Black Plauge
John Hatcher. The Black Death: An Intimate History of the Plague. (Weidenfeld & Nicolson), 2008.
The Black Death: An Intimate History of the Plague is a nonfiction explanation of the Black Death infused with John Hatcher’s fictional dramatizations of life, and death, during the early 1350’s. The village of Walsham is invaded with the Black Death and more than half the population of 1,500 is killed within two months. Although the actual occurences of peasant’s lives are impossible to say, Hatcher has taken a new method of what he calls “literary docudrama” to bring the lives to reality. By using the records of the transactions between the lords of the manor and their tenants in the village's two manorial courts during the 1340s, realistic reconstructed accounts of how the plague devistated the village fill the book.
Hatcher depicts how society changed after the infection had passed. There were considerable rewards for the survivors of the plague. Land was available, food was cheap, higher wages were paid for less work, and a new social freedom for the poor was established, with less respect and compliance to their masters.
Hatcher does not only describe the most devastating pandemic in human history in terms of physical conditions, he also emphasises the momentous social, economic, and religious effects to befall the village.
The most contemptible aspect is the faith that people placed in preventive measures, and the readiness of liars and frauds to exploit their credulity. Holy men and priests offered bones from the skeletons of saints that could be kissed for a halfpenny or bought for a much higher price. Residents flock to churches and temples to repent for their sins, thinking that the cause of the plague is punishment for wrongful behavior. Twice-weekly processions were held in which the malefactor smear themselves with ashes and crawl on all fours or wriggle along on their stomachs.
The Church taught that the plague was God's merciful way of...
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