The Bubonic Plague

It is the year of Our Lord 1346, and trade is abundant in the wealthy ports of Europe. Merchant ships sail between Italy and the Orient on a regular basis, exchanging goods and glory, prosperity and ... plague? What foul disease could disturb the general peace of the known world? Originating in the Orient, a plague swept westward and in 1348, was rampant in the once-thriving Italian port of Sicily. As the Black plague, quickly becoming known as the Black Death, spread, people began to become afraid. The stories of travelers had been circulating that disaster had struck the Orient a decade earlier. But Europe, detached from the situation, had simply ignored the possibility of its spread. While no one had been able to say why the plague began in the Orient, stories of its spread westward and its dastardly death toll had began to alarm people. Medieval medicine was a mixture of superstition and religion; because of this, the idea that the Bubonic plague was caused by atmospheric corruption over the Orient kept Europeans calm. Later, excused as punishment on heathens and sinners, the Bubonic plague would be scoffed by Europe as a whole. At the outbreak, many ignored its spread in Europe. However, the plague continued to spread rapidly, and people began to doubt their theories when it descended indiscriminately on heathen and Christian, sinner and saint, alike. As people began to realize that the Bubonic plague, also becoming known as the Black Death, could be contracted through contact with those already infected, cities, and even entire counties, began mass ostracisms and exiles. Infected individuals were forced to remain locked inside their homes, not even daring to show their faces outside their doors, for fear of exile. Humanitarians in communities, appalled at such treatment of the ill, left food and supplies on doorsteps, but even they dared not venture any further than that, for fear of being infected. The rest of the community often either ignored the infected, or treated them cruelly. Europe's population, having grown steadily since AD 1000, plummeted into despair over a matter of weeks, and did not regain its vitality until almost 1500. With the drop in population, labor became scarce and expensive, and the feudal ties that had bound the Medieval Era in the Dark Ages began to fray. England, as an island, lagged behind the continent in everything, and the Black Death was no exception. When plague broke out in Italy in the early months of 1346, England remained unaware that it even existed in Europe. By the spring of 1348, however, England became aware of the ever-growing threat. Still, the English people remained calm, reasoning that it could not reach them in their island nation. By the fall of 1348, however, the Black Death had proven that it could reach anywhere. Beginning along the Dorset coast and in the ports of Bristol and Southampton, the Black Death spread like wildfire through England, and was more devastating to the island nation than to anywhere else in Europe. From the coast, it spread rapidly inward, reaching London. London was the largest city in England, and the dirtiest, and the plague lasted within that city alone from late fall of 1348 until early summer of 1349. About thirty thousand of London's seventy thousand inhabitants suffered and died from plague. By the end of 1350, the plague had settled down in England for a long wait. Every mouth spoke of loss; families were torn apart, and towns shattered, and yet the plague still lingered, claiming more lives with each passing day. Since the fourteenth century, much