FATHER LIAM SAYS: Many
people blamed their own sinfulness
for the unprecedented disaster of the Black Death. By the middle of 1349, when the Plague was
raging in much of Europe, the Flagellant movement mushroomed in Hungary,
Poland, Flanders and the Low Countries.
How were they all to be fed? A
single monastery in the Low Countries had to provide for two thousand, five
hundred pilgrims and five thousand, three hundred flagellants descended on
Tournai. When they reached Constance it
was claimed that they numbered forty-two thousand. Magistrates began to refuse them entry to
their towns and in France Philip VI was determined to stop them in their tracks. Clement VI published a Papal Bull denouncing
the Flagellants. All bishops were
ordered to suppress the pilgrimages and to call on the secular power for help. When a party of Flagellants arrived in
Avignon – where the Pope was based – the Pope threatened them with
excommunication. In Europe hundreds were
imprisoned, tortured or executed. The
Brethren of the Cross, as they were often called, vanished as suddenly as they
had come. But it was desperate fear that
drove them to their excesses. Misguided
as they were, they had put themselves to great pain and inconvenience in part
for the sake of their own souls but also in the hope that their sacrifice might
induce God to lift from his people the curse that was destroying them.
One
thing at least it is hard to forgive the Brethren of the Cross for. In his Bull
condemning them, Pope Clement VI complained that most of them ‘beneath an
appearance of piety set their hands to cruel and impious work, shedding the
blood of Jews, whom Christian piety accepts and sustains.’ The persecution of the Jews during the Black
Death was virulent. The part the
Flagellants played in this was barbarous – but they were not the worst
offenders.
People
needed scapegoats to blame for the dreadful disaster all around them. In their search for suitable targets they
seized upon minority groups who were easily identifiable and lacking any
powerful protection. The Jews were the
principal group singled out – but not the only ones. In large areas of Spain the Arabs – or Moors
as they were called – were suspected of playing some part in spreading the
plague. Pilgrims were sometimes viewed
with the gravest doubts of being responsible for poisoning wells. English pilgrims were accused of doing this
in Narbonne. Lepers were often suspected
and scapegoated. In 1346 King Edward III
decreed that lepers were not allowed to enter the City of London because ‘some
of them endeavouring to contaminate others with their abominable blemish.....
do so taint persons who are sound, both male and female, to the great injury of
the people dwelling in the city.’ In
cases where lepers were accused of complicity in spreading the plague, the Jews
were accused of playing the leading role.
The Jews were very vulnerable.
In
Germany especially – but to a lesser extent in Europe generally – most of the
money-lenders were Jewish. Jews had been
barred from most civil and military functions, from owning land or working as
craftspeople. Usury was the only field
of economic activity open to Jews.
Christians, in theory at least, were forbidden by Canon Law to charge
interest on money lent. But in the 14th
Century more and more Italian and other Christian bankers entered the
scene. This, coupled with a widespread
recession, reduced their prosperity and the pressure was on them to impose
excessive rates of interest. As the
Italian bankers acquired the cream of the business the Jewish bankers depended
on a large clientele of petty debtors.
Recovering money from reluctant clients was a dangerous business and
they were forced to pay bribes to the authorities for their protection. They became more and more hated and many
people were ready to believe any evil which they might hear of them. The Council of Vienna for instance, in 1267,
forbade people to buy meat from Jews on the grounds that it was likely to be
poisoned. It is hard to believe that
sane people could believe such fantasies, but the anti- Semitism under the
Third Reich was far more barbaric than anything in the 14th Century
as Buchenwald, Auschwitz and Belsen bear witness.
Many
people seem to have believed that at the time of the Black Death, Jews poisoned
the wells of Christian communities and so infected the inhabitants with the
plague. You would imagine that those who
turned on the Jews would have noticed that the Jews died from the plague as
fast as Christians – probably faster as they lived in crowded and unhealthy
ghettos. People who have studied the
literature of the time have discovered that there are very few references to
the guilt or innocence of the Jews. Records
reveal that Jewish mortality was so high that new cemeteries had to be opened
in many places. Those who wrote in
journals therefore must not have believed the anti-Jewish accusations. They must have been aware of the
accusations. Did they think that those
ideas were too ridiculous to mention?
Perhaps it is more likely that they deliberately avoided expressing
publicly a view on the issue that would have been favourable to the Jews.
It
would have taken considerable moral courage to stand up for the Jews in 1348
and 1349. Not many people were prepared
to take the risk. The first cases of
persecution seem to have taken place in the South of France. In May 1348 there was a massacre of Jews in
Provence – especially in the towns of Narbonne and Carcassonne. There was a notorious trial at Challon in
September of Jews accused of poisoning wells.
Under extreme torture disastrous ‘confessions’ were extracted from the
accused and the dossier was sent to several cities. Perhaps many who might have felt bound to
protect the Jews were swayed by the horrific evidence concocted at the
trial. Zurich voted never to admit Jews
to the city again. In Basle all the Jews
were penned up in wooden buildings and burned alive. In November 1348 the Jews were burnt at
Solothurn, Zofingen and Stuttgart and it went on and on. In Mainz the Jews retaliated and slew two
hundred Christians. The revenge of the
city was terrible. Roughly twelve thousand
Jews perished.
The
persecutions died down temporarily in March 1349 but it was quickly renewed due
to the influence of the Flagellants who generated more mass-hysteria. The Pope renewed his condemnations of the
Flagellants, threatening excommunication for all who joined in the persecution
of the Jews.
My thanks to ‘The Black
Death’ by Philip Ziegler
