Noah and the Golden Horde: Reactions to Religious Outgroups in relation to the Black Death

The outbreak of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) in March of 2020 quickly led to altered life for much of humanity across the globe. While work and school was shutting down for much of the global population, there was a growth in a search for cures and treatments, some medical and some much less so. In multiple cases, Ivermectin, an anti-parasite drug, was touted as a “life-saving” treatment drug, despite scientific consensus to the contrary.[1] In another well-publicized case, an “injection” of household cleaning solution was suggested as a potential virus deterrent.[2] For others still, turning to religion, and with it, prayer, was seen as a solution to the risk posed by COVID-19.[3] All of these responses, despite being perhaps questionable, are uniquely understandable as human responses to the stress of a global pandemic, and when considering the multitude of plagues and epidemics in global history, prompt further consideration of the responses that humans from earlier time periods may have had in response to their own relevant sicknesses. As such, this paper explores this idea by analyzing medieval mentalities in relation to the Black Death.

In 1348, Gabriele de’ Mussis of Piacenza described the Black Death’s transmission to Europe as originating from the refugees of the siege of Caffa, a siege during which the bodies of the infected invading Islamic force were catapulted over the walls of the city as to infect its Christian inhabitants.[4] While Mussis’ account has since been questioned for its accuracy regarding the transmission of Yersinia pestis,[5] it does provide evidence of common mentalities at the time in which he was writing. Le Goff describes medieval mentalities as those based in “insecurity”, surrounded by fear of the uncontrollable and the threat of damnation in the afterlife.[6] This thought process can be seen echoed in Mussis writing. To Mussis, the arrival of the Black Death, with its quick and far-reaching casualties, is the creation of a ‘modern’ flood, one comparable to the one depicted in the biblical story of Noah, as he writes that:

 God “[looked down at] the entire human race wallowing in the mire of manifold wickedness, enmeshed in wrongdoing, pursuing numberless vices, drowning in a sea of depravity because of a limitless capacity for evil, bereft of all goodness, not fearing the judgments of God,”[7] 

In short, as in the times of Noah—a story which medieval audiences would know well—God saw that humans were sinful and therefore decided to punish humanity. Other scholars confirm that this was indeed a common train of thought regarding the plague, and have written extensively about the effects which spawned from survivors trying to cope with the massive changes the plague brought to life afterwards.[8] One such example that blends religious devotion and artistic endeavor is the lasting motif of Memento Mori, seen in the many depictions of corpses meeting all walks of life, symbolizing how death comes for all.[9] 

However, it stands to mention that not all effects of the plague were as positive as the artistic movements inspired, or were as guiltful as the case of self-flagellators who roamed the countryside before being excommunicated by the Pope.[10] No, some of the reactions to the impending plague caused greater suffering compounded upon the mass deaths caused by said pestilence. For starters, the mention of the siege of Caffa and the included description of what has been previously described as “biological warfare” in Mussis' account of the Black Death reaching Europe, whether considered accurate or not, can be considered an example of the increased fear of the religious other which aligned with the arrival of the plague and increased religious fervor for Christian Europe at the thought they were damned. Previous accounts from the Crusades, such as the pleas made by Pope Urban II, had already painted Turkish forces in a negative light, describing them as “despicable, degenerate, and enslaved by demons”.[11] By all regards, the fact that Mussis account seems to suggest the Islamic Golden Horde is the primary earthly cause (superseded only by God’s intent to punish) for the Black Death reaching Europe would paint them evermore so as the linch-pin sinners and eradicators of Christians as previously characterized by Pope Urban II. This characteristic was also applied to other ethno-religious groups, including most notably the Jewish peoples of Europe.

A primary source from the Flores Temporum about the early days of the Black Death describes such:

“Some said [...] the Jews wished to exterminate the totality of Christianity with poison, and everywhere they poisoned wells and fountains. And this many Jews admitted under torture, that they nurtured spiders and toads in pots and jars, and that they purchased poison from overseas, and this evil was not known by the whole Jewish people but only by the most powerful so that it would not be divulged.”[12]

 Such hearsay was common according to scholars, and in some cases, these accusations of well and water poisoning would even precede the arrival of the plague within a given area.[13] The Flores Temporum goes on to describe the subsequent punishment said Jews and their communities faced:

“God the Lord of vengeance did not suffer that the manifest evil of the Jews would go unpunished, and everywhere in all of Germany, with a few exceptions, they were burned, and many accepted baptism out of fear of punishment, and their lives were spared. This happened to the Jews in the year of the Lord 1349, and it is continuing, because in many diverse regions, both nobles and commoners, conspired that none should stop until the whole race of the Jews should be destroyed. ”[14]

The loss of life from this event was only surpassed by the later riots in 1391 that led to mass conversion, emigration, or death for German Jews. However, Germany was not the sole country to feature such moralistic panic surrounding their Jewish population in light of the plague. In Catalan Italy, the cities of Barcelona, Cervera, and Tàrrega were victims of attacks made by its Christian citizens on the Jewish populations that lived there.[15] In Tàrrega, the death toll was reported as high as 300 Jews.[16] Archeological evidence has cautioned that this reported number may be slightly exaggerated, with the caveat that the entire Jewish burial site had not been excavated to check, but otherwise confirms that the victims of this attack range wildly in age and gender, with several showing clear signs of violent deaths based on bone deformations.[17]

Fortunately, there is evidence to show that as much as this occurrence happened, there remained individuals who saw the reactions against the Jewish communities for what they were. In particular, the royal chancery documents of the court of Pere III describe the events in Barcelona thusly, “On Saturday last, some people incited by an evil temper, having set their fear of God and our dominion aside, gathered as a riotous mob and entered into the call of the Jews of Barcelona.”[18] Authorities later gathered up the rioters, and fortification of the security around the Jewish call in Barcelona was put into place to further protect the peace.[19]

While medieval mentalities can be far from those of the modern twenty-first century, the previous evidence shows that humans still tend towards common behaviours in times of great stress, such as embracing conspiracy theories in modern times, or turning to common tropes which help explain why something has happened, potentially at the risk of harm to groups under said trope or stereotype as with both the Jews and Islamic Golden Horde of medieval Europe. Furthermore, the proliferation of conspiracy does not mean that the entire world has lost its head, as shown with the response to the Barcelona Jewish massacre from Catalonian officials. In short, whether medieval or modern, humans have always been human.

Footnotes

[1] Mark Joffe, Lynora Saxinger, and Braden Manns, “Ivermectin: A Useful Drug, but Not a Treatment for COVID-19,” Alberta Health Services, October 12, 2021, https://www.albertahealthservices.ca/news/releases/2021/Page16218.aspx.

[2] Dartunorro Clark, “Trump Suggests ‘Injection’ of Disinfectant to Beat Coronavirus and ‘Clean’ the Lungs,” NBC News, April 24, 2020, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-suggests-injection-disinfectant-beat-coronavirus-clean-lungs-n1191216.

[3] Selene Rivera, “An L.A. Faith Group Believes Prayer Can Help COVID Patients, despite Scientific Skeptics,” Los Angeles Times, April 9, 2021, https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-04-09/la-faith-group-prays-to-heal-covid-scientists.

[4] Patrick J. Geary, ed.,“Gabriele de’ Mussis,” in Readings in Medieval History, Fifth Edition. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), 493.

[5] Hannah Barker, “Laying the Corpses to Rest: Grain, Embargoes, and Yersinia Pestis in the Black Sea, 1346–48,” Speculum 96, no. 1 (January 1, 2021): 97–126, https://doi.org/10.1086/711596.

[6] Jacques Le Goff, Medieval Civilization, 400-1500, trans. Julia Barrow (Oxford: Blackwell, n.d.)., 325.

[7] “Gabriele de’ Mussis,”492.

[8] Jean E. Jost, “The Effects of the Black Death: The Plague in Fourteenth-Century Religion, Literature, and Art,” in Death in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: The Material and Spiritual Conditions of the Culture of Death, ed. Albrecht Classen (De Gruyter, 2016), https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110436976-007.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Patrick J. Geary, ed., “Flores Temporum,” in Readings in Medieval History, Fifth Edition. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), 736.

[11] Patrick J. Geary, ed., “Fulcher of Chartres,” in Readings in Medieval History, Fifth Edition. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015).

[12] Patrick J. Geary, ed., “Flores Temporum,” in Readings in Medieval History, Fifth Edition. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), 736.

[13] Ivan G. Marcus, “A Jewish-Christian Symbiosis: The Culture of Early Ashkenaz,” in Cultures of the Jews: A New History, ed. David Biale (New York: Schocken, 2012), 448–516.

[14] Patrick J. Geary, ed., “Flores Temporum,” in Readings in Medieval History, Fifth Edition. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), 736.

[15] Anna Colet et al., “The Black Death and Its Consequences for the Jewish Community in Tàrrega: Lessons from History and Archeology,” The Medieval Globe vol. 1, no. 1 (2015): 63-66., https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/306/article/758489.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Ibid.

[18]  Anna Colet et al., “The Black Death and Its Consequences for the Jewish Community in Tàrrega: Lessons from History and Archeology,” The Medieval Globe vol. 1, no. 1 (2015): 66., https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/306/article/758489.

[19] Ibid.

Bibliography

Barker, Hannah. “Laying the Corpses to Rest: Grain, Embargoes, and Yersinia Pestis in the Black Sea, 1346–48.” Speculum 96, no. 1 (January 1, 2021): 97–126. https://doi.org/10.1086/711596.

Clark, Dartunorro. “Trump Suggests ‘Injection’ of Disinfectant to Beat Coronavirus and ‘Clean’ the Lungs.” NBC News, April 24, 2020. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-suggests-injection-disinfectant-beat-coronavirus-clean-lungs-n1191216.

Colet, Anna, Josep Xavier Muntané i Santiveri, Jordi Ruíz Ventura Ventura, Oriol Saula, M Eulàlia Subirà de Galdàcano, and Clara Jáuregui. “The Black Death and Its Consequences for the Jewish Community in Tàrrega: Lessons from History and Archeology.” The Medieval Globe vol. 1, no. no. 1 (2015): 63–96. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/306/article/758489.

Ditrich, Hans. “The Transmission of the Black Death to Western Europe: A Critical Review of the Existing Evidence.” Mediterranean Historical Review 32, no. 1 (January 2, 2017): 25–39. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518967.2017.1314920.

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———, ed. “Fulcher of Chartres.” In Readings in Medieval History, Fifth Edition. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015.

———, ed. “Gabriele De’ Mussis.” In Readings in Medieval History, Fifth Edition.. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015.

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Joffe, Mark, Lynora Saxinger, and Braden Manns. “Ivermectin: A Useful Drug, but Not a Treatment for COVID-19.” Alberta Health Services, October 12, 2021. https://www.albertahealthservices.ca/news/releases/2021/Page16218.aspx.

Jost, Jean E. “The Effects of the Black Death: The Plague in Fourteenth-Century Religion, Literature, and Art.” In Death in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: The Material and Spiritual Conditions of the Culture of Death, edited by Albrecht Classen. De Gruyter, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110436976-007.

Marcus, Ivan G. “A Jewish-Christian Symbiosis: The Culture of Early Ashkenaz.” In Cultures of the Jews: A New History, edited by David Biale, 448–516. New York: Schocken, 2012.

Rivera, Selene. “An L.A. Faith Group Believes Prayer Can Help COVID Patients, despite Scientific Skeptics.” Los Angeles Times, April 9, 2021. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-04-09/la-faith-group-prays-to-heal-covid-scientists.