The Black Death and Western European Eschatological Mentalities

Abstract

As THERE IS a Richter scale for measuring earthquakes, so is now a scale for measuring disasters. Harold D. Foster, a Canadian geographer, has maintained that disasters ought not to be ranked solely by their toll in lives but also by the physical damage and emotional stress they create. By these standards the Black Death of 1347 to 1350 falls two-tenths of a point short of being the worst disaster in history: on the Foster scale, World War 11 (1 1.1) ranks first, the Black Death (10.9) second, and World War I (10.5) third.' Without stopping to quibble about the two-tenths of a point, or to ask whether one can calibrate emotional stress so finely, we might agree that the Black Death was one of the worst disasters on record. Among the numerous vivid illustrations of the horror are a German chronicler's image of ships floating with dead crews aimlessly on the seas and an Italian chronicler's offhand hyperbole that there was not a dog left pissing on the wall.2 Granted that the disaster was enormous, the question to be asked here is, how was it placed within the framework of eschatological thought? At a time when people believed seriously in the end of the world and the Last Judgment, how did they place the onslaught of the greatest disaster yet known within their conception of the history of salvation? Obviously, even during the greatest of disasters, not everybody reacts in the same way. Robert Benchley once remarked that in every news photo of epochmaking events always seems to be a man in a derby hat looking in the opposite direction from the action: on Bloody Sunday in St. Petersburg or assassination day in Sarajevo, a Johnny-on-the-spot is always looking up at a clock,