FATHER LIAM SAYS: In
August 1349 Richard Fitzralph,
the Archbishop of Armagh, went on an official visit to the Pope at Avignon in
the South of France, where the Popes lived for seventy years from 1309. He told the Pope that the plague had
destroyed two thirds of the English nation but had not yet done any conspicuous
harm to the Irish or the Scots. The
Archbishop had left Dublin in mid-July but by the time he arrived back from
Avignon the situation in Ireland had become very serious.
The
most likely source of the spread of the plague to Ireland is Bristol which was
the main centre of Anglo-Irish trade, but it could have come directly from one
of the ports of Brittany. Friar John
Clyn writes of these events happening about him: ‘In the months of September
and October, bishops, prelates, priests, friars, noblemen and others, women as
well as men, came in great numbers from every part of Ireland to the pilgrimage
centre of That Molyngis, north of Dublin near Drogheda. So great were their numbers that on many days
it was possible to see many thousands of people flocking there; some through
devotion but others (the majority indeed) through fear of the plague which then
was very prevalent. It began near Dublin
at Howth and at Drogheda. These cities
were almost entirely destroyed and emptied of inhabitants so that in Dublin
alone between August and Christmas fourteen thousand people died.’ At the end of his account he wrote: ‘And I
Friar John Clyn, of the Order of Friars Minor and of the Convent of Kilkenny
wrote in this book those notable things which happened in my time which I saw
with my own eyes or which I learned from people worthy of belief. And in case things which should be remembered
perish with time and vanish from the memory of those who are to come after us,
I seeing so many evils and the whole world, as it were, placed within the grasp
of the evil one, being myself as if among the dead, waiting for death to visit
me have put into writing truthfully all the things that I have heard. And lest the writing should perish with the
writer and the work fail with the labourer, I leave parchment to continue this
work, if perchance any man survive and any of the race of Adam escape this
pestilence and carry on the work which I have begun.’ He added two words to his conclusion – ‘great
devastation’. Another hand added – at
some later date: ‘Here it seems that the author died.’ Even if there were no other surviving
evidence, John Clyn’s words show how painfully the country must have
suffered. The friar records that twenty
five of his Franciscan brothers died at their house in Drogheda and twenty
three in Dublin.
There
are records of several towns filing petitions pleading for relief. As late as 1354 the tenants of several royal
farms around Dublin were claiming that they were reduced to destitution by ‘the
plague lately existing in the Country’ and because of ‘the excessive price of
provisions.
There
are not many records about the spread of the plague in Scotland but we have an
account from John of Fordun: ‘In the year 1350’ he wrote, ‘there was in the
Kingdom of Scotland so great a pestilence and plague among men as, from the
beginning of the world even unto modern times had never been heard of by man,
nor is found in books for the enlightenment of those who came after. For to such a pitch did that plague wreak its
cruel spite that nearly a third of mankind were thereby made to pay the debt of
nature. Men shrank from it so much that
through fear of contagion, sons, fleeing as from the face of leprosy or from an
adder, durst not go and see their parents in the throes of death.’
To
survive the Black Death, however, was not to survive unscathed. Fairly or unfairly medieval people felt that
their Church had let them down. It was
taken for granted that the plague was the work of God and the people were often
told that they had brought the plague on their own heads. By their wickedness they had provoked the
Divine anger and were now suffering just retribution for their sins. People noticed that the priests were just as
likely to die of the plague as their parishioners. In spite of the heroism of many of the clergy
people also saw that some fell short of what was expected. Chaucer – and also some Bishops – complained
that some priests turned away from the care of their parishes for fear of
contagion and death. The priests who were
often hurriedly prepared for ordination to take the places of those who had died
were perhaps not always quite of the calibre, spiritually or educationally, of
their predecessors. In Winchester in
1350 twenty-seven new priests were ordained after very little preparation. It seems that in the years after the plague
as society was slowly pulling itself together the Church was not particularly
well equipped to give a lead.
Over
a decade later, in 1361, the disease returned to ravage France and England once
more. Coming at a time when spiritual
resistance was already low, this took the heart out of the Middle Ages. The many monasteries and Convents in these
islands throughout Europe were sadly depleted in numbers and in morale. In the renewed plague of 1361, seventeen
thousand died in Avignon, including a third of the Cardinals. This proved to be a very strong incentive for
the Papacy to return to Rome.
It
seems that following the Black Death there was a sense of pervading gloom. People had lost so many friends and relations
and material things. They lived in a
climate of uncertainty and apprehension.
We now have at least a rudimentary understanding of the workings of our
world. Seven hundred years ago it was
very different and strange and frightening.
This mood found expression in the works of the religious artists of the
time. The favourite themes were those of
suffering and retribution, Christ’s passion or the tortures of Hell. Christ was often portrayed as an angry and
threatening figure. The inspiring
aspects of Christianity that were reflected in the art of the 13th Century
did not shine so brightly as the art of the 15th Century.
Petrarch,
in a letter to his brother, a Religious at Monrieux and the only survivor of a
monastery of thirty five, says: ‘Consult your historians, they are silent,
question your doctors, they are dumb; seek an answer from your philosophers,
they shrug their shoulders and frown and with their fingers on their lips bid
you to be silent. Will posterity ever
believe these things when we, who see, can scarcely credit them? O happy people of the future, who have not
known these miseries and perchance will class our testimony with the
fables. We have indeed deserved these
and even greater punishments, but our forefathers also have deserved them and
may our posterity not also merit the same.’
My thanks to ‘The Black
Death’ by Philip Ziegler
