[Ansteorra] And the Plague goes on...

[Darnell Daniels]

Oh citizenry,

The year is 1350, and this vile pestilence has decimated the country-side. Death comes so swiftly that there is no time to even morn the dead as the mourners soon follow. Now mass graves are dug to house the number of dead that are found daily. There is not even time for wills. Who will you leave your possessions to? The heirs in your household have contracted the same disease that will take your life, and those far away will not venture to take your plague ridden possessions. 

In this time of misery two figures have appeared to help the populace cope with the plague; the flagellants and the plague doctors. The flagellants are bands of people who wander through towns and the countryside doing penance in public. They inflict all sorts of punishments upon themselves, trying to atone for the evil of the world, sacrificing themselves for the world's sins in imitation of Jesus. Last year the pope condemned them and ordered all authorities to suppress them yet they reappear time and time again.
Here are a couple of descriptions of the flagellants from contemporary chroniclers. The first is from Jean de Venette. 
While the plague was still active and spreading from town to town, men in Germany, Flanders, Hainault and Lorraine uprose and began a new sect on their own authority. Stripped to the waist, they gathered in large groups and bands and marched in procession through the crossroads and squares of cities and good towns. They formed circles and beat upon their backs with weighted scourges, rejoicing as they did so in loud voices and singing hymns suitable to their rite and newly composed for it. Thus, for 33 days they marched through many towns doing penance and affording a great spectacle to the wondering people. They flogged their shoulders and arms, scourged with iron points so zealously as to draw blood." 

This second account is from the medieval historian Jean Froissart, from his history of the Hundred Years' War.
...the penitents went about, coming first out of Germany. They were men who did public penance and scourged themselves with whips of hard knotted leather with little iron spikes. Some made themselves bleed very badly between the shoulder blades and some foolish women had cloths ready to catch the blood and smear it on their eyes, saying it was miraculous blood. While they were doing penance, they sang very mournful songs about nativity and the passion of Our Lord. The object of this penance was to put a stop to the mortality, for in that time . . . at least a third of all the people in the world died.
 
The plague doctors are specifically hired by a city or town to treat plague patients, rich or poor, in this time of great sorrow. They are especially designed for the poor that can not afford to pay. Their contractual responsibility is to treat only plague patients and no other patients. In many cases these "doctors" are either volunteers, second-rate doctors, or new young doctors starting a career. A plague doctor will have to endure a long quarantine after seeing a plague patient in his beak doctor costume. He is regarded as a "contact" of which by agreement he must live in isolation to be quarantined.

Those who live to see another day, take heart and be joyous. Guard your hearth and home against all manners of evils and foulness that may harbor the plague. This cannot last forever.

Robert of Coleford
Autocrat, Bring out your dead!
http://bringoutyourdead.comxa.com/index.html