IT would be tedious and probably unprofitable to trace the Black Death in any detail through the remaining countries of Europe. For one thing, the great majority of the more important contemporary chroniclers lived in Italy, France, Germany or England and most of the significant research has been done in those countries. For another, the remarkably similar course which the Black Death took in each country that it visited makes extensive treatment unnecessary. One of the most striking features of the plague is the way in which its principal phenomena are constantly reproduced. The same phrases are used to describe the appearance of the disease, the same exaggerated estimates of mortality appear, the same passions are aroused, the same economic and social consequences ensue.
The similarity is to some extent illusory. The impression is derived partly from the common Latin tongue, used by almost all the chroniclers, and partly from the authority of the Catholic Church which imposed an appearance of uniformity on widely differing social formations. Beneath this veneer of uniformity there were, of course, important variations of wealth, culture and national temperament, but the bracket within which such variations could operate, though today being rapidly narrowed again by technological advances, was more restricted in the Middle Ages than at any subsequent period. Any generalizations about Europe as a unit must be perilous, but they will be much less perilous if applied to Europe of the fourteenth century than of the eighteenth or nineteenth. The impact of the Black Death was broadly the same in every country which it visited and anyone observing its effects in Italy and France could have predicted, with a fair degree of success, what would happen as it ravaged Germany and England.
Odd details stand out from the records, often of little more than anecdotal interest. ‘During the second year,’ recorded the Greek historian Nicephoros Gregoras{204} who was himself a witness of the plague in Constantinople,
it invaded the Aegean islands. Then it attacked the Rhodians as well as the Cypriots and those colonizing the other islands… The calamity did not destroy men only but many animals living with and domesticated by men. I speak of dogs and horses, and all the species of birds, even the rats that happened to live within the walls of the houses…’
‘The second year’, from the context, must mean 1348. Other evidence suggests that Cyprus, at least, was attacked in the late summer of 1347. It seems to have been afflicted with unfair harshness. While the plague was just beginning a particularly severe earthquake came to complete the work of destruction. A tidal wave swept over large parts of the island, entirely destroying the fishing fleets and olive groves on which the prosperity of the Cypriots largely depended. The islanders massacred their Arab slaves, for fear that these should somehow take advantage of the disturbances to get the upper hand, and fled inland. But flight seems to have availed them little. ‘…A pestiferous wind spread so poisonous an odour that many, being overpowered by it, fell down suddenly and expired in dreadful agonies.’ This phenomenon,’ exclaimed the German historian Hecker in justified surprise, ‘is one of the rarest that has ever been observed.’{205}
Dalmatia seems to have received the plague across the Adriatic from North Italy. Dubrovnik was attacked in January 1348, and Split about two months later. In this latter city the wolves, unlike their more superstitious colleagues in Styria, saw the Black Death as nothing but a happy accident which immeasurably improved the prospects for the season’s hunting. They ‘came down from the mountains and fell upon the plague-stricken city and boldly attacked the survivors.’{206} The rate of mortality was so high that the authorities gave up any pretence of trying to cope and left the dead piled in the streets for weeks at a time.
