Plagued By Disaster, Humanity Turns To Faith
By: Stephanie Schorow
Faced with fears of a pandemic like the avian flu or worried about mad cow disease, Ebola or Hantavirus, modern society typically looks to science and medicine to explain — and thus — avert disaster.
But in the history of civilization, this is a recent development.
During humanity’s worst biomedical disaster, the Black Death of 1347 to 1350, when neither scholar nor priest could stem the tide of the plague, people took comfort in a wrathful God.
Amid what appeared to be the end of the world, 14th-century citizenry believed that humanity’s own sins and follies caused the terrible disease devastating Europe.
Such knowledge may have helped fulfill the human need to find meaning in the madness, noted John Kelly, author of the 2005 book The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time. “We have an inherent sense, probably genetic, to find order in chaos,” he said. “We need that in order to function. That’s one thing religion gives us.”
European civilization — despite a population drop of 30 percent and several subsequent plague outbreaks — continued. The religious response to the plague, moreover, produced acts of generosity and self-sacrifice as well as terrible acts of misdirected vengeance.
Today, the concept that God has caused a calamity as punishment for human sin — whether the AIDS epidemic or the Asian tsunami — is viewed skeptically by most mainstream religious leaders. Yet it is a concept that lingers, whether in assertions that Hurricane Katrina whacked New Orleans for its wicked ways or in evangelist Pat Robertson’s conclusion that God caused Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s stroke.
Evidence suggests that the Black Death was bubonic plague, carried by fleas and spread by rats. In the Middle Ages, however, “medical science was utterly baffled by the plague,” said Franco Mormando, associate professor of Italian studies at Boston College and an expert on plague-related fine art. No one knew how it spread. Folk remedies were to no avail and astrology found no solutions in the stars or the movement of Saturn.
“The church had a very simple answer: The ultimate cause of the plague is an angry God who is punishing humanity for its sinfulness,” Mormando said. “It’s a terrible message and theologically wrong, but the consolation is having a ready answer.”
Thus, the only way to truly ward off the disease was to lead a Christian life — a benefit both to plague victims and society.
While many people fled cities or barricaded themselves in homes, a surprising number chose to care for stricken family or friends. This was evidenced by the number of people surrounding someone at a time of death as recorded in surviving bequests and wills.
Many priests left their posts or charged extraordinary fees for services, many others stayed to serve and succumbed with their flocks, Kelly said. With cities falling into ruin, “people didn’t turn away from religion — it became more private and less institutional,” he said.
The religious impulse also found its away into fine art. Certainly the macabre “dance of death” skeleton motifs lingered in art and literature for decades. However, many painters took another approach, as shown in Hope and Healing: Painting in Italy in a Time of Plague 1500-1800, a landmark exhibit Mormando helped organize in 2005 at the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts. Contrary to expectation, many plague-related paintings did not document the destruction, rather, “the final role of art was to be a mirror of hope and healing,” Mormando said.
The paintings in the exhibit used only symbols of the plague (such as people holding their noses because of victims’ stench) and featured saints associated with the disease — St. Sebastian, St. Roche, St. Rosalie and St. Michael the archangel. These served as “reminders of their abiding availability as intercessors and saviors,” Mormando said. Paintings were often commissioned by local authorities for public display, creating messages about “the great resource of human charity.” “What we call social services collapsed so society depended even more on the kindness of individuals,” Mormando said.
Religious excess created horrors during the plague years. Rumors that Jews were spreading the plague by poisoning well water sparked violent attacks on Jews in Germany and France. According to the University of Minnesota’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 2,000 Jews were burned alive in Strasbourg in 1349. Thus, the search for sin often targeted innocent scapegoats, although, Kelly noted, Pope Clement issued two bulls in 1348 condemning attacks on Jews.
Groups of “Flagellants,” including both monks and laypeople, roamed the streets publicly whipping themselves so as to bear God’s punishment for all humanity themselves. Unfortunately, these groups of people, often carrying plague-carrying fleas, roamed from town to town, Kelly said. Even the act of bringing people together in churches could spread the disease.
Eventually local authorities realized the value of quarantines when outbreaks occurred. And, for whatever reason, subsequent outbreaks of the plague, which continued into the 18th century, were less devastating.
By the time of the massive flu outbreak of 1918, which according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Center for Disease Control and Prevention, killed as many as 40 million worldwide, medical science had replaced theology in the search for solutions. Yet, the tendency to attribute disaster to divine retribution lingers even today. The need to see order in chaos “may be something we need to survive,” Kelly said.
Stephanie Schorow is a freelance writer for Science & Theology News.