Living in Fear: The Black Death

De Mussis believed, as do many scholars today, that this directly led to the disease being introduced to Europe.

When the number of victims started to subside, people appear to have felt great relief and started living life to the full.  As a result of low food prices and high wages, the living standard for the surviving members of the lower classes dramatically rose, prompting Florentine chronicler and moralist Matteo Villani to complain;

“The common people, by reason of the abundance and superfluity that they found, would no longer work at their accustomed trades; they wanted the dearest and most delicate foods ….while children and common women clad themselves in all the fair and costly garments of the illustrious who had died”.

Villani also criticized survivors for their lack of gratitude to God for ending the terrible punishment he had inflicted on man.  Rather than becoming more humble, virtuous and pious;

“the opposite happened.  Men ….gave themselves over to the most disordered and sordid behaviour …. As they wallowed in idleness, their dissolution led them into the sin of gluttony, into banquets, taverns, delicate foods and gambling.  They rushed headlong into lust”.

And as ever, many from within the church were by no means different from the rest of society.  Leading bishops and priests came under attack for their sinful ways in the post-plague years, when Pope Clement VI asked them;  

 “about what can you preach to the people?  If on humility, you yourselves are the proudest of the world,  arrogant and given to pomp.  If on poverty, you are the most grasping and most covetous ….If on chastity – but we will be silent on this, for God knoweth what each man does and how many of you satisfy your lusts”.

Without first hand experience we can never truly understand what it would be like to live through a natural disaster of the magnitude of the Black Death.  However through the study of contemporary testimonies like these we can get an idea of the level of fear felt by people from all walks of life, and the relief felt when it was finally over.