The Black Death

The second cycle of plague was known as the Black Death, which spread rapidly through Europe in the mid – 14^th century. It may have erupted somewhere in Central Asia in the 1330’s and spread westwards to the Middle East, North Africa and Europe along caravan trading routes. It was probably carried to major coastal ports on merchant ships. Descriptions of large buboes, boils, bruises, black pustules and the coughing up of blood, vomit and sputum suggest that the Black Death may have been a combination of bubonic, septicaemic, and pneumonic plague.

In Europe alone, in a few years, from 1347-53 at least 25 million people died, possibly more than one-third of the population of Europe. Everywhere countless bodies were buried by surviving family and friends, tossed onto rattling carts, buried in pest pits, or left to rot in the mid day sun to be devoured by wolves, pigs and dogs. In Venice, the dead were rowed out to sea. There were mass graves stacked high with decaying corpses. In some places, even the funeral bells and weeping ceased, for everyone was expected to die!

As the epidemic slowly retreated, there was an outpouring of macabre art and literature across Europe. ‘The Dance of Death’, ‘The Grim Reaper’, ‘Fearsome Visions of Hell’, ‘The Devil and The Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse’, and ‘The symbol of the Skull and Crossbones’ are all chilling reminders of the dreaded disease that once devastated Europe.