GREAT CHASTISEMENT DURING MIDDLE AGES WAS FEROCIOUS SPREAD OF 'BLACK DEATH'

Let's take a look, today, and in a second installment next week, at the "black death," which occurred in the 14th century.

That great disaster -- one of the greatest on record -- took place at a time of immorality, irreligion (the Mass was celebrated in some places like a circus), and materialism.

It followed on the heels of a climate swerve -- decades of strangely warm weather (corn was grown as far north as Norway) and ferocious storms, followed by a sudden cooling.

In England a monk named Gervase of Canterbury reported that in 1178 "on the Sunday before the Feast of St. John the Baptist after sunset when the moon had first become visible a marvelous phenomenon was witnessed by some five or more men who were sitting there facing the moon. Now there was a bright new moon, and as usual in that phase its horns were tilted toward the east; and suddenly the upper horn split in two. From the midpoint of the division a flaming torch sprang up, spewing out, over a considerable distance, fire, hot coals, and sparks. Meanwhile the body of the moon which was below writhed, as it were, in anxiety, and, to put it in the words of those who reported it to me and saw in with their own eyes, the moon throbbed like a wounded snake."

It sounded like they had seen asteroids hitting the lunar surface, while on earth there were wholesale migrations.

Whether from heightened El Niño activity, tidal waves that may have resulted from meteors, or some mysterious shift, Indians in South America seemed to be avoiding the coasts and islanders were moving all over the Pacific.

Crops crashed and starving peasants roamed the countryside. As the weather continued to change, prophets rose with hysterical prophecies (the antichrist, the end of the world).

"The mountain Tsincheou disappeared and enormous clefts appeared in the earth," recounted writer George Deaux. "Near King-sai, it was said, the mountains of Ki-ming-chan utterly fell in and in their place appeared suddenly a lake more than a hundred leagues in circumference."

There was "subterranean thunder" in Canton and a flood along the Yellow River that a climatologist named H. H. Lamb described as "one of the greatest weather disasters ever known, alleged to have taken seven million lives in the great river valleys of China.

In a province "hard by Greater India" were "horrors and unheard of tempests" for a span of three days, according to a Flemish missionary who reported to Church authorities that "sheets of fire fell upon the earth, mingled with hailstones of marvelous size; which slew almost all, from the greatest to the least."

In Europe, earthquakes shook Greece, washed it with tidal waves, collapsed highland in Cyprus, and did the same in Naples, Pisa, Padua, Bologna, and Venice.

The Middle Ages were not overrun by abortion (it was forbidden in the Latin text of the Hippocratic Oath), but there was plenty of other sin, sin attracts demons, and evil brings accidents and illness.

If modern Americans studied this time period, they would find it sobering (to say the least).

People forgot devotion in the High Middle Ages, they forgot the truths of the Savior, they had fallen deeply into materialism, there was crime, there was corruption in the Church, there was suddenly high fashion, and vanity (it was even when they invented the vanity mirror), and so something began to arrive, something so grave as to defy prophecy, something that, as it turned out, was like Pompeii and the destruction, thirteen centuries before, of Jerusalem.

Born in the Asian hinterlands and carried by Mongol horsemen, the disease was marked by fever and huge swellings the size of eggs, a combination of several bacterial agents that thrive in rats and their fleas. Most prominent was a lethal bacteria that caused pneumonic and septicaemic illness -- attacking the lungs and causing dark blotches on the skin -- the pneumonic aspect similar to what has been reported in certain mutant strains of the current H1N1 virus.

Perhaps the skin discoloration or the fact black rats were carriers was why they called it the "black death," but more likely it was simply its lethality, the utter darkness of its effect -- the fact that once introduced into an area it could spread by human contact and kill in days.

It preyed especially on populations like China's (where ironically the zodiac included a "Year of the Rat" and where the droughts, locusts, and floods had weakened the population in the 1330s), and although we don't know exactly how many died from it there, the Chinese population would be reduced from 123 million in 1200 to a mere 65 million by the end of the 14th century.

It does us well to revisit what plague can do -- and why we need God's protection.

In 1339 the first record of the plague's westward movement showed in mortalities near Lake Issyk in the Tien region. From central Asia it moved on overland routes or through merchant shipping to the Middle East and then Europe (for by now Asia was a source of silk, spices, and other luxuries). In 1345 the plague was at Sarai, a major trading center on the lower Volga in what is today Russia, and within a year it was in the Caucasus and Azerbaijan.

Dead bodies littered territories from Armenia to India, the infirm no doubt fleeing to Vedic gods as this mysterious and awful ailment, this horrid coughing of blood, which could be spread by merely breathing near or touching someone -- simple contact with contaminated clothing -- depopulated much of the subcontinent and found its way around Yemen to the Red Sea.

Kurds fled in vain to the mountains and hardly anyone survived in places like Caesarea (the current⌐day Iran⌐Iraq region). Syria and Egypt were hit, and so was Mecca -- despite Mohammed's preaching that disease would never reach the Holy City.

Within two years the entire Islamic world would be engulfed -- losing from a third to fifty percent of its population. Strange phenomena were noted, including lights at tombs and aerial phenomena.

As the disease made way over commercial routes, the Christian parts of the eastern Mediterranean were likewise devastated.

After ravaging Constantinople, the Black Death was carried on Italian ships to Cyprus in 1347 -- the same year that this region (as if in pre-warning) suffered an earthquake and several tidal waves.

The water had swept over large parts of the island, destroying olive groves and fishing fleets.

Islanders murdered many of their Arab slaves for fear they would take advantage of the chaos, and then fled inland but couldn't avoid what one chronicler called "a pestiferous wind" that spread "so poisonous an odor that many, being overpowered by it, fell down suddenly and expired in dreadful agony."

Earthquakes also did severe damage in Rome, Naples, Pisa, and Venice just before the plague arrived in those places. The entrance into Western Europe came at least in part through the Sicilian port of Messina, where residents insisted there were demonic entities transfigured into the shape of dogs and that these dogs wreaked the harm on human beings.

So aghast was the populace that few ventured from their homes until by common consent and at the wish of the archbishop they gathered their courage and marched around the city reciting litanies.

According to a scribe named Michael of Piazza, "while the whole population was thus processing around the streets, a black dog... appeared among them, gnashing with his teeth and rushing upon them and breaking all the silver vessels and lamps and candlesticks..."

It was a terrifying and prodigious vision and such was also captured by artists who portrayed the plague as spread by demons.

Pope Clement VI declared it a "pestilence with which God is afflicting Christian people" and it seemed indeed like the stench of hell, a plague so disgusting that it inspired less pity than detestation.

Many theorized that poisonous fumes were rising from cracks in the earth. Sulfur from the netherworld?

Meteors were seen (known as "black comets"), and there were reports of strange columns of fire. These were witnessed in Florence and Avignon -- above the papal palace (which was now in France)! A ball of flame was also seen over Paris, and there were phantoms -- demons that in places like Messina were said to transform into frightening "dogs."

More horrid, however, was the disease itself, which rapidly moved west and north, striking Avignon. The death rate there was fifty percent. Hundreds who worked at the papal palace were turned into corpses; Pope Clement VI fled, and such was the shortage of priests that laymen had to give Last Rites. In Vienna the evil came as a hovering light that was exorcised by a bishop.

Spain fell under assault. Five million died in France. Throughout Europe cadavers were left in the front of homes like refuse and even scavenging animals wouldn't touch them. In England in one field 5,000 lay dead and within two years half of the 17,500 monks, nuns, and friars in that nation's monasteries were no longer counted among the living.

An astonishing 66 percent of clergy in Buckinghamshire were killed, and by 1350 the death toll was at least 35 percent in London. It was relentless. It was sinister. At sea, ghost ships wandered. It was as if the whole world had been placed "within the grasp of the Evil One," noted a friar in Kilkenny, Ireland, who wondered just before his own death if "any child of Adam may escape this pestilence."

It was a good question; never before (at least not since Noah) had there been a trauma like this; on three continents the very existence of homo sapiens was threatened. Men and women, driven to despair, wandered as if mad across the breadth of Europe.

According to the Neuburg Chronicle "cattle were left to stray unattended in the fields for no one had any inclination to concern themselves about the future.

The wolves, which came down from the mountains to attack the sheep, acted in a way which had never been heard before. As if alarmed by some invisible warning they turned and fled back into the wilderness."

In desperation the residents of Messina, Italy, fled by foot and horse six miles outside of town to get an image of the Madonna said to have special power, but as the horse carrying it approached Messina the animal suddenly stood motionless and fixed like a rock.

That was interpreted as a sign that what was occurring was God's requital of an unrighteous, blood⌐stained people and that Mary was not to intervene.

In the words of Michael of Piazza, the Blessed Mother judged the city to be "so hateful and so profoundly stained with blood and sin that she turned her back on it, being not only unwilling to enter therein, but even abhorring the very sight thereof."

Really Mary never turned her back on her children but the protection of Heaven did seem absent and there was a lapse in the Virgin's apparitions, which had been ongoing for many decades -- a relative silence during the 1340s, except at a Ukrainian monastery called Pochaiv -- as the scourge continued to cause wreckage.

It was the same casualty count -- one⌐third -- as prophesied in Revelation 9:15.

Aimless ships were spotted with dead crews and by December of 1347 the disease had spread to much of southern Europe, making its entry through various ports and fishing villages.

There it coursed into the central and northern parts of Europe through other harbors like Genoa, where three galleys which had put to port after being driven by fierce winds from the East were found to be laden not just with the sought-after spices but also with Pasteurella pestis.

Terrified residents had attacked the ships with flaming arrows "and diverse engines of war" in hopes of keeping it out, but it was already too late:

In hard-hit Florence an estimated 100,000 died, the stately homes, the grand palaces, all evacuated. Brothers abandoned brothers, uncles their nephews, parents their children.

As the classicist Giovanni Boccaccio phrased it, "there came the death⌐dealing pestilence, which, through the operation of the heavenly bodies or of our own iniquitous dealings, being sent down upon mankind for our correction by the just wrath of God, had some years before appeared in the parts of the East, and after having bereft these latter of an innumerable number of inhabitants, extending without cease from one place to another, had now unhappily spread towards the West."

It was devastating. It was eerie. As the plague arrived church bells were silenced and black flags flapped in the quiet breeze.

While conservative estimates say 33 percent of Italians succumbed, many scholars would put the mortality for that particular nation -- lined as it was with ports -- at forty or even fifty percent.

“Just out of curiosity. How long do you think AIDS would exist if the main transmission route for it’s spread were removed?”

Well, if you’re serious, as in Bubonic Plague once the primary vector was removed from the chain (ie. rats), then the disease transmission would occur by secondary vectors (other vermin like Prairie Dogs and other rodents). Don’t assume that the disease goes away simply because you remove the primary vector. In the case of AIDS, I’m not entirely sure if the original resevoir for the infection has ever been established. If it were eradicated in the human population, as much as that action would disappoint a small minority, it would continue to exist in the original reservoir. Without removing the original reservoir, it could conceivably re-emerge into the human population by whatever means it was introduced originally. At least in the United States, AIDS is no longer a disease that sweeps the population and kills at a young age. Most folks with AIDS are beginning to approach a normal life span thanks to medical science. That, in itself, is a victory (though some obviously disagree).

How long do you suppose AIDS existed in its original reservoir before it got into the human population. I certainly don’t know the answer to that question. No human does.

Of course, I don’t believe AIDS is a judgement on the world, anymore than an H1N1 epidemic in the church nursery is God’s judgement on the Baptists.

I still think you’re gonna’ get on the bad side of God by accusing him of having a rather peculiar interest in carrying out mass exterminations. I’m not terribly comfortable with God being portrayed as some sort of divine Mengele. But since I’m not inside God’s head (and neither are you by the way), I can’t really say what God’s gonna’ do. Suffice to say that every natural disaster, pandemic and human mass atrocity has folks that’ll tell you that it’s God’s judgement for this or that. Some even advocate it.

Personally, I don’t lay a lot of this sort of trip on God, as I have always tried to be complimentary towards the Gentleman Upstairs. Now, you go ahead and do what you want. But I’d prefer to avoid explaining why I dropped that less than favorable rap on God when I go through my final interview.

Death is trauma enough. A soul doesn’t need to be pleading his/her case for redemption in what could become an adversarial proceeding. Don’t be saying uncomplimentary things about the Big Guy for which you don’t have absolute proof. Just tryin’ to help another soul here.

“Just out of curiosity. How long do you think AIDS would exist if the main transmission route for it’s spread were removed?”

How long do you suppose AIDS existed in its original reservoir before it got into the human population. I certainly don’t know the answer to that question. No human does.

Of course, I don’t believe AIDS is a judgement on the world, anymore than an H1N1 epidemic in the church nursery is God’s judgement on the Baptists.

God holds us accountable for our decisions. People have a huge problem with 3 small words, “Thou shall not”. I don’t know how it could be made more simpler.

How did AIDS get started in the US? What group has the most cases? How do they get exposed to AIDS? What possibility does a straight married couple who don’t engage in sex outside of marriage and don’t use illegal drugs have of contacting that disease? What is the average lifespan of a homosexual?

I am not in God’s head. If you read his word you will understand his plan a little better. The Bible is full of instructions. It says what to do and what not to do. It also tells what happens to people who refuse to listen.

The God of the Bible destroyed 2 cities in the large part because of what the citizens were doing.

I seriously doubt he cares what you think. The Bible says you will be judged for every action and every word that leaves your mouth.

Have a long good life. By the way, you should seriously pray I am wrong. If I am wrong, what have I lost. If you are wrong, what have you lost?

“I seriously doubt he cares what you think. The Bible says you will be judged for every action and every word that leaves your mouth.”

Indeed. And that is the wonderful thing about free will. We are eventually accountable. I believe that one would be incorrect in a belief that one will receive heavenly rewards or punishments in this life. The scales get balanced later.

In the same way that Christians have no assurance of an easy earthly existence, neither is there any divine guarantee that the wayward among us will be receive an earthly “correction”. Apparently there are those that take satisfaction, if not downright joy at the human suffering of others. I am not one of them. I work the other side of that street.

All of this business of assuming that the mortal suffering of particular groups is visited by God himself, does God a great disservice. Jews, Gays, even African Christians fall into groups that have had plenty of troubles. To select some as being worthy of divine extermination, and taking satisfaction in this based on self-judgement is intellectually lame, and spiritually bereft of the Christian tenets that Jesus commanded us to exercise during our life.

I will pray for you (I really will!), in the hope that you continue to progress in your spiritual development. As you’re no doubt aware, Christianity can be a joyful experience if one chooses to live in the light, versus the dark. I prefer the joy, but I’m one of those New Testament types.

Thank you. I will also pray for your spiritual development. We both need it. I love the phrase “there are none so blind as those who will not see”.

Galatians 6;

Verse 7- Be not deceived; God is not mocked: For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

Verse 8- For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.

I am slow, but to me this seems to indicate we should be careful what kinds of seeds we plant and where we plant them. Of course, I am not a scholar.

The whole of Jeremiah Chapter 5 is very interesting to me.

Jeremiah 5:

Verse 23- But this people hath a revolting and a rebellious heart; they are revolted and gone.

Verse 24- Neither say in their heart, Let us now fear the Lord our God, that giveth rain, but the former and the latter, in his season: he reserveth unto us the appointed weeks of the harvest.

Verse 25- Your iniquities have turned away these things, and your sins have withholden good things from you.

Verse 26- For among my people are found wicked men: they lay wait, as he that setteth snares; they set a trap, they catch men.

Verse 27- As a cage is full of birds, so are their houses full of deceit: therefore they are become great, and waxen rich.

Seems pretty plain to me. I see a lot of Verses 26 and 27 now. Look at the riches our Television Evangelist are gaining.

Jesus also walked the other side of the street. I sincerely hope you are on his side. He taught the wages of sin is death. He fought the dangers of the current “religion” of his time because it had deviated from God's plan. Our religions are following the old plan.

The truth can't be taught in most Church buildings because it would step on too many people's toes. He can't preach about adultery, dishonesty, or homosexuality and a long list of other wrong things. The people would find some way to get rid of him. He would be unemployed and lose many of the benefits the Church members provide.

Some pastors get free housing and cars as part of their salary. Some don't even mow their own grass. It is a whole lot easier to just preach God's love and Oh, be sure to give to the Church so they can afford to keep him.

As a result the Pastor is forced to preach about God's love, not the fear we should have and let his flock wander around aimlessly.

My Bible says:

Psalm 111: verse 10- The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do his commandments: his praise endureth forever.

Proverbs 1: verse 7- The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

Proverbs 9: verse 10- The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.

This makes me wonder if many Churches are on the wrong side of the street. ;0(

Makes me wonder who controls those Churches.

God may or may not be in a Church service. Satan never misses one.

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