Black Death and Disease Essay

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Black Death and Religion in Western Europe

The Black Death is perhaps considered as the most devastating pandemic that has happened to humanity in the previous to the present century. The disease was transmitted from Asia into and through Europe. The disease set feet in Europe by the sea in October of 1347 when trading ships belonging to Genoese set their dock at the Silician Port of Messina when it had covered a long journey through the sea. It was not business as usual because the people who had gathered to receive the ship were met with drilling surprise. The sailors, almost all of them, who were on the ship, were dead. Those who were not yet dead were suffering in ill pain. They have a somewhat strong fever that had overcome them and could not do anything because of the pain. What was notable is that the bodies of these people were covered unknown black boils that made blood to ooze with pus giving the illness its name of "the black death." The Silicia authorities immediately tried to order the fleet of "death ships" to be taken out of the harbor although it was too late to save the infected (Cantor, 2001, p. 27). The disease had already landed in the lives of the people and will soon spread and kill over twenty million people in the next five years. The disease was considered as mysterious as it came from nowhere and wiped out almost a one-third of the population of the world.

Before the arrival of this ship carrying the disease, there were already rumors about the "Great Pestilence" that was covering the deadly paths of trade routes of the Far East and near. This was early in the 1340s in Egypt, Syria, China, Persia, and India. Nonetheless, no serious equipment could fight this deadly disease. As indicated by the Italian Poet called Giovanni Boccaccio, the "black death" was a serious disease that was scary in nature. The disease was contagious. It caused swellings in the parts of the body, swellings that were as big as an egg, and produced puss. The person would feel extreme pain and discomfort (Platt, 1996, p.9). The other symptoms included diarrhea, vomiting, chills, fever, among others. It was terrific, and people hated the most. It spread like wildfire in a dry forest. Those who were healthy at night could be affected and be dead by morning.

Galleys are said to have been the main transmission agents of the Black Death right from where it started to the rest parts of the world. From Rome to Barcelona, the ships moves and transmitted the disease. Individual could not manage t transmit the disease since its death was instant or over a short period. As ships operated in trade from Rome to Barcelona, Milan, Marseille, among others, the people was infected and died. It was not long before the galleys moving to Paris and London arrived resulting in the infection of more people (Bulliet 2014, p. 64). Meanwhile, the disease was spreading through Kiev to Copenhagen and later to Stockholm. Moscow was later declared to be infected by the disease. The disease spread between 1346 and 1353 and by this year, it had covered almost the entire Europe and the rest of the continents including Asia.

The disease was contagious and hence likely moved from one person to another through contact and air. Traders who were moving across Europe, into, and out of Asia participated in spreading the disease the most. It was soon declared that the places were entirely affected and nothing could be done to salvage whatever remained (Cantor, 2001, p. 56). People died until the disease disappeared. The interconnections of trades, through the sea harbors, happened to have been the main central places that conducted the disease from one country to another and from one region to another.

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The economic activities involved with a trade made everything possible that the disease could spread through human activities and interventions.

It was apparent from the beginning that Black Death was something new to the people. The rate at which the number of deaths occurred was devastating. No one knew anything concerning the biological processes involved in understanding the disease. What people only know was that Black Death was spreading through different European and Asian regions, and was killing people. The probable consent from among the people, as seen within the religious understanding, was that Black Death was a sign of something occurring in the supernatural. They thought this must have been a punishment from God (Person 2010, p. 53). For this reason, its effects symbolized a bad omen among the people. Those on the rational side of life saw this as just a disease like any other.

The impact of the Black Death was devastating. Much of what happened was merely a destruction of the societies that had been building for many years. The urban areas were declared common zones of the disease and soon wiped out the entire populations of these places. People tried to move away but as they moved, is when the disease even spread more and more. Those who were affected, seeing the disease as a punishment from God, did not hesitate to punish themselves more by going from one urban area to another punishing themselves through beatings and many other painful occurrences. The urban areas lost their social structure and grip that put them together. Whatever happened was a creation of one society since the disease did not discriminate even the diversities of the people regarding their economic standards. In fact, those who were in the villages had a little scare from the disease unlike those who lived in the urban areas. With the number of the deaths increasing, it soon became clear that the urban areas were left with immeasurable states of poor sanitation (Herlihy, and Cohn, 1997, p.36). The death rates were very high since many people met trading activities and other people. The disease spread faster in the urban areas and hence wiped out most populations in urban areas.

The societies were terrified by the outbreak of the disease. The majority of the people was dead and left families just like any other member of the society. Families were disintegrated and left for nothing. Soon the family togetherness became a nuisance as people feared for the spread of the disease. With high death rates, it became possible that families were wiped out beside the populations. Right from Asia and in Europe, many lives were lost. The urban areas lost their grip to maintain the state of the economy as it was before. People were never free to engage in economic activities that required them to interact with others in the society. It soon became clear that whatever was taking place was something like a punishment from God. People adopted all possible strategies to eradicate the disease to no avail. Rituals and traditions were done to cleanse up people and societies, but this was not enough to cast out the disease (Bulliet, 2014, pp.126).

The recovery of the urban vitality was central to the ending of the period of a disease outbreak. As seen with the way in which the disease spread, the vitality of the urban area also vanished in this way. Nothing new was there to make life better after the disease. Right from Rome to Russia, the disease had wiped out clearly everything that was possibly important for the economic standard of the people. Research has shown that pestis was the major agent of the transmission of Black….....

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