Every Rose

Black Death and its affects on European culture    

Ring around the Rosie, a pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall down.  Though this song is just a simple children’s game, in the Middle Ages this song and dance held completely different meaning.  When men and women showed the first symptoms of the plague, they drank their cellars empty, and sang loudly holding hands.  They continued this game until their death; Ashes, ashes, they all fell down.  This routine was called the Dance of the Dead.  This Dance of the Dead is a description of the year 1348 when the Bubonic plague was spreading rapidly throughout Europe by rats and fleas.  Wiping out nearly 25 million people, this disease could kill in just three days, showing no mercy.  There were many theories of prevention and cure for the Black Death, but none of these proved successful.  The Black Death brought about change in the art, religion, and social system in 14^th Century Europe.   

The Bubonic Plague is bacterial disease that originated in Asia.  It is caused by the bacteria Yersinia Pestis.  This bacterium was carried by infected fleas, and those fleas lived on rats.  In the 14^th century European trade was done mostly on water in large ships where the infected rats lived.  When released the rats could quickly wipe out an entire town.  Once the Plague broke out there was no stopping it.  The plague was named the Black Death because of its early symptoms.  The disease is first spotted when a “bubo” forms around the point of infection (flea bite).  After just a few days the victim’s skin turns black, and buboes are everywhere.  Many attempts were made to prevent the disease but none were successful (“Bubonic Plague”).     

There were various ideas for prevention but none of them proved effective.  Some believed the disease was caused by food.  They believed that people should not eat eggs, meats, or desserts.  They believed that root plants such as rhubarb, onions, leeks, and garlic helped cure the disease as well as herbs.  Here is an example of one recipe   said to cure you:  “Take five cups of rue if it be a man, and if it be a woman leave out the rue, for rue is a restorative to a man and wasting to a woman; and then take three to five crops of tansy and five little blades of columbine…” (Peters 33).  People also developed different bathing habits, or did not bathe at all.  The theory was that bathing opened pores to attack.  Instructions were to only wash feet and face, and they must be washed with a combination of rose water and vinegar.   Sleeping and exercise were believed to bring on the disease.  People were not to sleep during the day, and at night they were to sleep on their left side first, then switch to their right, and no exercise.  The only exercise that people with the Black Death got was in their last moments by playing   Ring around the Rosie.  The Dance of the Dead was depicted frequently in painting during the time of the Black Death.    

Art of the fourteenth century was very much affected by the plague.  Much of the art before the plague illustrates scenes of love and happiness.  Many of the paintings were images of Bible scenes involving God, Jesus and the Saints.  The only type of death involved in these paintings was that of Christ hanging on the cross.  With the Black Death came art depicting death, suffering, and sadness.   Some reoccurring symbols in the art were devils torturing souls, macabre skeletons, scythes, and hourglasses.  The Dance of the Dead was usually depicted by skeletons holding hands in a circle.  The scythes were pictured in the hands of skeletons, or dark cloaked figures in the rooms of a victim of the Black Death.   The hourglasses also had important meaning in the paintings.  They were symbols of the short period of time it took for the victims to die.  Images showed people carrying multiple dead bodies, preparing them for burial.  The expression on their faces was one of grief and pain.  One famous painting, “The Triumph of Death”, by Pieter Brueghel is a perfect example of post plague art (Pioch, 2).  His painting depicts multiple skeletons attacking a town, and dead bodies covering the ground.  These skeletons are   representative of the Black Death.  The background of the painting is of very dark skies, very gloomy.  In the picture no one is escaping the wrath of this army of skeletons, not even the religious people holding crosses.  (See attached image) In very few paintings do you see images of religious icons.  The religious symbols, if any were people hiding behind crosses, or St. Peter at the pearly gates.  In these painting however, Peter is not acting charitable.  He is turning people away who are infected with the Bubonic Plague, and not letting them enter heaven.  This artwork shows the dramatic threat to Christianity and the Church in Europe during the time of the Plague.    

Fourteenth century Europe pre-plague was very religious, but the church suffered losses due to the Black Death.  Many priests fled from churches fearing they would be infected by the plague by the contagious congregations.  Other priests caught the plague when performing death rites to dying victims.  The people believed that the priests had abandoned them, and had failed them because they could not stop the Black Death by simply talking to God and asking him to stop it.    The religious people of the churches died so rapidly, surviving priests began to ordain anyone that was willing.  They took widowed men, and even some that were still married.  The bishop of Norwich, England actually asked for permission from the Pope to allow sixty men under the age of twenty-one to hold rectories (De Hahn 93).  Because of the dramatic loss of clergymen the universities had insufficient staff; five universities had to close during the black Death.  After the Black Death, however, twice as many universities were founded.  Clergymen established many of the universities so people fearing boat travel could simply walk to them.    

Because of the loss of their religious leaders, a new group called the ‘Brotherhood of the Flagellants’ formed in Europe.  This was a very strict religious group formed during the time of the Black Death.  These self-scourging people were very brutal believing that   God would love them and keep them safe because they beat themselves.  They traveled from town to town dressed in matching white robes, and in routine order.  They traveled in lines two by two with as many as one thousand people stopping in towns to perform litanies for the citizens.  They performed these rituals in either parishes, or in outdoor meeting areas usually marketplaces.  The ceremonies consisted of a litany in the church, followed by their rites (Toke, 2).    

To begin their ceremony a large circle was formed around a dead child wearing only a cloth from their waist to their ankles.  The flagellants walked around the circle and when the master signaled, they laid low on the ground with arms out.  The master walked around the circle and beat the ones who had confessed to committing harsh crimes and sins.  The next part of these ceremonies was the collective flagellation.  Each person carried a scourge with three leather straps tipped with metal.  Again with the signal of the master, the men and women began to beat themselves.  The beatings became a contest between people of who could stand to beat themselves longer.  The Flagellants met a problem with the church, and the church soon declared war.  The Flagellants lost and vanished quickly, they were not entirely gone, but enough to be overlooked.  The Brethren of the Flagellants were a group of fanatics, but did help to bring “spiritual regeneration” to the people of the fourteenth century (McMullen 61).  They also helped by making adulterers confess, and thieves give back their stolen goods to rightful owners.  The Flagellants still had faith in God, but some people turned entirely away from God and the church to other forms of worship.    

Many people at this time also turned away from the church and turned to the devil’s work of witchcraft and magic seeking prevention and cure for the plague.  The word abracadabra was at the time believed to cure the Black Death.  This word was carried bypeople on a charm.  The letters were arranged in an interesting triangular pattern.      

Abracadabra

Abracadabr

Abracadab

Abracada

Abracad

Abraca

Abrac

Abra

Ab

A

(Peters 33)  

The letters were arranged so that the first line said the full word, and with each line following a letter would disappear.  People believed that as each letter faded away so would the Black Death, this was not true.  Though there was no magical cure found for the Black Death this added a new element, Witches, to European society.    

The Black Death affected the social system in Europe.  In the fourteenth century, Europe was divided into classes of people.  This system was called the manorial system.  This is the term used to describe interactions between peasants and the landowners.  The highest class in the manorial system was the land owners, and lords and the wealthy.  During the Black Death the manorial system was lost because the wealthy lost so much of their money: they could not afford their homes.  The middle class and peasants were strengthened during the Black Death because they could now demand lower tax rates from the landowners, and if they were not granted their requests, they could simply leave.  Now that there were fewer peasants to work for the lords, the surviving workers could pick and choose where they would work depending on their pay.  For example “before the plague a ploughman was paid two shillings a year, during the years 1349-1350 seven shillings, and in 1350-1351 more than ten shillings” (De Hahn pg 91).  Women who had been peasants were now needed to help with the work.  They were paid just like the men and were now more respected by society because of their productivity.  Their work was mostly in the textile industry, but also in the breweries.    

While the peasants grew more powerful in the economy, they became less united.    People became less likely to interact together.  Giovanni Boccaccio, an Italian who lived in the time, was inspired to write an historical fiction novel called The Decamaron  about a group of people that escaped the disease (“The Black Death, 1348”).  Boccaccio writes, “One citizen avoided another, hardly any neighbor troubled about other, relatives never or hardly ever visited each other.  Moreover, such terror was struck into the hearts of men and women by this calamity, that brother abandoned brother, and the uncle his nephew, and the sister her brother, and very often the wife her husband.  What is even worse and nearly incredible is that fathers and mothers refused to see and tend their children, as if they had not been theirs…”  Europe’s citizens became divided.  They all feared catching the plague from their neighbors, so they tried to solve the problem by not going places, especially not with others.    

Trade therefore became even more popular because people wanted the goods brought to them instead of going to get them, but now ship trade was mush more difficult because of the rat threat.  In Venice, for example, ships had to stay in Ragusa, an island across the Adriatic Sea, for forty days to make sure the sailors were not carrying the disease.  The term quarantine derives for this forty day waiting period because of the Italian word for forty, quaranta (De Hahn pg 91).  Merchants now had money to marry into wealthy families, but most of those families were wiped out.  The trade was now much more heavily taxed, but peasants could still afford it because of their new found income.  This also changed the culture in Europe because now even peasants could buy expensive things from merchants, letting them live like a wealthy person.    

As a result of the Black Death the culture of fourteenth century Europe changed as seen in the artwork, religious practices, and social system of the time.  Before the plague, the art depicted happiness and love, but after the plague death, sorrow, and grim   creatures crept onto the canvases.  Religious symbols were no longer present in paintings and symbols of hope were changed into hopeless images of plague victims being banned from heaven.  People had turned from the church because they felt abandoned and began new more unusual practices of Worship.  They turned to magic, witchcraft, and self-mutations all in search of a cure for the Black Death.  The loss of life also took its toll on the wealthy class of Europe.  The Landlords had lost their income due to the loss of peasants to work the land.  The power ultimately was reversed.  Any surviving peasants now came with; a large fee.  The peasants now had the power to pack up and move on to the next higher paying manor.  With the decrease in workers the women moved out of the house and into the workforce.  The ways that people of the time lived and the way they viewed their lives changed as a result of the Black Death.  I will never feel the same way when I hear the words Ring around the Rosie, a pocket full of posies ashes, ashes, we all fall down!  Realizing that a few centuries ago this song and dance was a ritual performed as a last moment of fun to end a very painful death.