Dark death: In 1347, a terrible plague brought death and destruction to Europe. (World History).

It started in Sicily in 1347. Citizens in the small seaport of Messina began to get headaches. Then came fevers, chills, nausea, and pain. Soon, red blotches appeared on their skin, and the lymph nodes (clumps of tissue) in their armpits and groins swelled to the size of eggs.

The nodes grew hard until they turned black and oozed blood and pus. In most cases, death came soon afterward. "It was such a frightful thing," observed Giovanni Boccaccio (joh-VAHN-nee boh-KAH-chee-oh), an Italian writer, "that when it got into a house... no one remained. Frightened people abandoned the house and fled to another."

Families Torn Apart

What caused this killer disease? No one knew. But within five years, it would race north through Europe into Scandinavia and Russia, claiming the lives of 25 million people, nearly one third of Europe's population.

Never was an epidemic (a rapidly spreading disease) so deadly. At the plague's height, the Italian city of Pisa lost 500 people a day. Paris, France, lost 800.

Across the continent, the sick were locked in airless buildings and left to suffocate. Corpses filled graveyards, trenches, and even streets. Stray dogs, who also caught the disease, dug up body parts and scattered them everywhere.

With so many people falling ill and dying, families were torn apart. Boccaccio described the physical and emotional toll:

"The fact was that one citizen avoided another that almost no one cared for his neighbor, and relatives rarely or hardly ever visited each other--they stayed far apart. This disaster struck such fear into the hearts of men and women that brother abandoned brother, and very often wife abandoned husband, and -- even worse, almost unbelievable -- fathers and mothers neglected to tend and care for their children."

A Shaken Society

As families crumbled, so did the structure of European society. People lived in fear and panic, a state that led to much turmoil.

Many thought that this was the end of the world, and that God was punishing them for their sins. They prayed for deliverance from sickness, but it followed them everywhere.

For the first time, people questioned their faith in God and the hereafter. As a result, the once powerful Catholic Church, whose priests died in record numbers, lost control over the spiritual lives of many followers.

Because of a growing labor shortage, serfs (peasants) no longer had to do what their lords commanded. Wages increased--but, with a shortage of goods and materials, prices skyrocketed. For many peasants, work lost its meaning. After a life of tough, brutal labor, they abandoned fields, shuttered shops, and stayed at home, enjoying leisure for the first time. Others headed to cities and villages in search of new opportunities.

As the plague raged, scientists desperately searched for a cause--and a cure. One group of French academics studied the matter and concluded that poison-spewing storms, triggered by earthquakes and planetary forces, had brought on the epidemic. Such far-flung theories only fueled the panic.

Local leaders did what they could to impose order. In one small city near Florence, elders issued laws in a futile (useless) attempt to stop the disease. One law directed that the bodies of the dead be "placed in a wooden casket covered by a lid secured with nails, so that no stench [smell] can issue forth from it." Such odors, it was wrongly believed, further spread the disease.

Blaming Others

Growing hysteria led to an even worse kind of speculation. Lords blamed peasants for the disease; the healthy taunted the sick. And Christians began to blame Jews-even though the plague also reached towns where no Jews lived. Innocent people were slaughtered by the thousands. In Strasbourg, now a French city, Jews who refused to convert to Catholicism were tied to stakes and burned.

"We All Fall Down!"

In such a climate, community life all but dried up. Men raced silently through streets, their faces covered with handkerchiefs. Women held bouquets of flowers to their noses, to mask the smell of death. Children watched, incorporating what they saw into new games. The chant of one of those games is still heard today:

Ring around the rosies

A pocket full of posies

Achoo! Achoo!

We all fall down!

"Rosies" were the skin blotches soon ringed in black "Posies" were the flowers women carried, and "Achoo!" was the sneezing that accompanied fever.

A Mystery Solved

People called the disease by many names, including "the Great Mortality," "the Pestilence," and "Black Death." Later, it officially became known as the bubonic plague, after the buboes, or lumps that erupted on victims' skin.

In 1898, a French scientist finally solved the mystery. People got the disease from fleas that had fed on the blood of infected rats or other rodents. The germ probably originated in China, although no one knows for sure.

The discovery came hundreds of years too late to help medieval Europeans (those who lived during the Middle Ages). They never would have guessed that death arrived on trading ships. Flea-ridden rats living on those ships would scurry onto land--drawn to the darkness of gutters, basements, and alleys.

The route of the disease followed trading patterns, traveling from Asia to Europe, north through Scandinavia, and east across Russia.

A Rebirth, or Renaissance

It would take Europe centuries to replenish its population and recover from the upheaval and chaos brought on by the plague.

Many changes fostered growth, as people thought in new ways about work, art, and leisure. Inventors developed labor-saving devices, and philosophers debated every aspect of civic life.

Questions about God and faith led to more thoughtfulness and skepticism. This helped draw Europeans out of the so-called Dark Ages and into the Renaissance--a rebirth of learning and ideas.

The plague recurred (came back) in later centuries, hitting London, England, hard in the 1600s and Asia in the late 1800s. Then, in the early 20th century, scientists finally found a cure.

To this day, the level of death and destruction remains unimaginable. As Boccaccio wrote: "If I and others had not witnessed it with our own eyes, I should not dare believe it."

WORLD HISTORY/GEOGRAPHY

1. True or false? Aircraft carriers in the Arabian Sea are used as bases for U.S. planes striking terrorist targets in Afghanistan (True)

2. Which country has the longest border with Afghanistan? (Pakistan)

3. The bubonic plague entered Western Europe in December 1347 through the port of Messina in what country? (Italy)

4. The western shore of Saudi Arabia borders on which body of water? (The Red Sea)

5. Which animal and which insect were responsible for spreading the bubonic plague? (Rats and fleas)

6. Name the three countries that occupy parts of the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir? (China, India, Pakistan)