Outline Lecture Five—Confronting the Plague
I) The Specter of Pandemics in Human History
a) Recent outbreaks of contagion
i) Major outbreak of zoonotic infection is not a question of if, but of when
ii) David Quammen’s Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic
b) Plagues in human history
i) Old Testament references
ii) Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian Wars
iii) Small-pox and measles on both the Roman and Han empires in the 2nd century
iv) 6th century bubonic plague in the city of Constantinople alone
v) The Spanish Flu in 1918
vi) 16th century introduction of Old World diseases to the New World
c) Real risk of some pandemic outbreak
i) Lessons from the history of the Black Death in the 14th century
II) The Spread of the Black Death
a) Ripe Preconditions
i) Demographic changes
(1) Warming Trend from 800 to 1200
(2) The Great Famine 1315-1322 in northern Europe
ii) Interlocking Trade Networks
(1) Impact of the Mongol empire in late 1200s
(2) Shift from local endemics to global pandemic
iii) How the Plague Spread in Europe 1347-1350
iv) Death toll of the Plague
III) Responses to the Plague
a) In Europe
i) Boccaccio’s Decameron
(1) Preemptive measures
ii) Range of Responses
(1) Changes in life-style
(2) Flight
iii) Idea of Original Sin and Innate Depravity
(1) Plague as God’s punishment
(a) Gabriele de Mussis’s imagined dialogue between God and the Earth
(2) 1348 “General Indulgence Drive”
iv) Penance and Scapegoating
(1) Flagellants as a “holy army of saints” to purge sins of the world
(2) Pogroms—organized mob attacks on Jews
b) In Islamic Regions—esp. Mamluk territory
i) Emphasis on maintenance of community
(1) Religious fatwas against flight and isolation
(2) View regarding the theory of contagion
ii) Historical and Quranic precedents for this type of response
iii) E.g. of detractors like Ibn-al Khatib in Granada
(a) “Affront to God and holds cheap the lives of Muslims”
iv) Overall response was one of “reverent resignation”
(1) Ibn al-Wardi: “God creates and recreates…it is God’s Will”
(2) An awakening of one’s obligations to others