Unheard of Tempests

Merchants Trading with the East

In 1346 rumors reached Europe of strange and terrible things happening in the East. Stories of a horrible plague supposedly arising in China and spreading through Tartary to India and Persia, Mesopotamia, Syria, Egypt and all of Asia Minor told of a death toll so devastating that India was said to be depopulated, whole territories were covered by dead bodies, and other areas had no one left alive. Actual eyewitness accounts were few, but a Flemish priest, basing his remarks on a letter from a friend at the papal court, wrote: "In the East, hard by greater India, in a certain province, horrors and unheard of tempests overwhelmed the whole province for a space of three days. On the first day there was a rain of frogs, serpents, lizards, scorpions, and many venomous beasts of that sort. On the second, thunder was heard, and lightning and sheets of fire fell upon the earth, mingled with hail stones of marvelous size; which slew almost all, from the greatest to the least. On the third day there fell fire from heaven and stinking smoke, which slew all that were left of men and beasts, and burned up all the cities and towns in those parts. By these tempests the whole province was infected; and it is conjectured that, through the foul blast of wind that came from the South, the whole seashore and surrounding lands were infected, and are waxing more and more poisonous from day to day." This was the first word Europeans had of a disaster of unprecedented magnitude that would soon embrace them, shattering lives, families, institutions, and the very fabric of Medieval society. It was the Black Death, and Europe would never be the same.

At first the news caused little concern in Europe. Stories of natural disasters from the East were common, and without the concept of contagion no serious alarms were felt; but soon people realized that a plague of unexampled fury had struck the East. Tales began to circulate, beginning in the leading European seaports, of the terrible numbers who were dying from it, and by the end of 1346 it was said that the plague was rapidly spreading westward, taking a huge toll of life as it went. "India was depopulated, Tartary, Mesopotamia, Syria, Armenia were covered with dead bodies; the Kurds fled in vain to the mountains. In Caramania and Caesarea none were left alive." Contemporary Russian chroniclers reported that the infection first sprang up in China, where thirteen million people were said to have died from it.

It is not known how or when the plague first reached Europe. The 20th century Medieval historian G. G. Coulter wrote that it reached Constantinople in 1347, and from there followed the trade route, by Messina and Genoa, to Normandy. The infection was most certainly carried along these trade routes, particularly those by which Eastern spices and silks were taken to European merchants. Much of this trade was carried in galleys from collecting places in the Crimea to Messina in Sicily while other ships from the Levant sailed into Genoa and Venice. A Flemish chronicler wrote of the plague's arrival in one of these ports: "In January of the year 1348, three galleys put in at Genoa, driven by a fierce wind from the East, horribly infected and laden with a variety of spices and other valuable goods. When the inhabitants of Genoa learned this, and saw how suddenly and irremediably they infected other people, they were driven forth from that port by burning arrows and divers engines of war; for no man dared touch them, for if he did he would be sure to die forthwith. Thus, they were scattered from port to port." Other accounts say that infected trading ships had reached Messina in October of 1347 with dead and dying men at the oars. These ships had come from the Black Sea port of Caffa in the Crimea, where the Genoaese maintained a trading post. At any rate, by January 1348 the Black Death had established itself in Sicily and on the Italian mainland, penetrated France via Marseilles, and North Africa via Tunis. From Marseilles it spread westward to Spain and northward to Avignon, which it reached in March. Between February and May it hit Rome and Florence. Between June and August it reached Bordeaux, Lyon, and Paris. From Normandy it crossed the channel into southern England. From Italy it crossed the Alps into Switzerland and moved eastward into Hungary.