The Black Plague: A Pandemic of the 14th century
The Plague – also known as the Black Death, the Pestilence, and the Great Morality – was one of the deadliest pandemics in history, killing an estimated 200 million people in Europe, Asia, and North Africa. Islamic cities lost nearly a third to half of their population and Europe lost an estimated 33% of their population. The disease was caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis and can manifest as a bubonic, pneumonic, or septicemic strain, depending on what bodily system it is affecting. It was primarily transferred by infected fleas from rats found on boats and spread initially by shipping.i
The famous pandemic that occurred in the fourteenth century is from the Second Plague Pandemic appeared between China and the Crimean Peninsula in the 1330s, making its way to the Black Sea region by 1345. It arrived in Messina, Sicily in 1347 and quickly spread through Europe. The Black Death lasted until 1352, but the Second Plague Pandemic did not end until the early 1770s.ii The plague is now curable, but a vaccine has not been made for the plague, so a small number of cases appear every year in North and South America, Central Asia, and Africa.iii
The plague impacted the European social, political and economic structures, as well as the art produced during and after the fact. Previously, monarchies and governments were the most frequent and high-paying patrons for the arts. However, the impact of incredible population loss, especially in the noble class, caused a switch in established structures – while governments struggled, religious institutions gained a significant amount of wealth from, “the bequests of the dead.”iv It is not just the primary patrons that changed, but the iconography of the commissioned works. Samuel Cohn, a professor of medieval history at the University of Glasgow who specializes on the Black Death, argues that these changes included more saints added to the rolls who were intended to protect the patron from the plague.v
The Office of the Dead appeared more in Books of Hours after 1350, and included a multitude of images associated with the plague, such as Pope St. Gregory during the First Pandemic, King David prayers to avert a plague, the Three Living Meet the Three Dead, the Triumph of the Death, general funeral imagery, and more.vi Due to the frequency and re-occurrence of the plague, the macabre imagery persisted throughout the pre-Modern periods (15th-17th centuries).
Despite the devastation of the plague, the 14th still holds beautiful works of art of the book. The University of Oregon Special Collections & University Archives holds three items from the fourteenth century. The first was made between the 13th and 14th centuries and is an Italian Vulgate Bible with a prologue by St. Jerome and a Book of Interpretation of Hebrew Names (UO SCUA, MS 28, figure 1). The included image, folio 3r, is the initial I that begins Genesis and includes interlaced vine-work that forms six spaces, each containing a miniature that represents one of the six days of creation. The manuscript contains 2 large historiated initials, 29 large illuminated initials, 58 medium-sized illuminated initials, and 38 small illuminated initials.vii
Next is the Liber Prophetarum, a large German Vulgate Bible from 1380 (UO SCUA, MS 31, figure 2). Although the illuminated initials do not contain figures, they are tremendous examples of the extreme and detailed flourishing commonly found in 14th century German manuscripts. This type of initial does not occur frequently in the manuscript; instead, there are minor pigmented initials and some column flourishing. Since this manuscript was made twenty years after the most decimating part of the pandemic, perhaps the infrequency is due to some sort of consequence from the plague, likely the lack of tradesmen to do this specialized work due to death in their ranks.viii The population of Europe did not rebound to its pre-Plague numbers until the mid-17th century.
The final 14th century item is a nativity scene in a leaf from a late-13th – early 14th century French Book of Hours (UO SCUA, MS 54.) The leaf demonstrates an attempt at some intuitive perspective, using the lines of the roof of the manger to demonstrate receding space. While some of the leaf has some flaking damage, the delicate use of painted gold leaf remains intact. Given the evidence of gold-leafing, it’s very likely this item was made before the Plague. Gold and other minerals were at a high premium, due again to reduction in population, and the need for prioritizing services such as farming.
While the Black Death eradicated a significant amount of the world’s population, individuals found creative outlets and incorporated their death-stricken realities within their art for centuries to come. Although we are not in quite the same drastic position as the artists of the 14th century, perhaps some of the most beautiful and fantastic art of the early 21st century will emerge from the trauma of our current pandemic.
Written by Zoey Kambour, a second-year master’s student in the History of Art & Architecture at the University of Oregon and a Special Projects Cataloger for the University’s Special Collections and University Archives.
Notes
[i] Joseph P. Byrne, Encyclopedia of the Black Death (Santa Barbara, UNITED STATES: ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2012), http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uoregon/detail.action?docID=831975.
[ii] Byrne.
[iii] John Frith, “The History of Plague – Part 1. The Three Great Pandemics” Journal of Military and Veterans’ Health 20, no. 2 (April, 2012), 11.
[iv] “Black Death and Medieval Art,” Grove Art Online, accessed August 24, 2020, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/groveart/view/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.001.0001/oao-9781884446054-e-7002273208.
[v] Samuel Kline Cohn, The Cult of Remembrance and the Black Death: Six Renaissance Cities in Central Italy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992).
[vi] Byrne, Encyclopedia of the Black Death, 54-55.
[vii] For more images, please see: https://library.uoregon.edu/ec/exhibits/burgess/ms28i.html#front. Catalogue link: https://alliance-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/to8ro2/CP71269138510001451.
[viii] For more images, please see: https://library.uoregon.edu/ec/exhibits/burgess/ms31i.html. Catalogue link: https://alliance-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/to8ro2/CP71269138560001451.
— written by Zoey Kambour, August 2020
