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secondary sources. The Church played a significant role during the Middle Ages because

religion was an important aspect of daily life for European Christians. When the Black

Death struck Europe in 1347, the Church struggled to cope with the plague’s damaging

consequences and its reputation suffered as a result. This thesis concludes that the Black

Death contributed to the decline in the confidence and faith of the Christian laity towards

the institution of the Church and its leadership. The scope of this paper focuses on the

plague’s impact on the clergy, the rise of the flagellant movement, and the widespread

Jewish persecutions that ensued in the wake of the plague. The Black Death was a

significant event in the history of Western society with profound cultural and

demographic consequences, and its impact on the Church and religion in medieval

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CHAPTER II: THE HERETICAL NATURE OF THE FLAGELLANTS.......................24

EPILOGUE…....................................................................................................................65

BIBLIOGRAPHY..............................................................................................................67

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medieval world by challenging the institutions that provided its people with stability and

guidance. Perhaps the most important of these institutions during this time was the

Church. Medieval Europeans turned towards the Church and its leaders in times of crises

because they were in search of answers that provided a degree of order and solidity.

overall confidence and faith in the Church from the laypeople diminished during the

plague and its subsequent outbreaks because the Church suffered just as they did. People

were able to see the “human” side of the Church that was unable to save them from the

onslaught of the plague.

arrival of the plague. The Church had gradually become more secular as its focus turned

toward wealth and political power. Thus, the Church already found itself at a

disadvantage during this time because of its weakened state. The papacy had been moved

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from Rome to Avignon, a city located today in southern France, and its reputation

suffered as a result. When the Black Death struck Europe in 1347, the increasingly

secular Church was forced to respond when its religious, spiritual, and instructive

capabilities were found wanting.

Church because it exposed its vulnerability to Christian society. Despite this view, it is

important to note that the majority of Europeans did not experience a decline in their faith

in God, but rather a decline in their confidence in the ability of the institution of the

Church.

plague was due to the deterioration in the quality of its clergy. A great number of priests

succumbed to the pestilence, and the individuals whom the Church recruited to take their

against the Jewish population. The Church vehemently opposed this slaughter, but this

did not stop the maddened public from taking action. Jews had long held a tense

relationship with their Christian neighbors, and when the plague arrived, European

Christians violently attacked the Jews in the belief that Jews had spread the plague. All of

these events point to how the Church began to lose its influence over the Christian

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people. If the process had already been occurring before the pestilence, it became even

more amplified when the Black Death reached Europe. Although Western society

eventually recovered from the onslaught of the plague, it was no longer the same Europe.

Its population had been significantly diminished, but more importantly, the structure of

its society was changed in lasting ways.

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laity and the Church. During times of crisis, it was the clergy to whom people looked for

guidance. When the Black Death struck Europe, however, both the Church and its clergy

were found wanting in the eyes of European Christians. The significant reduction in the

ecclesiastical population, combined with the deterioration in quality of clerical services,

created an untrustworthy image of the Church in the minds of medieval Christians.

Although the Church had already begun to lose its power and influence over the Christian

world, the Black Death amplified the growing division between the Church and laity.

Ultimately, there was a decline in the faith of the Christian population towards the

Church due to the extreme mortality rate of the clerical populace, the failure of the

Death.

The loss of life among clergy members during the Black Death was substantial,

and the repercussions of this were severe because it markedly weakened the manpower of

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“Many parish priests fled, leaving no one to offer services, deliver last rites, and comfort

the sick. Flight might have been intellectually explicable, but it was morally

inexcusable.”

priests in various deaneries fled the onslaught of the Black Death. The fear and paranoia

that people experienced during the plague only worsened when they witnessed their local

priests abandon their posts. These instances were notable because “in a world in which

performance of an appointed role was very important, many clerics no longer seemed to

be doing their jobs.”

they were surely doomed. Boccaccio remarked, “As the ferocity of the plague increased,

such [services] ceased either totally or in part, and new ones took their place.”

had created a world where every man was concerned only with his own wellbeing, and

many members of the clergy, individuals who were supposed to live by the principles of

selflessness and charity, were found in the eyes of European Christians to be no different.

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availability of priestly assistance to the Christian population but also the standard of

quality in the work that was performed. The lack of competency among the clergy was a

major repercussion of this depopulation. One of the major causes of this was the

increased number of unqualified individuals the Church was forced to accept into its

ranks. Ziegler writes, “During and immediately after the plague the usual rules governing

the ordination of priests were virtually abandoned.”

decimated and in such a need of an ecclesiastical labor force that it was frequently forced

death toll of the plague. He observes, “The Bishop of Norwich obtained a dispensation to

allow sixty clerks aged twenty-one or less to hold rectories on the grounds, more or less

candidates was not the only factor in the decline in quality of the clerical services

performed, it no doubt had an impact on the need of the Church to react quickly and

effectively to the current crisis. Norman Cantor supports this claim, asserting, “During

and immediately after the Black Death, priests were ordained at twenty rather than

twenty-five. Monastic vows could be administered to adolescents at age fifteen rather

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than twenty. Priests took over parish churches at age twenty instead of twenty-five. It was

a younger, much younger Church that came suddenly into being, and one now staffed

heavily with undereducated and inexperienced people.”

and experience were vital traits required by the Church. After the first year of the plague,

it was evident that this had changed.

Church in its clerical members, and the Black Death transformed it into an institution

severely lacking both. Older clerics were greatly respected and looked to for guidance by

scourge must have been most demoralizing to discipline, destructive to traditional

practice, and fatal to observance.”

could not be renewed by the youths received without the necessary training, rather to fill

the empty houses than to restore the lost discipline.”

historians with blatant examples of instances where clergy members were often incapable

of performing their clerical duties. William Dohar writes that in the diocese of Hereford

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there were “glaring cases of misfits at the altar, men who were patently inept at

exercising the arts of arts, some on account of ignorance, poor training and spare

opportunity for learning, others out of an incompetence that was not adequately

challenged by the usual pastoral authorities of rural dean, archdeacon or bishop.”

Whether these new clerical members were youthful or not, the lack of experience that the

majority of them held was detrimental to the Church’s mission to restore stability to the

Christian world. Many of them were also uneducated, which is an obvious problem when

the clergy were unable effectively to read and understand the texts about which they were

significantly waning, and the incompetence of its new members only worsened its

reputation among the Christian population. Ziegler concludes that during the aftermath of

Ziegler writes, “among these novice priests and the survivors of the plague there was

noticeable a new acquisitiveness: a determination to share in the wealth which fell free

for the taking after the Black Death.”

that had become prevalent among all classes of European society during the first years of

the plague. This was especially prevalent among the clergy. When priests began to realize

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the opportunities that arose from the dwindling number of the clerical population and the

increased rarity of a qualified cleric, they made sure to take advantage of the situation by

demanding higher fees due to their increased demand. Ziegler writes of a monk who

observed, “In this plague many chaplains and hired parish priests would not serve without

excessive pay.”

Edward III ordered his bishops to make certain that they were paid no more than their

usual salary and did not abandon their posts in search of higher pay.

moral leaders in the Church often proved futile, however, with the continued outbreaks of

letter to the bishop of London describing these same problems with clergy members. This

is significant because it shows how clerical greed persisted during further outbreaks of

benefits that could be gained.

through their services and other means. One way was to serve private chapels where

wealthy patrons paid great amounts to have them direct private masses. Simon Islip, the

Archbishop of Canterbury at the time, complained that because some priests were not

!

satisfied with their current salaries, “they demand for their services excessive wages, and

thus they win more profit for themselves than curates do, in exchange only for their status

and little work.”

for greater wealth, given the economic difficulties many of them faced during the plague,

it did not serve as an adequate excuse to the Christian laity for a man of God. Ziegler

writes, “Insistence upon his financial due is rarely becoming to a minister of the Church

and sometimes they were greedy and excessive in their exactions.”

Augustinian canon who served in Leicester, England, also observed this behavior among

less than 10 pounds or ten marks. And while there had been plenty of priests before the

plague and a man might have had a chaplain for five or six marks or for two marks and

deeds accumulated from Christ, the patristic fathers, and saints.”

greater emphasis on death and the afterlife, people became even more concerned with

their fate after death and how their past sins would affect their judgment by God. He

continues, “Indulgences were not given freely, but usually in anticipation of a gift of

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money; always mindful of turning a profit, church leaders began to sell them in

increasing numbers to a richer public.”

argument that the Black Death was the major cause of the Protestant Reformation, these

instances nevertheless were significant in that they pointed to the practices that incited

the radical change that transformed the Church in the sixteenth century. Gottfried

supports this claim by writing, “While indulgences were not the only thing that spurred

Martin Luther, their use and sale inspired him to nail up his 95 Theses.”

class and opportunity that distinguished the fewer beneficed clerics from their more

numerous non-beneficed brothers.”

faith in the institution of the Church itself. Although these actions were not representative

of the entire clerical population, the actions of some of them were enough to paint the

general reputation of the clergy in a negative light. Gottfried notes, “The idealized

selfless image of the Christian clergy suffered during and after the Black Death. Many

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people believed that the clergy were greedy, self-centered, and filled with a sense of their

own importance.”

examples for the laity and show them the proper way to live one’s life in devotion to

God. Islip writes that the surviving priests “do not blush for shame when their insatiable

greed provides a wicked and pernicious example for other workers, even among the laity,

now have no regard for the care of souls.”

situation because of the actions by its clergy. It found it difficult to denounce selfish and

gluttonous behavior of the laypeople when its own clergy were doing the same.

environment created by the Black Death. Ziegler explains, “Some writers have also

ascribed to the Black Death the responsibility for an increase in the number of pluralities

in place. Dohar describes how “the institutional demands of the diocese remained pretty

much the same after the plague as before, but there were far fewer priests to administer

them and far fewer innovations provided by visionary leaders of the post-plague

church.”

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selling of ecclesiastical privileges, to spread throughout clerical positions. Heinrich von

Herford, a Dominican friar of Westphalia, accused the clergy of these evils in his

chronicle: “The heresy of simony also grew so strong among the clergy, and

overwhelmed them so completely, that everyone, of whatever degree (great, middling or

humble) and of whatever status (secular or regular) in some fashion openly bought and

sold spiritualties of all sorts.”

before the plague struck Europe, and the problem worsened among clergy members

throughout the aftermath of the Black Death. Heinrich complained that “every office and

useful gift.”

least, be ascribed the great growth of the crying abuse of pluralities.”

masses also became widespread, and they gave the affluent another way to maintain their

relationship with God when the Church failed to aid them. Gottfried writes, “This charity

system of private worship played a large role in late medieval religion and represented a

considerable blow to monopoly over church services held by the traditional Christian

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hierarchy.”

money that was donated was given to hospitals. Records from testators’ wills show that

before 1348, only 5% of them gave money to hospitals, but this number increased to 40%

between 1350 and 1360.

“was the kind of good work that counted toward salvation, but it could [also] be done

directly without clerical involvement.”

the Black Death was the increase in pilgrimages undertaken by Christians. Between 1349

and 1360, the number of pilgrimages taken to Rome and other shrines increased

detracted from the reputation of the clergy because it was another way for the laity to find

their path to salvation without their assistance. In making pilgrimages to shrines, “the

often nonetheless viewed in a better light than the parish clergy. It is difficult to discern

the reasons for this, but “the very fact that they had no territorial responsibility increased

their chances of making an impression on the laity.”

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remained well-organized and straightforward in their goals, and were seldom challenged

by lay or church authorities.”

There were many instances when the flagellants incited extreme emotions from

their spectators. Several primary sources from this period “testify to the exceptional

emotion, even hysteria, the ceremonies could arouse in both participants and

spectators.”

support when flagellant groups marched through their cities. Even when the flagellants

were later labeled as heretics by the papacy in 1350, many Europeans continued to listen

flagellants held by many commoners in his chronicle of their movements. He recorded,

“And the majority of the common people, reckoning such penance to be acceptable,

martyrs who atoned for the sins of the world and, hence, helped to avert further suffering

from the plague and future visitations.”

the flagellants, usually without permission from the clergy, for they saw their own

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positions being threatened as a result. There were also instances when local villagers

opened their homes, fed the flagellants, and gave them candles for their rites.

towns, especially those of central Germany, civic councils sometimes contributed

financial aid to the flagellants. The movement attracted a variety of followers, even

sometimes including clergymen themselves, which further added to their prestige and

increased their chances of being accepted by the towns they traveled to.

throughout Europe’s towns and cities were commonly pleased to receive the visits of the

flagellants and often went out of their way to meet their simple desires. It was easy for

flagellants and many of them took comfort in their demonstrations of modesty and

humbleness.

more welcome in this scenario because people believed their actions might prevent the

arrival of the plague altogether. The flagellants were welcomed throughout towns and

cities because the Church was no longer seen as an institution that could grant the public

salvation from God’s wrath.

Medicine (Westport: Praeger, 1977), 163.!

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between its members and the Catholic Church inevitably increased. Part of the reason for

this were the symbolic elements and Christian images that were prevalent in the flagellant

movement. Heinrich von Herford, a Dominican from Westphalia, wrote on the flagellant

activity that he witnessed. He described how flagellant groups attempted to portray the

sufferings of Jesus by donning red crosses on their clothes and bearing crucifixes when

they marched.

prostrated themselves in the shape of a cross during their proceedings.

known as the Brothers of the Cross, wore white robes and marched through the country

for thirty-three day periods.

appeal to many European Christians.

they represented the pain and suffering that Jesus experienced during his death on the

cross and the whipping he received before the crucifixion. The members of these groups

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took their name from the word “flagella,” meaning whips, which was their primary tool

to display their penance publicly.

knotted cords hanging from the end. Two sharp metal pieces were inserted through the

center of the knot, again forming the shape of a cross. Herford stated, “I have seen, when

they whipped themselves, how sometimes those bits of metal penetrated the flesh so

deeply that it took more than two attempts to pull them out.”

which flagellants performed public penance reflected their desire to raise parallels to the

pain experienced by Christ.

and in Popular Medicine, that the dramatic elements of religious song and dance that

were prevalent in the marches of the flagellants were instrumental in gaining the support

through the village square.

after they reached a town in an effort to involve the spectators in their penance. Herford

described how the flagellants “formed themselves into a procession, with hoods or hats

pulled down over their foreheads, and sad and downcast eyes, they went through the

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streets singing a sweet hymn.”

is the purpose of the pilgrimage, the object of the self-castigation: that men’s souls shall

tremble, and their hard hearts may weep in secret, and that God and Christ and Mary may

be prevailed on to bring to an end all plague and sudden death, and to guard and protect

the pilgrim band.”

varied between different groups, but many times the groups formed a large circle,

whipping themselves while they sang religious hymns. Other times they simply fell on

their backs after the scourging. Frederick Closener, a priest who wrote about the

incorporated song and dance in their procedures. He maintained that the “pilgrims moved

‘round the circle two by two, while the brethren sang just as people still sing for the

flagellants’ whipping, two members often stood tall in the middle of the procession and

sang “in a high voice a religious song with a pleasant melody, singing through one verse

out of the whole song.”

one hymn used by the flagellants, the Stabat Mater, began with the words “Mary, Mother,

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and Maiden pure, have mercy on thy Christendom, have mercy on thy children, living in

this evil world.”

experienced by Mary as she witnessed the crucifixion of Jesus. The flagellants sang this

hymn during a public penance as a way of asking God to share in this suffering.

Christians found solace in the image of Mary because it helped soothe their fears and

anxiety caused by the constant death around them. Horrox asserts, “Mary was regularly

invoked against the plague and its terrors, and the image of her as the Mother of Mercy,

shielding mankind with her cloak, became popular in the century and a half after the

characteristic plague buboes.”

beneficial to their goal of recruitment, but it also sometimes added to the widespread

thorns, or thistles, or nettles or stones.”

would fall on their stomach and face in the shape of the cross; this was another way in

which they could portray an image of Christ’s suffering.

religious message they sent. If a song was known to the flagellants’ witnesses then they

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could expect to have a better chance of gaining the crowd’s approval. William Cooper

argues, “Their new songs, which soon became well known, operated strongly on the

minds of the people.”

Crusades, was reintroduced during the Black Death by the flagellants and was

remembered by townspeople during flagellants’ marches. The lyrics read: “Now passes

the holy host of pilgrims. Christ himself road to Jerusalem. He had a cross in his own

hand. Help us, Holy Ghost.”

meaning, added to the dramatic and violent elements of flagellants’ rituals that made

whole when he wrote that “one would need a heart of stone to be able to watch this

without tears.”

discussed in the earlier chapter. Europeans were wary and suspicious of the activity of the

papacy, and many no longer felt that they could gain salvation through their guidance.

Because so many Christians, like the flagellants, believed that the plague was a

punishment for human sin on earth, many of these people also attributed this blame to the

sinful nature of the Church at the time. Gottfried argues, “Much of this reflected the

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general dissatisfaction with the clergy, who were seen as corrupt and incapable of

assuaging the pain of the Black Death in any way.”

hierarchy of the Church and began to look elsewhere for salvation, and to find other ways

in which they could repent for their own individual sins. Joining the ranks of flagellants

was a solution for many people to achieve this goal. As the flagellant movements

increased in popularity and continued to gain more followers, the threat to the papacy

grew with it as well.

There are several reasons why the Church felt so threatened by the practices of the

spiritual leadership.”

movement that arose in the aftermath or in anticipation of the Black Death. It represented

encouraged Christians to partake in the flagellant movement, these circumstances led

Pope Clement VI to condemn the flagellants publicly in October of 1349.

justified in his actions, the flagellant movement had become far too popular among the

Christian population to subdue it effectively at the time. The moment Pope Clement VI

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prohibited public flagellation and declared such groups heretical was a significant

occurrence during the Black Death; it revealed to Europeans that the Church had lost its

control over the Christian populace. The public denouncing of the flagellants was

unavoidable because “these men seemed to be supplanting the clergy in the role of the

intermediaries between heaven and earth. This the Church could not allow.”

Ecclesiastical leaders realized the “heretical” nature of the flagellant bands was a direct

challenge to their power. Richard Kieckhefer maintains, “The movement seems always to

have had anticlerical leaning. It was essentially a lay movement – not only in the sense

clerical supervision.”

“salutary power of the flagellants’ extraordinary penance – and lack of ecclesiastical

guidance and authorization, thus relegating the flagellants to the status of a mere

‘sect.’”

found hope in the extreme practices of the flagellants. Kieckhefer comments in an article

that historians have frequently maintained that the flagellants were initially a

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conventional and pious group, without the intentions of replacing the clergy and that they

became more radical only in the final months of their existence.

confession was not deemed a heretical practice, the underlying meaning of it represented

problems for the Church. The frequency of lay confession only increased the tensions

associated with it, “and relations between the flagellants and the ecclesiastical

establishment no doubt suffered greatly because of this usurpation of sacerdotal

function.”

Christians of their sins was obviously a major factor in the clergy’s change of attitude

Another significant manner in which the flagellants conflicted with the Church

was their refusal to acknowledge clergy members as the only group that could preach to

served them no purpose to continue to listen to the word of the clergy because God

seemed to be punishing them as well. Pope Clement VI pronounced that these flagellants

were heretics because some of these men claimed to be messengers sent from God.

The conflict with the Church was inevitable because the flagellants were preaching the

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to resolve it. European Christians believed the plague to be a punishment from God for

their sins, and some blamed the Jews for the pestilence. To the rest of European society,

the Jews were viewed as outsiders due to how their religious doctrine opposed

Christianity; people joined pogroms and began to attack Jews in hopes of appeasing the

wrath of God. Jews were quickly accused of absurd plots against Christians, and many of

them became the targets of mass genocide.

originated in southern France during the spring of 1348. Despite the attempts of the

clergy to stop the violence, massacres erupted in Provence, Narbonne, and

these assaults, it is also significant that they continued in spite of the strict condemnation

by Pope Clement VI himself. The Pope represented the entire institution of the Church,

and it is noteworthy that his public word did nothing to calm the hysteria that had taken

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control of Europe. Individuals lost faith in the ability of the clergy to guide them through

the disaster of the plague, and most Christians refused to heed their demands for the

protection of the Jews. The Christian persecution of the Jewish population is a striking

example of the paranoia that swept through Europe during the plague, and the little power

that the Church had in controlling it.

Scholars have argued whether the Jewish pogroms were a purely emotional

reaction to the plague or whether they were planned, coldly calculated attacks on a

minority group. The historical sources reveal that it is difficult to generalize the

process and that different factors contributed to how the pogroms unfolded. A significant

trait of the persecutions that remained consistent across Europe was the hatred that fueled

Christian doctrine, and many people believed that by punishing the Jews, they could gain

the favor of God by undertaking his bidding. Ziegler argues, “The Black Death

concentrated this latent fear and hatred of the Jews into one burning grievance which not

only demanded vengeance but offered the tempting extra dividend that, if the Jews could

only be eliminated, then the plague for which they were responsible might vanish too.”

Christians came to the conclusion that the best route for gaining salvation was to

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eradicate the population that was responsible for the death around them, for they felt that

the clergymen could no longer save them from God’s wrath. Chaos followed everywhere

the plague spread, and the already tense relations between Christians and Jews were

exacerbated by the mass disorder in society caused by the Black Death. The paranoia that

infected Europe contributed to the ease with which European Christians were able to

blame the horrors of the plague on a group that conflicted with their religious principles.

The Black Death revealed the religious and ideological stimulus of these groups to be a

motivation to reestablish order and stability in the wake of disaster. The plague exposed

natural order and the contamination of the Christian world.”

During times of catastrophe in the Middle Ages, such as famine or disease,

struggled to find answers to this predicament. Naturally, many of them sought ways to

relieve this tension, and unfortunately, the labeling of minority groups as scapegoats

served this purpose. John Aberth writes that “scapegoating of minority groups seems to

be a common failing in times of crisis, and medieval Christian society during the Black

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California Press, 2000), 17.

!

Death was no exception.”

greatly from rebellions by peasants and laborers against secular leaders before the arrival

of the plague.

rebels in the revolts before the plague aimed to solve issues concerning class struggle and

manorialism.

markedly different. The Christians involved in these attacks, “rather than struggling for

concrete goals or redressing specific political, economic or social grievances, [instead]

targeted forces outside political and economic hierarchies to resolve anxieties, fears and

Jews, were easy targets for Christians looking for a group to blame. The residents of

Languedoc even suggested that the lepers were bribed by the Jews to poison the wells in

canon law.

persecution under the protection of the papacy. The Black Death changed this. Although

(2007): 8.

Past and Present (2007): 196.

!

there were other minorities that were embattled for their supposed role in the spread of

the plague, the Jews were undoubtedly the most often accused.

One factor that contributed to the hatred directed towards the Jewish population

was their common role as moneylenders in European society. Although it is audacious to

claim that this was the primary cause for the attacks on Jews, it is worth mentioning in

order to examine the factors that contributed to the tension between Jews and Christians

before the onset of the plague. Usury, or the lending of money at any amount of interest

on loaned funds, became a stereotyped profession for medieval Jews. While Jews were

despised minority throughout the Middle Ages. But before the outbreak of the plague,

Jews witnessed a rare increase in their economic and political power as financiers.

of them thrived in cities throughout Europe during the High Middle Ages. This would be

short-lived, however, when the recession of the fourteenth century abated their success.

Christian financiers, especially the Italian bankers, experienced an increased economic

role that further contributed to the decline of Jewish moneylenders and their access to the

market. The Jewish response to this economic decline further contributed to their already

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negative reputation. Ziegler notes that the “Jewish moneylenders often reacted to

insecurity and persecution by deploying a ruthlessness of their own.”

that they had no choice but to harass their clients in order to raise the money they needed.

The increased bitterness that resulted further strained the relationship between Jews and

Christians, and Jews “therefore became the targets of pollution anxiety and [were]

attacked by Christians in an effort to reinforce the social structure.”

moneylenders was a major reason why this hatred was directed more towards the Jewish

population. European Christians generally did not persecute other minority groups

Jew.

more violent. In Strasbourg on February 14, 1349, before the plague had reached the city,

primary reason for their persecution, “the overwhelming motivation appears to have been

religious hatred and not opportunistic gain.”

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Jews were also persecuted during the plague because medieval Christians

associated Jews with the image of the Antichrist, which had become more prominent by

the onset of the Black Death. The figure of the Antichrist was a powerful symbol in the

minds of individuals during the Middle Ages, and it added to the paranoia that people

were already experiencing. Jews were associated with this image due to their reputation

as “Christ killers;” they were persecuted for rejecting Jesus Christ and betraying him to

Pontius Pilate. This conviction by the Christian populace was a major reason why Jews

were so strongly linked to popular medieval demonology.

been sent by unknown forces to destroy their world.

the drama of the apocalypse because if they could not be converted before the final

Catholic Church.

perhaps a factor in the distrust people began to have with the Church when it suddenly

changed its opinion towards the Jewish population during the Black Death. In an attempt

to represent the Jews in this way, some priests even spread reports of Jews kidnapping

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and torturing Christian children. These priests depicted the Jews as “demons attendant on

Satan, portrayed in drama or in pictures as devils with the beards and horns of a goat,

passing their time with pigs, frogs, worms, snakes, scorpions and the horned beasts of the

field.”

Christians, and the attempt by the clergy to reverse their efforts to demonize the Jews

proved to be futile when Christians sought to eliminate their population.

The reasons for which Jews were blamed for the onslaught of the plague varied

among the sources, but the absurdity of many of them spoke to the chaos and paranoia

characteristic of the majority of the rumors directed against the Jews was that they had

used some means of infection to bring about the plague. Some chroniclers even suspected

Death had created an environment in which such beliefs could easily be conceived.

Of all the different reports concerning how the Jewish population succeeded in

spreading the plague, the rumor of poisoning wells was by far the most common. Once

the rumor of the wells emerged, thousands of Jews were immediately placed in chains or

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burned.

infecting the wells and water. The whole world rose up against them cruelly on this

account. In Germany, they were massacred and slaughtered by Christians, and many

thousands were burned everywhere, indiscriminately.”

Jews were the primary suspects was tied to notions about Jewish lifestyles. Some

individuals believed and noted that Jews had a higher knowledge of sanitation and

cleanliness, and that Jews favored water from natural sources as opposed to drinking

water from wells. Ziegler argues that “such a habit, barely noticed in normal times, would

familiarity with science and astrology allowed them to foresee the plague and avoid the

same fate as the Christians. It was this knowledge that purportedly gave them the

these examples that medieval Christians had refused to believe the word of the Church

and the Pope himself.

the order of the Church. What is clear from the sources is that the stance of the Catholic

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Church was strictly opposed to the persecution of Jews and that the majority of the

secular and lay people refused to acknowledge its command. There had always been

tensions between the Church and the Jews, but “by the fourteenth century there was also

a long tradition whereby Church fathers argued for toleration of Jews, because their

conversion at the end of time would serve as witness to the final triumph of

Christianity.”

Clement VI issued two bulls condemning the violence against Jews. The Pope also tried

to convince Christians that the plague was caused by other means. He pronounced that

origins or God’s will.

argued that the Jews could not be the perpetrators behind the plague because their people

was widespread genocide that further cast Europe into disarray.

with which the laity was convinced of a Jewish plague conspiracy despite the arguments

of the Church. The rumors of a secret plot by Jews against Christians spread throughout

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for the trials of these cases. The trial at Chillon in Switzerland in September of 1348,

which occurred without the consent of the Church, was a prime example of the

consequences that arose from the hearings. Balovignus, a Jewish doctor, was accused of

poisoning wells and finally admitted his “guilt” after undergoing torture by his captors.

He declared that a young Jewish boy had been sent to him from Toledo to assist him in

poisoning the wells using a poison in powder form.

spread from Switzerland to Germany and surrounding areas, and the pogroms began to

appear throughout Christian territories. The Jew’s admission of guilt was false, and he,

death. The results of these trials were significant, for “so incriminating a confession

settled the doubts or perhaps quietened the consciences of many who might have

The Jewish pogroms and the flagellant bands that both appeared during the Black

Death are sometimes linked together in the sources. Some cases show that due to the

hysteria provoked by the flagellants, some towns were stirred to assault Jewish

communities so as to prevent the plague from reaching their homes.

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the flagellants’ “passionate penitential desire to cleanse the individual soul of sin could

easily become a desire to cleanse the world of the enemies of Christ.”

somewhat unclear if the majority of flagellants were concerned with punishing the Jews,

but the few instances that transpired point to how mass paranoia led to other forms of

aggression. While it is certainly possible that flagellants and anti-Semites shared similar

motivations, the wide consensus among scholars is that they were fundamentally separate

groups with distinct goals. While the flagellants and Jewish pogroms were similar in

ways, the “arrival of the flagellants in various cities does not overlap with the Jewish

Death.”

the flagellants would easily lend itself to other acts of violence. But in many cases, the

the desire to placate the wrath of God, they went about achieving this goal in different

manners. It is important to note, moreover, that although these movements were different,

both groups significantly threatened the authority of the Church.

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A major reason why European Christians might have more easily disobeyed the

Church on the Jewish massacres was due to the hypocrisy of some of its clergy. While

the majority of ecclesiastical leaders made it clear they were against the persecution of

Jews, there were some who did not share this opinion. In the massacres of Strasbourg,

one chronicler pointed to the anti-Semitism of the bishop in the region as an encouraging

factor for the pogroms.

concerns of the Jewish population. He commented on his fear: “By their sins, our lord

God all-powerful might wish to send pestilences about the land.”

Middle Ages.

bishop, who guaranteed their safety from persecution. However, when the Christian

the principle of preserving the Church from corrupt influences through expulsion and

isolation.”

is possible that people were less inclined to follow his order if they believed his

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(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 472.

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intentions to be hypocritical. Pope Clement VI stated in his bull in October of 1348,

“Even though we justly detest the perfidy of Jews, who, persisting in their stubbornness,

refuse to interpret correctly the sayings of the prophets and the secret words of their own

writings and take notice of Christian faith and salvation, we nevertheless are mindful of

our duty to shelter the Jews.”

shy from making his feelings toward Jews known to the public. It is clear that it was not

just individual clergy members who held this opinion towards the Jews; the teachings of

the Catholic Church had ingrained in the minds of European Christians that Jews were

been accustomed to hear the Jews bitterly condemned from the pulpit – as perverse,

stubborn and ungrateful because they refused to admit the divinity of Christ.”

deal with the chaos left in the wake of the plague. When the aggression and tension from

the plague were directed against the Jewish population, the damaged authority of the

Church was unable to protect them. The plague was significant not only because of the

mass destruction and death it caused but also because of its consequences on European

society. The violence directed towards Jews by the Christian pogroms exposed the lack of

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control the Church and governing institutions had on the Christian population. The

massacres of the Jewish population point to the upheaval and the mass chaos that struck

at the heart of European society during the Black Death.

institution, and the Black Death detracted from its influence on the laity by attacking its

structure and the reputations of its leaders. But it is important to reiterate that the plague

profoundly shook only the faith of the laypeople towards the institution of the Church,

not their faith in God. The Black Death made this change possible through the decline of

the clergy after the plague, the radical flagellant groups, and the anti-Semitic violence

that ensued despite the attempts of the Church to protect the Jews. The relationship of the

laypeople with the Church was forever altered after the Black Death, and this

consequence would prove to be enduring even after the plague had vanished from

Europe.

created a world through these changes that made it possible for such movements to take

place. Although it cannot be denied that the Church continued to be recognized as a

powerful institution in the second half of the fourteenth century, it is distinctly clear that

recovered.”

plague, for its physical, cultural, and religious consequences marked a point of no return.

The Black Death exposed the mortal qualities of the Church to the Christian world and

forever transformed religious attitudes held towards its leaders and structure.

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