Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/395

Rh ets had threatened of the vengeance of God on the sins of man. In 1347 the plague known as the Black Death invaded Europe from the East, making leisurely progress during 1348 and 1349 through France, Spain, Hungary, Germany, and England. No corner of Europe was spared, and on the high seas it is said that vessels with rich cargoes were found floating, of which the crews had perished to the last man. Doubtless there are exaggerations in the contemporary reports which assert that two thirds or three quarters or five sixths of the inhabitants of Europe fell victims to the pest; but Boccaccio, as an eye-witness, tells us that the mortality within the walls of Florence from March to July, 1348, amounted to one hundred thousand souls; that in the fields the harvests lay ungathered; that in the city palaces were tenantless and unguarded; that parents forsook children and children parents. In Avignon the mortality was estimated at one hundred thousand; Clement VI. shut himself up in his apartments in the sacred pal- ace, where he built large fires to ward off the pestilence, and would allow none to approach him. In Paris fifty thousand were said to have perished; in St. Denis sixteen thousand; in Strass- burg sixteen thousand. That these figures, though vague, are not improbable, is shown by the case of Béziers, where, in 1348, Mas- caro, who was chosen escudier to fill a vacancy, records in his diary that all the consuls were carried off, all their escudiers or assistants, and all the clavars or tax-collectors, and that out of every thousand inhabitants only a hundred escaped. As though Nature did not cause sufficient misery, man contributed his share by an uprising against the Jews. They were accused of causing the plague by poisoning the waters and the pastures, and the blind wrath of the population did not stop to consider that they drank from the same wells as the Christians, and suffered with them in the pestilence. From the Atlantic to Hungary they were tortured and slain with sword and fire. At Erfurt three thousand are said to have perished, and in Bavaria the number was computed at twelve thousand.