“Ring-a-ring o’roses,
A pocket full of
posies,
A-tishoo! A-tishoo!
We all fall down.”
Today,
young children enjoy playing “Ring around the Rosie.” But to those who first
sang it, the rhyme was anything but playful. The song actually describes the
deadly bubonic plague. One of the first symptoms of the disease was a circular
red rash- a “ring O’roses.” To ward off the disease, people carried around “posies,”
or bunches of herbs. The last two lines refer to the final stages of the
plague. The victim suffered bouts of sneezing, then “fell down” ---dead.
Bubonic plague struck Western Europe several
times during the Late Middle Ages. The worst outbreak occurred during the mid-1300s,
the direct result of increased trade with the Middle East. The plague had
already swept through much of Asia. Flea-infested rats that carried the disease
crept on board Italian trading ships in Asia Minor and spread the plague into
Europe. In Genoa, Italy, sailors developed hideous swellings on their bodies.
They turned black and blue all over, then died within a few hours.
From
Italy, the Black Death spread across all of Western Europe. People died by the
thousands, keeping gravediggers busy night and day. In all, the plague killed
more than one third of the population of Europe, an estimated 25 million
people.
Punishment for “our
sins.”
Many
people viewed the plague as “just punishment for our sins.” The pope called on
Christians to pray for forgiveness. In 1348, more than 1 million pilgrims
flocked to Rome. The crowded conditions there increased the spread of the
disease. Only 1 pilgrim out of 10 survived.
Panic
seized Western Europe. Fearing contagion, doctors refused to treat the sick.
Priests refused to hear their confessions. Some parents even abandoned children
who showed signs of the disease. In art, the “dance of death” became a common
theme. Woodcuts showed the Grim Reaper dancing along a road, leading a train of
victims- nobles and commoners alike.
For the
Jews of Europe, the Black Death brought double trouble. They not only suffered
from the disease but they also were blamed for it. In one German town,
Christians walled up Jews in a wooden building and burned them alive.
Effects of the Plague
In
England, Henry Knighton recorded the crushing economic effects of the plague:
“Because of the fear of death there were low prices for
everything….Many large and small buildings….collapsed and were levelled with
the earth for lack of inhabitants.”
The
plague helped to weaken serfdom. In the chaos of the times, serfs fled without
fear that anyone would capture them. Workers became so scarce that the serfs
who remained could demand high wages from their lords at harvest time.
Europe
did not recover from the effects of the Black Death for more than 100 years.
The disease’s most terrible toll, though, was on the human spirit. The Italian
writer Agnioli di Tura reported simply:
“I buried with my own hands five of my children in a single
grave. No bells. No tears. This is the end of the world.”
(Text from World Cultures: A Global Mosaic)
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