It was a strange and troubled time, and social neurosis swept across Europe. Thousands joined the hysteria, and the Brotherhood became more popular in some areas than the priests, whose rituals had been powerless during the plague. They marched through cities, chanting repentance, and calling on the citizens to join them as they stripped to the waist and whipped themselves with knotted scourges. To ward off the plague, a fanatical sect called the "Brotherhood of the Flagellants" tried to take the sins of Europe upon themselves. The most frightening part was that nothing could be done to help the afflicted, who were abandoned by the healthy to avoid contagion. The disease was so infectious that it seemed impossible to avoid. After the churchyards were full, they made vast trenches where bodies were heaped in mass graves. So many died so quickly that there was no place to bury them. Then came fever, constant vomiting (often blood), diarrhea, pneumonia, and, almost inevitably, death within three days. The first sign was sneezing (hence, "God bless you"), followed by the appearance of lumps, or "buboes" (hence, "bubonic"). In some cities, 90 percent of the population was wiped out. In Florence alone, 100,000 died within four months. London, Vienna, Florence, and Avignon (the papal city at the time) were particularly hard hit. The unsanitary conditions in medieval Europe allowed the disease to move rapidly northward. Humans get it when bitten by the fleas, and then spread it by coughing. The disease is caused by a bacteria carried by fleas (which travel on rats). (The ship had become infected in Central Asia during battle, when a clever Mongol chieftain catapulted diseased corpses into their camp.) Within three years, the plague had spread through Italy, France, and most of Europe. In 1347, a Genoese ship landed in Sicily, carrying a deadly cargo: rats with the bacteria known as the bubonic plague. Most saw the plague as not just a disease, but a heavenly curse "sent down upon mankind for our correction by the just wrath of God." It killed with such power and swiftness that "the living could scarcely bury the dead." The economic, physical, and emotional shock is unsurpassed in European history. The disease spread quickly, killed horribly, and then moved on, leaving whole cities devastated in its wake. The medieval equivalent of a nuclear holocaust, the bubonic plague - or "Black Death" - killed as many as one-third of Europe's people in three long years (1347–1350).
Town squares throughout Europe still sport (often gaudy) "plague monuments" built by dazed, grateful survivors. Ever wonder why we say, "God bless you" when someone sneezes? It's because of the bubonic plague.
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