Archaeology Magazine - March/April 1986 - 72

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72

SCOPE

Spell

Archaeology

Fleming

The
Mediaeval
Plague:
In 1346 the rumor was strong in every
port in Europe: a plague of unprecedented ferocity was sweeping through
the East. But the wealthy shipowners
of the Italian city-states were not about
to let rumor interfere with business. The
Venetians and Pisans plied the trade
routes of the Mediterranean, gathering
eastern goods at the Levantine coast
and in the Nile Delta. The Genoese controlled the ports along the Black Sea's
northern shore, ports which lay at the
end of the caravan route from northern
China that was then under the protection of the Mongol khans throughout
its path in central Asia.
It was in one of these Genoese trading settlements, Kaffa (now the Soviet
city of Feodoyisa) that a street brawl
broke out between local Muslims and
Christian merchants, a conflict which
soon escalated into a war. After some initial skirmishes the Muslims sought support from the local Tatar lord, Janibeg
Kipchak Khan, who promptly laid siege
to the city. Since the Genoese traders had
set their fortifications well, it looked as
if the siege would be a long affair.
But the plague erupted amid the Tatar
army almost as soon as it had crowded
into its relatively insanitary encampments. A frustrated Janibeg Khan prepared to withdraw, but vowed one final
defiant gesture. He saw fit to share the
pestilence with his enemy, so he ordered
all plague-ridden corpses to be catapulted over Kaffa's walls. Rotting bodies proliferated in the nearby streets and
the plague soon spread the length and
breadth of the city.
The Genoese paused only long enough
to load their great galleys with all the
oriental riches they had in store. As they
sailed westward they surely thought
that they had left their miserable experiences in Kaffa behind. But they were
wrong. In their cargo lurked the beginnings of an epidemic; one that was to
spread throughout Europe over the next
years and become known later as the
Black Death.
Paths of infection
Although the ports of Sicily and mainland Italy took the immediate brunt of
the disease's ravages, within the year it
had reached inland to Florence. That
city had survived floods, famine and even
earthquakes, but its people were not remotely prepared for the new threat. The
street trader died alongside the physician, the prostitute alongside the priest.
Some people formed communes in sealed-

Scourge
off houses and would not speak to
outsiders of death or sickness. Others
caroused without restraint, looted abandoned properties and overtly challenged
the disease to do its worse. And it did,
so much so that Giovanni Boccaccio, in
The Decameron (1353) observed: "Nor
for all their number were the obsequies
honored by either tears or lights or crowds
of mourners; rather it came to this, that
a dead man was then of no more account
than a dead goat would be today."
By Spring of 1348, the plague was
poised to strike Paris, from there to
move swiftly along the Rhine and the
Moselle. A year later, it arrived at the
eastern ports of England via the Netherlandish traders gathering their cargoes
of woolen cloth. By then, the Byzantine
capital of Constantinople, sitting astride
the passage between the Black Sea and
the Mediterranean, had lost almost half
its people. And Cairo, a sprawling city
with about half a million inhabitants,
was reporting deaths of about 7,000per
day during the peak periods of infection
in the late spring and early fall. No place
was spared, and social order was on the
verge of collapse.
How could an infection travel that
fast? The answer is that it had a lot of
help from the black rat (Rattus rattus).
Although it hates to swim, this rodent
climbs nimbly and loves to explore the
holds of ships. It is also a creature that
has learnt to dine wellon the scraps from
human meals, nesting and breeding in
some comfort under the rafters of houses.
It too can be struck down by the plague
when its body becomes the host to the
tiny flea, Xenopsylla cheopsis, since that
is the most common host for the plague
bacillus itself, Versiniapes tis.
This flea tends to only lightly populate the skin of healthy rats, but it is
actually attracted to sick, plague-ridden
ones. It feeds well, in each meal unwittingly syphoning about half a million
plague bacilli through its proboscis and
into its stomach. At this point something quite remarkable happens. Each
bacillus releases an enzyme that causes
the blood to clot around it, and so provide a safe and nutritious environment
for bacterial growth. A microscopic war
now ensues as the flea tries to disperse
these clots with a different enzyme of
its own. Only about a third survive the
struggle. As the clotting blocks the flea's
syphoning system, bacilli-rich blood is
regurgitated into the host during each
later feeding.

Archaeology Magazine - March/April 1986

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Archaeology Magazine - March/April 1986