The horrific experience of the Black Death also caused some people in the Christian world to question fundamental teachings about the mercy and power of God or the usefulness of religious rituals. For some, the plague prompted an orgy of hedonism, perhaps to affirm life in the face of endless death or simply to live to the full in what time remained to them. Most European Christians, however, relied on familiar practices: seeking the aid of parish priests, invoking the intercession of the Virgin Mary, participating in religious processions and pilgrimages, attending mass regularly, increasing attention to private devotion. From church leaders, the faithful heard a message of the plague as God’s punishment for sins. Accompanying such ideas were religiously based attacks on prostitutes, homosexuals, and Jews, people whose allegedly immoral behavior or alien beliefs had invited God’s retribution.

The most well-known movement reflecting an understanding of the plague as God’s judgment on a sinful world was that of the flagellants, whose name derived from the Latin word flagella, meaning “whips.” The practice of flagellation, whipping oneself or allowing oneself to be whipped, had a long tradition within the Christian world and elsewhere as well. Flagellation served as a penance for sin and as a means of identifying with Christ, who was himself whipped prior to his crucifixion. It reemerged as a fairly widespread practice, especially in Germany, between 1348 and 1350 in response to the initial outbreak of the plague. Its adherents believed that perhaps the terrible wrath of God could be averted by performing this extraordinary act of atonement or penance. Groups of flagellants like those depicted in Source 11.5A moved from city to city, where they called for repentance, confessed their sins, sang hymns, and participated in ritual dances, which climaxed in whipping themselves with knotted cords sometimes embedded with iron points.

The initial and subsequent outbreaks of the plague in Western Europe generated an understandable preoccupation with death and its apparently indiscriminate occurrence. This concern, or obsession, found expression in the Dance of Death, a ritual intended to prevent the plague or to cure the afflicted, which began in France in 1348. During the performance, people would periodically fall to the ground, allowing others to trample on them. By 1400, such performances took place in a number of parish churches and subsequently in more secular settings. The Dance of Death also received artistic expression in a variety of poems and sketches along with paintings like Source 11.5B.

Questions to consider as you examine the sources:

Source 11.5A

The Flagellants

Source 11.5B

A Culture of Death

Notes