Plato had
conceived to be true of ophthalmia. Trebellius Pollio[118] recounts the
association of terrestrial and other portents. Volcanoes awoke to fresh
activity: earthquakes occurred and rumblings of the earth were heard:
the sky was darkened for days: chasms yawned in the ground: great tidal
waves overwhelmed many cities. It seemed as though the end of the
world, foretold by the Christians, was at hand. In Rome the Sibylline
books were consulted, and they prescribed the easy atonement of a
sacrifice to Jupiter Salutaris.

Eusebius[119] is the chief authority for the pestilence of A.D. 302,
during the reign of Maximian. It was accompanied by famine, so that the
people were reduced to eating grass, and as many died of starvation
as of disease. The famished dogs fought over the corpses of the dead,
and the people slaughtered them wholesale, lest they should go mad and
attack the living.

FOOTNOTES:

[92] _De Re Rustica_, i. 12.

[93] _Metamorphoses_, vii. 520 seq.

[94] Bk. I.

[95] iii. 5.

[96] x. 2.

[97] _Aeneid_, x. 272 seq.

[98] _Annals_, xiv. 22.

[99] _Quaestiones Naturales_, vi. 27. 28, and Seneca, _Physical
Science_, Clarke and Geikie.

[100] _Annals_, Bk. XVI.

[101] lxvii. 11.

[102] lxxii. 14.

[103] Herodian, Bk. I.

[104] Evagrius, _Hist._ iv. 28.

[105] xxiii. 7.

[106] Merivale, _Hist. of Rome_, vii. 578.

[107] vii. 15.

[108] _Hist. of Rome_, v. 186.

[109] _Commentar. I. in Hippocrat. Lib. VI, Epidem. Aph._ 29.

[110] _De Praesag. ex pulsibus_, iii. 4.

[111] _De Simplicium Medicamentorum Temperamentis et Facultatibus_, ix.
1.

[112] _Method. Medendi_, v. 12.

[113] _Hist. Eccles._ vii. 22.

[114] Trebellius Pollio, _Gallienus_, tom. ii.

[115] Pomponius Laetus, _Rom. Hist._ tom. ii.

[116] Pontius, _Vita Caecilii Cypriani_.

[117] _Compend. Historiarum, ex versione Xylandri_, p. 258.

[118] _Gallienus_, iv and v.

[119] _Hist. Eccles._ ix. 8.




CHAPTER V


Until recent years it was generally believed that no certain record
of bubonic plague existed prior to that of Procopius (_c._ A.D.
490-560). It would seem to be necessary to revise this opinion in the
face of a fragment of the writings of Rufus of Ephesus, preserved by
Oribasius,[120] the Christian physician of the Emperor Julian (A.D.
355-63). He writes: ‘The buboes called pestilential are most fatal and
acute, especially those that are seen occurring about Libya, Egypt,
and Syria, and which are mentioned by Dionysius Curtus. Dioscorides
and Posidonius make much mention of them in the plague, which occurred
in their time in Libya: they say it was accompanied by acute fever,
pain, and prostration of the whole body, delirium, and _the appearance
of large and hard buboes_, which did not suppurate, not only in the
accustomed parts, but also in the groins and armpits:’ and further:
‘One can foresee an approaching plague by paying attention to the ill
condition of the seasons, to the mode of living less conducive to
health, and to the death of animals that precedes its invasion.’

Rufus is believed to have flourished in the reign of Trajan (A.D.
98-117), and may have been his physician. Dioscorides and Posidonius
were probably Alexandrine physicians who flourished soon after the
Christian era. The identity of Dionysius Curtus is conjectural, but
there is some reason to think that he practised medicine in Alexandria
in the third century B.C. Accepting these dates, one must admit that
the evidence for the existence of bubonic plague in epidemic form in
northern Africa and the Levant as early as the third century B.C.
is exceedingly strong. Even if we conceive buboes to have been more
common than nowadays in the course of other acute infectious diseases,
the above record can hardly denote anything but bubonic plague. The
reference to buboes as occurring with greater frequency in other parts
than the groins and armpits does not appear to have received from
medical writers the attention it deserves.

We have already adduced evidence to show that Hippocrates also was
familiar with bubonic plague in its sporadic, but probably not in its
epidemic form. Galen,[121] too, discusses the relation of buboes to
fever in such a manner as to show that he also was acquainted with a
severe bubonic malady, distinct from ordinary septic buboes. Oribasius
also is cognizant of bubonic fevers, but it may be asserted generally
that neither Galen nor Oribasius shows any signs of knowing them as
a prevalent epidemic pestilence. We may, then, justly say that the
narrative of Procopius affords the first unequivocal description of an
epidemic of bubonic plague.

According to Procopius[122] the plague began at the ill-starred
Pelusium, spreading in one direction through Alexandria and Egypt, in
another through Palestine, and thence throughout the world, which would
have meant to him from the eastern limits of Persia as far westward
as the shores of the Atlantic. In the light of modern knowledge it
is probable that Pelusium was no more than a distributing centre
_en route_, and that the true focus of origin lay much further back
along the commercial highways to the east or south. Of its pandemic
character, however, we have the fullest confirmation in a succession
of historical records. Evagrius[123] says that its total duration was
fifty-two years, and this also it is possible to substantiate from the
annexed table of its offsets, along with the names of the authorities
for each locality.

    _Date._      _Locality._      _Authority._

    A.D. 540       Antioch          Evagrius.
    A.D. 542       Byzantium        Procopius.
    A.D. 549       Arles            Gregory of Tours.
    A.D. 558       Byzantium        Agathias.
    A.D. 565       Liguria          Paul the Deacon.
    A.D. 567       Auvergne         Gregory of Tours.
                   Narbonne         Gregory of Tours.
    A.D. 587       Marseilles       Gregory of Tours.
    A.D. 590       Rome             Gregory of Tours.
                                    Paul the Deacon.
                                    John the Deacon.
    A.D. 590       Avignon          Gregory of Tours.
    A.D. 591       Strasbourg       Oseas Schadaeus.

Procopius describes the plague as progressing by definite stages,
expending its virulence on one country before passing to another, as
though intent on overlooking nothing. Indeed, if at first it touched
a place lightly, it always returned to it subsequently, till the full
measure of punishment was exacted. Always beginning at the sea-coast
it spread into the interior, so that the infection in the first place
was clearly sea-borne. He states that it took over a year to reach
Byzantium, where it made its appearance in the spring of A.D. 542. We
know, however, from Evagrius that plague was already in Antioch in A.D.
540, earlier, therefore, than the date of its alleged appearance in
Pelusium.

In his discussion of etiology Procopius borrows much of the phraseology
of Thucydides, but neither here nor elsewhere does he show the least
sign of being influenced by the substance of the Thucydidean narrative.
Thucydides, it will be remembered, evidently attributed the plague of
Athens to natural causes, declining to speculate as to what could have
produced such a disturbance of nature (μεταβολή).

Procopius says that those who pretended to knowledge ascribed the
pestilence to things darting down from heaven (τοῖς ἐξ οὐρανοῦ
ἐπισκήπτουσιν). This is indeed harking back to primitive conceptions.
But he adds that they do so without a fragment of evidence, merely
for the sake of deceiving, ascribing to nature what is clearly the
handiwork of God and nothing else. This opinion he bases on the ground
that the plague did not confine its ravages to any single country nor
fall specially on either sex or any age, but spread over the whole
world, regardless of season and of differences of habit. The argument,
in so far as it was negative, was certainly a strong one in the light
of the medical knowledge of his time, which referred much of the
distinction of different maladies to variations of climate, soil,
season, habit, and other accidental circumstances. Visual and auditory
hallucinations were not lacking. Procopius says that many that were
stricken by the plague saw, either when awake or when asleep, visions
of spirits arrayed in human forms. Some seemed to hear in their sleep
a voice saying that they were enrolled in the number of the dead. They
fancied that these spectres in human form struck them in some part of
the body, and immediately they were seized with the disease. To avoid
these demons some shut themselves up in their houses and would not come
out on any account. Others tried to escape the demons by invoking that
the most sacred names and by every form of expiation.

This idea of pestilential demons seems to be of oriental origin. We
have already encountered it in the story of Apollonius of Tyana at
Ephesus. It figures in early Indian medicine, and also in Mahometan
lore. Mahomet seems to have adopted it directly from Magian tradition,
as embodied by Zoroaster in the Zendavesta. The Magians conceived
one supreme God and Creator of the universe, from whom also emanated
two active principles, personified as Ormusd, the principle or angel
of light or good, and Ahriman, the principle or angel of darkness or
evil, a demon. From these two opposite principles the universe was
compounded, and in the direction of its affairs these two conflicting
elements were always striving for mastery. So long as the angel of
light was in the ascendant it was well with the affairs of men; but if
for a while the demon of darkness prevailed, then sorrow and suffering
and sin were the lot of mortal man. It was inevitable that a shepherd
race, tending their flocks beneath a star-lit sky in the plains of
Arabia and the uplands of Central Asia should see in the light and
the darkness two hostile personalities dominating their existence for
better or for worse.

Mahometans believed that spirits were sent by God armed with bows and
arrows to disseminate plague as a punishment for sin. Spectres of a
black colour dealt fatal wounds, but those dealt by white spectres were
not fatal. We shall presently find this same fancy figuring in the
literature and art of mediaeval Italy. It is not without interest to
have traced the conception spreading, like the plague itself, from an
endemic focus in the East, first to Byzantium, and then by slow stages
to Italy and the West.

In Byzantium many succumbed to the disease without any premonitory
visions. In these there was a sudden onset of a mild fever without any
grave symptoms, so that the victim had no apprehension of dying. Then
either the same day, or a day or two after, appeared a bubo (βουβών),
either in the groin or armpit, or behind the ear, or elsewhere. So
far as these symptoms went, all suffered in pretty much the same way.
The Byzantine plague was therefore characteristically bubonic, and
the buboes seem to have been distributed in the different parts of
the body, much as we find them to-day. In this and in all essential
points bubonic plague still exhibits a striking conformity to the
picture drawn by Procopius some 1,400 years ago. Indeed Procopius
has afforded an admirable outline sketch of oriental plague, to
which the most recent medical science has added little beyond some
elaboration of detail. We can decipher in his narrative at least
four recognized types—the bubonic, the pustular, the pneumonic, and
the tonsillar—as having prevailed during this epidemic in Byzantium.
Unlike Thucydides, Procopius rejects the idea of contagion, as opposed
to his own observations. Physicians, nurses, and those who buried the
dead were not, in his experience, specially affected, in spite of their
constant contact with the sick; and contrariwise, many contracted the
disease without any contact at all. The belief of Procopius in the
pestilence as a special act of God almost necessitated his being a
non-contagionist. He was at a loss whether to attribute the varied
manifestations of the disease to differences of constitution, or to
the will of the Author of the plague. In one case profound lethargy
prevailed, in another maniacal delirium. The lethargic lay simply
regardless of everything and died of starvation, unless food was
pressed on them. The delirious in their terror tried to flee: they
struggled with their attendants in the attempt to throw themselves out
of windows, or to drown themselves. Their desire was not to assuage
their thirst, for often they threw themselves into the sea. This is
evidently a criticism of the suggestion of Thucydides that it was
thirst that drove the victims to throw themselves into cisterns.

Procopius says that the physicians conceived that the source of the
disease lay in the buboes. This was a not unnatural inference from the
fact that, in cases of simple suppuration of the bubo, the sufferer
usually recovered, as though some virulent humour had escaped by this
channel. For the same reason in later years incision was performed,
and suppuration encouraged, whenever practicable. When, however, the
physicians opened the buboes in the hope of discovering the cause, they
found nothing but a horrible growth, like a carbuncle (ἄνθραξ). The
Byzantine physicians evidently regarded the disease as a morbid process
within the confines of recognized pathology.

There was a pustular type of the disease, and those who got a crop of
black pustules all over the body, as large as a lentil, died at once.
Procopius in his φλυκταίναις μελαίναις, ὅσον φακοῦ μέγεθος, ἐξήνθει
τὸ σῶμα echoes the language of Thucydides, ᾄφλυκταίναις μικραῖς καὶ
ἓλκεσιν ἐξηνθηκός: and it is noteworthy that ulcers were no feature of
the Byzantine plague.

Many dropped dead from spontaneous vomiting of blood, probably from the
lungs, as is not infrequent in the pneumonic form of plague.

Some escaped with a defect in the speech, so that as long as they lived
they stammered or stuttered, and were unintelligible. This may well
have been a sequel of the tonsillar type.

The plague lasted in epidemic virulence in Byzantium for four months in
all, and was at its height for three. This again, speaking broadly, has
been a feature of most European and Levantine outbreaks. At the worst
the daily mortality reached the appalling total of ten thousand.

Procopius dwells at length on the accumulation of dead bodies in the
streets and the neglect of funeral rites. At first each man buried the
dead members of his own household, sometimes throwing them into graves
prepared for others; but soon buriers failed, and then corpses began to
litter the streets. These Justinian commissioned his agent Theodorus
to bury. When all the existing burial-grounds were filled, huge
burial-pits were dug wherever they could find space all round the city.
Finally, when the digging of graves could no longer keep pace with the
deaths, they mounted the towers of the city walls in Sycae, the port of
Byzantium, and removing the roofs threw in the bodies promiscuously:
when these were filled, the roofs were replaced. But when the wind
set from that quarter, the awful stench proved most distressing to
the citizens. Many corpses were simply cast out on the shore, where
they were piled in barges and turned adrift out to sea. We shall see
these various conditions strikingly reproduced during the plague of
Marseilles in A.D. 1721. John of Ephesus states that the ambulance
arrangements made by Justinian for the burial of the dead met all the
requirements, but it is impossible to accept his statement in face of
the precise and detailed account of Procopius.

The horrors of the plague, according to Procopius, turned men from
dissoluteness to piety, for fear that their own death was imminent. If,
however, they fell sick and recovered, they became even more dissolute
than before, in the belief that they were now safe for the future.
According to Thucydides, the Athenian Greeks became reckless from the
first and gave themselves over to pleasure, seeing that the disease
smote virtuous and vicious alike. Perhaps, however, the difference
lay more in the mental attitude of the observer than in the actual
demeanour of those observed.

All work came to a standstill in Byzantium, so that famine supervened
in the city, where usually everything was in profusion. Justinian
himself became infected and suffered from an attack, in which a bubo
appeared.

Such in brief is the account that Procopius gives of the plague of
Byzantium, as he saw it with his own eyes. Unquestionably he had
before him the description of the plague of Athens, for now and again
he slips into an identical turn of language. But to speak of him as a
flagrant plagiarist of Thucydides is sheer absurdity. Rather he gives
the impression of maintaining a critical attitude towards Thucydides,
and of emphasizing the points of dissent. Procopius has no doubt that
he is describing the same disease as Thucydides, and is impressed by
the clinical differences he has observed. The tone of Thucydides is
subjective: he attempts a general description, but cannot keep in
the background the symptoms of his own case. The tone of Procopius
is wholly objective: he writes as an intensely interested onlooker,
retailing his own observations, supplemented by the statements of those
who have had the disease and recovered. The apparent resemblance of the
two accounts is really no more than surface deep.

An account of an offset of this pandemic at Antioch survives from the
pen of the historian Evagrius,[124] who was born in A.D. 536 and spent
the greater part of his life at Antioch. Apparently he knew nothing of
the records of Procopius or Agathias, for he says that the history of
this pestilence had not been written previously. He knew the narrative
of the plague of Athens, for he says that this plague was ‘in some
respects much like that which Thucydides described, in others quite
unlike’: it cannot be said to have influenced either the form or the
substance of his description. He says that it first reached Antioch
in 540 B.C., whereas it did not appear at Byzantium till the spring
of 542 B.C., and that the pandemic lasted altogether fifty-two years,
exceeding ‘all the diseases that had ever been before Philostratus
wondered at the plague, which was in his time, because it continued
fifteen years’. This is presumed to have been the Antonine pestilence,
for Philostratus was born in Lemnos about A.D. 170, but spent most of
his life in Rome and died there in A.D. 245. Evagrius had the fullest
opportunities of observing the plague at close quarters, for as a boy
at school he himself suffered from an inguinal bubo, and in later years
he lost his wife and several children of plague. He was but three
years old when it first reached Antioch, so that his description must
represent the disease after it had been rife for many years. Evagrius
traces its origin further back than does Procopius, placing it in
Ethiopia, so that it may actually have originated in an endemic area
in Central Africa. Spreading over the whole world, it attacked cities
quite irrespective of season, summer and winter alike. Evagrius has no
doubt whatever of the contagiousness of the distemper. Those, he says,
who escaped one year were attacked the next, and those who fled to
places free from disease were the first to succumb, as they carried the
contagion with them. Infection seemed to be taken in various ways—by
sharing beds, by actual contact, by visiting infected houses, or even
by casual meeting in the market-place. Some, however, escaped in spite
of running every risk of infection.

The description that Evagrius gives of the symptoms of the disease,
though brief, is wonderfully comprehensive. It shows that he was
cognizant of the tonsillar, the bubonic, and the carbuncular or
pustular types at least, and the rapidity of a fatal issue in a
proportion of the cases suggests that pneumonic and septicaemic forms
were also rife. ‘The disease’, he writes, ‘was compound and mixt with
many other maladies. It took some men first in the head, made their
eyes as red as blood and puffed up their cheeks: afterwards it fell at
their throat, and whomsoever it took it dispatched him out of the way.
It began with some with a fire and voiding of all that was within them,
in others with swellings about the secret parts of the body, and there
arose burning fires, so that they died thereof within two or three days
of the furthest in such sort and of so perfect a remembrance as if they
had not been sick at all; others died mad, and carbuncles that arose
out of the flesh killed many.’

Agathias[125] (b. A.D. 536) describes a recrudescence of this pandemic
in Byzantium in A.D. 558. He carried on the history of Procopius from
its termination to A.D. 558. He says that the disease had never really
disappeared since the first outbreak in A.D. 542, when it burst out
furiously a second time in the spring of this year. Many persons fell
as though stricken with apoplexy: those who held out longest died
on the fifth day. Buboes and continuous fever were the outstanding
features, as in the previous visitation. ‘People of all ages perished
indiscriminately, but especially the young and vigorous and those in
the flower of youth: and of them the males, for the females were not
so much affected.’ With an epidemic recurrence such as this, the chief
incidence would necessarily be on the young, who had neither resisted,
nor acquired immunity from, a previous attack. The character of their
occupation or of their habits of life would doubtless explain the
special liability of the males to infection.

Gregory of Tours[126] (A.D. 540-94) testifies to the widespread
character of the plague in France. In A.D. 549 he says that it
depopulated the province of Arles, and afterwards devastated Narbonne.
Here Felix, bishop of Nantes,[127] succumbed to the sloughing of his
legs caused by the application of cantharides plasters to a crop of
pustules.

In A.D. 566, before the plague invaded the Auvergne,[128] a succession
of portents terrified the district. Three or four great brilliant
lights made their appearance around the sun, which nevertheless
underwent almost complete eclipse in October, looking dark and
discoloured and like a bag. The heaven also seemed to be on fire, and
many strange signs were seen. Then in A.D. 567 the epidemic raged
throughout the district, causing an immense mortality. Lyons, Bourges,
Chalons, and Dijon also lost a large part of their population. Coffins
for the dead soon failed, and as many as ten bodies would be placed
in the same grave. One Sunday no less than three hundred corpses were
counted in the church of St. Peter at Clermont. Death seized the
victims with dramatic suddenness. ‘There grew in the groin or armpit
a lesion in the shape of a serpent, the effect of which was such that
men yielded up their souls on the second or third day, and its violence
completely took away their senses.’

In this epidemic buboes were evidently most frequently found in
the groins, for Gregory repeatedly speaks of the disease as _lues
inguinaria_ or _morbus inguinalis_ and the like.

Plague broke out at Marseilles[129] in A.D. 587, brought there by
a merchant ship from Spain, which concealed its contact with a
plague-stricken port. Several people made purchases from it, and in
consequence eight inhabitants of one house were fatally infected. As in
the epidemic of A.D. 1720, the disease did not spread immediately to
the whole town. Bishop Theodore and a few of his suite shut themselves
up in the church of St. Victor, and there, amid the general desolation,
implored the mercy of God with prayer and vigil till the epidemic was
at an end. On the return of the fugitive populace a belated outbreak
exacted its appointed tribute.

Around Avignon[130] celestial portents foretold the plague that broke
out in A.D. 590. The earth was illuminated at night by a light as
bright as the midday. Balls of fire were seen tracking the sky during
the night. A violent earthquake was felt at dawn in mid-June. The
sun suffered almost complete eclipse in mid-August. Abundant autumn
thunderstorms and rain raised the rivers in flood.

Meantime Italy, too, had been in like case. Paul the Deacon[131] (A.D.
720-90) briefly refers to a plague that had devastated Liguria in A.D.
565. He says that the plague was presaged by the sudden appearance of
marks on houses, doors, utensils, and clothing, and the more they tried
to efface them the more conspicuous they became. Eusebius[132] in like
manner told of moulds on the walls of houses in a previous pestilence,
and in Leviticus[133] we read of greenish and reddish marks on houses
infected with leprosy. Towards the end of the year buboes began to
attack the people, followed by a fever that killed in three days. The
inhabitants fled, leaving property and cattle and crops, and desolation
reigned supreme.

But it was on the head of hapless Rome that the full fury of the
expiring storm was destined to spend its virulence. Both Gregory of
Tours[134] and Paul the Deacon have left a record of the havoc. Gregory
says that he obtained his information from his own deacon, who happened
to be in Rome at the time. Paul the Deacon[135] seems to borrow his
material from Gregory of Tours. An inundation of the Tiber in A.D. 589
resulted in the destruction of many old buildings on its banks and in
the flooding of the granaries of the church, so that immense stores of
grain were spoilt. The river yielded up a multitude of serpents, and
a dragon of extraordinary size was seen to float through the city on
its passage to the sea. Probably these were eels from the muddy bed
of the Tiber, metamorphosed after the manner of Ovid into serpents:
the dragon no one seems to have seen at close quarters. The inundation
was followed in A.D. 590 by a severe outburst of bubonic plague
(_pestilentia, quam inguinariam vocant_).

Portents were not confined to Rome. According to Evagrius,[136] a great
earthquake in A.D. 589 laid Antioch in ruins, destroying the sanctuary
of the Mother of God, and taking sixty thousand lives. In Upper Italy
also there were extensive inundations due to overflowing of the
mountain streams in Venetia, Liguria, and the sub-Alpine plains.

It is instructive to contrast the records of these chroniclers of the
Church of the West with those of Procopius and Evagrius, and still more
so with that of the pagan historian Thucydides. So intent are they on
the mental and moral features of the distemper, that they say almost
nothing of its physical features. They dilate at length on the visions
and hallucinations that haunted the distracted fancy of the sufferers,
which Thucydides disregards, though such must have accompanied the
wild delirium he describes. Demons stalking the streets, ineffaceable
marks and moulds on houses, voices from the grave, and celestial
portents were the creations of the delirious fancy, and are faithfully
reproduced in the pages of the Christian writers. One is sensible
of something of the spirit in which Fra Angelico portrayed the joys
of heaven and the torments of hell, when pestilence lay heavy on
mediaeval Italy. The mortality in Rome was appalling. Death was rampant
everywhere. At first the dead bodies were gathered up and flung in
loads into great gaping graves, but after a while none were left even
to bury the dead, and putrid corpses littered the streets. All business
was at a standstill, and such as survived were huddled, panic-stricken
like sheep, in the insecure sanctuary of the churches. To add to the
general consternation, Pope Pelagius perished on February 8, A.D. 590.
The choice of a successor lay with the clergy and people of Rome,
subject to confirmation by the Emperor. With one accord they haled
Abbot Gregory from the seclusion of his monastery to the pontifical
chair in anticipation of the Imperial assent. Gregory of Tours, Paul
the Deacon, and John the Deacon all tell of Gregory’s unwillingness
to obey the summons, and of his attempt to intercept the letter of
election on its way to the Emperor in Constantinople. But meantime,
as the plague showed no sign of abating, Gregory determined to try to
appease the wrath of God by a special act of contrition. Ascending
the pulpit of St. John Lateran, he preached a memorable sermon, which
has been preserved by the hand of Gregory of Tours. He implored them
to make their sufferings an instrument for their conversion, and a
means by which to soften the hardness of their hearts. He besought
them, as Cyprian had done before, as Borromeo and Belsunce were to
do hereafter, not to let the suddenness with which death seized them,
sweeping away numbers at a time, and giving no opportunity for tears of
penitence, find them unprepared to meet their God. Let them call their
sins to mind and purge them away with weeping, for God wills not the
death of a sinner, but rather that he may turn from his wickedness and
live. Let no man despair because of the multitude of his offences. Did
not God forgive the people of Nineveh of old, when they did penance for
three days, and did He not give the reward of everlasting life to the
dying thief? Let them therefore turn with him to God with importunity
of prayer, or ever the sword of punishment descend. Does He not say by
the mouth of the Psalmist: call upon Me in the time of trouble: so will
I hear thee and thou shalt praise Me. Let them all come with contrite
hearts and mended moods at early dawn on the fourth day from then to
the celebration of a sevenfold litany, and with lamentation in their
souls, so that the stern Judge may remit the sentence of damnation He
has purposed to pass upon them. Let the clergy then start from the
church of the martyr-saints Cosmo and Damian, along with the priests
of the sixth region. All the abbots with their monks from the church
of the martyrs Gervase and Protasius, along with the priests of the
fourth region. All the abbesses with their flocks from the church of
the martyr-saints Marcellinus and Peter, along with the priests of the
first region. All the children from the church of the martyr-saints
John and Paul, along with the priests of the second region. All the
laity from the church of the protomartyr-saint Stephen, along with the
priests of the seventh region. All the widowed women from the church
of St. Euphemia, along with the priests of the fifth region. And the
married women from the church of the martyr-saint Clement, along with
the priests of the third region. Let them all go forth from these
several churches with prayer and lamentation, to meet at the basilica
of the Blessed Virgin Mary the Mother of Christ, there with long and
earnest supplication to implore pardon for their sins.

So Gregory distributed the remnant that the plague had spared according
to the seven ecclesiastical regions of Rome, bidding his clergy spend
the three days’ interval in ceaseless psalms and prayers for mercy.
Then on the fourth day, the festival of St. Mark, in the pale light
of the early April morning, the great procession set out. With solemn
chant of doleful _Miserere_, these seven trains of human suffering
wended their slow way sadly amid the ruined monuments of ancient Rome.
No other sound broke the stillness, but the faint rustle of sweeping
garments and the silent shuffle of sick men’s feet. Now and again one
fell stricken and lay as he fell, for Death was moving hither and
thither among the moving ranks.[137] No less than eighty breathed out
their lives before the church of the Mother of God was reached. There
again Gregory fervently exhorted the people to repentance, so that the
plague might cease.

A legend has it that as Gregory, heading his train of penitents,
reached the Aelian Bridge, there, right before him, on the summit
of Hadrian’s mole, a heavenly vision met his eyes. There stood the
Archangel Michael, restoring a flaming sword to its sheath, in token
that the plague was stayed. It is to this legend that the mausoleum
owes the name of Castel S. Angelo, that it has borne since the tenth
century at least. A bronze figure of the Archangel sheathing his sword
still hovers on the summit, fifth of a series that have stood there at
different times.

The legend of the angel is not mentioned by either of Gregory’s
biographers, the deacons Paul and John, or by Bede or Gregory of Tours.
Though of earlier origin than the tenth century, the first written
records of it are in a German sermon of the twelfth or thirteenth
century and in the _Legenda Aurea_ of the end of the thirteenth century
Caxton has rendered it thus:

       ‘And because the mortality ceased not, he ordained
    a procession, in which he did do bear an image of our
    Lady, which, as is said, St. Luke the Evangelist made,
    which was a good painter, he had carved it and painted
    it after the likeness of the glorious Virgin Mary. And
    anon the mortality ceased, and the air became pure and
    clear, and about the image was heard a voice of angels
    that sung this Anthem:

    Regina Coeli laetare! Alleluia.
    Quia quem meruisti portare: Alleluia.
    Resurrexit sicut dixit: Alleluia.

and St. Gregory put thereto

          Ora pro nobis, deum rogamus: Alleluia.

       At the same time St. Gregory saw an angel upon a
    castle, which made clean a sword all bloody, and put
    it into the sheath, and thereby St. Gregory understood
    that the pestilence of this mortality was passed, and
    after that it was called the Castle Angel.’

In memory of this legend the great processions from S. Marco, until the
prohibition of processions in A.D. 1870, used to strike up the antiphon
‘Regina Coeli’, as soon as they came to the bridge of Hadrian.

For the true source of this legend there is no need to look beyond
the vision of the angel at the threshing-floor of Araunah: ‘And David
lifted up his eyes, and saw the angel of the Lord stand between the
earth and the heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out
over Jerusalem.’ In the Capitoline Museum is an altar dedicated to Isis
by some traveller on his safe return, and bearing the customary imprint
of two feet. The devout believed these to be the footprints of the
angel that appeared to Gregory, and the altar once stood in the church
of Ara Coeli.

[Illustration: GREGORY AND THE ANGEL

Photograph by Giraudon, Paris]

It is certain that at least as early as this time pictures were carried
in public procession. Theophylactus[138] has described two occasions
on which a sacred effigy of Christ, believed not to have been made
by human hands, was carried into battle for the sake of inspiring
valour and discipline into the soldiery (A.D. 586 and 588). Among the
many gems in which Bede’s _Ecclesiastical History_[139] abounds is
that picture of the arrival of Augustine and his companions in Thanet
‘bearing a silver cross for their banner, and the image of our Lord
and Saviour painted on a board’ (A.D. 597). The sixteenth-century
chronicler Baronius says, that the picture which Gregory carried
in this plague procession of A.D. 590 was that of the Madonna, now
preserved in the church of S. Maria Maggiore on the Esquiline, and
still believed to protect Rome from plague and pestilence. Rome has
no fewer than four pictures of the Madonna attributed like this one
to the hand of Luke the Physician, and all of them reputed to have
wonder-working powers. Expert opinion, alas! pronounces the oldest of
them a fifteenth century production.

Gregory’s procession has afforded a favourite theme for art. It is
the subject of one of the frescoes in the Lady Chapel of Winchester
Cathedral executed under the direction of Prior Silkstede at the
beginning of the sixteenth century. The scene is also shown in a
picture in the Chiesa del San Pietro at Perugia, in a modern picture by
the Austrian painter Hiremy Hirsch, and in several others elsewhere.
The miniature figured on the opposite page is one of two from a
beautiful Livre d’Heures, of the early fifteenth century, and once
the property of the Duc de Berry. It is now in the Musée Condé of the
Château de Chantilly.

An Italian tradition refers the custom of saying ‘Bless you’, when a
person sneezes, to the time of the pestilence of Gregory, in which all
those that sneezed were said to have died. Boersch, quoting from the
local chronicles of Kleinlauel and of Oseas Schadaeus, would trace its
origin to the plague at Strasbourg in A.D. 591.[140] ‘And when any one
sneezed, he gave up the ghost forthwith. Hence the saying “God help
you”. And when any one yawned, he died. Hence it comes that when any
one yawns, one makes the sign of the cross before the mouth.’ Probably
the association is even older than this, for Thucydides speaks of
sneezing in the plague of Athens. Sneezing and yawning were prominent
features of the Sweating Sickness.

[Illustration: PLATE V (Face Page 95)

FRESCO IN S. PIETRO IN VINCOLI, ROME

Photograph by Anderson, Rome]

FOOTNOTES:

[120] _Œuvres de Oribase, Bussemaker et Daremberg_, lib. 44. c. 17.

[121] _De Differ. Febr._ i, tom. vii, p. 2; 96, ed. Kuhn.

[122] _De Bello Persico_, ii. 22-3.

[123] _Hist._ iv. 28.

[124] _Hist._ iv. 28.

[125] _Hist._ v. 12.

[126] _Hist. Francorum_, iv. 5.

[127] vi. 14.

[128] iv. 31.

[129] _Hist. Francorum_, x. 1.

[130] x. 23.

[131] _De Gestis Langobardorum_, ii. 4.

[132] _Hist. Eccles._ vii. 22.

[133] xiv. 37.

[134] _Hist. Francorum_, x. 1.

[135] _De Gestis Langobardorum_, iii. 24.

[136] _Hist._ vi.

[137] This penitential procession has been wonderfully depicted by
Dudden in his _Gregory the Great_, vol. i, p. 217.

[138] _Hist._ ii. 3, and iii. 1.

[139] Bk. I, c. 25.

[140] _Essai sur la mortalité à Strasbourg_, p. 79.




CHAPTER VI


In the summer of A.D. 680 Rome was again gripped in the toils of an
appalling plague that had spread over the greater part of Italy. Paul
the Deacon[141] says that eclipses of both sun and moon in May were
followed by pestilence in the months of July, August, and September.
Describing its ravages at Ticinum (Pavia) Paul says that ‘the number
of the dead was so great that parents were often carried to burial on
the same biers as their children, and brothers along with sisters....
And then many saw with their own eyes a good and a bad angel passing
through the city by night. And whenever at the bidding of the good
angel, the bad one, who seemed to carry a lance in his hand, struck
so many times with his lance on the door of each house, as many of
that household would die on the following day. Then it was revealed to
some one that the plague would not cease until an altar was set up to
Sebastian, saint and martyr, at the church of S. Pietro in Vincoli.
This was done, and as soon as the altar was set up, the relics of the
martyr-saint Sebastian were brought from Rome, and forthwith the plague
ceased.’

Paul the Deacon, beyond all doubt, was referring to the church of S.
Pietro in Vincoli at Pavia, but the Romans of later date claimed the
legend for their own church of the same name, in which it has been
embodied in a fresco of the fifteenth century, ascribed to Pollajuolo
(1429-98). In the background, at the summit of a flight of stairs,
presumably suggested by those of Ara Coeli, a citizen is telling to
Pope Agatho, who is seated among his cardinals, his dream that the
pestilence will not cease till the body of S. Sebastian is brought into
the city. On the right the good angel indicates the condemned houses
to the bad angel in the guise of the Evil One, who strikes on the door
with his lance. On the left a procession, carrying a banner on which
the Madonna is depicted with robe spread out in protecting attitude,
is bringing in the relics. The foreground is strewn with corpses of
the dead. In the sky, bow in hand, hovers the angel that spreads the
pestilence. To the left is a group of the Almighty and angels, now
almost obliterated.

It is not generally recognized that the well-known picture ‘La Peste à
Rome’, by Delaunay (A.D. 1828-91), now in the Musée du Luxembourg at
Paris, was directly inspired by this fresco. The scene is laid in a
street of Rome, which is strewn with bodies of dead and dying, among
which the good and evil angels are busy at their task. The figure
of a youth huddled up in a brown shawl on a doorstep is a living
picture of misery. In the background a procession bearing a cross is
descending a flight of stairs, and a fire to purify the atmosphere is
burning in the open street. An effigy of Aesculapius and a colossal
equestrian statue of Constantine are introduced in the manner of the
Renaissance. The chief merit of the picture lies in the excellence of
its draughtsmanship.

In this same church at Rome is a mosaic effigy of Sebastian, believed
to have been executed in A.D. 683. In spite, however, of the name of
Sebastian, that it carries in gold mosaic letters, it is difficult to
believe that it is anything but a figure of St. Peter, transformed
perhaps in the presence of this epidemic to that of Sebastian. It
represents faithfully the traditional lineaments of the apostle, an old
man with white hair and beard, dressed in the true Byzantine style.
Kugler considers that the careful shadowing of the drapery, executed
with more than usual pains, indicates that the effigy was intended
to be exposed to the close gaze of the pious. The figure on its blue
mosaic background is stiff and inanimate, even beyond other similar
archaic effigies. Beside it, on a marble tablet, is an inscription in
Latin, reproducing almost to a word the story told by Paul the Deacon.
Tradition has it that Pope Agatho (A.D. 678-82) on this occasion caused
the bones of the saint to be collected in the cemetery of Calixtus, and
brought to the church of S. Pietro in Vincoli, there to be enshrined
beneath an altar. In the ninth century the body seems to have been
removed for safety to the Vatican, and again transferred to the church
of S. Sebastiano, where it now is, by Honorius III in A.D. 1216. This
church, however, was completely rebuilt in A.D. 1611.

[Illustration: PLATE VI LA PESTE À ROME. BY DELAUNAY

Photograph by Giraudon, Paris (Face Page 96)]

From the time of this pestilence in A.D. 680, Sebastian was universally
recognized as the patron saint of pestilence. Gradually he comes to be
identified more particularly with true plague, but never in the same
exclusive fashion as his brother saint, St. Roch. His comprehensive
patronage of pestilence indicates not only how rife were other epidemic
diseases besides true plague, but how little they were differentiated
in the public mind.

The story of the life of Sebastian[142] is well authenticated in its
main incidents. Born in the middle of the third century A.D., he was
a native of Narbonne in Gaul. His noble birth secured for him early
in life the command of a company of Praetorian Guards, so that he
was constantly about the person of the Emperor. Though secretly a
Christian and using his position to secure the conversion of others
to Christianity, he remained intensely loyal to the temporal interest
of the Emperor. Among his friends were two young soldiers, Marcus and
Marcellinus, like him of noble birth. They were convicted of embracing
Christianity, and after enduring torture bravely were led out to die.
On the way their aged parents, their wives and children, and their
friends, implored them to relent, and they were about to recant, when
Sebastian rushed forward and exhorted them not to renounce their
Redeemer. So inspiring was his appeal, that the whole assembly, guards,
judges, and all, were converted and baptized, and for a while Marcus
and Marcellinus were saved. This scene is depicted in a spirited canvas
by Veronese in the plague church of S. Sebastiano at Venice. Their
respite was but short, for in a few months they were put to death with
many others of the Christian community, and Sebastian himself was
condemned to die. The Emperor Diocletian (A.D. 284-305), by reason
of his personal attachment, sent for him and exhorted him to abjure
his heresy, but Sebastian meekly and courageously refused. Diocletian
then ordered that he should be bound to a stake and shot to death with
arrows, and that an inscription should be placed on the stake for all
to see, saying that he was put to death only for being a Christian. A
vast number of pictures, beside the masterpiece of Sodoma,[143] depict
this scene. Pierced with arrows, Sebastian was left for dead, but at
midnight Irene, the widow of one of his martyred friends, came to take
away his body for burial, but found him still alive, the arrows having
pierced no vital part. She and her attendants carried him to her house
and tended him, till he was completely healed. After this they urged
him to leave Rome, but Sebastian went boldly to the palace gate, and as
the Emperor passed out, pleaded for those Christians who were condemned
to suffer for their faith, and reproached Diocletian for his cruelty.
The Emperor in fierce anger ordered his guards to seize Sebastian and
carry him to the circus, there to beat him to death with clubs. To
conceal his dead body from his friends it was thrown into the Cloaca
Maxima, but a Christian woman, Lucina, received tidings in a vision of
where the body lay, and recovering it had it secretly buried in the
catacombs. The church of S. Sebastiano at Rome is now built over these
catacombs.

[Illustration: PLATE VII (Face Page 99)

SEBASTIAN AS PROTECTOR AGAINST PESTILENCE

By Benozzo Gozzoli. Photograph by Brogi, Florence]

Though Sebastian was martyred in A.D. 288, it was not till the plague
of A.D. 683 that his cult as a protector from pestilence was firmly
established.

The association of Sebastian with pestilence was in the first instance
purely fortuitous. Devout men in seasons of pestilence were wont to
acclaim their own peculiar patron saint a very present help in time of
trouble: an altar, a church, a votive picture, a procession, these,
now one, now another, were the price of the promised dispensation. But
that Sebastian came to be the patron saint of plague and pestilence
was due to the association of arrows with his effigy and with the
story of his attempted martyrdom. From remote antiquity we have seen
that arrows have been emblematic of plague. It was Apollo among the
Greeks that scattered pestilence with his bow, and who was invoked also
by sacrifice and hymns of praise to avert it. In Christian hagiology
and Christian art Sebastian is the counterpart of the pagan Apollo.
Whatever the variations of detail, Sebastian is practically always
represented, either transfixed with arrows or carrying an arrow in his
hand. Having regard to his story, it is a mistake to show the arrows
piercing a vital part, such as the heart, the brain, or even the neck,
as is often done. And for artistic effect it is well that they should
not be so numerous as to suggest a well-filled pin-cushion: albeit the
_Golden Legend_ has it that ‘the archers shot at him till he was as
full of arrows as an urchin is full of pricks’.

Such is the effect of an interesting fresco by Benozzo Gozzoli (_c._
A.D. 1420-97) in the Chiesa della Collegiata at San Gimignano,
dedicated to Sebastian in A.D. 1465 in a time of plague. At the head of
the picture, Christ, with the marks of wounds in His hands, communes
with the Virgin and a group of saints. Sebastian is standing on a
pedestal, his whole body studded with arrows, while archers on either
side of him are rapidly increasing the number. This Collegiata fresco
has been closely followed in an Italian _Pestblätter_, reproduced in
the Heitz-Schreiber portfolio of _Pestblätter_ (q.v.).

Another votive fresco in the church of S. Agostino at San Gimignano,
also by Benozzo Gozzoli, commemorating the disastrous plague of A.D.
1464, shows Sebastian turning aside with his cloak the broken arrows
of pestilence. In the uppermost part of the fresco the Almighty is
launching forth His shafts, and attendant angels are aiding in the
task. Between them and Sebastian Christ and the Virgin kneel in an
attitude of prayer. Sebastian stands in the centre of the foreground
on a low stone pedestal, on which are inscribed the words, ‘Sancte
Sebastiane, Intercede Pro Devoto Populo Tuo.’ His body is fully draped,
and the broken arrows lie behind him, removed by the hands of angels,
two of whom hold a crown of martyrdom above his head.

[Illustration: PLATE VIII (Face Page 100)

SODOMA’S SEBASTIAN PLAGUE BANNER (REVERSE)

SS. Roch and Sigismund, and Brethren of Compagnia di S. Sebastiano

Photograph by Alinari, Rome]

These older representations of Sebastian by Benozzo Gozzoli, and others
by Albrecht Dürer and the early German school, showing Sebastian as
an elderly bearded man, offer but little attractiveness. By far the
most beautiful pictures are those of Perugino, Sodoma, and Francia,
who use his nude and youthful figure, as the Greeks used Apollo, as a
model for the exhibition of elegance of form and accuracy of anatomical
design. As one of the few nude forms permitted to Christian art, it
is readily understood why Sebastian figures in such a multitude of
pictures. The finest example of this type is the peerless masterpiece
of Sodoma (1477-1549), now in the Uffizi Gallery at Florence, one
of the most beautiful creations of Renaissance art. It was formerly
a banner, painted in A.D. 1528 for the Sienese Compagnia di San
Sebastiano in Camollia, and was carried in procession when Siena
was afflicted with pestilence. It was kept in the church of the
Confraternity at Siena, until it was removed to Florence in A.D.
1786. The undraped body of the saint is modelled on the lines of the
youthful Apollo. He is bound to a tree in the foreground of a wild
Italian landscape. His neck, side, and one thigh are transfixed with
arrows. The upturned face wears an expression of ecstasy, in spite of
suffering, as an angel descends to place the crown of martyrdom on his
brow. Symonds has said of this picture:

      ‘Gifted with an exquisite feeling for the beauty of
    the human body, Sodoma excelled himself when he was
    contented with a single figure. His St. Sebastian,
    notwithstanding its wan and faded colouring, is still
    the very best that has been painted. Suffering,
    refined and spiritual, without contortion or spasm,
    could not be presented with more pathos in a form of
    more surpassing loveliness. This is a truly demonic
    picture in the fascination it exercises and the memory
    it leaves upon the mind. Part of its unanalysable
    charm may be due to the bold thought of combining the
    beauty of a Greek Hylas with the Christian sentiment of
    martyrdom. Only the Renaissance could have produced a
    hybrid so successful, because so deeply felt.’

On the reverse of the banner is the Madonna with the Child in her
arms, enthroned on clouds, above a kneeling group of SS. Roch and
Sigismund and members of the Compagnia di S. Sebastiano, wearing their
characteristic garments. The work is much inferior to that of the
face of the banner, and is said to be in part the work of Beccafumi
(1486-1551).

Another superb, but little known picture, by Perugino (A.D. 1446-1524)
in the Musée at Grenoble, shows the same type of nude figure of
Sebastian bound to a tree. Face and figure alike are the very
embodiment of youthfulness and grace, verging almost on effeminacy. In
this picture S. Apolline stands beside Sebastian.

Exceptionally, and more particularly in the older pictures, the
youthful Sebastian is depicted clothed in the costume of the period,
with or without an arrow in his hand. In the Brera at Milan is a
folding altar-piece of five panels by Nicolò da Foligno (A.D. 1430-92),
in which he is represented as a youth in kilted tunic and hose. He is
similarly clad in another picture in the Vatican, ‘The Coronation of
the Virgin and Saints,’ also by Nicolò da Foligno, and in a few others
as well.

Sebastian is very frequently represented in plague pictures along with
other saints: his most frequent companion by far is St. Roch. In the
sacristy of S. Maria della Salute at Venice, itself a plague church,
is Titian’s well-known picture commemorating the great plague of A.D.
1512, in which St. Sebastian, St. Roch, and the physician-saints Cosmo
and Damian stand before the throne of St. Mark, across whose majestic
figure the shadow of a cloud has fallen. These groups of saints are not
infrequently represented mediating with the Madonna.

Travelling through Italy from town to town one becomes aware that the
land of pestilence has been roughly partitioned into separate dominions
under the tutelage of varying presiding saints. In Milan it is Carlo
Borromeo: in Venice, S. Rocco: in Rome, the Madonna: in Central Italy,
in Siena, and in Florence, S. Sebastiano. In Florence he was the patron
saint of the Compagnia della Misericordia, the institution that has for
seven centuries been so closely interwoven with the daily life of the
city, and has left no small mark on the products of Florentine art.

Christian sculpture has also seized the opportunity of the nude figure
for a model. Well-known statues are those by Matteo Civitali (_c._
1470) at Lucca, and by Puget (1622-94) in the church of Carignano at
Genoa. A colossal recumbent figure of the saint by Bernini (1598-1680)
lies beneath the high altar of the church of S. Sebastian on the Via
Appia at Rome.

In Switzerland especially, but also in southern Germany and
south-eastern France, wooden statues of Sebastian are commonly met
with, mostly belonging to the three centuries following the Black
Death. Several may be seen in the Historical Museum at Basle, more or
less archaic in character, and a very fine example in the Cluny Museum
at Paris. The same museum also possesses a pair of quaint coloured
high reliefs in wood of St. Sebastian and St. Roch respectively.
These wooden effigies are naturally most common in districts where
wood-carving has been extensively pursued.

[Illustration: PLATE IX (Face Page 102)

SS. MARK, SEBASTIAN, ROCH, COSMAS AND DAMIAN. BY TITIAN

Photograph by Naya, Venice]

It must not be supposed that the cult of Sebastian was widespread from
the first, or that the record of its growth is continuous and unbroken
from its inauguration in this Roman plague of A.D. 683. Circumstance
chanced to be arrayed against its continuity. The seventh century
was not a notable period of plague in Europe, and that was now the
dominating epidemic. There was famine and pestilence in Ireland,[144]
but its nature is not known, and the kings of Erin faced their Irish
question in the spirit of Cromwell. In a season of famine they summoned
the leading clergy and laity to a council to consider the situation.
No one, in the circumstances, will dispute the propriety of their
injunction to clergy and laity to observe a fast. But the further
injunction that they should employ their hours of abstinence in praying
that some sickness might carry off the surplus of the lower orders,
as the excess of population was the cause of the famine, is more
debatable. (‘Petebant ut nimia multitudo vulgi per infirmitatem aliquam
tolleretur, quia numerositas populi erat occasio famis.’) At the
instance of St. Gerald, who contended that the Almighty could relieve
the situation more suitably and quite as easily by multiplying the
fruits of the earth, it was proposed to recommend this course to His
adoption, at any rate as a preliminary measure. But clergy and laity,
headed by the holy St. Fechin, were in no mood for such half-hearted
measures as promised no finality, and St. Gerald’s suggestion was set
aside. Pestilence followed in due course, and the Divine working was
made manifest in that it claimed St. Fechin and the two kings of Erin
among its innumerable victims.

In spite of the retrocession of plague from Europe after the seventh
century, Syria,[145] the Euphrates valley, and Irak were still
devastated at frequent intervals by recurring epidemics. From this
persistent source it spread as far as Constantinople in A.D. 697 and
794, in the latter case almost completely depopulating Constantinople
according to Nicephoras Byzantinus. Constantinople was in such intimate
relation, commercial and political, with Syria and Central Asia that
transference of plague was wellnigh inevitable. After this there was a
long lull in Europe, and to a less extent in Syria, until the eleventh
century. It is often confidently stated that the Crusades brought
plague back to Europe, but it must not be forgotten that there was a
severe epidemic of plague on that continent in A.D. 1094, before the
Crusades commenced. Doubtless they served to maintain the continuity
of infection. The pestilence that decimated the army of Louis IX and
carried off him and his son was by no means certainly bubonic plague.
The surviving accounts suggest rather cholera or dysentery. Again, in
A.D. 1167, the army of Frederick Barbarossa, while encamped before
Rome, was swept away by a pestilence, that seems to have been bubonic
plague, which penetrated into the city also and worked great havoc.
Thomas à Becket, writing to Pope Alexander III after the retreat of
Frederick, congratulates him on the Lord having destroyed Sennacherib’s
army. Again, in A.D. 1230, a destructive inundation of the Tiber
was followed by plague, that led the Romans to recall the banished
pope, Gregory IX. In A.D. 1244 plague was in Florence, and led to
the institution of the Compagnia della Misericordia. Its foundations
were laid in the fines paid by wool-porters for the use of foul and
blasphemous language at their meeting-house. One of them, the good old
Piero di Luca Borsi, induced them, when the total had reached a large
sum, to spend it in the provision of six litters, one for each ward of
the city, and to select two of their members weekly for each litter, to
carry sick persons to the hospitals or dead bodies to the mortuaries.

In A.D. 1294 plague was again widespread and severe in Europe, and a
succession of scattered epidemics, of which the most severe were those
of A.D. 1320 and 1333 respectively in southern France and Spain, led up
to the virulent pandemic of A.D. 1348 and after, commonly known as the
Black Death.

Out of the desolate wilderness of the Black Death arose the figure of
St. Roch,[146] patron saint of the plague-stricken and intercessor
against the plague. Born at Montpellier, the son of noble parents,
probably about A.D. 1295, he seemed designed for a life of sanctity by
the birthmark of a small red cross on his breast. So Mahomet before him
had borne in the imprint of a mole between his shoulders the token of
his divine mission. From boyhood he was attracted by the active virtues
of the Redeemer, and aspired to follow that example rather than to
devote himself to the life of the cloister. The death of his parents,
before he was twenty years old, left him with great riches, which he
distributed forthwith among the poor and hospitals. His lands he left
in the management of his brother, and set out on foot, as a pilgrim,
for Rome. On his way he found plague raging at Aquapendente. There he
gave himself to the service of the sick in the hospital, and such was
his skill and sympathy that his ministrations were regarded as more
than human. The sick seemed to be healed by his mere prayers, or by the
sign of the Cross as he stood over them, so that when the plague soon
ceased, they in their enthusiasm attributed it to his intercession. So
Roch himself became inspired with the belief in a divine Providence
specially guiding his ministry. Hearing that plague was devastating
the province of Romagna, he hastened thither and devoted himself to
the sick in the cities of Casena and Rimini. Thence he went to Rome,
where plague was raging fiercely (_c._ 1306), and for three years
tended the sick, devoting himself to those most destitute of help. His
constant prayer to God was that he might be a martyr in his task, but
for long he passed unscathed through daily peril. Visiting city after
city, wherever plague was rife, he succumbed at last to the infection
at Piacenza, while nursing the sick in the hospital. Along with a
burning inward fever, a horrible ulcer broke out on his left thigh. The
pain was so intolerable that he shrieked aloud. Fearing to disturb the
inmates of the hospital, he crawled into the street, but the officers
would not let him remain there for fear of spreading infection. With
the aid of his pilgrim’s staff he dragged himself to a solitary spot
outside the gates of Piacenza, and there laid himself down to die. But
still a kind Providence watched over him. His little dog, that had
attended him faithfully in all his pilgrimage, went daily into the city
and brought back a loaf of bread, none knew whence. An angel came, too,
and dressed his sore and tended him, till he was well. Others say that
it was the dog of a countryman, one Gothard, that brought food to him.
On his recovery he turned his steps back to his native Montpellier,
but his sufferings had so changed him that even his own retainers
there did not recognize him. He was arrested as a spy, and condemned
by the judge, who chanced to be his own uncle, to be thrown into the
public prison. Roch, believing it to be God’s will, yielded to the
punishment without revealing his identity, and languished in a dungeon
for five years. One morning, when the jailer entered his cell, he found
it filled with a bright supernatural light, but his prisoner dead,
and by his side a writing that revealed his name and the words: ‘All
those that are stricken by the plague, and who pray for aid through
the merits and intercession of St. Roch, the servant of God, shall be
healed.’ His uncle, the judge, gave him an honourable burial, and the
whole city lamented his death.

St. Roch is believed to have died in A.D. 1327 in his thirty-second
year. At Montpellier he was venerated from the first, and this
veneration was quickened and extended by the great pandemic of A.D.
1348. But it was not till the fifteenth century that his cult became
widespread. This was the direct consequence of an outbreak of plague
at Constance in A.D. 1414, during that Council of prelates that
condemned Huss to the stake. They were about to disperse and fly from
danger, when a young German monk told them of the power of St. Roch.
On his advice the Council ordered an effigy of the Saint to be carried
in procession through the streets with prayers and litanies: and
immediately the plague was stayed. His festival has been celebrated for
centuries on the sixteenth day of August.

In A.D. 1485 the Venetians, who from their trade with the Levant,
were constantly subject to plague, carried off the body of St. Roch
from Montpellier by stealth, and the church of San Rocco was built to
receive it.

Such is the legend of St. Roch. He and Sebastian commonly figure
together in dedicatory plague pictures, as dual protectors against
plague. They seem to represent in art two attitudes to suffering,
St. Roch that of compassion, St. Sebastian that of courage and
resignation—two attitudes well expressed in four short lines of an
obscure Australian poet that deserve to be better known than they are:

    Life is mostly froth and bubble:
      Two things stand like stone:
    Kindness in another’s trouble,
      Courage in your own.

Coming into general knowledge about the time of the revival of art, the
legend of St. Roch and his figure were favourite and familiar subjects
in the Christian art of the West. The whole legend has been frequently
used as a theme for the decoration of churches dedicated to his name:
such a one may be seen in Siena, and another, though less complete, in
Venice. In the Scuola di S. Rocco his life-story is set out in a series
of twenty carved reliefs on the walnut panelling of the upper hall.

Sometimes several scenes from his life are blended in a single picture.
In the Brera, at Milan, is a picture of St. Roch with Madonna and
Child, by Ambrogio da Fossano, called ‘Borgognone’ (A.D. 1480-1523). In
the background are scenes from his life, among which his dog is shown
carrying a loaf in its mouth. The picture formerly belonged to the
Company of Charity of Milan.

St. Roch is generally represented as a man in the prime of life, with
a short pointed beard, delicate features, and a gentle expression of
countenance. As a rule he wears a pilgrim’s dress, with a cockle-shell
in his hat and a wallet at his side. In one hand he holds a long staff,
while with the other he lifts his robe to show the plague sore in his
groin or thigh. Very rarely he is figured as a youth in the dress of
the period, and is then nearly always introduced to balance a similar
Sebastian.

Numerous pictures deal with single episodes in his life—his tending
the plague-sick, his healing by an angel, his life and death in prison.
The best known are perhaps those by Tintoretto in the church of S.
Rocco at Venice. Many show him praying among the sick, as in the
picture by Domenichino of Bologna (A.D. 1584-1641) in the Palazzo Rosso
at Genoa. An angel with a drawn sword hovers over the scene, and St.
Roch holds out one arm, as though entreating the angel to put up his
sword into its sheath. Jacopo Bassano (A.D. 1510-92), in a picture in
the Brera, represents him among a number of plague victims, with hand
raised in attitude of benediction.

[Illustration: PLATE X (Face Page 108)

S. ROCH. BY AMBROGIO BORGOGNONE

Photograph by Anderson, Rome]

[Illustration: PLATE XI (Face Page 109)

AN INTERCESSORY PLAGUE PICTURE BY NIKLAUS MANUEL. S. ROCH TENDED BY AN
ANGEL]

A picture by the Swiss painter, Niklaus Manuel (A.D. 1484-1530), at
Basle, painted in tempera on linen, shows St. Roch with a little angel
tending his wound. It is typical of a large group of intercessory
plague pictures. At the summit of the picture is the Almighty in
glory in the heavens. Beneath Him is St. Anna with the Virgin Mary
and the Child Jesus: they are placed between the Almighty and the
plague-stricken to indicate that they are the appropriate medium of
intercession. They are flanked on the one side by St. Roch, and on the
other by St. James. St. Anna appears in many pictures of this period,
as Pope Alexander II in 1494 promoted her worship, by making her
feast-day one of the chief festivals of the Church. At the foot of the
picture is a rough delineation of the city attacked by plague: on the
right of it, a group representing probably the donors of the picture:
on the left, a group of sufferers, two of whom show plague marks on
their limbs. On the woman’s arm is a raised sore: on the man’s arm
black petechial blotches, on his body large circular spots, and an open
red ulcer on the inner side of his leg.

One of the most famous pictures of St. Roch is the altar-piece by
Rubens, at Alost, near Brussels. The upper part of the picture shows
the interior of a prison illuminated by a supernatural light. St.
Roch kneels looking up into the face of Christ, in radiant gratitude,
as he receives his commission as patron saint against the plague. An
angel holds a tablet on which is written, ‘Eris in peste patronus,’ in
allusion to the words revealed in his cell at his death.

Statues of St. Roch are hardly so frequently met with as those of
Sebastian: he was a less attractive model for sculptors. In the Musée
of Grenoble is a quaint archaic wooden figure of St. Roch of the early
fifteenth century, which stood formerly in the chapel of the Château of
Bressieux. It shows him in pilgrim guise, holding aside his garments to
show the bubo in his left groin. It is deeply incised, according to the
surgical practice of the period.

The plague mark of St. Roch is depicted in a variety of forms.
Sometimes it is simply a bubo in the groin, usually the left, or just
below it, to satisfy artistic decency. This form may be seen in a
picture by Crivelli (A.D. 1468-93) of ‘Four Saints’, in the Academy at
Venice, and in another of St. Roch and St. Sebastian, by Alfani, in the
Pinacotheca at Perugia.

Far more commonly the mark is a short longitudinal incision in the
upper part of either thigh, as in Sodoma’s plague banner (see Plate
VIII, p. 100).

Sometimes the incision is in the substance of a bubo. This may be seen
in a portrait of St. Roch over a side-altar in the church of S. Maria
dei Servi at Siena.

Not infrequently the incision is slanting or transverse and displays
a complete disregard for the femoral artery. A notable example is
Titian’s ‘St. Mark and Saints’ in the Salute at Venice (see Plate IX,
p. 102).

Sometimes the hose is slit over the incision in the flesh, as though
some bold and busy surgeon had been pressed for time. This may be seen
in Caroto’s picture of ‘Four Saints’ in the church of S. Fermo Maggiore
at Verona: also in a picture by Perugino, ‘Virgin and Saints,’ in
the cathedral at Perugia, and in another of St. Roch in the Palazzo
Borromeo at Milan.

A solitary example of St. Roch with a black pustule on the inner side
of his left thigh, surrounded by a pink zone of inflammation, may
be seen in the Brera. The picture is by Bernardino Borgognone (A.D.
1490-1524).

In some of the _Pestblätter_ a gash in the thigh is shown as well as a
small circle, which would seem to indicate the circular plague pustule.

[Illustration: PLATE XII (Face Page 110)

MADONNA AND CHILD, S. ANNA AND SAINTS BY G. FRANCESCO CAROTO

Photograph by Alinari, Rome]

FOOTNOTES:

[141] _De Gestis Langobardorum_, vi. 5.

[142] Caxton, _Golden Legend_; Jameson, _Sacred and Legendary Art_.

[143] See Frontispiece.

[144] Bascombe, _History of Epidemic Diseases_.

[145] Kremer, _Ueber die grossen Seuchen des Orients, nach arabischen
Quellen_.

[146] Caxton, _Golden Legend_; Jameson, _Sacred and Legendary Art_.




CHAPTER VII


There is no need to rewrite the history of the Black Death: that has
been admirably accomplished by Hecker and by Abbot Gasquet. It is still
profitable, however, to investigate its by-effects in the domains of
literature and art, and to consider its broad morbid features, as
a contribution to the medical history of the time. The Black Death
was the first great pandemic that left in its wake a complete and
continuous succession of literary and historical records, in most
points complementary, in some frankly contradictory, but for all that
none the less instructive.

As to the starting-point of the pandemic there is a diversity of
voices. Russian records place it in India, Greek in Scythia, English in
India and Asiatic Turkey, Arabian in Tartary and the land of darkness.
According to Italian tradition it originated in Cathay, to the north
of China, and spread in every direction from that focus; northward by
Bokhara and Tartary to the Black Sea; to India and the towns south of
the Caspian, and to Asia Minor; and by way of Baghdad through Arabia
and Egypt to the north of Africa. The leading contemporary Italian
authority is Gabrielle de Mussi, a notary of Piacenza, who himself saw
its outbreak in Upper Italy. In his ‘Ystoria de morbo seu mortalitate
qui fuit a 1348’, first printed by Henschel in Haeser’s _Archiv für die
gesammte Medicin_, he describes how the plague was brought by ship from
Caffa; a Genoese settlement in the Crimea. The Tartar city Tana (Port
Azov), that had been appropriated by Italian merchants, was besieged
in A.D. 1346 by an army of Tartars and Saracens. The Tartars expelled
them, and followed them to Caffa, whither they had fled. Plague broke
out fiercely among the besieging Tartars, who, in the hope of infecting
the garrison, threw their dead bodies into the city by means of engines
of war. The garrison in turn cast them into the sea, but the city
became infected and almost completely depopulated, a few survivors
taking ship and carrying the disease with them to Italy in the autumn
of A.D. 1347. Speaking of the infection of Caffa, de Mussi says ‘the
air became tainted and the wells of water poisoned, and in this way the
disease spread rapidly in the city’. So the old idea of poison still
prevails, but it is a virus derived from infected corpses, and not some
extraneous poison compounded by a maleficent enemy. The poison was
communicable also from man to man, for he says of the sailors coming
from Caffa to Venice and Genoa that ‘as if accompanied by evil spirits,
as soon as they approached the land, they were death to those with whom
they mingled’.

These ships seem to have infected Constantinople _en route_, and an
account of its ravages there survives from the pen of the Emperor
Cantacuzenus.[147] It is a mistake to regard his record as worthless
material, because of its plagiarism of much of the language of
Thucydides. In what is not appropriated from this source he gives a
valuable clinical description of the disease. He notes the early low
delirium, and distinguishes pneumonic, bubonic, and carbuncular types
of the disease. He mentions cervical and axillary, but not inguinal
buboes, and also the dark patches on the skin, that later came to be
termed ‘tokens’. He also asserts the incidence of the disease on the
domestic animals.

In making for Genoa these ships put in at Messina in Sicily and left
the infection there. Michael Platiensis (of Piazza), a Franciscan
friar, has given an account of its course in this city. He refers to
infection by means of the breath, and by contact with the belongings
of, the infected. Gabrielle de Mussi seems to hold a similar belief.
‘We’ [i. e. the Genoese sailors], he says, ‘reach our homes: our
kindred and our neighbours come from all parts to visit us. Woe to us,
for we cast at them the darts of death! Whilst we spoke to them, whilst
they embraced us and kissed us, we scattered the poison from our lips.
Going back to their homes, they soon infected their whole families.’

De Mussi explicitly asserts that the plague was carried from the
seaport of Genoa by some Genoese to Bobbio, and to his city of
Piacenza. Here such was the mortality that ‘no prayer was said, no
solemn office sung, nor bell tolled for the funeral of even the noblest
citizen: but by day and night the corpses were borne to the common
plague pit without rite or ceremony’.

So Italy had been primarily infected at Venice and at Genoa, and from
these sea-coast cities the disease spread itself over the whole Italian
peninsula.

At Venice the example of Galen had sunk deep into the hearts of her
physicians. They fled before the advancing enemy and shut themselves up
in their houses, leaving the surgeons, led by Andrea di Padova, to fill
their place. Physicians would do well to bear this occasion in mind,
when they complain of the encroachments of surgery into the domain of
medicine. On March 30, A.D. 1348, the Grand Council of Venice appointed
three men to act as a Committee of Public Safety. These men had large
burial-pits dug in one of the islands of the lagoon, and organized a
service of boats to transport the bodies to them.

Rome was not so hard hit as some of the cities of Italy. Nevertheless,
there remains to this day a monument of this plague in the flight
of marble steps leading up to the church of Ara Coeli. These were
set up by Giovanni de Colonna in October 1348, out of the spoils of
the temple of the Sun on the Quirinal, and were designed for the use
of the citizens, who with ropes round their necks and with ashes on
their heads climbed the hill barefooted, to implore from the Blessed
Virgin the cessation of the plague. The thirteenth-century mosaic of
the Madonna and Child may still be seen above the side entrance of
Ara Coeli at the head of the well-worn stairs leading up from the
Capitoline Piazza. The object of worship remains, but the worshippers
are no more.

Lanciani[148] has reproduced an old engraving showing women ascending
the marble stairs on their knees. This staircase would seem to be
indicated both in Delaunay’s picture and in the fresco by which it was
inspired.

There is a legend in Rome, that as the panic-stricken people were
carrying an effigy of the Madonna from the Ara Coeli to St. Peter’s,
the statue of the angel on the Castel S. Angelo bowed its head to do
homage to it.

Plague was not the only enemy in Rome in A.D. 1348, for a terrible
earthquake on September 9 and 10 wrought havoc among the remaining
monuments of ancient Rome. Those citizens, who had escaped the plague
and from death among the falling ruins, lived for weeks in the open
Campagna with no shelter from the inclemency of the weather. Perhaps it
was this accident that served to bring the visitation to an end at Rome
more rapidly than elsewhere.

Agnolo di Tura, in his _Cronica Senese_, edited by Muratori, gives a
graphic picture of the Black Death in Siena. A large uninteresting
picture in the church of S. Maria dei Servi depicts St. Catharine
attending the plague-stricken, and there is an ugly, almost ludicrous,
fresco of the same subject in the House of St. Catharine of Siena. The
painter brothers Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti were both carried off
by plague. But it is in the Duomo itself that the mark of the Black
Death is most apparent. Begun in A.D. 1339, on the site of an older
cathedral dedicated to the Madonna of the Assumption, the transepts
were built, the foundations of the nave and choir were laid, and their
walls partly raised according to the designs of Lando Orefice, when
the Black Death broke out in the city in A.D. 1348. The money collected
for the building was diverted to urgent public purposes, and the work,
once suspended, has never been completely accomplished. The present
cathedral, splendid as it is, is a mere fragment of the magnificent
fabric, in which Orefice purposed to enshrine a memorial to the glory
of fourteenth century Siena.

The little Cappella di Piazza, attached as a loggia to the Palazzo
Publico of Siena, was set up in gratitude for the cessation of the
plague that carried off no less than thirty thousand persons. It was
commenced in A.D. 1352 and completed in A.D. 1376. Hard by Siena
the citizens of San Gimignano vowed an altar to St. Fabian and St.
Sebastian as the price of their protection, and set it up between the
doors of the Pieve or Collegiata. Above the place where once it stood
is now the fresco of Benozzo Gozzoli, commemorating the plague of A.D.
1464.

No less a man than Petrarch[149] has chronicled this plague at Parma.
His letter is in no sense descriptive, but rather a long-drawn-out
wail over the devastation, the loss of friends and relations, and
the magnitude of the destruction, that seemed to him to threaten the
utter extinction of the human race. Affectation is the key-note of
his lamentations, that are freely interspersed with allusions to the
ancient classics. Laura had died of plague at Avignon in A.D. 1348, and
Petrarch in sadness of soul wrote these lines on the manuscript of his
beloved Vergil, now in the Ambrosian Library at Milan:

      ‘Laura, illustrious by her virtues, and long
    celebrated in my songs, first greeted my eyes in the
    days of my youth, the 6th April, 1327, at Avignon; and
    in the same city, at the same hour of the same 6th
    April, but in the year 1348, withdrew from life, whilst
    I was at Verona, unconscious of my loss. The melancholy
    truth was made known to me by letters, which I received
    at Parma on the 19th May.’

      ‘Her chaste and lovely body was interred on the
    evening of the same day in the Church of the Minorites:
    her soul, as I believe, returned to heaven, whence it
    came.’

      ‘To write these lines in bitter memory of this event,
    and in the place where they will most often meet my
    eyes, has in it something of a cruel sweetness, but I
    forget that nothing more ought in this life to please
    me, which by the grace of God need not be difficult to
    one who thinks strenuously and manfully of the idle
    cares, the empty hopes, and the unexpected end of the
    years that are gone.’

The Florentines, by way of rehabilitating their city after the Black
Death, founded a university, and offered Petrarch a professorial chair,
which he declined.

Matteo Villani[150] wrote a plain unvarnished account of the state
of Florence during the Black Death, but it has found little favour
beside the lighter sketch that stands as a prelude to the _Decameron_.
His brother Giovanni, the Florentine historian, was one of the early
victims, and Matteo takes up his history at the point at which he
left it, and begins with a description of the epidemic. Famine had
preceded the plague, and like it was regarded as sent by Heaven for
the punishment of sin. But the energy of the government, in importing
corn and distributing it to the destitute, had done much to relieve the
distress, when this worse enemy presented itself at the gates.

Both Villani and Boccaccio enlarge on the futility of all measures,
preventive and remedial alike, and the intense infectiveness of the
disease. They believed that it could be communicated by a look, as well
as by contact with the person or belongings of an infected subject.
Boccaccio mentions the speedy death of two pigs from rooting among some
infected clothing. Some pinned their faith on strict seclusion: some
on temperate living, some on intemperance: others sought safety in the
carrying of aromatic substances. Both Villani and Boccaccio lay stress
on the utter depravity and demoralization engendered by the plague.
Great uncertainty of life has never failed to generate corresponding
recklessness. It has always been the same tale in every desperate city;
it was so when Jerusalem, panic-stricken at the threatened attack of
Sennacherib, gave itself over to wild revelry: ‘And in that day did the
Lord God of Hosts call to weeping and to mourning, and to baldness,
and to girding with sackcloth: but behold joy and gladness, slaying
oxen, and killing sheep, eating flesh and drinking wine: let us eat
and drink, for to-morrow we die.’ Matteo Villani traces to the Black
Death the social and moral degeneracy and the political anarchy, that
were rampant in Florentine life, in the centuries that followed close
upon it. Family affection is apt to reach its lowest ebb in the houses
of a plague-stricken city. Villani and Boccaccio echo the language of
Thucydides when they tell of parents deserting children, and husbands
wives, in their hour of need, and the neglect of the sacred rites of
sepulture. The plague raged in Florence from April to September, and
Antoninus, Archbishop of Florence, computes the mortality within the
city at 60,000 persons, two-thirds of the total population. Boccaccio
actually raises the figure to 100,000 between March and July only,
but this figure, if correct, must comprise also the surrounding
district, which suffered only less severely than the city itself.
One bright record stands out against this dark background of social
demoralization in the devotion of the Compagnia della Misericordia to
their self-appointed task. Instituted in A.D. 1244 for the service
of the sick, they now also lent themselves to the transport of the
dead. A picture by Cigoli (A.D. 1559-1613), now in the church of the
Misericordia, shows the brotherhood in red robes—now changed to
black—gathering up the dead and dying at the foot of Giotto’s Tower.
The bearers may be seen to this day in the streets of Florence in
the same robes and hoods masking the whole face but the eyes, but
the hand-litters and sedans of Cigoli’s picture have now been slung
on wheels and sanctified to modern use with the addition of a motor
ambulance. Great wealth flowed into the coffers of the guild from men
who desired to crown a vicious life with a comfortable death and a
decent burial.

The horrors of the plague-stricken city, with which Boccaccio has
prefaced his _Decameron_, stand out in striking contrast to the gay
frivolity of the young men and women round whom his romance ranges.
Plague and pleasure jostle each other in jarring juxtaposition.
Boccaccio of set purpose chose this dark background for the staging of
his brighter theme. Thucydides had done the same before him, in setting
the panegyric of Pericles side by side with the plague of Athens: and
Manzoni has done so after him in the romance of _Promessi Sposi_.
Perhaps also he had learnt, amid the fierce realities of the plague, to
envisage life as it is, and so present it to his readers.

Niebuhr, in tracing the decadence of Roman literature to the Antonine
plague, cites as a parallel illustration the influence of the Black
Death on early Florentine literature. In the latter case, at any
rate, it is difficult to bring his dictum into line with the actual
circumstances. It would seem rather that the break in the vernacular
Florentine literature after Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, was
deliberate, and in no sense accidental. What Petrarch perceived, and
perceived unerringly, was the poverty of the material on which the
vernacular had maintained a starved existence; and he saw in the
ancient classics, in their mythology, in their speculative freedom,
in the principles of their art, liberation from the bondage that the
Church had laid on literature. What he did not perceive was that
in reverting to ancient modes of thought it was needless, nay even
harmful, to adopt also the language of the ancients. It was not open
to him to see, as it is to us, that no great work of literature has
ever been produced in any language but that in which the writer speaks
and feels and thinks: any tongue but the tongue of his daily life must
needs be artificial and inanimate. Petrarch himself little guessed that
with posterity his fame would rest on his _Rime_ in the vernacular, and
not on his epistles and multifarious dissertations in a lifeless Latin
language. It is this mistaken teaching of Petrarch that explains the
abrupt break of a century or more in vernacular Florentine literature,
to which the Black Death can have been at most a trivial contributory
cause. As soon as this mistake came to be recognized Florentine
literature flows on again in its old channel in the full stream of the
fifteenth and sixteenth century masterpieces of Ariosto, of Tasso, and
the rest. It was the advice of Petrarch that turned Boccaccio from
the vernacular to Latin, after he had completed in his _Decameron_
a masterpiece of Italian prose. The influence of the classical
revival that Petrarch had brought to life was destined also slowly to
secularize Florentine art, but the time of its complete emancipation
was not yet.

The Black Death first touched French soil at Marseilles, brought
thither, it was thought, by ships from Genoa. Simon de Covino, a
doctor, described the features of the disease as he witnessed it at the
neighbouring town of Montpellier, in Latin hexameter verse. He clearly
recognized its contagious character, for he says, ‘By a single touch or
a single breath of the plague-stricken they perished.’

Of the plague at Avignon both lay and medical accounts survive. A full
description is contained in a letter from an anonymous canon to his
friends in Bruges. He remarks on the virulence of the contagion, and
describes both pneumonic and bubonic types of the disease. He says
that Clement VI ordered bodies to be examined after death, in the hope
of discovering the origin of the disease. This fact should be noted
by those who assert that the Church interpreted the _De Sepulturis_
bull of Boniface VIII (A.D. 1300) as prohibiting the anatomy of human
bodies. The autopsies disclosed no more than inflammation of the lungs
in the pneumonic cases. Similar examinations, previously undertaken
in Italy, had also yielded no better result. Clement also ordained
expiatory processions and penitential litanies. Within the precincts
of his palace, to which his medical attendant, Gui de Chauliac,
confined him, he lent his own presence to the whole ceremonial that he
prescribed. But he did not neglect to keep large fires alight in his
apartments, as Pope Nicholas IV (A.D. 1288-92) had done at Rome in a
previous visitation. Only those who have been at Avignon at midsummer
can appreciate the price that Clement was ready to pay for immunity.

Clement’s physician, Gui de Chauliac, says that the plague began at
Avignon in January, and lasted for seven months.[151] In his view
the causes of the pandemic were twofold: universal, consisting in
a conjunction of the planets: and special, dependent on the feeble
constitution of the individual, whereby it came about that labouring
men were chiefly attacked. But then as now the scared populace was
proof against pontifical pronouncements from the Chair of Medicine.
They saw in it the handiwork of Jews spreading poison throughout the
world, so they put them to death. They saw in it malevolence of lepers,
so they drove them out. They saw in it a plot of feudal overlords
for their extinction, so they remained within their houses. And for
completer security they set a guard around the towns and villages, who
accosted each newcomer and compelled him to swallow any ointments or
powders found upon him.

De Chauliac describes two prevalent types of the disease. The one
type, the pneumonic, prevailed only for the first two months, and was
characterized by spitting of blood, extreme infectiousness, and death
in three days. The second type, the bubonic, prevailed throughout the
five succeeding months, and was characterized by boils, by buboes
chiefly in the armpits and groins, by slight infectiousness, and death
in five days. The mortality extended to no less than three-fourths of
the total population, so that to get rid of the bodies they were driven
to throw them into the Rhone, after Clement had pronounced a blessing
on its waters.

To Gui de Chauliac the best of all preservatives was flight, aided,
or perhaps we should say embarrassed, by the free use of aloetic
purgatives.

He did not fly himself, for he says, with the _naïveté_ of a Pepys,
‘As for me, to avoid infamy, I did not dare absent myself, but still
I was in continual fear.’ (Et moy pour euiter infamie, n’osay point
m’absâter: mais auec continuelle peur me preseruay tant que ie
peux, moyennant les susdicts remedes.) His hesitancy was to prove
his undoing, for he was himself infected towards the end of the
epidemic—but recovered after six weeks. Among other preservatives
he reckons venesection, purification of the air by means of fires,
comforting the heart with treacle and apples and things of savoury
flavour, consoling the humours with Galen’s Armenian bole, and the
prevention of putrefaction by the use of bitter things. Should the
disease defy all these precautions, then he commends, as curative
measures, bleedings and evacuations, with electuaries and cordial
syrups. Buboes should be ripened with poultices of figs and boiled
onions, pounded and mixed with leaven and butter: then they should
be opened and treated like ulcers. Carbuncles are to be leeched,
scarified, and cauterized—an improvement on the disastrous treatment
meted out to Felix, bishop of Nantes, on a previous occasion.

Raymond Chalin de Vinario, another practitioner in Avignon during
the plague, adds but little to what Gui de Chauliac has to say. He
describes a solid cord, red or variously discoloured, which appeared
in some cases on the body surface, with a carbuncle at one end and a
pestilential tubercle at the other. This can hardly have been anything
else than an acute lymphangitis.

It is clear from the descriptions of the various writers that a large
proportion of the cases in this pandemic were of pneumonic type: hence
its virulence and its infectiousness.

Amid all the panic of the Black Death, persecution of the Jews broke
out with even greater ferocity than during the Crusades in the twelfth
century. Some victim was needed to appease the maddened populace: so
the Jews were accused of poisoning the wells, and even of infecting
the air. Circumstantial accounts were circulated throughout Europe of
secret operations directed from Toledo. The concoction of poisons from
spiders, owls, and other supposed venomous animals was described, and
its mode of distribution made known. So well did their accusers deceive
themselves that in many places the springs and wells were sealed, so
that no one might use them, and the inhabitants of many cities had
to rely on rain and river water. If confirmation of poison were ever
needed, the rack could be trusted to procure it: or, failing that,
men could be found vile enough to deposit poison in places in which
circumstances demanded its presence. Those who escaped the fury of the
mob fell into the clutches of an inexorable justice. In the case of
the Jews the suspicion of poisoning was prompted by the fact that at
this time the practice of medicine, at any rate in southern Europe, was
chiefly in the hands of Jewish physicians. Hideous massacres of Jews
had taken place in southern France and Spain in the previous epidemics
of A.D. 1320 and 1333, as we know from the writings of Rabbi Joshua.

The first outbreak of murderous ferocity seems to have occurred at
Chillon, on the Lake of Geneva, in September and October, A.D. 1348.
Here it was merely the culmination of an accusation of poisoning the
wells so long previously as the epidemic of A.D. 1320. In face of the
common danger, high and low bound themselves together by a solemn oath
to extirpate the Jews by fire and the sword. Chillon summoned Bern, and
Bern sent on the summons to Basle, Freyburg, and Strasbourg to join
them in their righteous task. The record of confessions extracted from
the Jews by the ordeal of torture within the Castle of Chillon has been
rescued from oblivion by the vigilance of Hecker.[152] In Basle and
Freyburg the Jews were seized, one and all, and without form of trial
were burnt to death in a wooden building, specially constructed for
the purpose, while at Strasbourg no less than two thousand Jews were
immolated on a wooden scaffold, erected in their own burial-ground.
Such as escaped were ruthlessly murdered in the streets, saving a few
only to whom freedom was granted on submission to baptism. But for
these the respite from renewed accusation and death was only temporary.
Faithlessness to their own religion, or physical charms sufficient to
assuage the blood-lust of their Christian persecutors, constituted the
only acceptable claims to a passing mercy. Strasbourg betrayed the
true ground of its hatred of the Jews in an order of its senate that
all pledges and bonds should be returned to the debtors and the money
divided among the working-people. Those who were unwilling to soil
their hands with blood-money presented their share of the spoils to
monasteries, at the prompting of their confessors. At Spires, Mayence,
and Eslingen, voluntary immolation in their own houses alone saved the
Jews from more inhuman tortures. Some were murdered in the open streets
and their dead bodies thrown into the Rhine in empty casks, so that
they might not infect the air. Now and again banishment was substituted
for burning, only for the outcasts to perish at the hands of a savage
and blood-thirsty countryfolk.

When the houses of the Jews were burnt a ban was set on entry into
the ruins of their habitations: the site was accursed, as the site
of Jericho of old. But the bricks of the destroyed dwellings and the
tombstones of the victims were in due time rendered as an acceptable
thank-offering to God in the repair of Christian churches. In Austria
the same accusations were brought against the Jews as elsewhere, and
numbers were burnt to death in Vienna and throughout the country. Where
there were no Jews, as in Leipsic, Magdeburg, and other places, the
grave-diggers were accused of propagating the plague for their own
sordid ends.

It should be set to the credit of Clement VI that he extended his
personal protection to the Jews at Avignon, issuing two bulls,
asserting their innocence, and calling on Christians to refrain from
persecution. The Emperor Charles IV did what lay in his power, short of
drawing the sword, to check the outrages perpetrated by the Bohemian
nobles. Duke Albert of Austria exacted from the persecutors punishments
only less cruel than they themselves had inflicted, but even so did not
avail to save hundreds of Jews from the flames, in his own fortress
of Kyberg. Other lesser princes, more often for bribes than for pity,
extended some measure of protection to the wretched Jews, earning for
themselves the _sobriquet_ of ‘Jew-masters’. It was no light matter for
a private person to shelter a Jew, for the penalty was often exacted on
the rack or at the stake.

Basnage[153] states that the large number of Jews in modern Poland
may be traced to the fact that King Casimir the Great (A.D. 1333-70),
yielding to the entreaties of a favourite Jewess, Esther, granted
sanctuary to such Jews as sought it. But actually Casimir only
confirmed an edict of protection promulgated in A.D. 1264, and Poland
had then already afforded a haven of refuge to the Jews, who had fled
from the cruel massacres perpetrated in the enthusiasm of the first
Crusade.

In England the Black Death served to revive the perennial charges
brought against the Jews—that they stole Christian children and killed
them, especially at Easter-time, a charge that Chaucer, mindful of Hugh
of Lincoln, has enshrined in the pathetic verse of his Prioress. They
were charged also with outraging the Host, as well as with spreading
poison.

The Black Death seems to have fallen with greater violence on Austria
than on Germany,[154] perhaps on account of its close contact with
Italy. It devastated Vienna from Easter to Michaelmas of A.D. 1349,
carrying off thirty thousand out of a population of less than one
hundred thousand persons. The excited populace personified it as the
Pest-Jungfrau, who had only to raise her hand to infect a victim. She
was to be seen flying through the air in the form of a blue flame,
and also proceeding out of the mouths of dead and dying. Some saw the
plague poison descend in the form of a ball of fire. One such was seen
hovering over the town, but a bishop exorcised it by prayer, so that
it fell harmless to earth. A stone effigy of the Madonna was set up in
the street, where it fell. All medical aid proved useless, and amulets,
potions, and preservative electuaries were in general use. Segregation
of the sick was attempted, by nailing up doors and windows of infected
houses, but even so dead bodies littered the streets. Huge plague pits
were dug for the reception of the dead. Flagellant processions sought
to excite divine compassion by the ritual of peripatetic penitence.

The genesis of the Flagellant movement must be looked for further
back in the history of pestilence than the Black Death. The idea of
mortifying the flesh by the penance of scourging is of ancient origin,
and at least as early as the eleventh century brotherhoods were
devoted to this ritual. The processions of these _Devoti_, as they
were termed in Italy, were originated by St. Anthony in A.D. 1231, and
we hear of them under the name of Flagellants in Vienna during the
plague of A.D. 1261.

One Monachus Paduanus, quoted by Hecker, has left a record of the early
days of the _Devoti_.

      ‘When the land was polluted by vices and crimes, an
    unexampled spirit of remorse suddenly seized the minds
    of the Italians. The fear of Christ fell upon all:
    noble and ignoble, old and young, and even children of
    five years of age, marched through the streets with no
    covering but a scarf round the waist. They each carried
    a scourge of leather thongs, which they applied to
    their limbs, amid sighs and tears, with such violence
    that the blood flowed from the wounds. Not only during
    the day, but even by night, and in the severest winter,
    they traversed the cities with burning torches and
    banners, in thousands and tens of thousands, headed
    by their priests, and prostrated themselves before
    the altars. They proceeded in the same manner in the
    villages: and the woods and mountains resounded with
    the voices of those whose cries were raised to God.
    The melancholy chaunt of the penitent alone was heard.
    Enemies were reconciled: men and women vied with each
    other in splendid works of charity, as if they dreaded
    that Divine Omnipotence would pronounce on them the
    doom of annihilation.’

Before this mediaeval pageant of penitence the mind insensibly reverts
to the ancient ritual of the Salii on this same Italian soil, to
their choric hymn of expiation, to the _supplicationes_, and to the
love-feast of the _lectisternium_ of later days.

Under the stimulus of the Black Death, the Brotherhood of the Cross,
or Cross-bearers, arose out of the ranks of the Flagellants, first in
Hungary, and afterwards in Germany. Ditmar[155] has left the following
account of their processions:

      ‘Their heads covered as far as the eyes: their look
    fixed on the ground, accompanied by every token of the
    deepest contrition and mourning. They were robed in
    sombre garments, with red crosses on the breast, back
    and cap, and bore triple scourges, tied in three or
    four knots, in which points of iron were fixed. Tapers
    and magnificent banners of cloth of gold were carried
    before them: wherever they made their appearance they
    were welcomed by the ringing of the bells: and the
    people flocked from all quarters, to listen to their
    hymns and to witness their penance, with devotion and
    tears.’

When the Flagellants entered the town they would hand the citizens
a document setting forth God’s anger and determination to destroy
mankind, had not the Virgin Mary interceded for them. Some of
the crosses carried by the Flagellants are still to be seen at
Gross-Glogau, Kaysersberg, and Ammerschweyer in Upper Alsace.

This spirit of religious fanaticism spread like wildfire through
Hungary, Germany, Bohemia, Silesia, Poland, and Flanders, and
even beyond these countries. In the autumn of 1349 some six-score
Flagellants crossed from Holland and paraded the streets of London, but
the metropolis had not then acquired the taste for processions, and
ejected them as undesirable aliens. At last the movement had alighted
on uncongenial soil. So great was the number of the Flagellants that
they became a cause of well-founded anxiety to the clergy, whose
churches they actually invaded, and whose influence they threatened to
supersede. Their hymns were in every mouth, and one of them, the chief
psalm of the Cross-bearers, is reproduced by Hecker in his _Epidemics
of the Middle Ages_.

The secular authorities also saw cause for alarm at the growing numbers
and power of the brotherhood, bound together by common ritual and
common regulations, and capable, under bold and designing leaders, of
exerting their influence in the affairs of states. The Emperor Charles
IV appealed to the Holy See for protection against the heretics, and
Clement VI responded by issuing a bull from Avignon on October 20,
1349, prohibiting the pilgrimages on pain of excommunication. Philip
VI forbade altogether their reception in France, and several other
ruling princes followed his example. Relentless persecution soon took
the place of unthinking homage. The processions were abandoned, but the
spirit that animated them was not dead, and the same fanaticism broke
out again in Germany in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and in
Italy even as late as the eighteenth, under the influence of successive
plagues.

The Black Death, sweeping throughout England, is believed to have
carried off one-half of the total population. Historians have told the
tale of the resulting emancipation of the labouring class, but we find
that it has also left its mark on the education, the literature, the
art, and the architecture of England.

In education, it helped greatly to bring about the revival of English
in the schools. After the Norman Conquest French had gradually become
the language of education: not of set purpose, for the Conqueror
himself tried ineffectually to learn English. But most of the education
was in the hands of the clergy, and as many Frenchmen had been put in
charge of monasteries and of parochial cures, it was inevitable that
French should become the language of education, and so diffuse itself
generally through the educated part of the nation, both French and
English. About the middle of the fourteenth century Higden, in his
_Polychronicon_, states that French was still the language taught in
the schools, and had been so since the Norman Conquest. In A.D. 1385
Trevisa, commenting on Higden’s statement, writes:

      ‘This maner was myche yused tofore the first moreyn
    [before the 1349 murrain], and is siththe som dele
    [since somewhat] ychaungide. For John Cornwaile, a
    maister of gramer, chaungide the lore [learning] in
    gramer scole and construction of [from] Frensch into
    Englisch, and Richard Pencriche lerned that maner
    teching of him, and other men of Pencriche. So that
    now, the yere of owre Lord a thousand thre hundred
    foure score and fyve, of the secunde King Rychard
    after the Conquest nyne, in alle the gramer scoles of
    England children leveth Frensch, and construeth an [in]
    Englisch.’

Despite the adoption of French as the language of the schools, English
had survived as a colloquial language side by side with its supplanter.
In the conflict between the two prestige and fashion were on the side
of French, tradition and nationality on the side of English: and sooner
or later the balance was bound to incline to the side of the national
language. The fusion of the two had inevitably led to the corruption
of each, but the corrupted French, at any rate after the loss of
Normandy, had no standard of purity at hand to limit corruption,
while the corrupted English was constantly purified by contact with
the native tongue, and by the existence of a pre-Norman vernacular
literature. National spirit, stimulated by international strife, was
ripe for completing the task, that John Cornwall had begun in a single
west country school; and the Black Death, by sweeping away the existing
teachers and making place for others of native stock, did much to
facilitate the change. The triumph of the vernacular operated a mighty
revolution in our national literature, paving the way for Langland
and Chaucer. Thomas Usk, in the Prologue to his _Testament of Love_,
completed not later than A.D. 1387, alludes to the utter corruption of
the imported French, and the Prioress in the Canterbury Tales, although
she could speak French ‘ful fayre and festishly’ spoke it only

    After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe,
    For Frenche of Paris was to hire [her] unknowe.

One other immediate effect of the Black Death was to reduce the
literary output of the monasteries to its lowest level. No one can
fail to be struck by the scantiness and sterility of the contemporary
chronicles, which characterize the period following the Black Death,
and the reasonable explanation of this abrupt change would seem to lie
in the notorious depletion of the monastic households. The tragedy of
the Provençal brotherhood, in which Petrarch’s brother and his dog
alone survived to tend and guard the monastery, found an echo in a
like desolation of many an English monastery. The special incidence on
the monasteries was perhaps due to the monks moving freely among the
sick, and giving them sanctuary within their cloister. The sick, too,
exhibited often an ill-timed gratitude in bequeathing their clothes to
the monasteries. Doctors, as Chaucer remarked of his day, were only for
the rich.

In England, as in Italy, the Black Death left its mark on architecture
in the abrupt arrest of schemes of construction in course of execution.
Many such breaks may be detected in the church architecture of
the fourteenth century, and a notable example is furnished in the
unfinished towers of the church of St. Nicholas at Yarmouth.

Prior[156] indicates a similar break of continuity in the building
of York Minster. The west front and the nave were in course of
construction, when the Black Death appeared, and the result is a
makeshift wood vaulting to the nave. Then the building of the choir
was delayed for twelve years, till A.D. 1361, and in its structure the
flowing lines of the Decorated style, seen in the west front, have
given place to the formal stiffness of the Perpendicular.

In London the effect is much less conspicuous than in the northern
parts of England, perhaps because it was easier to replenish the
supply of masons in the metropolis than elsewhere. The building of
St. Stephen’s Chapel in Westminster and the completion of the Abbey
cloisters seem to have proceeded continuously, and with no change of
style, throughout the Black Death and the following years: and the same
is the case with Gloucester Cathedral.

Prior considers that the Black Death played a leading part in the
superseding of the Decorated by the Perpendicular type, and in the
diffusion of the latter from its Gloucester home throughout England.
The lack of builders led to masons passing from one district to
another, removing them from the conditions of local stone favourable to
their best work and to originality of style. The inevitable result was
that the architectural style easiest of expression in any form of stone
was bound to prevail, and that style was the Perpendicular. Examples
of this transformation in the years following close on the Black Death
are numerous, in the nave and cloisters of Canterbury Cathedral, in the
west front of Winchester Cathedral, and elsewhere.

The same stereotyped monotony, the same continuous decline in the
skill of execution, the same obvious diminution of interest in the
craft of the artificer, as is seen in the building construction, are
manifest also in the figure-sculpture and traceries of the period. The
variation of artistic expression, that in the two preceding centuries
had progressed steadily from strength to strength, comes to an abrupt
cessation, and is content with the incessant repetition of inanimate
models.

      ‘The figure-sculpture[157] of the later mediaeval
    church under such conditions grew to be especially
    of the shop, according to pattern and not of fresh
    adventure. It no longer took its place in the business
    of the building-yard, but was provided for—not
    worked—in the building. The constructing mason left
    niches for statues, and on occasion worked bosses
    with subject relief, cornices with ‘angel’ sculpture,
    and gargoyles with ‘devil’ sculpture. But this figure
    work was not essential, and a whole majestic piece
    of architecture in Perpendicular style might rise
    from the ground and never ask for the craft of the
    figure-sculptor at all. The works of the imager were
    now in effect furniture, which could be bought in the
    city and added to the building at any time. Accordingly
    statues and reliefs ceased, in fifteenth century
    practice, to be carved immediately by the mason upon
    the building: they became outside works conceived in no
    intimate relation to it.’

Gasquet maintains that a similar breach of continuity may be observed
in the manufacture of stained glass, and that there is a noticeable
change in style after the Black Death. Speaking broadly, the styles
of stained glass correspond to the styles of architecture, but in
each case are a little later: so that the contention comes to this,
that there is an unbridged gap between the late Decorated and early
Perpendicular. Yet one cannot but recall the ante-chapel windows of New
College, Oxford, and the east window of Gloucester Cathedral, in each
of which the transition from Decorated to Perpendicular is apparent.

FOOTNOTES:

[147] iv. 8.

[148] _Golden Days of the Renaissance in Rome._

[149] _Epistolae de rebus familiaribus_, viii. 7.

[150] Bk. I, c. 4.

[151] Traité II, Doct. ii, ch. 5.

[152] _Epidemics of the Middle Ages._

[153] _Histoire des Juifs._

[154] Krafft-Ebing, _Geschichte der Pest in Wien_.

[155] _Chronicon_, 1580.

[156] E. S. Prior, _Cathedral Builders_.

[157] Prior and Gardner, _Mediaeval Figure Sculpture in England_, p.
390.




CHAPTER VIII


For three centuries and more after the Black Death plague was endemic
throughout central and southern Europe, and its presence is indelibly
recorded in the productions of contemporary art. Dances of Death,
plague banners, votive and commemorative paintings, and actual
representations of plague scenes all bear silent testimony to the
abiding presence of the enemy within the gates. _Memento mori_, with
its dismal foreboding, was the appropriate motto of the age. Innocent
III in his _De Contemptu Mundi_ had said the last word on the misery
of human existence, and the shame and degradation of the human body,
polluted and polluting, long before the Black Death: but henceforward
the gloom that haunted the soul of this great successor of St. Peter
seems to diffuse itself throughout the world.

Dancing from early ages has been associated with the conception of
death. In many primitive races these dances seem to pertain to mimetic
magic, and purport to expedite the passing of the spirit of the
deceased. Both Greeks and Romans preserved dancing in their funeral
celebrations, and representations of these funeral dances have been
found in connexion with Greek and Etruscan tombs. These are commonly
a file of maidens, holding each other’s hands, and led by a youthful
male coryphaeus. Anacreon,[158] Tibullus,[159] and Vergil[160] all
depict the revelry of the dance in the land of departed souls, and joy
is the key-note of the dance. Christianity, in superseding paganism,
for better or for worse inculcated a gloomy conception of death,
as a punishment, a penalty for original sin. Recurrent epidemics
of pestilence served to transform the conception into that of an
inexorable foe revelling in the subversion of human happiness and the
futility of human affairs. The literature of the age no less than
its art bears the imprint of this conception. Petrarch has left us a
_Triumph of Death_, and Langland in his _Vision of Piers Plowman_[161]
has given us in verse a Dance of Death:

    Death came driving after, and all to dust pashed
    Kynges and Knightes, Kaysers and Popes,
    Learned and lewde: he ne let no man stande;
    That he hitte even, stirred never after.
    Many a lovely ladie and her lemmans of knightes
    Swouned and swelte for sorwe of Death’s dyntes.

The earliest authenticated painting of the Death-dance is that which
was once to be seen in the churchyard of the Innocents at Paris,
painted in A.D. 1434, but it is improbable that it was actually the
first. A closely similar theme of earlier date may still be seen in
the Campo Santo at Pisa. Vasari attributed it to Andrew Orcagna (A.D.
1329-68), but modern critics believe it to have been painted by Pisan
artists, about A.D. 1350. This fresco shows three young men following
the chase on horseback. Coming to the cell of St. Macarius, an Egyptian
anchorite, they are brought face to face with three open coffins,
in which are a skeleton and two dead bodies, reminding them of the
fleeting nature of human pleasures. This subject also is one adopted
from contemporary literature. Under the title of ‘Les trois Morts et
les trois Vifs’ it had figured in thirteenth-century verse, and is
frequently illustrated in the manuscript _Horae_ of the period. It is
suggested that this legend is the origin of the name ‘Danse macabre’,
or ‘Macaber Dance’, used often as an alternative name for the familiar
‘Dance of Death’.

[Illustration: PLATE XIII DANCE OF DEATH, AT BASLE (Face Page 135)]

It is not in Italy and not in France, but rather, as we should expect,
in Germany and Switzerland, that these Dances of Death found most
favour, as befits the countries that gave birth to Luther and shelter
to Calvin. In 1462-3 plague raged fiercely at Lübeck. In the chapel at
the east end of the Marienkirche is a much restored ‘Dance of Death’,
dated 1463, and showing the costumes of the period. It is interesting
as being considerably older than the more famous Basle Dance.

By far the most celebrated ‘Dance of Death’ was that painted in a shed
in the churchyard of the Dominican convent at Basle. It is believed
to have been painted in commemoration of a plague that occurred
during the session of the Grand Council of Basle, that lasted from
A.D. 1431 to 1443. It has been attributed on insufficient evidence to
Holbein. It was destroyed by a riotous mob in A.D. 1806, but relics
of the life-size figures, painted in oil, are still to be seen in the
Historical Museum at Basle. Engravings of it also exist that record its
characters in detail. Holbein did actually paint a ‘Dance of Death’ in
fresco on the walls of the old Whitehall Palace, which was destroyed in
the fire of A.D. 1697. It was an appropriate subject for the brush of
an artist, who himself was to die of plague (A.D. 1554). It is probably
referred to by Matthew Prior in his _Ode to the Memory of George
Villiers_:

    Our term of life depends not on our deed,
    Before our birth our funeral was decreed,
    Nor aw’d by foresight, nor misled by chance,
    Imperious death directs the ebon lance,
    Peoples great Henry’s tombs, and leads up Holbein’s Dance.

Holbein was almost certainly also the author of the originals of the
Lyons ‘Dance of Death’, from which Hans Lutzenberger engraved the
woodcuts, which represent a varied assortment of characters of each and
every social order, among whom Death, in grotesque guise, plies his
grim and gruesome task.

The most casual observer cannot fail to be struck in any collection
of pictures of the Holbein School, with the number that present some
aspect or other of death. In the small picture gallery of Basle there
is a picture of two skulls and a tibia, by Ambrose Holbein: a diptych,
with the bust of a young man on one panel, and a skeleton on the other,
by Hans Holbein the Younger: another sixteenth-century diptych with a
bust of a girl on one panel, and a bust of a skeleton on the other, by
an unknown painter: and two pictures by Hans Baldung (A.D. 1475-1545),
one of Death holding a woman by the hair and pointing to a grave: the
other of Death kissing a woman before an open grave.

Plague banners, or _gonfaloni_,[162] are a characteristic product
of the Umbrian school of painting, and particularly of its Perugian
branch. It was the lot of Perugian painters to ply their art in the
midst of tribulations of every kind. Throughout the fifteenth century
their country was devastated by war, and by a succession of epidemics
of plague (in A.D. 1399, 1418, 1429, 1437, 1450, 1456, 1460-8, 1475-80
and 1486). In the face of these visitations Perugia set herself to
appeal to the mercy of Christ through the medium of her art. All her
painters scarcely sufficed to provide all the banners required for her
expiatory and triumphal processions. It was at times such as these
that the _gonfaloni_ made their appearance, raised between heaven and
earth, as though to convey to God a splendid manifestation of popular
repentance. Before the suppliant banners marched the priesthood in
their robes, behind them followed a penitent people, striking their
breasts and wailing aloud _Misericordia_. At each fresh invasion of
plague a new generation of artists, beginning with Bonfigli (A.D.
1420-96) and ending with Baroccio (A.D. 1528-1612), was called upon to
produce afresh these tributes of the popular devotion. The remedy was
well adapted to their sufferings, for these processions of penitents,
traversing the city and following banners, that displayed the
figure of the Redeemer, or the Madonna, or some other plague saint,
produced in their souls such a degree of spiritual exaltation, as made
despondency impossible. Men gazed on them as they gazed on the Brazen
Serpent that Moses set up in the wilderness. A striking banner is that
by Bonfigli, in the church of S. Fiorenzo at Perugia, painted in A.D.
1476 during an epidemic of plague. Above kneels the Madonna: before
her stands the Child in a basket of roses upheld by angels, wearing
chaplets of roses, as in most of Bonfigli’s pictures. Both Madonna and
Child are crowned. Below kneel groups of citizens, men and women, with
Sebastian and other saints, supplicating the Madonna. An angel holds a
scroll, on which is inscribed a fervid call to repentance, blended with
fierce denunciation of their sins, in these words of Lorenzo Spiriti:

      ‘Oh, most obstinate and wicked people—cruel, proud,
    and full of all iniquity, who have placed your faith
    and your desires on things, which are full of a mortal
    misery, I, the angel of Heaven, am sent unto you from
    God to tell you, that He will put an end to all your
    wounds and weeping, your ruin and your curse through
    the mediation of Mary.... Turn, turn your eyes, most
    miserable mortals, to the great examples of the past
    and present, to the utter miseries and heavy evils,
    which Heaven sends to you because of all your sins:
    your homicide and your adultery, your avarice and
    luxury.... Oh miserable beings, the justice of heaven
    works not in a hurry, but it punishes always, even
    as men deserve.... Nineveh was a city florid and
    magnificent, and Babylon was likewise, but now they
    are as nothing: and Sodom and Gomorrah, behold them
    now—a morass of sulphur and of fetid waters.... Oh,
    therefore, be grateful and acknowledge the benefits
    and graces of our Saviour, and let your souls burn
    hotly with the fire of faith and charity, of hope and
    faithful love.... But and if you should again grow
    slothful and unwilling to renounce your errors, I
    foretell a second judgement upon you, and I reckon
    that it will prove more terrible, more cruel than the
    first.’[163]

In banners such as this the imagination of the painter finds play for
the crowding emotions not of his own heart only, but of the hearts of
his fellow citizens as well.

Another type of plague banner is that of the ‘Madonna della
Misericordia’ in the church of S. Francesco del Prato at Perugia,
also by Bonfigli. It bears the date A.D. 1464. In the centre stands
the crowned Madonna, a majestic figure erect like a lighthouse amid
the storm, on which sufferers may fix their eyes and hope. On her
garment lie broken arrows, while beneath its ample folds kneel groups
of monks on one side, and of nuns on the other, all in attitudes of
prayer. In the upper part of the picture Christ, wearing both crown
and cruciferous nimbus, casts arrows down. At His right hand is the
angel of justice with sword drawn, at His left the angel of mercy
with sheathed sword. Gathered around the Madonna and craving her
intercession are S. Lorenzo and the Bishop SS. Severo, Costanzo, and
Ludovico. Beneath these to the right SS. Francis and Bernardino, and to
the left S. Peter Martyr and S. Sebastian, whose body is pierced with
many arrows. These saints have Perugia in their special keeping. At the
foot of the picture is shown the city of Perugia, with its emblematic
griffin on the wall. Within the walls a white-robed confraternity is
kneeling in prayer. Without them lurks Death, a bat-winged skeleton
with bow and arrows, whose victims strew the ground. But the prayers
have prevailed, and already the archangel Raphael strikes Death with
his spear. In the foreground outside the walls is a fugitive family,
the mother mounted on a donkey, carrying her infants in its paniers. At
a side gate two soldiers make off in haste, as the porter tells them
the state of the city. Perugians say that not Bonfigli but an angel
painted the face of the Madonna. They might well have said it of the
exquisite ‘Madonna del Soccorso’ in Sinibaldo Ibi’s plague banner of
A.D. 1482 in the church of S. Francisco at Montone. This fancy of the
protecting Madonna, spreading her robes over her suppliants, as a hen
gathers her chickens under her wings, is borrowed from Hebrew poetry.
It figures in a similar conception in the language of the ninety-first
Psalm: ‘I will say unto the Lord, Thou art my hope and my stronghold:
my God, in Him will I trust. For He shall deliver thee from the snare
of the hunter, and from the noisome pestilence. He shall defend thee
under His wings, and thou shalt be safe under His feathers.’

[Illustration: PLATE XIV (Face Page 138)

MADONNA DELLA MISERICORDIA BY BONFIGLI

Photograph by Alinari, Rome]

[Illustration: PLATE XV (Face Page 138)

MADONNA DEL SOCCORSO. BY SINIBALDO IBI

Photograph by Alinari, Rome]

[Illustration: PLATE XVI (Face Page 139)

PLAGUE BANNER. CHRIST AND SAINTS. BY BONFIGLI

Photograph by Anderson, Rome]

One more Madonna banner calls for passing notice—that of Bonfigli at
Corciano near Perugia, dated 1472. It has the same general character as
his ‘Madonna della Misericordia’. The quaint head-gear of the angels
supporting her robe is the rose-wreath, symbolic of the Madonna, which
appears, in one form or another, in so many of her pictures.

In nearly all these banners, as in other archaic works, the dwindling
size of individual figures indicates the lesser parts they have to
play. In many the Madonna fills almost all the banner’s surface.

In another of Bonfigli’s banners in the church of S. Maria Nuova at
Perugia the figure of Christ, wearing a cruciferous nimbus, dominates
the picture. He holds the arrows of pestilence ready to be launched
among the people. His face is sad and regretful, as He executes
faithfully the behests of His Father. On either side of Him saints
bear the emblems of the Passion, and to the right and left are the
darkened sun and moon. Beside Him kneel the Madonna and the Franciscan
S. Paulinus. In the lowest part of the picture are the chimneys and
towers of Perugia, with the pest-fiend, in the semblance of a huge
bat, bearing a scythe, and the Angel of Deliverance smiting him with
his lance. Below, shepherded by S. Benedict and S. Scholastica, the
diminutive citizens kneel in prayer.

Yet another type of plague banner is that in which the figure of a
saint plays the leading rôle. The saint is always Sebastian, only
because in Umbria and Tuscany he was the chief accredited protector
against pestilence. The finest example of this type is the S. Sebastian
of Sodoma, described above (pp. 100-1).

Plague banners were not the exclusive product of Umbria. Two of the
most famous, the S. Sebastian of Sodoma and the Sistine Madonna of
Raphael, painted at Siena and Florence respectively, are products of
the Tuscan school: but it is only in and around Perugia that they can
be found and studied to advantage. The Sistine Madonna, in which the
Madonna and Child are attended by S. Sixtus and S. Barbara, was painted
during an epidemic of pestilence for the Black Brothers of S. Sisto
at Piacenza. No record exists that it was ever actually used for the
purpose for which it was painted. Bonfigli, in the spirit of Phidias,
had painted ‘Mary the Queen of Heaven’: Raphael, in the spirit of
Praxiteles, had painted ‘Mary the Mother of God’. The people wanted a
queen and Raphael gave them a peasant woman. They could not see, as
Raphael saw, in womanhood the embodiment of gentleness spiritualizing
the brute in man. They could not see in motherhood the vision of
willing suffering transfigured to joy. It was this reunion of Art with
Nature, that dethroned the plague banner from the affections of the
common people.

Plague banners of less importance are those by Bonfigli at Civitella
Benazzone, by Sinibaldo Ibi in the convent of S. Ubaldo at Gubbio,
dated A.D. 1503, by Giannicola Manni in the church of S. Dominico
at Perugia, dated A.D. 1525, and by Berto di Giovanni in Perugia
Cathedral, dated A.D. 1526. There they will be seen for the most part
as framed altar-pieces.

Perugia’s greatest painter, Pietro Vannucci, better known as Perugino,
perished in the course of one of his city’s plagues. Tradition has it
that he died denying the Saviour and Madonna, whom his art had done
so much to glorify, and that his body was thrown into a desolate
grave beside a wayside oak. His sons searched diligently for their
father’s body, to lay it in the church of S. Agostino, but in vain,
among so many that had perished of the plague. It is, said, however,
that a priest found it and buried it under the walls of his church at
Fontignano.

The humbler _Pestblätter_ seem to have played much the same part in
the devotional activities of the individual as did the _gonfaloni_ in
those of the multitude. They were not exclusively German, but were
issued also from the presses of Flanders, the Netherlands, Italy, and
more rarely of France as well. Pictorial _Pestblätter_ are mostly rough
woodcuts or copper-plate engravings, crudely coloured by hand in some
cases, and belong chiefly to the last two-thirds of the fifteenth and
the first third of the sixteenth centuries. In the character of their
subjects they are usually simply devotional, and represent some act of
expiation or intercession on behalf of mankind. The three leading types
correspond closely to the three types of _gonfaloni_ in their subjects:

    1. Christ, the suffering Redeemer, on the cross.
    2. Intercession by the Virgin Mary or by Christ.
    3. Memorials of the martyrdom of special plague saints,
       such as St. Sebastian, St. Roch, and St. Antony.

And closely allied to this last,

    4. Intercession by these special plague saints, or by
       other saints whose association with plague was more
       fortuitous and less widely recognized: such were
       St. Quirinus, St. Adrian, and St. Valentine.

Many of these forms have attached to them some appropriate prayer or
invocation. Sometimes the religious element is supplemented by an
exposition of hygienic precautions or of remedial measures. Thus a
devotional cut comes to be blended with injunctions, usually in verse,
as to how to stave off pestilence by isolation, fumigation, washing,
or dietary; or how to cure it by such measures as bleeding, or
plasters to hasten maturation of the buboes.

In addition to these types, a non-pictorial type is met with, nearly
akin to the English Broadside, in which the religious purpose has
almost or wholly disappeared, and which sets out in uncompromising
prose directions of prophylactic or therapeutic character.

_Pestblätter_ originated in more ways than one. In times of pestilence
pilgrimages were often made to the shrines of special saints, and rough
representations of these saints were provided, as memorials of their
pilgrimage to the devout. Sometimes the object of homage was some
sacred picture, which would then be roughly reproduced as a memento.
At other times they seem to have been issued by religious communities
for purely devotional purposes. Those of secular character were either
printed by order of the municipalities, or were the product of private
medical enterprise. Original _Pestblätter_ are to be seen in the
leading museums of most European countries. A selection of these has
been admirably reproduced in a portfolio[164] by Heitz and Mündel of
Strasbourg.

Plate XVII (1) is a woodcut, probably printed at Nuremberg at the
commencement of the fifteenth century. The Almighty is depicted with
the drawn sword of pestilence in His hand, within what would seem
from its colouring in the original to be a representation of the
rose-wreath, emblematic of the Virgin Mary. In the centre are St.
Sebastian with his symbolic arrow, and an angel tending the plague sore
of St. Roch. Below is a prayer to these two saints.

Plate XVII (2) shows the Almighty above, with the shafts of pestilence
in His hands. The crowned Madonna shelters beneath her robe her
suppliants, among whom are dignitaries of the Church. Below a group
of saints are interceding with the Virgin and Child and St. Anna. The
whole is encircled by the Virgin’s girdle wrought into a rose-wreath.

[Illustration: PLATE XVII (Between Pages 142 and 143)

1. THE ALMIGHTY WITH SS. SEBASTIAN AND ROCH]

[Illustration: PLATE XVII (Between Pages 142 and 143)

2. THE ALMIGHTY, MADONNA AND SUPPLIANTS. THE VIRGIN AND CHILD, S. ANNA
AND SUPPLIANTS]

St. Anthony is a favourite figure of these _Pestblätter_. He is more
closely associated with plague and pestilence in Germany than is the
case in Italy. He is also patron saint against erysipelas, known as St.
Anthony’s Fire, which often raged in epidemics in pre-Listerian times.
He is commonly represented with the cross, on which he was crucified,
with a crutch symbolic of his great age and feebleness, and with an
exorcising bell. The passing bell was tolled originally not only to
ask for prayers for the soul of the departed, but also to scare away
evil spirits from it. The pig, that accompanies St. Anthony, is the
emblem of the Devil, whose temptings he successfully repelled. Even
in the absence of St. Anthony himself, his cross in the form of the
Greek T is often introduced, sometimes with Christ nailed upon it. From
this association of St. Anthony with the cross, it became customary to
appeal to him, as to the crucifix, in times of pestilence.

The association of SS. Quirinus, Adrian, and Valentine of Rufach with
plague is purely local and incidental. St. Quirinus was primarily the
patron saint of the gouty, and St. Valentine of the epileptic, so
that the name _Veltins Krankheit_ was applied to epilepsy. St. Adrian
held under his special protection the Flemish brewers, and the more
creditable patronage of the plague-stricken was only a later accretion.

       *       *       *       *       *

A very large number of pictures are designed to commemorate specific
plagues, and were painted in fulfilment of vows made to the Madonna and
saints for deliverance from plague. Many of these have already been
considered in connexion with the legends and cults of SS. Sebastian and
Roch, to whom they were dedicated. But in far the larger proportion of
these pictures the central figure is the Madonna (see Plates XI and
XII). Sometimes she is attended by SS. Sebastian and Roch, and by other
saints as well. The added saints are, as a rule, the special protectors
of the city, for which the thank-offering has been vowed. Sometimes
they are the patron saints of confraternities, for whom they have been
painted. Sometimes the special medical saints, Cosmas and Damian, are
appropriately added to the pictures. Examples may be seen in almost any
gallery of Italian pictures. In the Brera, Cima de Conigliano (A.D.
1460-1518) has painted the Madonna and Child with St. John the Baptist,
St. Sebastian, the Magdalen and St. Roch, the last-named showing an
incised wound on the inner side of the right thigh. The character of
the picture may be taken as conclusive evidence of its origin and
purpose.

Titian’s picture in the Vatican shows the Madonna and Child in glory,
and St. Sebastian, St. Nicholas, St. Catharine, St. Peter, and St.
Francis are the attendant saints. This picture was painted by Titian
after the cessation of a plague epidemic at Venice for the Franciscan
church of S. Nicolò de Frari.

Correggio’s ‘Madonna di San Sebastiano’, in which she is attended by
SS. Sebastian and Roch, with S. Geminiano, the patron saint of Modena,
was painted in A.D. 1515 in commemoration of a plague that devastated
that city three years previously.

Yet another by Guido Reni (A.D. 1574-1642), in the Academy at Bologna,
was painted at the instance of the senate of Bologna, after the plague
of A.D. 1630. It was carried in solemn procession through the city
to its consecration, and from this circumstance has been called ‘Il
Pallione del Voto’. The rainbow beneath the Madonna’s feet, and the
olive branch in the hand of the infant Christ, each signify the return
of peace. The attendant saints are the special protectors of Bologna,
St. Petronius, St. Francis, St. Dominic, St. Proculus, St. Florian, St.
Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier.

Raphael’s ‘Madonna of Foligno’, in the Vatican, has been accounted by
some a plague picture on account of its general character, and of the
fireball descending on the city of Foligno. Raphael, however, painted
the picture in A.D. 1512, the very year in which it is recorded that
an aerolite fell into Foligno: the picture probably commemorates the
escape of some individual or institution. There was a disastrous plague
in Foligno, but not till A.D. 1523, and it has been depicted in a
hideous picture by Gaetano Gandolfi of Bologna (A.D. 1734-1802), which
is now in the Corsini Palace at Rome.

Miraculous Madonnas abound in Italy, but are, as a rule, of little
artistic interest. A pleasing exception is the ‘Madonna and Child’ that
hangs in the tribune of the church of Carmine in Perugia. It was put up
to commemorate the deliverance of Perugia from plague at the prayer of
the Perugian Carmelites: at each recurrence of plague it was the object
of popular adoration. Formerly it was covered with a gauze veil, which
caught fire and was destroyed, but the Madonna herself escaped any
trace of injury.

The Madonna of Ara Coeli and the Madonna of S. Maria Maggiore are both
accredited deliverers from plague and pestilence in Rome.

Florence, too, has her miraculous Madonna in the small village of
Impruneta. This dark panel, blackened and perished with the lapse
of years, was found, so the legend goes, in the soil at Impruneta,
uttering a cry as the workman’s spade struck it. Seldom or never
exposed to the gaze of the devout, she has suffered the indignity of
an exposure at the hands of the omnipresent photographer. In A.D.
1527 plague broke out in Florence in the early summer. On June 2,
an enormous festival was celebrated in honour of the Virgin of the
Annunciation, that she might be persuaded to succour the Commonwealth
in its troubles. But in July and August the mortality rose to 150-200
a day, and in the autumn to twice these numbers, so that all business
was at a standstill, and the city seemed deserted. Then the government
determined to have recourse to the Black Virgin of Impruneta, whom the
Commonwealth of Florence has invoked so often in various crises of its
history. Of her Segni[165] says: ‘To this mother of God our city has
never publicly applied in vain, in whatever extremity of distress. It
is no light or silly thing, which I am here affirming: for in time of
drought she ever sent rain: in periods of flood, she has restored to us
fine weather: from pestilence she has removed the poison: and in every
most grievous ill she has found its appropriate remedy.’ So the Black
Virgin was brought from Impruneta, and the magistrates of Florence,
‘barefooted and in mourning, received her at the gate of the city, and
carried her in solemn and very sad procession to the Church of the
Servites. Forty thousand citizens had died in the month of November.
But the never-failing Virgin of Impruneta prevailed on this occasion
also. For with the coming of the cold weather, the sickness began to
abate. And thus the faith of the Florentines in their charm was more
than ever confirmed.’ The Black Virgin still watches over Florence in
time of drought. Readers of _Romola_ will recall that other stirring
procession of the Impruneta Virgin, in which Savonarola strode along
defiantly among his company of black and white Dominicans.

Throughout France and Italy numerous pictures may be seen, recording
the ministrations of local or locally venerated saints in time of
pestilence. Such is Tiepolo’s picture in the cathedral at Este, showing
St. Tecla liberating Este from plague. Pictures such as this stand
midway between the group of votive pictures and the group of actual
plague scenes, of which Raphael (A.D. 1483-1520) is the earliest
exponent.

[Illustration: PLATE XVIII (Face Page 146)

THE IMPRUNETA VIRGIN]

[Illustration: PLATE XIX S. TECLA LIBERATES ESTE FROM PLAGUE

By Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. Photograph by Naya, Venice (Face Page
147)]

Raphael’s drawing of ‘Plague’,[166] now in the Uffizi gallery at
Florence, has become much worn with time. The picture is divided into
two parts by a head of the god Terminus mounted on a lofty pedestal.
To the right it is night-time, but the interior of a house of mourning
is shown in vertical section. In its courtyard is a young man, with
a torch in his right hand, counting the number of stricken animals,
while with his left he prevents one of the sheep from coming near to
those that are dead. An ewe lies dead with a young lamb fastened to her
dried-up udder. An ox lying down surveys the scene sadly. Above this
corpse-strewn court a stream of light, penetrating into the interior
of a room, illumines the figures of two Sisters of Charity, as they
minister to the master of the house, who is dying: he is stretched on
his bed, lying in a dense shadow—the shadow of impending death. He
seems to turn away from them and to reject their help.

In the other part of the picture it is day, and daylight shows
up everywhere scenes of suffering, death, and desolation. In the
foreground lies the body of a woman stretched out in death, while her
child struggles to reach her ice-cold breast. The father bends down
hastily to hold the child away, and, as he does so, covers his nose
and mouth with his hand, to keep out the contagion of the pestilence.
Behind this group an older woman turns away in horror: before it, an
old man buries his face in his hands against the plinth of the statue
in an anguish of sorrow, while a young man makes off in panic. In
the background broken columns and the dead body of a horse serve to
intensify the desolation of the scene.

Raphael’s rendering of the scene, for all the horror of its details,
serves rather to inspire pity than horror. He holds the balance evenly
between the horrible realities of the plague and the redeeming
spirituality of human nature. Compassion and suffering stand side by
side. The ox pities his kind passively, as the Sisters seek to minister
actively to their kind. In the features and attitude of the child
Raphael has depicted the devotion that does not die with death. The
deepest note of pathos is touched in the form of the old man in the
centre of the picture, whose grey hairs are brought down in sorrow to
the grave.

It has been asserted that Raphael’s rendering of the dead mother and
the child was inspired by an actual record of Ambroise Paré, but as
Paré was only born three years before Raphael died, the statement falls
to the ground.

Raphael’s debt seems to go back as far as to Aristides of Thebes, who
flourished about 340 B.C. Pliny[167] mentions a picture by him, which
so impressed Alexander the Great, at the sack of Thebes, that he took
it for himself, and ordered that it should be sent to Pella. According
to Pliny, the picture represented a wounded mother lying at the point
of death, and her infant child creeping to her breast. Fear is written
in the expression of her face, lest the child should draw blood from
her breast, now that her milk is dry.

Raphael’s drawing has been engraved by Marco Antonio Raimondi under
the name of ‘Il Morbetto’. In Delaborde’s _Marc-Antoine Raimondi_ it
is reproduced under the name ‘La Peste de Phrygie’, because on the
pedestal are inscribed the words of Vergil:

    Linquebant dulces animas aut aegra trahebant
    corpora.[168]

Vergil, in this brief description of pestilence, aims at no more than
mere poetic effect. It is introduced only to fill up the cup of trouble
for the Trojan wanderers, and is compressed into a few lines. The
Trojan fleet had just made the land: Aeneas had laid the foundations of
a new town, and Ilium was to live again in Pergamus. Then the plague
broke out.

[Illustration: PLATE XX PLAGUE. A DRAWING BY RAPHAEL (Face Page 148)]

    Iamque fere sicco subductae littore puppes;
    Connubiis arvisque novis operata iuventus,
    .. .. .. .. subito cum tabida membris,
    corrupto caeli tractu, miserandaque venit
    arboribusque satisque lues et letifer annus.
    linquebant dulces animas aut aegra trahebant
    corpora; tum steriles exurere Sirius agros;
    arebant herbae, et victum seges aegra negabat.

    Scarce stand the vessels hauled upon the beach,
    And bent on marriages the young men vie
    To till new settlements, while I to each
    Due law dispense and dwelling place supply.
    When from a tainted quarter of the sky
    Rank vapours, gathering, on my comrades seize,
    And a foul pestilence creeps down from high
    On mortal limbs and standing crops and trees,
    A season black with death, and pregnant with disease.

    Sweet life from mortals fled: they drooped and died.
    Fierce Sirius scorched the fields, and herbs and grain
    Were parched, and food the wasting crops denied.
                                 (FAIRFAX TAYLOR.)

As it stands, this is an outline sketch of a famine-pestilence, which
Raphael had no intention of depicting, when he adopted the line. Surely
Sisters of Charity would not figure in a Phrygian plague, some thousand
years before Christ!

Besides pictures, a few medals exist commemorative of plagues prior
to the sixteenth century: these were sometimes struck as mediums of
spiritual consolation. Frequent devices on these were representations
of Christ on the Cross, or of a Serpent on a pole. The specimen figured
here (Plate I (4)) is a Wittenberg thaler of 1528. It shows these two
devices on the opposite faces of the medal, each with a descriptive
legend.

The fifteenth century had drawn to a close in Italy amid a confusion
of epidemics. Pintor, the personal physician of Pope Alexander VI,
has left a book in which he says that the _morbus Gallicus_ first
appeared at Rome in March 1493 and had claimed numerous victims by the
August following. Then, after an inundation of the Tiber in December
1495, plague broke out fiercely in Rome. Pintor states that the touch
of certain precious stones was vaunted as a specific. In 1493 plague
was raging also at Genoa and Naples. At the latter city the mortality
amounted to 20,000 souls. A Genoese chronicler, Seneraga, attributes
the outbreak at Genoa to pollution of the shore by the dead bodies
of the Jews, who had sought sanctuary there on their expulsion from
Spain in 1492, but had died of starvation on the outskirts of the
inhospitable city. Jewish writers asserted that there was plague in
Spain, and that it was carried by the fugitives in their ships to
Italy. Most of the expelled Jews found shelter from the persecution
of the Cross under the protection of the Crescent, in Constantinople,
Salonica, the Levant, and Northern Africa. It was this far-reaching
epidemic that drove Charles VIII of France out of Florence, Rome, and
Naples in succession, almost as soon as his army had entered them.

FOOTNOTES:

[158] Ode 4.

[159] Bk. I, Eleg. 3.

[160] _Aeneid_, vi. 644.

[161] Passus xxiii. 100-5.

[162] Rio, _L’Art chrétien_; and Crawfurd, _Proceedings of Roy. Soc. of
Med._, 1913, vol. vi, pp. 37-48.

[163] Duff Gordon, _Story of Perugia_ (translation).

[164] _Pestblätter des xv. Jahrhunderts._

[165] Vol. i, Bk. I, and Trollope, _History of Commonwealth of
Florence_, vol. iv.

[166] Gruyer, _Raphael et l’Antiquité_.

[167] _Nat. Hist._, lib. xxxv.

[168] _Aeneid_, iii. 140.




CHAPTER IX


Throughout the sixteenth century plague epidemics follow each other in
almost unbroken succession throughout Central Europe. In Rome alone,
during this century, there were no less than twelve severe outbreaks.
The archives of the Capitol and the registers of contemporary
notaries[169] abound in scattered information concerning these
visitations. It had become an established custom that at the first
appearance of an epidemic the Pope and his court should escape from
Rome to a place of safety, leaving the municipality to provide for
the situation as best it could. In May 1449, Nicholas V had fled into
Umbria: in 1462, Pius II had fled successively to Viterbo, Bolsena, and
Corsignano. In 1476, Sixtus IV had flitted in like manner from place to
place. So in April 1522, at the height of the epidemic, it seemed only
in accordance with precedent, when Adrian VI from his secure seclusion
in Spain sent word to Rome of the necessity of imposing a fresh tax
for supporting a crusade against the Turks. The Cardinals seem to have
desired to emulate the example of Adrian, for in June the Town Council
asked the Sacred College not to forsake their posts. Deserted by their
spiritual leaders, the populace lent a ready ear to the imposture of
the Greek necromancer Demetrius of Sparta. He persuaded the terrified
people that the plague was the work of demons, and that, by appeasing
them, it might be brought to an end. So he paraded the streets of the
city, leading by a silken cord a bull that he professed to have tamed
by spells, and sacrificed it in the Colosseum with full pagan ritual to
the hostile demons. As soon as the clergy realized the enormity of the
sacrilege they had condoned they instituted a penitential procession,
which marched through the city, scourging themselves to bleeding and
crying _Misericordia_. If we may credit Paolo Giovio, chief physician
to Clement VII (A.D. 1523-34), it was neither prayer nor sacrifice that
put an end to the plague, but a wonderful oil invented by Gregorio
Caravita, a physician from Bologna. The Oratorio del Crocifisso, near
the church of S. Marcello, is said to have been erected in expiation of
this event. This plague lingered on at least till the following year,
A.D. 1523, for Benvenuto Cellini[170] records his experience of it in
some detail. He says that it dragged on for months, and that several
thousands died daily in Rome. In not unnatural apprehension on his
own account, he determined to adopt such amusements as would promote
cheerfulness of mind, which many believed to be the best remedy against
infection. So he betook himself to shooting pigeons among the ancient
monuments of Rome, and found the pursuit so beneficial to his health
that he succeeded in staving off for a long time the plague, to which
many of his comrades succumbed. But somewhat later, after spending
the night with a young serving girl, he himself fell a victim and has
recorded his initial sensations as follows:

      ‘I rose upon the hour of breaking fast, and felt
    tired, for I had travelled many miles that night, and
    was wanting to take food, when a crushing headache
    seized me: several boils appeared upon my left arm,
    together with a carbuncle which showed itself just
    beyond the palm of the left hand, where it joins the
    wrist. Everybody in the house was in a panic: my
    friend, the cow [Faustina] and the calf [the serving
    girl] all fled. Left alone there with my poor little
    prentice, who refused to abandon me, I felt stifled at
    the heart, and made up my mind for certain I was a dead
    man.’

By the constant ministrations of a male friend and the help of a
physician, whom the apprentice summoned, Benvenuto threw off the
sickness, but while the bubo was still open and plugged with lint
under a covering of plaster, went out riding on a little wild pony.
Benvenuto’s account is valuable as the record of the personal
sensations and sufferings of a plague-stricken man, and tells us also
something of the treatment to which he was subjected at the hands of
sixteenth-century medicine.

Benvenuto says that the joyous reunion of the survivors, after
the plague was over, led to the formation by one Michael Agnolo,
a sculptor, of a club of all the leading painters, sculptors, and
goldsmiths in Rome. The meetings of the club, to judge from his
descriptions, seem to have been devoted to merrymaking rather than to
artistic discourse. On his return to Florence he found that his father
and most of his household were dead, and his surviving sister Liparata,
believing him to have died at Rome, swooned at sight of him. But under
the mellowing influence of supper, at which weddings were the main
topic of conversation, sorrow speedily gave place to gaiety.

Marselius Galeati of Padua at the beginning of the fifteenth century
had drawn up the first known code of ‘Regulations against the Plague’,
based on the belief that the disease was imported to Italy by foreign
commerce.

From the records of the city of Rome it is possible to gather some
idea of the measures adopted by the Popes and Town Council for the
suppression of epidemics of plague. There isolation of infected
individuals or districts was attempted. All wearing apparel and other
materials and articles capable of spreading the infection, were
liable to be destroyed. The city gates were closed, and every incomer
was subjected to strict inspection, and was frequently rejected.
Those gates that were left open could only be used from daybreak to
nightfall, when they were locked against all comers. Navigation of the
Tiber was sometimes suppressed; Lanciani says that an order was issued
on July 30, 1575, that all the boats on the Tiber should be scuttled
in three days, because it was found that the boatmen were ferrying
passengers across stream for bribes. Two transgressors were actually
put to the rack for their offence, which was placarded over them for
all to read. On one occasion a wholesale destruction of dried fish was
taken in hand. Contract medical practice seems to have existed even
in these days. Lanciani has noted among the city records agreements
between physicians or quacks and Roman families for the provision of
medical advice and drugs for a stipulated payment of money. Wills were
often dictated from windows, while lawyer and witnesses stood in the
street beneath.

Confraternities for ministering to the sick and removing them to the
hospitals existed in Rome, though perhaps numerically less than in
other great cities of Italy. The confraternity of the _Pietà_ had
been instituted during a plague epidemic, in the time of Eugene IV
(1431-47), and still has a nominal existence in Rome.

Plague broke out fiercely again in Rome in 1527, at the time of the
sack of the city. Florence was also involved in this same epidemic. It
is this visitation that gave birth to Machiavelli’s _Descrizione della
Peste di Firenze dell’ anno 1527_, cast in the form of a letter to a
friend. In it we find no vivid picture of the awful catastrophe that
was overwhelming Florence, but in place of that a cold-blooded cynical
record of the trivial doings of a loafer sauntering idly through the
streets of the plague-stricken city. It is a record that challenges
comparison rather with the casual entries of _Pepys’s Diary_, than with
the formal descriptions of Bocaccio and Manzoni, his own compatriots.
Opening with a vapid soulless lamentation, in the vein of Petrarch,
over the general demoralization and devastation produced by the plague,
he passes on to describe his own daily mode of living, from which his
correspondent is invited to infer that of the general body of citizens.
The _liaisons_ of licentious monks, the vile ribaldry of infamous
buriers, the vain recourse to preservatives against the plague, these
are the things that are uppermost in his mind, as he depicts his own
amorous intrigues against the dark background of the plague, with the
fidelity of a Pepys and the light-hearted insouciance of a Guy de
Maupassant.

Villari, Macaulay, and others have declined to accept the _Descrizione_
as an authentic product of Machiavelli’s pen. They cannot reconcile its
garrulous obscenity with the stern cold-blooded restraint of the author
of the _Principe_—the frivolity of the one with the sinewy manhood
of the other. They seem to forget that, so far back as 1502, amid
the stirring life of the camp of Caesar Borgia, he had found leisure
to write similar puerilities to his friends in Florence. Political
rectitude, or if we may not ascribe this to Machiavelli, political
sagacity is no guarantee of moral righteousness, and sensuality is
not the exclusive property of the young. Moral levity, as the history
of pestilence shows, is a usual product of the constant imminence of
danger and death; and with Machiavelli political degradation had left
moral levity in sole possession of the field.

A copy of the discredited production still actually exists in the
handwriting of Machiavelli, with revisions inserted in the manuscript
in that of his friend Lorenzo di Filippo Strozzi. Villari advances the
strange suggestion, that Machiavelli had merely copied out what Strozzi
had composed. Is it not equally reasonable to suppose that Machiavelli
had used an actual letter of Strozzi, as the basis of a casual
composition? This would explain the fact that it is cast in epistolary
form, as well as the apparent discrepancy of style. Francesco Berni
(_c._ 1490-1536), a contemporary of Machiavelli, has apostrophized
plague in one of his satirical poems or _capitoli_. A cleric, to whom
indolent pleasure was the be-all and end-all of existence, he must
surely stand alone among writers as one who would hug the pestilence to
him as a friend.

      ‘The pestilence time is good—a fig for other
    times.... Firstly, it carries off the rabble, it
    destroys them, makes holes among them and thins them
    out—like a housewife among the geese at Allhallowtide!
    In the churches there are none to press upon you.
    Besides, none keep any record of buying or borrowing.
    Yea, buy and make debts, for there will be no creditors
    to trouble you. And if a creditor should come, tell him
    that your head aches, that your arm pricks, he straight
    will go away, and will not turn him round! If you go
    out, no one will cross your path: rather is place
    yielded to you, and honour done you, especially if you
    are clothed in rags. You are lord of yourself and lord
    of others. You can watch the folk’s strange antics and
    laugh at others’ fear. Life has then new laws: every
    pleasure is allowed.... Above all, there need be no
    work done. It is a choice life, serene and large: time
    passes very gaily from dinner time to supper.’[171]

In A.D. 1530 there was plague in Geneva,[172] which is memorable as
the occasion of an accusation against certain persons of disseminating
the disease by means of concocted poisons. In the spring of the year
a dissolute young man, one Michael Caddod, was seen to throw down a
handkerchief near a shop. Some one picked it up, and its foul smell
aroused suspicion. Caddod was forthwith put to torture, and in his
agony implicated Jean Placet, an unqualified surgeon in charge of
the pest-house, together with his wife, son, and servant, and one
Dom Jehan Dufour, priest and confessor to the pest-house. Under the
influence of torture, they were driven to admit, that they had sworn
solemnly on a Book of Hours to join in spreading the plague, so as to
enable them to pillage the sick. Placet and his wife, they said, had
prepared the poison from poultices that had been used on discharging
buboes, by drying them to powder and then adding veratrum. Caddod and
his wife undertook to spread it about the streets, while Placet and
his wife administered it to patients in the pest-house with promptly
fatal results. Suspicion fell on Placet, and a barber-surgeon, Bastian
Granger, with his assistant, was instructed to keep an eye on his
doings. Madame Placet was equal to the occasion and gave the pair
short shrift with a dose of poison in their food. In the end Placet
and Caddod were convicted. Their hands were first cut off in front of
the houses of their supposed victims. Next their flesh was cruelly
lacerated with red-hot pincers, and finally the headsman’s axe put a
merciful end to their sufferings. Young Placet’s age obtained for him
the lenient treatment of hanging, while Dufour was first unfrocked and
then hanged. A rapid decline of the plague ensued on so acceptable a
sacrifice.

A few years later, in January 1545, a recurrence of plague in Geneva
raised anew the phantom of another plague plot. This time the bailiff
ordered the arrest of the two men, Bernard Dallinge and Jehan Lentille.
They were alleged to have cut off the foot of a corpse that had fallen
from the gallows, and used it as an ingredient of a plague ointment
that they smeared on the handles of doors. By March, confessions
extracted from them by torture had served to implicate no less than
forty persons. All were accused of having sworn to spread the disease
broadcast, and of having actually smeared door-handles and locks. When
searched, boxes of ointment were found in their possession. The craze
for carrying antipestilential remedies made this an easy matter, but
for all that their guilt was manifest. Calvin, in a letter of March 27,
1545, addressed to Myconius, seems to credit their guilt, but the State
records of Geneva show that he mercifully advocated strangling instead
of mutilation and the stake. As in the case of Servetus, he was less
concerned about their deaths than the manner of their dying. Nineteen
men and seven women—Catholics perhaps—profited by his clemency, and
were executed without preliminary torture. The _Nuremberg Chronicle_
says that in 1494 all the beggars were driven out of Nuremberg, because
they were believed to spread the plague.

The leaders of medicine were no more exempt than the people from the
promptings of fanatical fear. Ambroise Paré[173] echoes the crude
suspicions that Guy de Chauliac had expressed at the time of the Black
Death. This is his advice to the magistrates in time of pestilence:
‘What shall I add? They must keep an eye on certain thieves, murderers,
poisoners, worse than inhuman, who grease and smear the walls and
doors of rich houses with matter from buboes and carbuncles and other
excretions of the plague-stricken, so as to infect the houses and
thus be enabled to break into them, pillage and strip them, and even
strangle the poor sick in their beds: which was done at Lyons in the
year 1565. God! what punishment such fellows deserve: but this I leave
to the discretion of the magistrates, who have charge of such duties.’

Paré recommended, as a prophylactic, the wearing of an amulet of
arsenic. It was to be worn over the heart in order that ‘the heart
might become accustomed to poison, and so be the less injured when
other poisons sought it’.

The pandemic of A.D. 1565 was the occasion of a great impetus to the
production of the so-called Mystery and Miracle plays, particularly in
the south-east parts of France. Mystery plays aimed for the most part
at setting forth the central mysteries of the New Testament, such as
the Incarnation, the Nativity, the Passion, and the Redemption. Miracle
plays dealt with the legends of the great saints of the Church, but
in practice the distinction of Miracle and Mystery came to be ignored
in the play. The purpose of each, in time of plague, was to appease
an angered God by glorifying His majesty, either directly or through
the medium of His saints. The origin and prime purpose of these plays
had almost certainly been educational, for the instruction of a
populace unable to read for themselves: and they originated out of the
worship of the Christian Church. Christianity, when adopted as the
State religion, had dealt the death-blow to the vicious spectacles of
the amphitheatre that were all that survived of the ancient classical
drama. Christianity was also destined to become the parent of the
modern drama, by the introduction into public worship, not later than
the fifth century A.D., of living pictures to illustrate and expound
its teaching. Mystery and Miracle plays alike were evolved from this
simple liturgical origin. The transformation had been effected at any
rate as early as the twelfth century, and by A.D. 1380 a complete
Miracle play was produced in the presence of Charles IV.

Successive epidemics of plague had led to the adoption of these plays
as instruments of intercession, and the pandemic of 1565 gave a great
impetus to this development. When the district of Maurienne was in
the grip of the plague in 1564, the people vowed to present in the
following year the Miracle play of their patron saint St. Martin,
if only their town were spared. No less than seventy-four actors,
all drawn from the working class, devoted themselves to learning and
rehearsing the various parts of the play. Money as well as time was
freely afforded, for the people themselves undertook the expenses of
staging, scenery, and music. The marginal notes of the play, which has
been recently published, show that the stage was erected beside the
wall of a church. Later, as the control of the performances passed out
of the hands of the Church into those of lay associations, the plays
came to be performed away from the churches, a separation that paved
the way for the secularization of the drama by the introduction of a
non-religious atmosphere. This play is in dialect and arranged for
presentation on two days. At the first performance the central theme
was the life of St. Martin as a soldier, at the second his life as a
bishop, and with it were shown certain of his miraculous cures.

This play is but one of many that have recently been published: other
towns followed the example of St. Martin de la Porte. Villard-le-Lans
vowed and played the ‘Mystery of the Passion’ and the ‘Miracle of Saint
Sebastian’: Modane the ‘Mystery of the Last Judgement’: Termignan and
Sollières the ‘Miracle of Saint Laurence’, and so on. Local authors,
commonly the priest or the notary, compiled the various plays.

At Villard-le-Lans is a chapel of St. Sebastian. It has no windows, and
a doorway hewn in the rock. It was prepared as a theatre for presenting
a Mystery play in A.D. 1446. But following the plague of 1565 it was
converted, in fulfilment of a rich man’s vow, into a chapel adorned
with frescoes illustrating the story of St. Sebastian. The frescoes
survive to this day, and have been fully described by M. l’Archiviste
de Jussin.

If we may credit local legend, the Oberammergau Passion Play had
a similar origin in A.D. 1633. One Gaspard Schueler, a native of
Oberammergau, but living at Eschenlohe, where plague was rife,
determined to pay a hasty and surreptitious visit to his wife and
children. He did so, and carried the plague to Oberammergau, where he
died of it himself. Between the day of his death and the festival of
SS. Simon and Jude, thirty-three days later, eighty-four persons died
of plague at Oberammergau. A meeting of the inhabitants was summoned,
and six women and twelve men took a solemn vow to produce every ten
years a play representing the sufferings of Christ. They were rewarded
by the immediate cessation of the plague.

FOOTNOTES:

[169] Lanciani, _Golden Days of the Renaissance_.

[170] Bk. I, § 27 seq.

[171] Translated by Miss Egerton Castle, _Italian Literature_.

[172] Léon Gautier, _La Médecine à Genève jusqu’à la fin du
dix-huitième siècle_.

[173] _Livre de la Peste._




CHAPTER X


Throughout the fourteenth and two succeeding centuries Venice was
visited by a constant succession of epidemics of plague. This was the
price she was doomed to pay for the enjoyment of her Oriental commerce.
Standing, as she stood, at the meeting-place of east and west, so
long as the commerce of the east passed to the west by way of Syria
and Egypt, Venice knew no rival but Genoa, until the Turk appeared
at Constantinople to challenge her ascendancy. Plague and commerce
alike passed through Venice on their way to the countries of Central
and Northern Europe. Plague was in some sense the measure of Venetian
opulence, and with the loss of this opulence the number of her plagues
declined.

Venice had two main trade routes by sea,[174] one to the east and one
to the west, and two land routes to the north.

The first maritime route lay down the Adriatic, past the Ionian Isles,
and round Cape Matapan to Crete, where it divided into four branch
routes: (_a_) northwards to the Dardanelles, Constantinople, the
Black Sea, and the Sea of Azov; (_b_) along the shores of the Morea
and through the Aegean Islands to the Dardanelles; (_c_) to the ports
of Asia Minor, Smyrna, and Aleppo, Cyprus, Syria, Alexandretta, and
Beirut; (_d_) to Alexandria and Egypt. These two last branches linked
Venice to the caravan routes that led from Ormuz on the Persian Gulf to
Aleppo and Beirut, and from Suez to Alexandria, and at their far end
penetrated into the heart of Asia, Persia, India, and Cathay.

The second maritime route lay by way of the Adriatic westward to
Sicily, where it divided into two branch routes: (_a_) to Tunis,
Tripoli, and the ports of Spain; (_b_) through the Straits of Gibraltar
northwards as far as England and Flanders, bringing London and Bruges
into touch with the east.

The land routes from Venice to Central Europe lay for the most part
outside the confines of Venetian territory. One passed by way of the
Ampezzo valley northward to the Pusterthal and on to Innsbruck and
Munich; the other along the Po to Brescia and Bergamo, and thence by
Lake Como and the Splügen Pass to Constance. From Constance trade lines
diverged to all parts of Northern Europe.

A knowledge of these routes is necessary to understand the leading part
that Venice and Constance played in the carriage and distribution of
plague.

The discovery of the Cape route to the east in 1486, was the death-blow
to the trade monopoly of Venice. The lines of commerce shifted step by
step from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, and away from the ships of
Venice into those of the Portuguese, Spaniards, English, and Dutch.

The history of plague in Venice is in large part written in her
public monuments: her archives tell the rest. Venice has virtually
no literature of her own: two or three patriotic diarists, and that
is all. Her Renaissance gave birth to no harvest of men of letters:
painting and architecture sapped all her strength. Artists vied with
architects to write her history on canvas or on stone, not for the
enjoyment of private patrons, but for the embellishment of the city of
their birth.

In A.D. 1410 plague swept over Venice and Chioggia. In 1423 another
epidemic was imported from the east. It was this visitation that led
the Venetians to establish a pest-house or lazaretto on the island of
Santa Maria di Nazaret for infected persons and goods. It was supplied
with food, medicine, and medical attendance out of the revenue from
salt. This was the first institution of the kind in Europe, but it
quickly led to the establishment of more elsewhere.

The Government of Venice was never wont to fold its hands when plague
was at its door. So far back as the Black Death they had appointed
three nobles as _provveditori sopra la salute della terra_ to fight
the scourge. In 1468 these were supplemented by the addition of two
inhabitants of each _sestiere_, and in 1485 this commission was
reorganized as a permanent Board of Health. So by the end of the
fifteenth century Venice had organized and equipped an efficient
defensive system against the constant recurrence of plague.

A second lazaretto was established during the plague of 1576 on the
island of Sant’ Erasmo, and in the same year the Republic summoned
learned professors of medicine from Padua—Girolamo Mercuriale and
Giovanni Capodivacca—to identify the disease, and it was no fault of
the Republic that they pronounced it not to be plague.

A curious evidence of the mutual influence of religion and therapeutics
on each other is the fixing of quarantine at forty days, because this
was the period that Christ dwelt apart in the wilderness.

Venetian doctors for the most part seem now to have mended their ways
and devoted themselves loyally to the service of the sick. In a book
published in Venice in A.D. 1493, _Fasciculus medicus Johannis de
Ketam_, the physician Pietro da Fossignano is shown visiting a plague
patient. As he feels the pulse, he holds to his mouth and nostrils
a sponge, steeped in some antipestilential aromatic. Pietro’s death
about A.D. 1400 helps towards fixing the date of this simple clinical
precaution. In later years a special plague dress was devised for
doctors, which was adopted from Italy by France, and of which several
engravings exist of about the time of the 1720 plague of Marseilles
(see pp. 206-8). Ambroise Paré recommends that the material should be
camlet, serge, satin, taffeta, or morocco, but not cloth, frieze, or
fur, which might harbour the poison and carry death to the healthy.

Venice had also her street ambulance in the brotherhood of S. Rocco,
instituted for the purpose of conveying the sick to hospital and the
dead to burial. Their services were sorely taxed in times of plague.
A specimen of the working dress of the Order may still be seen in the
Treasury of the Scuola di San Rocco. It is a loose white cotton overall
with full hanging sleeves. On each side of the chest is an oval white
satin badge, embroidered with red silk and edged with red lace. On one
the figure of Christ is embroidered in silk: on the other that of S.
Rocco with his dog. It is bound at the waist with a corded girdle of
white cotton with heavily ornamented cotton tassels at each end. A deep
peaked hood of the same material completely covers the head, having
only slits as apertures for the eyes. White leather gloves complete
the costume. A similar dress was worn by many of the charitable
confraternities of Central Italy, and is to be seen in several Sienese
pictures (see Plate VIII). It has its modern counterpart in the
operating dress of the aseptic surgeon, but by a queer turn of the
whirligig of time its purpose is no longer to keep infection out, but
to keep it in.

The Guild of San Rocco had come into existence at least as early as
A.D. 1415, but it was not till 1478 that leave was obtained from
the Government to enlist a confraternity under the standard of San
Rocco. Its first meeting-place was the church of San Giuliano, but
in 1485 the guild undertook to build a church for the custody of the
body of the saint, which some Venetians had surreptitiously removed
from Montpellier. Five years sufficed to complete the church, and the
saint’s body was laid in it with great solemnity. The precious relic
was destined to bestow great prestige on its possessors. Of the five
great charitable guilds of Venice, that of S. Rocco was by far the
greatest. From 1516 to the end of the Republic each Doge was enrolled
a member, along with many of the richest merchants of Venice. In this
year the brethren determined to erect a meeting-house adjacent to the
church, which should be an added ornament to the city. So the building
of the Scuola was commenced in 1517 by Bartolommeo Bon, only to be
finished in 1550 by Antonio Scarpagnino.

While the Scuola was in course of construction, the original church
of S. Rocco was found to be insecure, and was rebuilt, but not in its
present form, which is no older than 1725. In 1559 the Confraternity
entrusted its decoration to Tintoretto, and there are still to be seen
there, on the rare occasions when daylight suffices, the four pictures
in which the artist set himself to illustrate the life of the saint.
These are (1) St. Roch in hospital; (2) St. Roch healing animals; (3)
The capture of St. Roch; (4) The appearance of an angel to St. Roch in
prison. The small picture that hangs by a side-altar—the ‘Betrayal of
Christ’, by Titian—has received all the homage that should have been
paid to Tintoretto’s subjects: indeed, the offerings rendered to this
‘miraculous’ picture enabled the guild to rebuild their Scuola. To this
church the Doge came yearly on August 16 to implore St. Roch to ward
off plague from the Republic.

In 1560 the growing wealth of the guild induced them to call in
competition the leading painters of Venice to decorate the halls of
the Scuola. Andrea Schiavone, Federigo Zuccaro, Giuseppe Salviati,
Paolo Veronese, and Tintoretto were all invited to prepare drawings and
submit them to the judges on the appointed day. While the others had
merely sketched designs, Tintoretto had finished a complete picture,
‘St. Roch in glory’, that now occupies the centre of the ceiling of the
refectory. To ensure still further his success, Tintoretto presented
the picture to the guild. From this time until 1588 the decoration of
the Scuola formed the chief part of Tintoretto’s work. By the beginning
of 1566 he had completed the superb ‘Crucifixion’ in the refectory
of the upper hall, and on its completion he was admitted to the
Confraternity, and assigned an annual subsidy of 100 ducats (about £50)
in payment for three finished pictures each year. Here, at any rate,
he found scope for the expression of an inexhaustible fancy: but those
who have attempted to study the paintings of the Scuola will appreciate
something of the difficulties he had to surmount owing to the defective
light which, as in the church, renders the pictures invisible except on
the brightest days.

As Michelangelo had done in the Sistine Chapel, so Tintoretto thought
out in advance a comprehensive and harmonious scheme for the entire
adornment of the halls. The key-note of it all is the dedication of the
Scuola to San Rocco, the patron saint of the plague-stricken, and also
of those who ministered to them. So the paintings in the upper hall
represent acts of mercy and deliverance, illustrated in Christ’s life
on earth. Those in the lower hall of entrance, eight in number, setting
forth mainly the history of the Virgin and her infant Son, form thus
an appropriate prelude to the upper series. Giovanni Marchiori and his
pupils have faithfully pursued the scheme in the twenty subjects from
the life of St. Roch carved in the panelling of the upper hall. The
great staircase that joins the two halls is decorated with frescoes of
plague scenes by Zanchi (1666) and Negri (1673), of little artistic
merit. Yet another memorial of plague survives in the rows of wooden
standard lamps, set round the upper hall, which the brethren used to
carry in processions to the honour of their patron saint.

Tintoretto was still at his work in the Scuola when the appalling
plague of 1575-7 fell on Venice, carrying Titian to his grave, within
close hail of his centenary. While others were hurried away to obscure
burial in the common plague pits of Sant’ Erasmo and the outlying
islands, the body of the old man, who had brought so great glory to
Venice, was accorded the honour of a public funeral by order of the
Signoria. After lying in state it was carried to the beautiful Gothic
church of S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, wearing the insignia of Imperial
Knighthood, conferred on him by Charles V, and placed in a tomb at
the foot of the altar of the Cross. Here Titian sleeps his last sleep
unmindful, be it hoped, of the outrage in marble inflicted on his
memory by Ferdinand I of Austria, at the hands of Luigi and Pietro
Zandomeneghi. Titian’s eldest son died with him, and his second son,
Pomponio, a canon of Milan, hastened to Venice, as soon as he was
assured that all danger was past, and quickly dissipated the fortune
that the painter had amassed by the thrift and labour of a lifetime.

For three years this plague devastated Venice, carrying off no less
than 50,000 souls, one quarter of her whole population. The Doge,
Luigi Mocenigo, displayed throughout the utmost courage and devotion.
He himself superintended all the efforts to arrest the plague, and
ministered in person to the sick. He went in solemn procession with
all the confraternities of Venice to the church of S. Rocco, to vow
the erection of another church, if only the saint would intercede
for them. As Cyprian and Gregory had done before him, he addressed
words of consolation and encouragement to his people in the sanctuary
of his cathedral church. But Luigi was dead when the day came for
his successor to summon the people of Venice to St. Mark’s to fulfil
Luigi’s vow.

Picture to yourself Venice one July Sunday under a cloudless sky. From
the pulpit of St. Mark’s some aged patriarch has proclaimed the freedom
of the city from plague. Out of the coloured gloom of the church files
the procession into the dazzling glare of the Piazza. All Venice is
there: Venice is in jubilant mood. St. Mark’s, Ducal Palace, Campanile,
and all the buildings around are gay with carpets and tapestries, with
pictures and gilded shields. Banners of gorgeous colours flutter to
the crisp sea-breeze from the columns of Theodore and the Lion. Amid
wild shouting of people and roar of cannon, and ringing of bells
the procession wheels to the Piazzetta. Before it lies the lagoon,
stretching over to S. Giorgio Maggiore, and away to the Lido beyond,
sparkling and shimmering in the sunlight, like some great scintillating
jewel. God and man seem to have joined hands there to create the
fairest spot of earth. From Piazzetta to Giudecca a bridge of boats has
been thrown over, near half a mile in length. On to the bridge goes
the procession.[175] The guilds and confraternities, displaying their
respective standards and carrying crosses, images of the Madonna and
saints, and reliquaries, lead the way, followed by magistrates, nobles,
and their ladies. Next come the patriarchs, the Church dignitaries, and
canons in their rochets, the friars, chanting, under the banners of
their fourteen orders, the clergy robed in rich copes embroidered with
gold and sewn with jewels, under their eleven banners. Last of all,
accompanied by senators and ambassadors, comes the Doge, Sebastiano
Venier, hero of Lepanto, a noble figure, robed in white with a splendid
mantle of silver brocade hanging from his shoulders. In a temporary
wooden oratory built close to the place where the Redentore Church was
to rise from the plans of Palladio, Mass was sung this day to music by
Giuseppe Zarlino of Chioggia, the Doge’s chief musician. And the sound
of this jubilant day has echoed down the ages and may be still heard
at the yearly _Festa del Redentore_ in July, as the procession passes
over its bridges of boats from San Zobenigo to Zattere, and Zattere
to Giudecca, but shorn of much of its former glory. Where stood the
wooden chauntry stands now Palladio’s church, a plague-spot on the face
of nature. Théophile Gautier, nevertheless, saw beauty in its aspect
by the light of the setting sun. Within there are no pictures and no
memorials of the plague to which it owes its being. A Venetian medal,
showing the Doge with the banner of St. Mark kneeling before Christ,
commemorates this plague.

Venice has other churches to commemorate her plagues besides San Rocco
and the Redentore; oldest of all, S. Giobbe, church and convent, built
in the middle of the fifteenth century (1462-71) by Doge Cristoforo
Moro, the friend of S. Bernardino, and dedicated to the Job of
Scripture who was plagued with all manner of diseases. Over the high
altar was once the famous picture by Giovanni Bellini, now in the
Accademia, of the Madonna and Child enthroned between St. Job, St. John
Baptist, St. Sebastian, St. Francis, and St. Louis of Toulouse. Venice
brought the cult of S. Giobbe along with plague from the east: he is
hardly known elsewhere in Italy.

Only a few years later (1506-18) another plague church, that
of S. Sebastiano, was built for the Order of St. Jerome by the
two architects, F. da Castiglione and A. Scarpagnino. It is the
burial-place of Veronese, to whom most of its decoration is due. The
ceilings of both church and sacristy are enriched with his pictures,
set in deep gilded mouldings. Over the high altar is an ‘Apotheosis of
St. Sebastian’, to whom the Madonna appears in heaven, along with St.
Mark, St. Jerome, St. John Baptist, and St. Catharine of Alexandria.
To the left of the altar is Veronese’s famous ‘Martyrdom of Marcus and
Marcellinus’.

While this church was building Giorgione died of plague. About his four
and thirtieth year he had become wildly enamoured of a young woman, and
when the plague seized her he still paid her secret visits, and taking
the sickness from her lips with her kisses, he paid for his love with
his life.

Last, but best known of all, is the church of S. Maria della Salute,
begun by Baldassare Longhena in 1632, to commemorate the plague of
1630-1, which carried off 46,490 in Venice, and 94,235 in the whole
lagoons. Doge Niccolò Contarini had vowed a church to the Madonna of
Health, if she would deliver the Republic from the plague. During its
building a temporary wooden oratory was built on a piece of land, which
the Knights Templar had bestowed on the Republic, and Doge, Council,
nobles, and people crossed over the Grand Canal by a bridge of boats
to hear a solemn Mass. In the sacristy of Longhena’s church are two
seventeenth century prints, one showing the procession as it crosses
the pontoon bridge, the other, as it files up into the church. Each
year in November the procession starts from St. Mark’s and crosses the
Grand Canal by the Redentore route, and circles round the church to
the entrance facing the Canal. Modern Venice has transformed a solemn
pageant into a fancy fair. These prints show the church as it now
stands, on a platform at the top of a great flight of stairs leading
up from the Grand Canal, but a statue of the Madonna has replaced the
Angel of Pestilence on the summit of its larger dome.

S. Maria della Salute contains many memorials of plague. Over the high
altar is a heavy group of marble statuary by Giusto il Corto. In the
centre sits the Madonna holding her Child, with cherubs at her feet. On
one side kneels a woman entreating her aid: on the other a cherub with
flaming torch expels a plague demon of human form.

In the vault of the choir is a ceiling painting by Fiammingo showing
Venice imploring liberation from plague.

In the sacristy is Titian’s picture of St. Mark with St. Sebastian,
St. Roch, Cosmas, and St. Damian, commemorating the plague of 1512, in
which Giorgione perished (see Plate IX). Here, too, is Marco Basaiti’s
(second half of fifteenth century) votive picture of St. Sebastian,
a fine figure in a beautiful Umbrian landscape, but not the peer of
Sodoma’s saint: and yet another picture of St. Roch, St. Sebastian, and
St. Jerome by Girolamo da Treviso (1497-1544).

FOOTNOTES:

[174] Horatio Brown, _The Venetian Republic_.

[175] Molmenti, _Venezia_.




CHAPTER XI


Milan had suffered from the Black Death far less than other cities
of Italy: maybe she had acquired a transient immunity. For the three
succeeding centuries her history is one long catalogue of plagues, of
which two claim special notice.

In 1576 plague broke out in late July. Carlo Borromeo was archbishop
at the time. The son of Ghiberto Borromeo, Count of Arona, and Mary
de Medici, Carlo was of noble parentage. His influence gained for him
in early life the archbishopric of Milan. Amid all his wealth his
own personal life was ordered with temperance and humility. Stern,
or as some say cruel, to track out and repress all the abuses that
had invaded the Church in his diocese, he earned the jealous dislike
of his clergy and of the religious orders. The Brothers of Humility
made open attempt on his life, but by a miracle he escaped them.
Carlo was away at Lodi when news reached him that plague had broken
out in Milan. Hastening back to the city he found that the governor,
many officials, and all the rich had fled. All was in chaos. The
people turned in despair to their spiritual father, and entrusted
the care of the town to him. He set them to work at once to adapt
the great hospital of St. Gregory for the reception of the sick, and
later to build six lazarettos of wood outside the walls. All these he
equipped and furnished with linen from his own palace. For its better
administration he divided the city into four quarters, and put over
each an overseer with a staff of helpers. His example of courage and
personal devotion served to attract many of the secular clergy, monks,
and nuns to the service of the sick. Even lay men and women organized
a nursing guild among themselves. Carlo himself went everywhere,
giving directions for housing the sick and burying the dead. He visited
even those parishes beyond the walls, where the disease was raging,
providing for the sick, feeding the needy, and rousing the clergy to
the loyal discharge of their duty. Famine soon came to add another
horror to pestilence. Borromeo collected all the destitute into an
encampment and arranged the supply of food. First he had all his own
silver plate melted down to provide the necessary money. When this ran
out, he begged it from door to door, and finally incurred huge debts on
his own personal security. Beyond such material aids as these, Carlo
Borromeo brought to the stricken Milanese the spiritual comforts of
religion. From the pulpit of his cathedral he expounded to them the
Lamentations of Jeremiah, showing them how they applied to Milan. From
the altar steps he chanted with quivering voice the penitential psalms,
and kneeling before the altar offered himself to God as a sacrifice
for his people. Through the streets of the city he marched at the head
of penitential processions with bare feet and the rope of the criminal
around his neck. But through it all he passed unscathed, himself and
his eight-and-twenty attendant priests. Only 17,000 died in Milan,
and 8,000 in the districts round about: that so few died out of so
vast a multitude of sick was attributed to the ministrations of their
archbishop.

As the traveller comes down from the Alps, skirting the shores of
Lago Maggiore, where gardens are radiant in spring with camellias,
magnolias, mimosa, and myrtle, one feature only blurs the faultless
landscape. On a ridge, high over the lake at Arona, towers on its
pedestal the statue of Carlo Borromeo, a senseless, soulless colossus,
in copper and bronze, mocking the skies. Your guide-book tells you you
may go up inside its body. If you do so on a hot day you may learn
something of the sufferings of Phalaris, roasted in the belly of his
own brazen bull. But perhaps you will do as well to stay beneath and
pray that something rather of the spirit oi Borromeo may enter into
your soul.

[Illustration: PLATE XXI PROCESSION TO S. MARIA DELLA SALUTE, VENICE

From a seventeenth century engraving (Face Page 172)]

[Illustration: PLATE XXII (Face Page 173)

CARLO BORROMEO. BY ANNIBALE CARRACCI]

Religion has canonized S. Carlo Borromeo; Art has ensured him
immortality. In the churches and galleries of Milan he figures as
patron saint against plague, sometimes alone, sometimes conjointly
with St. Roch. In Venice he gives place to St. Roch, in Florence to
St. Sebastian. In parts of Central Italy S. Carlo reappears, attended
often by local saints, interceding with the Madonna. In the church of
S. Dominico in Perugia a picture shows him along with S. Catharine of
Siena, supplicating the Virgin. At S. Carlo in Corso at Rome, along
with S. Ambrose, he intercedes with Christ, and another picture in the
same church represents his apotheosis.

Memorials of Borromeo are innumerable. The sacristy of Milan Cathedral
contains a life-size effigy in mitre and robes, all in wrought silver:
also a gilded wooden cross, on which the various emblems of the Passion
are carved in relief, which he carried in plague processions: also a
silk embroidered portrait of him in his mitre. S. Carlo Catinari at
Rome has one of his mitres, and part of the rope that he wore as a
halter.

Beneath the floor of Milan Cathedral, below the dome and in front of
the choir, is the Cappella of Carlo Borromeo. His remains lie in a
silver coffin, supported on a silver altar, each elaborately engraved
and embossed. The hexagonal chamber has the whole surface of its
walls coated with plates of silver, on which are reliefs representing
a series of scenes from his life. In one he is giving alms to the
plague-stricken: in a second he is baptizing children in a plague
hospital: in a third he is walking with feet and head bare, and with
a halter round his neck, in a plague procession, preceding the sacred
relics that are carried beneath a canopy.

Portraits of S. Carlo in Milan, those in the Cathedral, in the
Borromeo Palace and elsewhere, all in profile, show the prominent nose
and receding forehead and a degree of ugliness that would almost seem
to forbid enrolment in the catalogue of the saints. A rugged full-faced
portrait by Annibale Carracci (1560-1609), now in the Hermitage at St.
Petersburg, seems less discordant with the halo.

Pietro da Cortona (1596-1669) painted a picture of Borromeo heading
a plague procession, which is one of the best of its kind. It is now
over the altar of S. Carlo Catinari at Rome, but hidden from view by a
brazen symbol of rays of glory.

The familiar theme of innumerable pictures both in Italy and France
is Carlo Borromeo carrying the Sacrament to the plague-stricken. Some
of the best known are those by Jakob van Oost (le Vieux) (1600-71) in
the Louvre: by Lemonnier in the Musée at Rouen: by Cigoli (1559-1613)
in the church of Santa Maria Nuova at Cortona: by Francesco Gossi in
the church of Poveri at Bologna: and by Baldassare Franceschini in the
church of the Barnabites at Pescia.

The Flemish painter Gaspard de Crayer (1585-1669) has varied somewhat
the hackneyed features of the subject. In his picture, Carlo Borromeo,
in red episcopal robes, followed by two acolytes carrying the taper and
cross, bends down and offers the Sacrament to a dying man, who kneels
before him with head bandaged and shirt thrown open over his bare
chest. Behind the man are two women, one of whom supports his body,
while the other in the shadow of a doorway carries a glass of water
in her hand. Kneeling beside the man, with hands joined in prayer, a
little boy awaits the Sacrament: in the foreground lies a dead child.
Before this little corpse a man is seated on the ground, supporting his
head, his legs bare and covered with ulcers. Behind him are two women,
one of whom covers her mouth with a handkerchief, while the other
stretches out her hands to an attendant deacon, who is distributing
alms. The background is a street of Milan with a vista of open country
beyond.

[Illustration: PLATE XXIII (Face Page 174)

BORROMEO LEADING A PLAGUE PROCESSION

By Pietro da Cortona]

[Illustration: PLATE XXIV (Face Page 175)

BORROMEO INTERCEDING FOR THE PLAGUE-STRICKEN

A marble bas-relief by P. Puget]

Puget (1622-94) has represented the same subject in a marble
bas-relief, now in the Santé at Marseilles. Borromeo kneels in earnest
supplication amid a group of dead and dying. His eyes are fixed on a
cross borne aloft by cherubs. He is attended by acolytes, who carry a
cross and chalice, and a child clings to his robes. In the foreground a
convict drags off a corpse for burial. In the background a woman bends
in wild despair over a bed, on which a dead man is stretched.

       *       *       *       *       *

In 1630 occurred the Great Plague of Milan, well known to many by
the description of Manzoni (1785-1873) in his _Promessi Sposi_. For
his information he has drawn on many sources, and not least on the
contemporary record of Canon Ripamonti, written by request of the
Magistracy as a supplement to his History of Milan.

This volume on the plague bears an emblematic engraving on the
title-page. A skeleton holds in his hands weapons, armour, bones, and
books all strung together. The toes of his feet protrude from beneath
a carpet on which lies a plague-stricken man. In front of the skeleton
is an altar, on which stand taper and crucifix. Beside the altar sits
a woman, a drawn sword in her right hand, her left arm embracing a
stork: a naked child is by her side. On the frontal of the altar is the
title of the book: ‘Josephi Ripamontii, Canonici Scalensis Chronistae
Urbis Mediolani, De Peste Quae Fuit Anno cIɔIɔcxxx Libri V, Desumpti Ex
Annalibus Urbis Quos LX Decurionum Autoritate Scribebat.’

In his _Storia della Colonna Infame_, published in 1840, Manzoni
has told the trial and punishment of the two _Untori_, accused of
spreading the plague by means of ointments. The home of one of them
was destroyed by order of the State, and the ground on which it stood
declared accursed. On it a stone column was erected in 1630, bearing
the following inscription:[176]

      ‘Here, where this plot of ground extends, formerly
    stood the shop of the barber, Giangiacomo Mora, who
    had conspired with Guglielmo Piazza, Commissary of
    the Public Health, and with others, while a frightful
    plague exercised its ravages, by means of deadly
    ointments spread on all sides, to hurl many citizens to
    a cruel death. For this, the Senate, having declared
    them both to be enemies of their country, decreed that,
    placed on an elevated car, their flesh should be torn
    with red-hot pincers, their right hands be cut off, and
    their bones be broken: that they should be extended on
    the wheel, and at the end of six hours be put to death
    and burnt. Then, and that there might remain no trace
    of these guilty men, their possessions should be sold
    at public sale, and their ashes be thrown into the
    river; and to perpetuate the memory of their deed the
    Senate wills, that the house in which the crime was
    projected shall be razed to the ground, shall never
    be rebuilt, and that in its place a column shall be
    erected, which shall be called Infamous. Keep afar
    off, then, afar off, good citizens, lest this accursed
    ground should pollute you with its infamy. August 1630.’

This cursing of the site recalls the curse of Joshua[177] on the site
of Jericho after its capture: ‘Cursed be the man before the Lord, that
riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho: he shall lay the foundation
thereof in his first-born, and in his youngest son shall he set up the
gates of it.’ And the Constitutions of Moses[178] pronounced a similar
curse on cities that turned aside from the true religion.

In 1777 Count Pietro Verri, Counsellor of State in the service of Maria
Theresa, published a treatise on Torture, in which special reference
was made to this case at Milan in 1630. His work, however, did not see
the light till 1804. Then in 1839 the _Processo originate degli Untori
nella peste del 1630_ was issued in Milan, giving a full official
account of the trial of these Anointers. Fletcher, in 1895, drew up a
summary of evidence from all the sources in his _Tragedy of the Great
Plague of Milan_.

Early in the morning of June 21, 1630, one Catarina Rosa, a woman
of the lower classes, saw from the balcony of her house a man going
down the street writing on a sheet of paper. He stopped to wipe his
fingers on the wall of a house, probably to get rid of ink-stains,
but the woman’s fear at once conjured up the superstitious image of
a deadly ointment smeared on the walls to spread the plague. A crowd
of excited women flocked to the Council Chamber to inform the Senate,
who at once ordered the man’s arrest. Henceforth no one dared touch
a wall. Ripamonti tells how three young French travellers fared, who
in admiring the marble of a temple unsuspectingly ventured to touch
it. Someone saw them do it, and raised the alarm. Forthwith they were
savagely set upon and hurled into gaol, and only released when it was
found that there was no vestige of evidence to suggest anything but
innocent curiosity.

Again, an old man of eighty was seen to dust a bench in the church of
St. Anthony with his cloak before sitting down. Immediately the women
cried out that he was anointing the benches, and the worshippers set
on him there and then in the church, and after beating him brutally
dragged him before the magistrates. Ripamonti believes that he died of
his injuries.

The search for the suspected Anointer resulted in the arrest of one
Guglielmo Piazza, a scrivener who carried an ink-horn at his belt. He
was also a commissioner of health, that is to say, a petty official
employed to report cases of plague. Throughout two applications
of torture he stoutly denied the offence, but in his cell, broken
with suffering and fearing a renewal of torture, he yielded to the
suggestions of those around him. He confessed his guilt, and declared
that he obtained the deadly ointment from the barber Giangiacomo Mora.
This man was straightway arrested and carried to the court, but there
vehemently asserted his innocence and vowed that he had never seen
Piazza. Under torture, however, he gave way, and vied with the unhappy
Mora in concocting falsehoods. Among others, they implicated Count
Padilla, son of the Commandant of the Castle, but in the end he was
acquitted, and it is from the notes of his trial that Verri obtained
the material for the narrative of Piazza and Mora.

Mora, like most barbers of his day, dabbled in medicine, so that
medicinal jars and vessels were found in his shop. These, he asserted,
contained preservatives against the plague, and probably with truth,
for during epidemics of plague they were in great demand. Ambroise Paré
gives an elaborate formula for a preservative water, with which to wash
the body frequently and rinse the mouth, and a few drops of it were to
be placed as well in the nostrils and ears. Similar nostrums were in
great demand during the Great Plague of London and that of Marseilles
in 1720.

Piazza had occasionally visited Mora’s shop as a customer of the
barber, and both stated that Mora had undertaken to prepare a pot of
his preservative for Piazza. On this innocent transaction was to be
built up a charge of wholesale murder. Mora was induced by torture to
admit that Piazza had supplied him with foam from the mouths of plague
victims to mix with his ointment.

In the intervals of torture Mora and Piazza more than once recanted and
declared that their confessions were false, but a renewal of torture
soon induced them to retract. The ignorant ferocity of the populace
called aloud for satisfaction. At the conclusion of their examination
the unhappy victims were carried off for the execution of a terrible
sentence, in spite of the pledge of impunity. With the merciful
prospect of death before them, they openly asserted that all their
admissions incriminating others were false and had been extracted from
them by their terror of further torture.

[Illustration: PLATE XXV TORTURE AND EXECUTION OF THE ANOINTERS (Face
Page 179)]

At the end of the _Processo originale degl’ Untori_ is a folded plate
representing in all its details the execution of Piazza and Mora.
It is a rough reproduction of an older undated engraving, which
Fletcher has reproduced from a copy in the collection of medical
prints and engravings in the library of the Surgeon-General’s Office
at Washington. The engraver of this was Orazio Colombo, and it was
published in Rome by the authority of the Nuncio of the Roman College.

On the top of the engraving is its title, which may be translated, ‘The
sentence pronounced on those, who had poisoned many persons in Milan
in the year 1630.’ Fletcher appends this further description: ‘This is
followed by the names of the Magnificos, who sat in judgement, and the
particulars of the punishment decreed. Each scene in the picture has
its letter, which is referred to in an explanatory legend below. The
entire disregard of the unities of time and place, which characterized
such productions, is well displayed in this curious engraving. On the
right is the shop of the barber Mora, and in front of it the “Column of
Infamy” is already erected. A large platform car, drawn by two oxen,
exhibits the victims, executioners, and priests. A brazier of live
charcoal contains the pincers with which the flesh was to be torn. The
barber’s right hand is on the block, and a chopper held over the wrist
is about to be struck down by a mallet held aloft by the executioner.
Further on is seen a large platform, on which the two victims are
having their limbs broken by an iron bar, preparatory to their exposure
on the wheel for six hours. The wheels are also displayed, one of them
already on a pole, with the men bound upon them. Still further on are
the fires consuming the bodies, and, last scene of all, on the extreme
left is a fussy little stream, foaming under bridges, which is supposed
to be a river, and into it a man is throwing the ashes of the two
malefactors.’

One dark night in 1788 Nature for very shame let loose a storm that
wrecked the Column: her minion Man then tardily demolished the monument
of his own infamy. The balcony of Catarina Rosa’s house was also taken
down, so that no structure stands to call to mind the hideous tragedy.
The corner-house of the Vedra de’ Cittadini, on the left hand as one
comes from the Corso di Porta Ticinese, occupies the site of poor
Mora’s house. A dwelling has rested on the accursed site since 1803.

It is surprising to find that not only does not Ripamonti deny the
guilt of the victims, but now and again he seems to hint at its
reality. It has to be borne in mind that in his position as official
historiographer of Milan it was hardly permissible for him to express
sentiments opposed to popular conviction and the decisions of the
courts of justice. As late as 1832, during an epidemic of cholera
in St. Petersburg, the most circumstantial statements of miscreants
putting poison in the food and drink of the people were in every mouth.

Manzoni’s _Colonna Infame_ is a simple unadorned narrative of the
trial and execution of the two Anointers, quite different in literary
form from his _Promessi Sposi_. It is written with a definite purpose
in view. Verri had introduced the story into his _Observations on
Torture_, merely as an illustration of the way in which the confession
of a crime, both physically and morally impossible, may be extracted
by torture. Manzoni retells the tale, in the interest of humanity at
large, to show that no matter how deep may have been the belief in
the efficacy of ointments, and despite the existence of a legislature
that countenanced and approved torture, it was competent to the judges
to convict them, only by recourse to artifices and expedients, of the
injustice of which they were perfectly well aware.

Manzoni’s _Promessi Sposi_ is a happy blend of antiquarian research
and imaginative description, and the incidents of the plague are
dexterously woven into the fabric of his story. Manzoni wrote at a
time when literature, freed from the trammels of convention, was being
slowly brought into harmony with the outlook of modern thought. Though
an aristocrat by birth, his upbringing had taught him to regard life
with the eyes of the peasant, and not with those of his overlord. In
his genius for romance and in his reverence for the past Manzoni has
much in common with Scott, but with this difference, that Scott sees
the social fabric from above, Manzoni from below. To Scott life was a
pageant in which knights of chivalry and courtly dames shared all the
leading parts: Manzoni’s stage is filled with men struggling to be rid
of the yoke of feudal oppression. The plague of Milan, falling alike on
rich and poor, afforded him the text from which to preach the essential
equality of all men. His whole narrative is so moulded as to throw
into striking contrast the vices of the rich with the virtues of the
poor. The plague scenes, too, give him scope for his remarkable insight
into the psychology of crowds, and for his skill in marshalling men
in masses, a gift in which he rivals Tintoretto. It is the genius of
Manzoni that he persuades without preaching.

The total mortality of this pestilence in Milan has been estimated
roughly at 150,000 persons. The Sanità, or Board of Health, profiting
by the lessons of the previous plague, seem to have acted with sense
and energy, though hampered by the ignorant obstinacy of the Senate,
the Council of Decurions, and the Magistrates, who were afraid of
driving away trade, if the presence of plague were admitted. One
strange remedial measure was the organization of an immense procession
through the streets in honour of San Carlo. During the procession all
the sequestered houses were fastened up with nails to prevent the
infected inmates from joining in it. Deaths were so numerous at the
height of the plague that the burial-pits were filled, and bodies lay
putrefying in the houses and streets. The Sanità sought the help of
two priests, who undertook to dispose of all the corpses in four days.
With the assistance of peasants, whom they summoned from the country in
the name of religion, three immense pits were dug. The Sanità employed
_monatti_ to bring out the dead and cart them to the pits, and the
priests accomplished their task within the appointed time. Besides
the _monatti_ they appointed _apparitores_, or summoners, who went in
advance of the _monatti_ ringing a bell to warn the people to bring out
their dead. _Commissari_ supervised both _apparitores_ and _monatti_.
Piazza was one of these overseers.

       *       *       *       *       *

The plagues of the seventeenth century have left behind them very many
memorials both in literature and in art: among them the great plague of
Milan is only one of many.

Southern France was attacked again and again, and in 1643 plague raged
fiercely at Lyons. Over the portico of the church of Notre-Dame de
Fourvière, which stands high up on the precipitous hill that overhangs
the town, is a frieze commemorating this plague.

In Italy, city after city succumbed. Guido’s picture, ‘Il Pallione
del Voto,’ reminds us that Bologna suffered along with Milan. Venice
suffered too, and out of her ruin rose the church of S. Maria della
Salute.

Florence retains in the Bargello a hideous reminiscence of her
visitation in a wax representation of ‘Pestilenza’ by Zumbo Gaetano
Giulio (1656-1701). Corpses are lying about in various stages of
decomposition: among them lies a dead mother beside her infant child. A
man, whose nostrils are covered with a bandage, attempts to carry away
a corpse. In the background great bonfires are burning. The modelling
of the carcases is anatomically exact, but the production as a whole is
utterly repulsive.

In 1656 Naples assumes the leading rôle in this hideous Dance of
Death. Soldiers brought the plague on a transport from Sardinia. At
first the viceroy attempted to disguise the true character of the
disease. The first doctor who dared to pronounce the sickness plague
was promptly put in prison. Malcontents spread the report that the
Spaniards had designedly introduced the plague, and were employing
people to go through the city in disguise, sowing broadcast poisoned
dust. The infuriated populace turned on the Spanish soldiery, who
sought safety by transferring the accusation to the French. Nothing but
blood would satisfy the mob, and Angelucci di Tivoli, reputed author of
the plague powder, was broken on the wheel as a peace-offering to their
bloodt-hirsty fury. The Spaniards were accused also of poisoning the
holy water in the churches by means of the deadly powder. Superstition
was rampant in every form. One said that he had been miraculously cured
by drinking holy water before an image of the Virgin. Another saw a
marble statue of the Madonna and Child in the church of S. Severo
covered with sweat, and the faces of both livid and marked by the
plague. A doctor, Francesco Mosca, who printed a formula for curing
the plague, was honourably entitled _Protomedico_. A nun prophesied
that the building of a convent on the hill of St. Martin for her
sisterhood would bring to an end the pestilence. The building was taken
in hand in eager haste, rich and poor vying in bodily labour, but in
spite of all their efforts the mortality grew apace. By a strange
perversity of reasoning penitential processions paraded both day and
night the very streets in which priests, in terror of the contagion,
were administering the Sacrament on the end of a stick. The death-roll
of six months was 400,000 lives. Various writers have described this
plague, among them Muratori, Giannone, and de Renzi in his _Naples
in the year 1656_, published in 1667. The Papal Nuncio in Naples at
the time thought fit to write a pamphlet on it, and of modern writers
Shorthouse has made poor use of it in his _John Inglesant_.

Micco Spadara (1612-79), who actually witnessed this plague, has left
a picture of it, which is now in the National Museum at Naples. It
represents the Piazza Mercatello, a veritable pandemonium of dead
and dying. _Monatti_, drawn from the galley-slaves, are dragging the
corpses with hooks to carts in which to carry them to the burial-pits.
Here and there sedan chairs are seen. These were used to carry the
sick to the lazarettos. At first chair-bearers were selected from
the citizens who volunteered for the task, but when all these were
dead, galley-slaves and convicts took their place. In the plague of
Marseilles in 1720 sedans were put at the disposal of the doctors, ‘for
their more easy conveyance everywhere’, by order of the Town Council.

There was plague in Rome as well as Naples in 1656. Nicolas Poussin
(1594-1665) was resident in Rome, and has left the testimony of an
eye-witness in his picture, ‘The Plague of Rome,’ now in the Czernin
Collection at Vienna. It is a landscape with architectural features, of
which Denio[179] gives this brief notice: ‘Two men are seen dragging
a corpse to the mouth of a vault, whose opening is already barred by
dead bodies. A man, enveloped in a white mantle, directs the bearers
where to go: by his side is a jackal-like dog. On the high platform of
the receptacle we notice a group of six men. Broken columns take the
place of the half-seen trees in other works, while sarcophagi and tombs
indicate a cemetery. Beyond the arch stretches the Campagna.’ Poussin
has introduced into the picture the Castle of S. Angelo, mindful, no
doubt, of the legend of Gregory’s vision.

[Illustration: PLATE XXVI PLAGUE OF NAPLES, 1656. BY MICCO SPADARA

Photograph by Brogi, Florence (Face Page 184)]

The church of Santa Maria in Campitelli at Rome was rebuilt, in its
present form, in 1659, by Carlo Rainaldi, to accommodate a miraculous
image of the Virgin, to which the cessation of the plague of 1656
was ascribed. The church is sometimes called S. Maria in Portico,
because of the neighbouring Portico of Octavia. The miraculous Madonna
is placed now beneath the canopy over the high altar. It is still
believed to protect Rome from the contagion of pestilence. Here, too,
came constantly the Elder Pretender and his son Henry, who took his
Cardinal’s title from this church, to offer prayers to this self-same
image of the Madonna, for the liberation of England from the plague
of Protestant apostasy. To this end James instituted in perpetuity an
office of prayer, and ordained that every Saturday Mass should be said
at 11 of the morning before the picture, with the Sacrament exposed,
and that after recital of the prayers a blessing should be given
along with the Sacrament. This ceremony has ever since been regularly
performed.

In the sacristy is a framed engraving of the miraculous Madonna, dated
1747. It is surrounded by a series of small pictures, one of which
shows the appearance of the image to S. Galla in the pontificate of
John I (523-6), as she ministered to the wants of twelve poor men in
her house. Another shows Pope John dedicating the miraculous picture in
the oratory of S. Galla, which was transformed later into the church
of S. Maria in Campitelli. The remaining pictures represent scenes in
successive pontificates, in which this miraculous Madonna brought about
a cessation of plague. A brief explanation in Latin is attached to each.

The plague of 1656 occurred in the pontificate of Alexander VII. This
Pope did much to atone for the craven spirit of his papal predecessors
by his courage and devotion to his people throughout the epidemic. It
is surprising that no memorial has been erected to commemorate his
services.

Two rare contemporary prints represent scenes in the course of this
visitation. One is figured by Lanciani in his _Golden Days of the
Renaissance_:[180] the other is reproduced here.[181] Both were to be
seen in the Medical Exhibition in the Castel S. Angelo in the spring
of 1912. Lanciani’s print shows the following scenes:

1. Inspection of the city gates by Prince Chigi.

2. Barge-loads of corpses from the lazaretto on the island of S.
Bartolommeo.

3-5. Various methods of fighting the plague in infected districts.

6. The ‘Field of Death’ near St. Paul-outside-the-Walls.

The second print is of even greater interest than this: the first two
rows of plates give some idea of the character of the lazarettos, and
show how they were guarded by palisades and sentries: they also show
the carts for transport of the sick attended by armed soldiers. The
disinfection of the books and personal ornaments of the sick, a dead
dog being dragged away to be thrown into the river, and a sick-cart
marked with a cross, are other details of interest. The third row
indicates the removal of infected goods to places outside the city,
where they were either washed or cleansed; places where other things
were deposited; a country residence of the Popes converted into a
convalescent home; and the ruined palace of the Antonines, where
woollen goods were taken for disinfection. The fourth row represents
chiefly wash-houses and washing-places, to which clothes and bedding
were removed for cleansing. The fifth row, the execution of those who
transgressed the sanitary regulations, the shooting of sick criminals,
and the various measures taken to restrict the river traffic. A cable
is thrown across the river, and palisades are erected on the shores,
so as to break all contact between the city and boats bringing in
provisions. The huts are shown, in which soldiers and officials were
lodged, whose duty it was to compel obedience to the prescribed
regulations.

[Illustration: PLATE XXVII PLAGUE SCENES IN ROME, 1656

From an old engraving (Face Page 186)]

FOOTNOTES:

[176] Translated in _A Tragedy of the Great Plague of Milan_, R.
Fletcher, M.D. 1895.

[177] Joshua vi. 26.

[178] Deuteronomy xiii. 15-18.

[179] Nicolas Poussin, p. 134.

[180] p. 84.

[181] From an engraving in the author’s possession.




CHAPTER XII


The Great Plague of London, which reached its height in 1665, has left
an abundant aftermath both in literature and art. The main story of its
ravages is too well known to call for repetition.

There were still some ready to see in the plague, as they were in
the case of the fire, evidence of the handiwork of malevolent Jews.
Since their expulsion from England by Edward I, the Jews had never yet
obtained the legal right of re-entry, their open petition to Cromwell
having failed. With the restoration of Charles II to the throne, they
seem to have taken the matter into their own hands and found their
way quietly back, so that at the time of the plague there were many
resident in London, to the great advantage of trade and to the relief
of an ever-needy Government. But three centuries of plague, punctuated
by fierce outbreaks at regularly recurring intervals, had served to
unravel much of the mystery of pestilence, and the people had learnt
that it was not to be exorcised by a holocaust of Jews, or by the
brutal murder of imaginary poisoners.

Celestial portents were not lacking to presage the plague. A blazing
comet appeared for several months before the plague. Men affected to
see, in its dull colour and slow solemn movement, a prediction of the
heavy punishment of pestilence; whereas that which preceded the fire
was swift and flaming and foretold a rapid retribution.

Superstition raked up images afresh from the scrap-heap of discarded
fancies. Women saw flaming swords in the heavens, some even saw
angels brandishing them over their heads. Astrologers had strange
tales of malignant conjunctions of the planets. Medical opinion was
still divided along the same lines of cleavage, as it had been for
2,000 years before. There were those who referred the disease to some
occult poison, and those who referred it to an excess of some manifest
quality, such as heat, or cold, or moisture, in each case corrupting
the body humours. Speculation was rife as to the nature of the causal
poison. Some, as Lucretius had done, conceived it to be pestiferous
corpuscles of atomic character, outside the range of human vision,
generated either in the heavens by a malignant conjunction of planets,
or in the soil, and so often liberated by the agency of earthquakes.
These poisons, however generated, found their way into the human body
through the medium of the distempered atmosphere.

Some had noticed an unusual absence of birds before the epidemic, as
Thucydides and Livy had done in their times. Boyle observed a great
diminution of flies in 1665, Boghurst a superabundance of flies and
ants in 1664. Sir George Ent and others attributed the disease to
minute invisible insects, but Blackmore conceived these to be rather a
consequence than a cause.

Insects, so-called, had been vaguely associated with pestilence from
remote antiquity, more especially flies, lice, and locusts; but in the
medical literature of the sixteenth century and after they are assigned
a much more definite role. Mercurialis[182] states that huge numbers of
caterpillars paraded the streets of Venice during the plague of 1576.
Goclenus[183] mentions swarms of spiders during the plague of Hesse
in 1612, and Hildanus swarms of flies and caterpillars this same year
in plague-stricken Lausanne. Bacon speaks of flies and locusts, as
characteristic of pestilential years, and Diemerbroeck[184] of flies,
gnats, butterflies, beetles, grasshoppers, and hornets in the same
connexion. Gottwald[185] reported the presence of multitudes of spiders
during the plague of Dantzig in 1709. Arabian physicians considered
the putrefaction of swarms of dead locusts an important cause of
pestilence. Hancock,[186] as late as 1821, argued that locusts caused
famine by destroying the crops, and so prepared the way for human
pestilence.

Talismans, amulets, reliquaries, and all the stock-in-trade of
magic were in brisk demand among the populace. Quack vendors of
antipestilential remedies innumerable effectively replaced physicians,
most of whom took refuge in flight. All honour to those who stood fast
at their posts and reclaimed for medicine what Galen had renounced, the
captaincy of its own soul. These are the men who had no fear for ‘the
pestilence that walketh in darkness or the arrow that flieth by day’:

     1. Dr. Francis Glisson     } Presidents of the Royal College
     2. Sir Thomas Witherley    }     of Physicians.
     3. Dr. Nicholas Davys    }
     4. Dr. Edward Deantry    }
     5. Dr. Thomas Allen      }
     6. Sir John Baber        }
     7. Dr. Peter Barwick     }
     8. Dr. Humphrey Brooks   } Fellows of the Royal College
     9. Dr. Alexander Burnett }     of Physicians.
    10. Dr. Elisha Coysh      }
    11. Dr. John Glover       }
    12. Dr. Nathaniel Hodges  }
    13. Dr. Nathan Paget      }
    14. Dr. Thomas Wharton    }
    15. Dr. William Conyers  Member of the Royal College of Physicians.
    16. Dr. O’Dowd
    17. Dr. Samuel Peck
    18. John Fife       }
    19. Thomas Gray     } Members of Barber-Surgeons’ Company.
    20. Edward Hannan   }
    21. Edward Higgs    }

And yet a few beside these, whose names are inscribed on no human
document, but whose deeds are imprinted in imperishable type on the
deathless record of righteous human endeavour.

Nathaniel Hodges[187] shows us something of the daily life of a
physician in the course of this plague. He himself rose early, took his
antipestilential dose, attended to the affairs of his household, and
then repaired to his consulting room, where crowds awaited him. Some,
who were sick, he treated, others he reassured and sent away. Breakfast
followed, then visits to patients at their homes. On entering a house
he would vaporize some aromatic disinfectant on a charcoal brazier:
if he arrived out of breath, he would rest a while, and then place
a lozenge in his mouth, before proceeding to the examination of his
patients. After a round of several hours’ duration, he would return
home, drink a glass of sack, and then dine on roast meat and pickles or
some similar condiments, all of which were reputed antidotal. More wine
followed the preliminary curtain-raiser. Afternoon and evening, till
eight or nine o’clock, were devoted to a second round of visits. His
late hours he spent at home, a stranger to noxious fumes of tobacco,
quaffing sack, to ensure cheerfulness and certainty of sleep. Twice the
fatal infection seemed to have slipped past his outposts, but Hodges
had still his remedy: he merely doubled the dose.

Of all the literature of pestilence none has been more widely read than
Defoe’s _Journal of the Plague Year_: all later records take their
colour from Defoe. Nevertheless, a careful study and comparison of
other contemporary accounts leaves little room for doubt that Defoe’s
picture does not accurately represent the general state of London
during the plague. His picture is far more true of Marseilles in 1720
than of London in 1665, and in this connexion one should remember that
he had sedulously collected materials for a diary of the plague of
Marseilles, which have been printed in some editions of his works.
These can hardly have failed to colour his _Journal_, which was not
submitted to the public till 1722, two years after the plague of
Marseilles.

Defoe himself was but six years old at the time of the plague, so that
his own childish memories can have aided him but little in his task. He
will have had, at most, a dim recollection of some hideous catastrophe,
round which ranged tales of parents and friends in his boyhood. To
these he will have added facts and incidents borrowed from the chief
records available in print. Intrinsic evidence goes to show that these
were three: London’s _Dreadful Visitation_, Hodges’s _Loimologia_, and
Vincent’s _God’s Terrible Voice in the City_. The first of these will
have given him the Bills of Mortality and other general information:
the second, the aspect of the plague from a physician’s point of view:
the third, a vision of the plague as it appealed to popular imagination.

That Defoe intended to write history and not fiction, there is no
reason to doubt. Judged only by the accuracy of his facts it is
history, but it is in the facts that he omits, just because he had
never heard of them, that he unconsciously lapses into fiction.
Comparison of details and incidents with the unimpeachable record of
Pepys confirms his accuracy, but it shows also that, by separating
incidents from their surroundings and by compressing his description
to the exclusion of all but selected incidents, the picture, as a
whole, does not accurately represent the aspect of the city, as it
was. Pepys, who was an actual eye-witness, has noted not only the most
striking events but those of everyday commonplace interest, so that
his narrative is far more true to life. Defoe, on the other hand, has
removed his picture from its setting. Pepys shows us that, though the
spectre of plague was everywhere, everyday life went on, though in
subdued fashion. Defoe would have us believe that all activity was
paralysed.

For all this, however, as one reads the _Journal_ the narrative has
such an air of verisimilitude, that one instinctively pictures the
writer as describing what he has seen with his own eyes, so perfect is
the illusion. Mead, indeed, himself an authority on the plague and so
soon after the event, believed that the _Journal_ was the authentic
record of an eye-witness. Defoe’s faculty of visualizing what he has
not seen is inferior only to the vividness with which he describes what
he has visualized.

What is the secret of this vividness? More than all else, extreme
simplicity of language. The simple style was Defoe’s natural style,
and for that reason his use of it is fluent and easy, and knowing this
he fitly puts his story into the mouth of a simple saddler. Defoe
wrote for a growing class of readers of a lowly social order. He is
the apostle of the common people: that is why he imitates their way of
speaking. Not only is his narrative colloquial, but it deliberately
affects the language a saddler would use in reciting to his intimates
the memories of what he had lived through. There is no striving for
dramatic effect, no drawing of lurid pictures, no literary artifice,
but always the same sustained simplicity of diction, even in describing
the most appalling occurrences. There must be no chance of missing
the smallest point, so he even does such thinking as is necessary by
running comments on his own story.

The educated reader, particularly in these days, when even literature
is administered in tabloid form, must needs be wearied by the
prolixity, and irritated by the redundancy of the narrative. But
again it must be pleaded in extenuation that these very defects are
deliberate. Constant repetition, as every teacher knows, sooner or
later penetrates the densest brain.

But the _Journal_ is something more than a mere chronicle, vivid enough
at that, of what happened, and how men behaved, during the plague.
Defoe regards the plague as the judgement of God, and this attitude
imparts a strong moral purpose to the work. This is why he dwells so
much on the mental and moral effects of the catastrophe, inculcating
his lesson without the appearance of undue insistence. Pepys, as
we know, could find heart to make merry during the plague, just as
Boccaccio depicted his company of Florentines: to Defoe the mere idea
of merriment is revolting. Pepys, on New Year’s Eve, as he looked
back over the abomination of desolation, could make this entry in his
_Diary_:

      ‘December 31, 1665. I have never lived so merrily
    (besides that I never got so much) as I have done this
    plague time ... and great store of dancings we have
    had at my cost (which I am willing to indulge myself
    and wife) at my lodgings. The great evil of this year,
    and the only one indeed, is the fall of my Lord of
    Sandwich, whose mistake about the prizes hath undone
    him.’

Pepys was a stranger to imagination: his pleasures and his griefs were
things of the surface and matters of the moment. His creed is egoistic
hedonism in all its naked brutishness. He is far more concerned over
the fire, where there is a chance of losing his property, than over
the plague where the chance is of losing his life. His New Year’s Eve
retrospect is not the only glimpse he gives us of callous indifference
to the horrors of the plague. Look at September 30, 1665, when the
fiercest spell was only just past:

      ‘So to sleep with a good deal of content, and saving
    only this night and a day or two about the same
    business a month or six weeks ago, I do end this month
    with the greatest content, and may say that these
    three months, for joy, health, and profit, have been
    much the greatest that ever I received in all my life,
    having nothing upon me but the consideration of the
    sicklinesse of the season during this great plague to
    mortify mee. For all which the Lord God be praised!’

It was not that Pepys was unconscious of the terrible scenes of
suffering around him, only that he was unmoved by them. Into one short
letter to Lady Cartaret, at the height of the plague, he compresses all
the grim details that fill a volume for Defoe.

Historians frequently lay it down that the fire of London swept away
the plague. As a fact it probably had little to do with its departure.
Several English towns were as hard hit as London, and yet in the
absence of any conflagration subsidence and disappearance of plague
followed the same course as in London. At Salonica,[188] about A.D.
1500, a fire which destroyed 8,000 houses was actually followed by
an outbreak of plague. It was a common contemporary belief that the
departure of plague from London was hastened by the coming of pit-coal
into general use, so that the atmosphere was constantly permeated by
sulphurous fumes.

Records in art of the Great Plague of London, though numerous, are
mostly unimportant. Generally artists have been content to illustrate
its copious literature. In 1863 Frederic Shields commenced an intended
series of illustrations of the _Journal_ of Defoe. Ruskin lavished
great praise on the woodcuts, for their imaginative power and for the
superlative excellence of the design. Proofs of six of these woodcuts
were to be seen at the Memorial Exhibition of the works of Shields
(Alpine Club, September-October 1911). The set of six comprised the
following scenes:

          1. _The Decision of Faith_
    A man is seated at a table, on which lies a Bill of
    Mortality, with his Bible open before him. He says to
    himself, ‘Well I know not what to do, Lord direct me.’
    His finger points to the answer in the open Bible:
    ‘Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge,
    even the most High, thy habitation: there shall no evil
    befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy
    dwelling.’

          2. _The Death of the First-born_
    A youth lies in convulsions on a bed, while a woman
    kneels beside it. In the background are bearers
    carrying away a corpse: both are smoking pipes. On the
    ground lies an hour-glass.

          3. _Solomon Eagle warning the Impenitent_
    Solomon Eagle stands with a brazier of live coals on
    his head in a fierce preaching attitude before a group
    of lewd young women at an open window.

          4. _The End of a Refugee_
    A man with a long hooked pole is dragging a corpse
    along. Beside him stands a grave-digger with spade,
    dog, and dinner-basket.

          5. _The Plague-Pit_
    Bodies are being shot from a cart into a pit by the
    light of a torch, which a man is holding.

          6. _Escape of an Imprisoned Family_
    The door of a house has been hacked down, and is lying
    on a dead body.

George Cruickshank contributed four plates to Brayley’s edition of
the _Journal of the Plague Year_. Three of them, the ‘Dead Cart’, the
‘Great Pit in Aldgate’, and ‘Solomon Eagle’ are vivid and powerful; the
fourth, ‘The Water-man’s Wife’, feeble and commonplace.

The preaching of Solomon Eagle is the subject of a picture by P. F.
Poole, R.A., in the Mappin Gallery at Sheffield. The scene depicted
is taken from Harrison Ainsworth’s novel _Old Saint Paul’s_. It shows
Solomon Eagle, with the brazier of live coals on his head, nude but for
a loin-cloth; and discoursing to the terrified citizens outside old St
Paul’s Cathedral, during the plague. All around are strewn bodies of
dead and dying: a house displays the damning red cross and the words
‘Lord have mercy upon us’. In the background bearers are carrying away
a corpse to burial.

An incident, that Pepys describes in his _Diary_ under September 3,
1665, as follows, is represented in a modern picture by Miss Florence
Reason.

      ‘Among other stories, one was very passionate,
    methought, of a complaint brought against a man in
    the towne for taking a child from London from an
    infected house. Alderman Hooker told us it was the
    child of a very able citizen in Gracious Street, a
    saddler, who had buried all the rest of his children
    of the plague, and himself and his wife now being shut
    up and in despair of escaping, did desire only to save
    the life of this little child: and so prevailed to have
    it received stark-naked into the arms of a friend, who
    brought it (having put it into new fresh clothes) to
    Greenwich; where, upon hearing the story, we did agree
    it should be permitted to be received and kept in the
    towne.’

In 1679 a terrible epidemic of plague broke out in Vienna, then an
opulent city, with a population of some 210,000, and the seat of
Leopold, the Holy Roman Emperor. Our chief knowledge of the visitation
is derived from Sorbait (_Consilium medicum oder freundliches
Gespräch_), Abraham a St. Clara (Merk’s _Wien_), and Fuhrmann (_Alt-
und Neu-Wien_). The disease was preceded by an epidemic of the ‘Hot
Sickness’, (_Hitzige Krankheit_), which was very fatal. Bubonic plague
followed in its wake and Vienna presented the spectacle of one huge
lazaretto for the sick, one gigantic plague-pit for the dead. Convicts,
as at Naples, were employed both to nurse the sick and bury the dead.
Clothing, furniture, and bedding lay littered in the streets mixed
with the dead and dying. When carts failed, the bodies were thrown
into the Danube. A Plague Committee strove in vain to shut up all
infected houses and segregate the inmates in lazarettos and stations of
quarantine. Death by public hanging was the penalty of disobedience.
Some of the royal princes, and foremost among them Prince Ferdinand of
Schwartzenburg, together with many of the nobility, devoted themselves
courageously to fighting the plague, undertaking even the most menial
duties. But many of the citizens and the Emperor himself fled. Leopold
conceived his obligations to his people discharged by a pilgrimage to
Maria-Zell to pray for cessation of the plague. Then he moved his court
to Prague, whence plague drove him to Linz.

During the plague the Viennese set up a wooden column, to which
frequent processions were made, observing the ancient ritual of the
Flagellants. At the end of the plague Leopold made a vow at St.
Stephan’s to replace it by a marble column, which was duly erected in
the Graben between 1687-93.

An incident of this plague, the story of the street-singer Augustin,
who was thrown alive, but drunk, into the plague-pit, but escaped none
the worse for his experience, recalls the like occurrence in Defoe. The
man is said to have composed the familiar ‘O du lieber Augustin’ in a
beer-house on the very night he was thrown into the plague-pit.

Amulets of various kinds were extensively employed in the seventeenth
century. In South Germany a common form was the so-called Pest Penny.
These had on one face, as a rule, the figure of St. Benedict or St.
Zacharias, and on the reverse some formula of exorcism.

Vienna[189] fell a victim to outbreak after outbreak of plague, but the
experience gained in the visitation of 1679 enabled the authorities to
stamp out the infection in 1691 and 1709, before it had grown out of
hand. But in 1713 all preventive measures failed to check its spread.
Then, in the month of May, processions and litanies were organized
to the plague column. The Emperor Charles VI remained in Vienna, and
pronounced a solemn vow in St. Stephan’s, that if the plague ceased he
would erect a church as a thank-offering. Such was the origin of the
Karlskirche. This church is a rich square edifice with a huge dome. It
is the _chef-d’œuvre_ of J. B. Fischer von Erlach, commenced in 1715.
The ravages of the plague are portrayed in relief, by Stanetti, in the
tympanum. Flanking the portico are two domed belfries, resembling
Trajan’s column, 108 feet high, with reliefs from the life of S. Carlo
Borromeo by Mader and Schletter. In March 1714, when the plague died
out after a total mortality of 120,000, a thanksgiving _Te Deum_ was
sung in St. Stephan’s, at which the emperor was present. Two series
of memorial coins were struck, the one showing the votive column, the
other the church dedicated to S. Carlo Borromeo.

The Plague Regulations, published in separate form at Vienna at the
time of this epidemic, give a good idea of current popular opinion
as to the nature of plague. There was no lack of adherents for each
belief of every preceding period. There were those who regarded it as a
signal evidence of God’s displeasure. There were those who attributed
it to poison in the air or food, generated in the stars and spread by
the malice of grave-diggers for their own purposes. Even the Jews were
incriminated. There were those who read its origin in the conjunction
of certain stars. Others ascribed it to famines, to poisonous fumes set
free by earthquakes, to comets, and even to dry seasons through the
multiplication of insects. Come how it might, clouds taking the form
of biers and funeral processions, noises in churchyards, and dreary
sounds in the air foretold its coming. On infected bodies the virus was
often visible as blue sulphurous fumes. There were clearly also some
who conceived a natural origin. A doctor, named Gregorovius, dissected
three dead bodies in search of the cause, but failed to find it. His
intrepid zeal was duly rewarded by the Emperor and by the Faculty of
Medicine in Vienna.

Conformably with the varying conceptions of cause, remedies were varied
and multifarious. Some pinned their faith to a devout life, aided by
processions and penitential sermons. Some lit fires to cleanse the air,
at times adding sulphur. A host of herbs, chief among them Angelica,
enjoyed repute as antipestilential remedies. The simple life appealed
to some, purgatives and blood-letting to others.

But side by side with this ill-assorted medley of measures, a code
of sanitary precautions had slowly grown up. Early notification by
the doctors, quarantine of suspects and segregation of the sick,
cleanliness and disinfection were all recommended and sedulously
executed, and supplied in embryo the essential principles of modern
sanitary science. Doctors were enjoined to keep sober, to fumigate
themselves, and to wear silk or taffetas, to which the virus would
not cling. We have arrived indeed at the parting of the ways, and
henceforth the stream of medical science, polluted less and less by
the surface waters of superstition, flows on clear and full in its
appointed channel. The sun of science emerges at length from its
protracted winter solstice.

FOOTNOTES:

[182] _De Peste._

[183] _De Peste._

[184] _De Peste._

[185] _Reports to Royal Society._

[186] _Researches into the Laws and Phenomena of Pestilence._

[187] _Loimologia, and Dict. of Nat. Biog._

[188] Rabbi Joshua, ii. 403.

[189] Krafft-Ebing, _Geschichte der Pest in Wien_.




CHAPTER XIII


In the year 1720 plague found its way to Marseilles. It was believed to
have been brought by a ship, the _Grand-Saint-Antoine_, which arrived
on May 25 from the Levant. As usual, the attempt was made to hush it up
for the sake of trade. At the beginning of August something had to be
done, so on the advice of two physicians, Sicard, father and son, it
was decided to light bonfires throughout the city. For lack of firewood
this was not done, but also for lack of faith, for it was found that
despite their vaunted specific, the Sicards had fled the city. So
sulphur was served out to the poor instead, wherewith to ‘perfume’
their houses.

As early as August 2 the Town Council found it necessary to adopt
special measures to keep physicians and surgeons to their task.
Accordingly, they decided that the city should pay them a fixed
salary in place of fees from the sick, and allow them smocks of oiled
cloth, and sedan chairs to carry them on their rounds. There are
several illustrations extant of the dress adopted by doctors in the
plague of Marseilles. The same dress, with trifling variations, was
worn elsewhere in France, in Switzerland, and in Germany, and had
originated in Italy. It is shown in an old Venetian woodcut of A.D.
1493, from the works of Joannes de Ketham (_Fasciculus Medicinae_,
1493). This woodcut shows a physician in a long overall, but wearing
only a skull-cap on his head, visiting a plague patient in bed. He is
accompanied by attendants who carry lighted torches, while he himself
holds a medicated sponge before his mouth and nose, as he feels the
pulse. Grillot figured the dress as the frontispiece of his _Lyon
affligé de la peste 1629_, and Manget[190] has borrowed it from him.
From his description it would seem that the mantle, breeches, shirt,
boots, gloves, and hat were all of morocco leather. The beak attached
to the mask was filled with aromatics, over which the air passed in
respiration, and had an aperture for each eye, fitted with a disk of
crystal.

[Illustration: PLATE XXVIII, 1. DRESS OF A MARSEILLES DOCTOR, 1720]

[Illustration: PLATE XXVIII, 2. GERMAN CARICATURE OF THE SAME

(Face Page 200)]

M. Reber[191] describes an engraving by John Melchior Fuesslin,
representing a doctor in the plague of Marseilles. The legend beneath
it, in German, is (translated) ‘Sketch of a Cordovan-leather-clad
doctor of Marseilles, having also a nose-case filled with smoking
material to keep off the plague. With the wand he is to feel the
pulse.’ Reber’s and Manget’s plates are both reproduced in the Bristol
_Medico-Chirurgical Journal_, March 1898, from the _Janus_ blocks.
Gaffarel[192] gives the costumes both of a doctor and of a hospital
attendant: they closely resemble the dress of the Italian charitable
guilds of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

By August 9 some of the physicians and almost all the master-surgeons
had fled, and an ordinance was issued demanding their return, or in
default their expulsion from their respective corporations, and other
special penalties as well. Two physicians named Gayon volunteered
their services for the Hôpital des Convalescents, but forthwith paid
the penalty with their lives. In the absence of sufficient physicians
in Marseilles, others were summoned from Montpellier, Paris, and
elsewhere. These exhausted their energies in a dispute over the
contagious character of plague. Chicoyneau and Chirac maintained that
it was not contagious. Deidier proved, by successfully inoculating
dogs with bile taken from plague subjects, that at any rate it was
communicable. Each subsequently expounded his views in a formal
discourse before the School of Montpellier.

Existing hospital accommodation was quite unequal to the needs.
Emergency tents were erected outside the town, with mattresses for the
sick. Chevalier Rose equipped and maintained a hospital in the district
entrusted to him, at his own expense. A large temporary hospital of
timber covered with sail-cloth was hurriedly erected, but when almost
finished towards the end of September it was blown down by a gale,
and was not rebuilt till October 4. This hospital, together with
the Hôpital Général de la Charité of 800 beds, provided ultimately
sufficient accommodation, so that none need remain in the streets.

From the first the mortality was such that it was wellnigh impossible
to bury the dead. On August 8 the Assembly resolved that carts should
be used to carry the dead to burial, and that pits should be dug in
which the bodies could be buried in lime. So two huge pits were dug
outside the walls, between the gate of Aix and that of Joliette, M.
Moustier overseeing the diggers and compelling them to work. Chevalier
Rose also had pits dug and organized a corps of buriers in his own
district. The duties of burial were at first entrusted to sturdy
beggars, but in a brief space of time the supply of these failed,
so that bodies began to accumulate in the houses and streets. Then
convicts were requisitioned in relays from time to time.

These convicts were promised their liberty, to excite them to work—a
promise that was never fulfilled in the case of the few who survived
the task. Their ignorance of the management of carts and horses, their
idleness and lust of robbery rendered them so unfit for the task, that
Moustier and the other sheriffs and Chevalier Rose were compelled to
be always present on horseback, to superintend the work. By August 21
corpses had already begun to accumulate in old parts of the city, where
the streets were too narrow and steep for the carts to go. Accordingly,
an order was issued that the vaults of the churches in the upper town
should be used for burials in quicklime, and that, when full, they
should be sealed up with cement. By the end of August the streets
were literally strewn with dead bodies, some in an advanced stage of
putrefaction, mingled with cats and dogs that had been killed, and
bedding thrown out from the houses. The square in front of the building
called the Loge, as also the Palissadoes of the port, were filled with
bodies brought ashore from ships in the roadstead, to which whole
families had fled in the belief that plague would not reach them on the
water.

By September 6 more than 2,000 dead bodies were lying in the streets,
exclusive of those in the houses. On the esplanade called La Tourette,
lying towards the sea between the houses and the rampart, 1,000 corpses
had lain rotting for weeks in the sun and emitting a frightful stench.
They were too rotten even to be lifted into carts, and too foul to be
carried to distant pits. Chevalier Rose, mindful maybe of Procopius,
conceived the idea of throwing them into two huge vaults in the old
bastions close to the esplanade, after breaking in their roofs. The
task was carried out in fierce haste by 100 galley-slaves, who tied
handkerchiefs dipped in vinegar over their mouths and noses. At the
same time fishermen netted 10,000 dead dogs floating in the port and
towed them out to sea.

In the parish of St. Ferriol, the finest quarter of the city, Michel
Serre the painter undertook to see to the burial of the dead, with
carts and galley-slaves placed at his disposal, himself providing
food and lodging for the workers. A grateful city has repaid him by
hanging his two large pictures of Marseilles during the plague close
beneath the ceiling of an underground cellar, where it is impossible to
decipher their details.

When all the bodies were disposed of, the sheriffs employed the
galley-slaves to clear the filth from the streets and throw it into
barges, which carried it out to sea.

In the early days of the epidemic, the sheriffs had forbidden the
annual procession on August 16, in honour of St. Roch, at which the
saint’s bust and relics were carried through the streets; but the
people raised such an outcry that the procession was celebrated, the
sheriffs attending with their halberdiers to prevent a crowd following.
By September 7 even the civil authorities had come to regard the plague
as an instrument of God’s wrath, and the magistrates, to appease it,
vowed that every year the city should give 2,000 livres to a House of
Charity, to be established under the protection of our Lady of Good
Help, for orphans of the province.

At the height of the plague many parish priests and some of the monks
fled: the services of the Church were mostly suspended. But many
secular clergy and monks remained and devoted themselves unflinchingly
to the sick. The bishop, Belsunce, nobly played his part. Wherever the
poorest lay, there he went confessing, consoling, and exhorting them
to patience. To the dying he carried the Sacrament, to the destitute
the whole of his money in alms. Though plague invaded his palace and
carried off those about him, it spared him. It is of him that Pope[193]
asks,

    Why drew Marseilles’ good Bishop purer breath
    When nature sickened, and each gale was death?

On All Saints’ Day, Belsunce headed a procession through the streets
from his palace, walking barefoot, as Borromeo of old, with a halter
about his neck, and carrying the cross in his arms. He wished to appear
among his people as a scapegoat laden with their sins, and as a victim
destined to expiate them. Accompanied by the priests and canons of
the Church he led the way to a place where an altar had been erected.
There, after exhorting the people to repentance, he celebrated Mass
before them all. Then he solemnly consecrated the city to the Sacred
Heart of Jesus, in honour of which he had instituted a yearly festival.
The tears coursing down his face as he spoke moved all to cry aloud to
the Lord for mercy. On November 16 Belsunce was emboldened to exorcise
the waning plague. Calling together all that remained of the clergy
to the church of Acoulles, he read all the prayers that the Pope had
prescribed for deliverance from plague. Then after an eloquent and
moving exhortation he carried up the Holy Sacrament to the cathedral’s
roof, and there, under the open sky, with all the city lying before
him, uttered a solemn benediction, and performed the full ritual of
exorcism according to the forms of the Roman Catholic Church.

Belsunce was not the first human scapegoat to tread the streets
of Marseilles in voluntary expiation for its people. In times of
pestilence, in the old Greek colony of Massilia, one of the lower
orders offered himself on behalf of his fellow citizens. Dressed in
sacred garments and decked with sacred boughs he was led through the
streets, amid the prayers of the people that their ills might fall on
him, and then cast out of the city.

There stands this day on a lofty crest of land in the open square,
right in front of the episcopal palace of Marseilles, a statue of
Belsunce in bronze, by Ramus. The stone pedestal bears a commemorative
inscription and two reliefs in bronze. In one, Marseilles in woman’s
form is lying among her stricken children, while Belsunce and his
attendant priests implore the Sacred Heart to stay the plague. In the
other, Belsunce bears the Sacrament to sick and dying.

The statue of Belsunce, clad in full episcopal robes, stands with
face raised and arms outstretched to heaven, in attitude of earnest
supplication. Before him Nature has set a landscape of surpassing
beauty: sea, earth, and sky give freely of their best. Far down below a
polyglot people move hither and thither around the harbour quays, like
ants, at their appointed tasks. Beyond it spreads a matchless expanse
of Mediterranean sea, now smooth and silvery as a mirror, now fretful
with the rising tide. Away over the sea and over the low land that
bounds the bay, the evening sun lights up the face of Belsunce with
a last lingering radiance, as it goes down to its setting in a glory
of golden hues. If man’s graven image may enjoy the perfect happiness
denied to man, then surely Belsunce has his reward.

Marseilles is rich in reminiscence of her bishop. In the Bureau
d’Intendance Sanitaire hangs a pleasing portrait of Belsunce by
Gobert; while in the Musée may be seen a poor picture, by Mansian,
of him giving the Sacrament to the victims of the plague. François
Gérard (1770-1837) presented his ‘Peste de Marseille’ to the Bureau
d’Intendance Sanitaire, where now it hangs. The wan dismal colouring of
the picture accords ill with the striking vigour of the composition. In
the foreground is set forth the whole tragedy of a family stricken with
plague. On the ground lies the father writhing with agony: his hands
are clenched, his eyes are starting from their sockets: the dressing in
the right armpit indicates one site of the disease. The mother, seated
on a chest, clasps to her body her elder boy, wrapped in a blanket,
too weak to stand: the younger child leans against his mother, his
eyes fixed in terror on his dying father. Anguish is depicted in the
death-like pallor of the mother’s face. In the background Belsunce in
full robes distributes to the sick and starving poor the bread which an
attendant is carrying. To the left of the foreground bodies of the dead
are lying huddled up beneath an awning, while to the right convicts
are dragging corpses away for burial. The sublime serenity of the good
bishop seems to bring to his stricken people in their anguish some
promise of that peace which passeth all understanding.

[Illustration: PLATE XXIX (Face Page 206)

PESTE DE MARSEILLE. BY FRANÇOIS GÉRARD

Photograph by Giraudon, Paris]

[Illustration: PLATE XXX LA PESTE DANS LA VILLE DE MARSEILLE EN 1720

By J. F. de Troy (Face Page 207)]

J. F. de Troy the younger (1679-1752), himself an eye-witness of this
plague, painted a masterly picture, which is now in the city Musée. It
was executed for Chevalier Rose in 1722. It depicts him seated on a
white horse calmly directing the work of the convicts, who have been
assigned to him, as they clear the esplanade of La Tourette of the
accumulation of decomposing corpses. The sheriffs, also on horseback,
aid the Chevalier in his task. The ground is strewn with corpses, which
the convicts seize and hurl into the gaping mouths of the open vaults
in the bastions. They work in furious haste, impelled by the foul odour
of the bodies and the knowledge of the hazard of their task. Ferocity
is depicted in their faces, haste in all the movements of their bodies.
The whole scene is full of life and movement and spirit. In the sky
hover angels shaking flaming torches. The colouring has been managed
with wonderful effect to convey the feeling that sky and earth alike
are filled with a poisonous and sickly miasma.

In another picture in the Santé at Marseilles Guérin has treated the
same subject in a dull conventional manner. Chevalier Rose, bearing
the dead body of a woman, fills the centre of the picture. Behind him
a ludicrous boy is holding a white horse with one hand, and his nose
with the other, and is bestowing on his nose a tenacious grip that
would have been more appropriately bestowed on the horse. Convicts are
dragging away the dead bodies that litter the ground.

The two large pictures by Michel Serre are of interest rather as
pictorial records of old Marseilles, than as contributions to the
artistic presentation of plague. One represents the Cours de Marseille,
now known as the Cours Belsunce, during the plague. It is a handsome
boulevard bordered on either side by trees, beneath which are seen
tents hastily erected as temporary dwellings by those who have fled
from their plague-contaminated dwellings to the shelter of the streets.
Death and disease have followed them and are rampant on every side.
Buriers are seen collecting the dead and carrying them off in carts.
This picture has been engraved by Rigaud, and is figured in Crowle’s
_Illustrated Pennant’s London_, vol. x, p. 93; also in Gaffarel’s _La
Peste de 1720_, p. 304.

The other picture by Serre shows the open space in front of the Hôtel
de Ville together with part of the port of Marseilles. The scenes
resemble those of his other picture, and we are reminded also that
many took refuge in boats and anchored off the harbour, in the vain
belief that plague could not reach them there. The space before the
Town Hall became one heap of decomposing bodies that were landed
from the boats or had drifted ashore from the waters of the harbour.
Crowle[194] figures this picture as well as the preceding, so, too,
does Gaffarel.[195]

With the departure of plague from Marseilles, the disease had wellnigh
disappeared from Europe. In the Levant it still flourished for a while.
Patrick Russell, physician to the British factory at Aleppo, wrote a
treatise on an epidemic that occurred during his residence there from
1760-2. Again, in 1771 it gained a footing at Moscow, claiming there
no less than 80,000 victims. It was in vain that the people thronged
the miraculous _ikon_ of the Virgin at the Varvarka gate. Fearing the
great concourse, the archbishop had the _ikon_ removed to the Chudok
monastery, but such was the fury of the maddened people, that they
threatened to raze the building to the ground if the _ikon_ were not
restored. The archbishop yielded, but too late, for the mob dragged him
from his monastery and massacred him in the open street. From that day
the plague began to wane. So plague was banished from Europe by the
worship of a picture, and with dramatic appropriateness the curtain
fell on the final act in a scene of human sacrifice.

[Illustration: PLATE XXXI LES PESTIFÉRÉS DE JAFFA

By Baron Gros (Face Page 208)]

The celebrated picture ‘Les Pestiférés de Jaffa’ by Baron Gros, now
in the Louvre, has been the subject of much acrimonious controversy.
The picture was ordered by Napoleon when First Consul, and excited
extravagant enthusiasm on its exhibition in the Salon in 1804. Artists
placed a palm-branch over it, and the public covered the whole
frame with wreaths. It is, in fact, a large unattractive canvas,
devoid of any exceptional merit either of composition or colour. It
shows Napoleon accompanied by some of his staff standing among the
plague-stricken soldiers in the interior of a mosque. One of the men
is raising his right arm, so as to expose the bubo in his armpit, and
Napoleon is laying his fingers on it.

There is also in existence a rough sketch,[196] which shows that Gros
at the outset intended to present his subject differently. Napoleon,
like St. Louis in the modern fresco in St. Sulpice, holds in his arms
the body of a plague victim, which an Arab helps him to support. The
general’s impassive features contrast strongly with the frightened
appearance of his attendants.

Each of these two representations would seem to be actual historical
occurrences during Napoleon’s campaign in Syria. Plague had broken
out among the troops in Jaffa, where Napoleon had established a
large hospital, and the generals had issued an alarming report as to
its spread. It was Napoleon’s purpose to restore the _moral_ of his
army, which had been seriously affected by the outbreak. Norvin[197]
represents Napoleon as visiting all the wards, accompanied by the
generals Berthier and Bezzières, the director-general Daure, and the
head doctor Desgenettes. Napoleon spoke to the sick, encouraged them,
and touched their wounds, saying, ‘You see, it is nothing.’ When he
left the hospital, they blamed his imprudence. He replied coldly, ‘It
is my duty, I am the general-in-chief.’ This studied indifference to
the contagion, coupled with the fine behaviour of the head doctor
Desgenettes, who inoculated himself with plague in the presence of the
soldiers and applied to himself the same remedies as he prescribed
for them, successfully accomplished Napoleon’s purpose. The account
of the incident given in a letter[198] by Comte d’Aure is slightly
different. It runs, ‘He did more than touch the buboes: assisted by a
Turkish orderly, General Buonaparte picked up and carried away a plague
patient, who was lying across a doorway of one of the wards: we were
much frightened at his acting thus, because the sick man’s clothing
was covered with foam and the disgusting discharge from a broken bubo.
The general continued his visit unmoved and interested, spoke to the
sick, and sought in addressing them with words of consolation, to
dissipate the panic that the plague was casting on their spirits.’
Bourrienne,[199] Napoleon’s secretary, however, says, ‘I walked by the
general’s side, and I assert that I never saw him touch any of the
infected.’

The Duc de Rovigo in his _Memoirs_ practically corroborates the Comte
d’Aure. He says: ‘In order to convince them by the most obvious proof
that their apprehensions were groundless, he desired that the bleeding
tumour of one of his soldiers should be uncovered before him, and
pressed it with his own hands.’ Desgenettes and General Andréossy,
who were both present, confirm Rovigo and Comte d’Aure as against
Bourrienne.

Napoleon’s secretary carries the narrative a stage further. He says
that only sixty of those in the hospital had plague, and that as
their removal involved a risk of infecting the whole army, Napoleon
deliberated with his staff and the medical men, and decided to put them
out of their misery by poison. Bourrienne says that he does not know
who administered the poison, but that there was no question of their
destruction. Bourrienne’s statements on any subject, as is generally
recognized, need careful sifting, but out of the mass of conflicting
testimony the plain fact would seem to emerge, that Napoleon did
suggest that the death of some seven or eight, who were bound to die,
should be accelerated, so that they might not infect the whole army.
Napoleon himself, at St. Helena, did not deny this, and defended his
action on the ground of humanity, stigmatizing the story of wholesale
poisoning as an invention.

FOOTNOTES:

[190] _Traité de la Peste_, 2 vols., Genève, 1721; _Johns Hopkins
Hospital Bulletin_, August 1898.

[191] _Janus_, 1897, p. 297; and _Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin_.

[192] _La Peste de 1720_, p. 96.

[193] _Essay on Man_, iv. 107-8.

[194] vol. x, p. 91.

[195] p. 214.

[196] Richer, _L’Art et la médecine_.

[197] _Histoire de Napoléon_, ed. 1834, vol. i, p. 354.

[198] _Bourrienne et ses erreurs._

[199] _Mémoires sur Napoléon._




APPENDIX[200]


The statement of Thucydides, that all other diseases took on the
similitude of the dominating pestilence, is one that reappears
constantly in the literature of epidemic disease. We have already noted
the frequent concurrence of plague and typhus, leading such acute
observers as Diemerbroeck and Sydenham to believe that the one disease
might be transformed into the other. The same close association of
relapsing fever and typhus was constantly noted, and we know now that
the explanation lies in the fact that each disease is transmitted by
the body-louse, as plague is transmitted by the flea. Bearing in mind
the close and constant association of these and other acute infectious
fevers it is no matter for surprise that they should have been regarded
as states and stages of one pestilential process, differing from one
another, not in kind, but only in degree. As Bacon says, ‘putrefaction
rises not to its height at once.’

The acute, often abrupt, onset of the Athenian pestilence, with
profound depression, severe headache, and suffused conjunctivae, though
met with in a moiety of cases of plague, is eminently characteristic of
typhus. The striking appearance of the bloodshot eyeballs has led to
much confusion between the two diseases.

The aspect of the tongue and fauces inclines rather to the side of
typhus. In each disease the tongue is at first heavily coated with a
thick white fur, and tends later to become dry and parched. But in
typhus there is a special tendency, as the disease advances, for the
tongue to bleed from fissures at the edges. So frequently is this the
case, that this feature has been regarded as of diagnostic value in the
presence of an outbreak of typhus. A boggy reddened appearance of the
fauces is usual in typhus, and is seen also in a proportion of plague
patients.

Unnatural and even foetid breath may be met with in any acute
infectious fever, but foetor is in no way characteristic of any.
Doubtless it was far more common in times when the alphabet of oral
hygiene had not yet found acceptance as a necessary detail of medical
regimen. Murchison describes the breath of typhus patients as foetid,
and in addition it is well known that a repulsive odour may be given
off from their bodies. Salius Diversus mentioned it three centuries
ago, and it has been a commonplace of many subsequent writers.
Curschmann failed to detect it, and attributed its absence to the free
ventilation of the sick wards. A layman, as Thucydides was, might well
ascribe to the breath a foetor permeating the whole atmosphere around
the patient.

Sneezing has long been associated in popular tradition with plague,
and an old legend refers the association to the plague of Rome at the
commencement of the pontificate of Gregory the Great, when it is said
that those who sneezed died. The most careful and observant of modern
physicians do not, however confirm the connexion. Russell states that
he was on the look out for it during the plague of Aleppo and did
not observe it: Simpson does not even mention it. Nor does it appear
to be noteworthy as a symptom either of typhus or of any other acute
infectious fever, though it would be in accord with the swollen and
congested state of the nasal mucosa in typhus, to which Curschmann
has drawn special attention. Perhaps the tradition is a mere old
wives’ tale, for sneezing has been regarded as an ominous sign from
great antiquity, and as far back at least as the composition of the
_Odyssey_. Aristotle frankly confessed himself unable to explain the
connexion.

Curschmann met with hoarseness and laryngeal catarrh commonly in
typhus, but though catarrh of the whole respiratory tract may occur
in plague, it is not an outstanding feature. Cough is frequent in
either disease; so also is vomiting, often of great severity: and if
protracted will exhibit a succession of changes of colour, such as
Thucydides has described, first the food contents of the stomach, then
green bilious vomit, and finally blood, either red or altered to brown
or black. Hiccough and empty retching are liable to ensue on severe
vomiting from any enduring cause.

It is not clear to what Thucydides appropriates the term σπασμός: the
context would suggest that spasm of the diaphragm, such as accompanies
protracted vomiting, is indicated. But it may also signify true
convulsions, which are an occasional complication of both diseases.
Convulsive tremor of the limbs, and indeed of the whole body, is
habitual at the height of typhus, and is not infrequent in plague.

We should naturally look to the appearance of the skin and of the
eruption to afford criteria for a sure diagnosis, but such is not
the case. True, there is a remarkable resemblance to Murchison’s
description of the skin of typhus patients, in an English hospital.
‘The face’, he says, ‘is often flushed. The flushing is general over
the entire face. It is never pink: sometimes it is reddish or reddish
brown, but more commonly it is of a dusky, earthy, or leaden hue: in
grave cases it may be livid.’ No corresponding appearance of the skin
is to be seen in plague.

Thucydides has described the eruption as consisting of φλύκταιναι
μικραὶ καὶ ἕλκη, words that have generally been rendered as ‘small
blisters and ulcers’, and for this reason have been held to exclude
positively a diagnosis of typhus fever. So certain a conclusion is
hardly justified by the facts. Outbreaks of gangrenous dermatitis, in
which multiple bullae or blisters, leaving an ulcerated base, have
broken out over the body surface, have been not uncommon features of a
typhus epidemic, and from their virulently contagious character such
outbreaks would have been more prone to occur amid all the neglect
and destitution of a beleaguered garrison. Murchison has described
the resulting appearances in the following words: ‘I have seen bullae
filled with light or dark fluid, or large pustules appear on various
parts of the body during the progress of the fever. Stokes has observed
bullae of this description followed after bursting by deep ulcers with
sharp margins.’ But extensive ulceration such as this must inevitably
have left permanent scarring, at least as marked as the ‘pitting’
produced by small-pox, and we can hardly presume that this could have
escaped the critical Greek eye of so keen an observer as Thucydides.
The whole question arises of the exact significance of the words ἕλκος
and φλύκταινα.

In his treatise Περὶ Ἑλκῶν Hippocrates uses the term ἕλκος not only
for open wounds and ulcers, but also for burns, wheals, and wounds in
general.

Homer uses it for wounds of every kind. It so happens that the wounds
of the _Iliad_ are almost all the open wounds produced by spear and
arrow, but Homer also uses it for the bite of a snake[201] and for the
wound inflicted by lightning.[202]

Bion[203] uses it in consecutive lines for the wound caused by a spear,
and in the generic sense:

    Ἃγριον, ἄγριον ἓλκος ἔχει κατὰ μηρὸν Αδωνις,
    μεῖζον δ’ ἁ Κυθέρεια φέρει ποτικάρδιον ἕλκος.

Aeschylus[204] and Sophocles[205] use it also in the wider sense, as in

    πόλει μὲν ἕλκος ἕν τὸ δήμιον τυχεῖν

and

                                   τί γὰρ
    γένοιτ’ ἄν ἕλκος μεῖζον ἤ φίλος κακός;

The inference to be drawn from these passages is that ἕλκος, although
usually indicating an open wound, is used with no precise significance.

The same difficulty attaches to the word φλύκταινα. Though Hippocrates
uses the word frequently, there is no single passage in which
the precise significance is clear beyond all doubt. He applies
it to chilblains,[206] to an eruption on the skin of subjects of
empyema,[207] to lesions appearing on the tongue in fatal septic cases,
and so on. In one passage, in which he speaks of a φλύκταινα arising
from rubbing the skin with vinegar, he seems to indicate a blister.

The first clear definition of the term we have is from the pen of
Celsus, who defines it as a discoloured pustule that breaks and leaves
an ulcerated base (‘genus pustularum, cum plures similes varis oriuntur
nonnunquam maiores, lividae aut pallidae aut nigrae aut aliter naturali
colore mutato: subestque iis humor, ubi hae ruptae sunt, infra quasi
exulcerata caro apparet’). There are several passages in Aristophanes,
which indicate that he at any rate applied the term as we do to a
blister lesion: but at the same time, there are other passages in
which this exclusive use is by no means so sure. The lesion resulting
from rowing[208] or carrying a lance[209] cannot well be other than
a blister. And there is a passage in the _Ecclesiazusae_,[210] which
seems even clearer:

                    ἀλλ’ ἔμπουσά τις
    ἐξ ἁἵματος φλύκταιναν ἠμφιεσμένη,

    ‘Some vampire bloated with blood like a blister.’

The image must be that of a vampire, so bloated with blood, that its
body seems actually enveloped in it, simulating a blood-blister.

Aristotle applies the term to the bite of a shrew-mouse, which would
presumably produce a solid local swelling, and not a blister. Procopius
uses φλύκταινα for the black cutaneous lesions of Oriental plague,
known nowadays as pustules: he says, too, that they were of the size
of a lentil, but does not mention terminal ulceration. Procopius is so
precise in his medical terminology, that it is improbable he borrowed
the term from Thucydides without appreciating its exact significance:
far more likely he adopted it from the medical terminology of his day.

There is something to be said for appropriating the terms used by
Thucydides to the pustular lesions of Oriental plague. Many writers,
ancient as well as modern, have described the so-called pustules as
commencing in some cases as blisters and terminating in eroding ulcers.
But, on the other hand, we know nothing of epidemics of plague without
a considerable proportion of bubonic cases, while we do know from
the narrative of Procopius that plague has maintained its characters
unchanged for 1,500 years. In an epidemic of plague, in which death
did not supervene till the seventh or ninth day the presence of buboes
would be the outstanding feature of the disease, and Thucydides does
not even mention them.

Assuming that typhus fever also has maintained its characters
unchanged, and that the external manifestations of the Athenian
pestilence were not of the exceptional type we have alluded to, but of
the type habitually associated with the disease, can it reasonably be
contended that the terms φλύκταινα and ἕλκη are applicable to these?

Murchison says that ‘according to its colour, the eruption may be said
to pass through three stages, viz. 1, Pale dirty pink or florid; 2,
reddish brown or rusty; 3, livid or petechial’. In the first stage, it
is generally admitted that except on careful observation, and in a good
light, the faint diffuse maculae (spots) are apt to escape detection,
so that the impression is of a general suffusion of the skin—what in
fact Thucydides terms ὑπέρυθρον.

In the second stage, the deeper coloration of the spots throws them
into relief as individual lesions against the paler background of
general suffusion of the skin. Can it be that this is indicated by the
vague term φλύκταινα? Be it remembered that Thucydides was a layman,
describing, as he says, the lesions of a hitherto unknown disease.
Every physician is well aware of the restricted terminology that the
laity possess for the description of multifarious lesions. Medicine
itself is not exempt from the same confusion, for when physicians
glibly speak of the subcutaneous haemorrhages of typhus as petechiae
they forget that the word throws back to _petigo_ (a scab).

There remains then for the third stage of the eruption—the
haemorrhagic stage—the term ἕλκος, a generic term applicable to almost
any lesion, and having no philological affinity to the Latin _ulcus_,
and the English ‘ulcer’, with which medical usage has confused it.

Reviewing, then, all the facts, it cannot be held that the description
of the eruption, as given by Thucydides, is sufficient to negative a
diagnosis of typhus fever, which disease is otherwise depicted to the
life in all else that he says of its clinical course and characters.

Thucydides was so impressed with the intensity of the internal fever,
that he expected certainly to find a corresponding temperature of
the body surface: hence his surprise is obvious at finding it not
excessively hot. For all that, sufferers were ready to cast off
every shred of clothing, till they were naked, and longed to throw
themselves into cold water. Some did actually plunge into cisterns,
but no amount of water sufficed to slake their thirst. Procopius
mentions this same fierce longing to fling themselves into water among
the plague victims of Byzantium, but raving delirium of this kind is
far more characteristic of typhus than of plague. Curschmann depicts
the fierce medley of wild ravings, mingled with frantic efforts at
self-destruction, which give an unmistakable character to a ward of
typhus patients. Murchison, quoting from Bancroft, says: ‘Some leaving
their beds would beat their keepers or nurses and drive them from
their presence: others, like madmen, would run about the streets,
markets, lanes, and other places: and some again would leap headlong
into deep waters.’ Intolerable restlessness and insomnia fill up the
cup of misery to overflowing. Curschmann confirms the observation of
Thucydides, that typhus cadavers exhibit very little emaciation, but
this does not help to differentiate typhus from other acute fevers of
equally brief duration.

Death commonly occurred on the seventh or the ninth day. One recognizes
here submission to the authoritative doctrine of critical days.
Hippocrates[211] defined them on the basis of equal and unequal numbers:

    Equal—4, 6, 8, 10, 14, 28, 30, 48, 60, 80, 100.
    Unequal—5, 7, 9, 11, 17, 21, 27, 31.

Taking the mean of the numbers, the plague of Athens claimed its
victims for the most part about the eighth day of the disease. A layman
would hardly have had the opportunity, or indeed the inclination,
to make an exact statistical computation, and in this fact perhaps
lies this unexpected lapse of Thucydides into subservience to medical
orthodoxy.

With regard to the day of death in typhus fever, Curschmann says:
‘When death is caused simply by the severity of the disease, it
occurs usually in the middle or second half of the second week. A
fatal termination before the ninth day, or as early as the fifth or
sixth day, occurs only in the most severe forms of the disease, or
in individuals with little resisting power.’ Now, not only was the
Athenian pestilence severe in type, but there was also an almost
complete absence of the nursing and medical regimen that will have
served to prolong the duration of cases, that have ultimately proved
fatal, in recent epidemics. In plague death usually occurs between the
second and sixth days, seldom later, and few patients survive to the
seventh or ninth day without the appearance of buboes.

If the victims survived this period, the disease fastened on the bowels
and produced violent ulceration (ἕλκωσις). Initial constipation,
followed, as the disease develops, by diarrhoea, which is sometimes
profuse and intractable, is met with both in typhus and plague.

The disease began in the head and gradually passed through the whole
body. If the sufferer survived so long, it would often seize the
extremities and make its mark, attacking the privy parts and fingers
and toes. Some escaped with the loss of these and with the loss of
their eyes. This terminal gangrene of the extremities is of frequent
occurrence in typhus, but is rare in plague, and very rare in other
acute infectious fevers. Curschmann says: ‘Many patients continue
to suffer for some time after defervescence (of typhus fever) from
gangrene of the ears, fingers, toes, tip of the nose, and skin of the
penis and scrotum, arising during the febrile period.’ Gangrenous
changes around a carbuncle are occasional in plague, but not as an
independent affection of the extremities. Neglected plague buboes, even
nowadays in Indian epidemics, do exceptionally become gangrenous, as
the result of an intercurrent erysipelas. Necrotic ulceration of the
eyeballs is well authenticated as a complication of typhus as well as
of plague.

Some recovered from the disease, but with complete loss of memory.
This again is a frequent consequence, usually temporary, but sometimes
permanent, of typhus. According to Curschmann, ‘the patient’s
recollection of his illness is almost always very limited in severe
or moderately severe cases. True psychoses appear to be rare during
convalescence. Mild melancholia and hallucinations are sometimes seen,
and even mania has been observed.’

The combination of gangrene with mental symptoms inevitably suggests
the thought of ergotism (poisoning by a fungus of rye-grain), and
Read and Kobert have expended much ingenuity in support of this
hypothesis. One of the Athenian corn routes did actually tap the
northern shores of the Euxine, and southern Russia has been one of the
chief centres of epidemics of ergotism. But there is no need to invoke
this condition, to explain symptoms which are commonly encountered in
typhus, and no warrant either for so doing, seeing that the clinical
features of the visitation had little in common with ergotism. Kobert’s
ingenious arguments in favour of ergotism, superimposed on some other
unidentified disease, merely substitute one _impasse_ for another.

Thucydides observes that one feature distinguished the Athenian
pestilence from ordinary diseases. Birds and beasts of prey, which feed
on human flesh, would not as a rule touch the bodies, but, if they did,
they died. In fact, the birds of prey disappeared altogether, and were
not to be seen either about the bodies or anywhere else. In the case of
the dogs this was particularly noticeable, because they live with man.
The paragraph is curiously involved, but contains three statements of
fact:

    1. That vultures were nowhere to be seen.
    2. That dogs avoided the dead bodies, as a rule, but
       that, when they did not, they took the disease.
    3. That other animals, which feed on carrion, and
       within the walls of Athens these can hardly have
       been other than rats and cats, and possibly pigs,
       were affected like the dogs.

There is no evidence as to the effect on cattle, horses, sheep, and
goats, because all these had been removed to Euboea.

The phenomenon of the disappearance of birds of prey before and during
outbreaks of epidemic pestilence has been asserted again and again in
literature. Yet it is very doubtful if the observation rests on any
sure evidence. Search has brought to light only one occasion on which
the truth of the fact has been deliberately tested, and then it was
directly contradicted. Russell says that at the commencement of the
plague of Aleppo, in which true plague was ushered in by typhus, no
desertion of birds was observed, and no mortality among cattle. The
old-time fancy that pestilence engendered in the clouds distempered
the atmosphere almost necessarily involved the presumption that the
feathered inhabitants of the air would be the first to feel its ill
effects. In the same way the belief that pestilence might reach the
atmosphere in the exhalations from marshes, led to similar fables
attaching themselves to the marsh-dwelling frog. Aristotle alludes
to the increased number of frogs in pestilential years, and Bacon
and Horstius repeat his statement. These children of the marsh are
conceived of as products of its undue activity. Horstius went so far as
to assert the same of snails.

Livy[212] clearly asserts the disappearance of vultures from Rome
before and during the epidemic of 174 B.C. ‘Cadavera, intacta a canibus
et vulturibus, tabes absumebat: satisque constabat, nec illo, nec
priore anno, in tanta strage boum hominumque vulturium usquam visum.’
[Dead bodies rotted away, untouched by dogs and vultures: and it was
generally agreed that no vultures were to be seen either in that or the
preceding year in spite of so great a mortality of men and cattle.] In
this instance, then, it was not that they scented death from afar and
held aloof, but that they disappeared beforehand. If some undetected
epizootic—say of rats—had preceded the outbreak among cattle and
men, the vultures may well have perished at the outset from feeding on
infected material.

Other authors extend the observation to birds in general, and not only
to birds of prey, as though their affection was truly epizootic. Thus
Schenkius[213] says that in the plagues of 1505 and 1522 birds deserted
their nests and young ones. Goclenius says the same of the plague of
1612, and that they fell suddenly to the ground dead. Mercurialis
says that Venice was deserted by birds in 1576, and Short repeats
this of Dantzig in 1709. Diemerbroeck says that cage-birds died in
the epidemics of 1635 and 1636, and Sorbait records the same fact of
the Viennese pestilence of 1679. Most, if not all this succession of
epidemics, were unquestionably true Oriental plague, with or without
typhus.

At present there is very little evidence of any extensive affection
of the lower animals by typhus. Mosler, many years ago, failed to
communicate it to dogs by injecting fresh typhus blood into their
veins, or by feeding them on fresh typhus excreta, although death
with typhoid symptoms followed, when the blood and stools had first
been allowed to decompose. In the last few years experimenters have
succeeded in communicating the disease to various monkeys by the
agency of lice, but dogs, rats, and guinea-pigs have hitherto proved
refractory to infection.

On the other hand, there is abundant evidence of animal infection
with Oriental plague. Epizootics among rats and cats are well known.
Boccaccio asserted the susceptibility of pigs, and Michoud confirmed
the observation in the Yunnan epidemic of 1893. Dogs, poultry, deer,
cattle, monkeys, squirrels, and marmots have all been shown by various
observers to be prone to contagion.

Before accepting the evidence of Thucydides as to the disappearance of
birds as weighty evidence in favour of the presence of true plague,
one must consider the state of the country district around Athens,
devastated by fire and the sword, and denuded of all its stock, so as
to offer no promise of sustenance to bird visitors. But even so, one
is still confronted by his statement as to the domestic dogs, which
are known to be susceptible to plague and not known to be susceptible
to typhus.

Thucydides says that no one was attacked a second time, or if he
were the result was not fatal. Immunity of this kind, comparatively
complete, is alike characteristic of typhus and plague: the question
is one that has provoked considerable controversy right down to modern
times. Both Curschmann and Murchison are agreed as to the extreme
rarity of relapses and reinfections in typhus: curiously, Murchison
himself had two typical severe attacks.

In the case of plague, Alexander Massaria,[214] from his experience at
Vicenza, came to the conclusion that one attack rendered a man immune
with very few exceptions, but that a second attack might be mortal.
Mercurialis and Van Helmont were in agreement as to the rarity of
second attacks. Diemerbroeck[215] recorded two cases of reinfection
in the same year of the plague at Nymwegen, and several cases at an
interval of a few years. During the plague of Marseilles in 1720,
various writers observed cases of reinfection, and relapse was also
said to be frequent. In the plague of 1771 at Moscow, Samilowitz,
prejudiced by his own advocacy of inoculation, denied the existence
of reinfection, and suffered retribution for his dogmatism by three
relapses in his own person. In the same plague both Mertens and Orraeus
recorded cases of reinfection. In the plague of Aleppo, Russell noted
28 cases of reinfection within three years among 4,400 victims of
plague. Thus the idea of complete immunity, so prevalent popularly both
in Europe and the Levant, must be accepted with some reservation.

OXFORD: HORACE HART M.A. PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

FOOTNOTES:

[200] Curschmann’s contribution, in Nothnagel’s _Encyclopaedia of
Practical Medicine_, is perhaps the most graphic and succinct account
of Typhus Fever in modern medical literature. The record of Thucydides
should be studied closely side by side with this. Murchison’s article,
in his _Treatise on Continued Fever_, though admirable, is so diffuse
as to make comparison difficult.

[201] _Iliad_ ii. 723.

[202] _Iliad_ viii. 405 and 419.

[203] _Adonis_, 16-17.

[204] _Agamemnon_, 645.

[205] _Antigone_, 652.

[206] _On Ancient Medicine_, § 16.

[207] _Coacae Praenotiones_, § 396.

[208] _Frogs_, 236.

[209] _Wasps_, 1119.

[210] _Ecclesiazusae_, 1057.

[211] _Epidemics_, iii.

[212] xli. 21.

[213] _Obs._ p. 870.

[214] _Tract. de Peste_, ed. 1669, p. 509.

[215] _De Peste_, Lib. IV. Hist. 37. 45.



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