Responses To The Black Death

Sure the sight of a black bubble in a person’s skin could scare someone at least a little, or the terrible aches and pains brought about by a disease which no one in the region had heard about or had the slightest idea of a cure for could be a bit frightening. Just as it was during the 14th thru 16th centuries in Western Europe and just as it is today, death was and still is a big thing to fear. Thus, this epidemic that killed one third of Western Europe’s population got to be known as the Black Death, and people feared it. The population’s responses to the Black Death and its consequences were driven by fear due to religious superstition and a lack of knowledge about the epidemic itself.
Even the rich and noble feared the plague just as
Surely, one of the first things people would blame the plague on was God since the belief was that God controlled everything, including disease. The concerns of those not deeply involved with the church still show a reliance on God and a blaming of God for the plague. This is best demonstrated by M. Bertrand, an ordinary physician, who said that the plague must be a particular chastisement exercised by an angry God over a sinful and offending people rather than a calamity proceeding from common and natural causes (doc. 16). People of religious office started to believe that they could save themselves from the plague by appealing to God or the church, as such is the example of a priest named Father Dragoni who appealed to the Health Magistracy of Florence stating that he had accompanied severity with compassion and charity, managed and fed the convalescents and servants of two pest houses, and paid guards and gravediggers with the alms given to him (doc. 9). A statue was rectified in Vienna, Austria by Emperor Leopold in gratitude for the end of the plague that had gripped Vienna. The paintings depicted of the statue show angels and holy figures all around the statue signifying that it was the angels and the holy forces that took down the plague, once again showing man’s reliance on God (doc. 15). While most holy figures and people of religious and political offices believed that God was the reason for the plague and the answer to stop it, others such as Lisabetta Centinni looked on the power of the Holy Spirit as a healing and saving power when she describes how her husband Ottavio ate a little piece of bread that had touched the body of St. Domenica and suddenly his fever broke (doc.