THE GREAT MORTALITY. 405 



sweet and gentle conversation? We were surrounded by a crowd of 

 friends; now we are almost alone." And he might well see the world 

 darkening around him, for had not Laura just died of the plague at 

 Avignon? The 'great mortality' was indeed no respecter of persons. 

 It is true that the poor died in greater numbers in proportion to the 

 closeness and insalubrity of their dwellings and to their lack of power 

 of resistance from insufficient food. But the list of the great ones of 

 the earth who died is a long one. One of the earliest victims of the 

 plague on its entrance into Europe was Andronicus, the son of the 

 Emperor at Constantinople. The King and Queen of Arragon both 

 died from it. Joan, the daughter of Edward III., on her way to 

 Castile to be married, was smitten suddenly at Bordeaux and died, 

 escaping, it is true, the worse fate of living to be the wife of Pedro the 

 Cruel. Great churchmen died in all parts of Europe — the archbishop 

 of Cantania, the archbishop of Canterbury, the archbishop of Dront- 

 heim; bishops and abbots in every country. Of the twelve city 

 magistrates of Montpellier, in France, ten died; of the twenty-four 

 prominent physicians, twenty. Nobles and burghers, ecclesiastics and 

 lawyers fared but little better than the great masses, except that their 

 names are mentioned, while the hundreds of thousands of lesser men 

 died unknown. 



The Mediterranean was then still the middle of the world, and the 

 pestilence, like art and literature and money, was distributed readily 

 from Italy to all parts of Europe. Before the year 1348 was over it 

 was in France, Switzerland and Germany, and had obtained a foothold 

 in the southern seaports of England. The next year it passed still 

 further northward through England, Scotland and Ireland. It was 

 carried from England to Scandinavia by a London ship, all of whose 

 crew died, leaving the boat with its fatal cargo to be cast on the Nor- 

 wegian coast at Bergen. During the same year and the succeeding 

 spring, it had passed down the Valley of the Ehine, through the 

 Netherlands and northern Germany, until the year 1350 saw 'the great 

 mortality,' its harvest reaped for that season, passing out of the north- 

 ern and western portals of Europe to the all-purifying waters of the 

 great ocean. 



But during those four years of devastation what experiences had 

 humanity gone through ! We can look back now and see only dimly 

 through the mist. The figures are blurred and their movements indis- 

 tinct. The light of imagination fails to illuminate a condition so dif- 

 ferent from normal experience. Only here and there a clear light is 

 cast upon some spot by a record made at the time. In the inn of a little 

 town in Spain a French pilgrim returning from the tomb of St. James 

 of Campostella, after supping with the host, who with two daughters 

 and one servant had alone so far survived of his entire family and 



