The Black Death: An Intimate History of the Plague by John Hatcher

One for history buffs.

The Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history. It struck in the mid-1340s, and killed about half the population of Europe within four years. The death toll worldwide is put at 75m. It had momentous social and economic effects. Although the authorities strove to reimpose serfdom once the pestilence was over, the depleted workforce seems to have been able to sell its labour at market value, so it arguably spelt the end of the feudal system and the birth of capitalism. It may also have permanently weakened religious belief among the common people, since the mighty bombardment of prayers and penitential rituals that the Catholic church mounted against it was obviously and embarrassingly ineffective.

Yet, despite its colossal impact, surprisingly little is known about it. It is thought to have started in central Asia, but its cause remains mysterious. Precisely what disease it was and how it spread are also uncertain. It used to be identified as bubonic plague, which is carried by the fleas on rats, but that is now disputed, and there are theories that it was some kind of anthrax or maybe an Ebola-like virus. What is clear is the terror it caused. In the introduction to his Decameron, Boccaccio includes an eyewitness account of the panic and anarchy it brought to Florence in 1348, and of its horrible symptoms. It first showed itself by tumours in the groin or armpits, sometimes as big as an apple, and these swellings quickly appeared on other parts of the body, together with black or purple spots on thighs and arms. Most sufferers died within three days. It spread like wildfire, seemingly carried on the air. Fugitives sought remote hiding places and shut themselves away, but they still died.

What ordinary people thought and felt, how much they understood and what they believed, it is impossible to say. The vast majority were illiterate, so they have left no trace of their inner lives. This is the aspect that John Hatcher seeks to rediscover, using a new method that he calls literary docudrama. He focuses on the Sussex village of Walsham le Willows, which has unusually good records of the transactions between the lords of the manor and their tenants in the village's two manorial courts during the 1340s. From these it can be deduced that the Great Pestilence, as it was called, reached Walsham around Easter 1349, and killed rather more than half of the population of about 1,500 within two months. At its height the death rate was probably 50 a day. The court records provide only names, and details of fines, taxes and death duties. But Hatcher fleshes these out by drawing on a wide range of contemporary sources both British and continental - sermons, chronicles, mystical treatises - and ascribing the ideas and feelings they contain to the villagers of Walsham. Obviously, this entails a high degree of fiction. Obviously, too, by turning Walsham into a representative village, where virtually anything associated with the Black Death across the length and breadth of Europe can be assumed to have happened, Hatcher forfeits the particularity and uniqueness that his focus on a single village might have been expected to give. All the same, his reconstructed account is suspenseful, informative and appropriately horrifying.

The most pitiable aspect is the faith that people placed in preventive measures, and the readiness of quacks and fraudsters to exploit their credulity. The trade in relics boomed as the plague approached. Itinerant holy men offered bones from the skeletons of saints that could be kissed for a halfpenny or bought for fourpence. There were tussles to get hold of the stubs of Easter candles from the church, since wax amulets made from these were held to ward off infection. Nothing is known of Walsham's parish priest; not even his name. But Hatcher fills the gap with a fictional incumbent called Master John, based on Chaucer's idealised parson in The Canterbury Tales. In response to the frantic calls to penitence issued by the Pope and the bishops, he organises twice-weekly processions in which the devout smear themselves with ashes and crawl on all fours or wriggle along on their stomachs. Despite the risk of contagion, a group of villagers joins the throng of pilgrims heading for the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, where a phial of Mary's milk is preserved, and the faithful can purchase a miraculous drop of it, diluted with holy water and sealed in a small lead flask. Meanwhile, practical measures are taken to prevent refugees from infected areas from entering the village. Strangers are driven away with stones and threats, and guards mounted on the approach roads prevent them coming back.

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