116 TRANSLATIONS FROM CONTINENTAL JOURNALS. 
and Artois. If we take into consideration the conditions 
which precede an outbreak of the ignis sacer we can esta¬ 
blish, a priori, that the sanitary state of domestic animals 
was not more favorable than that of human beings, and that 
epizootics have been more frequent than is mentioned by the 
chroniclers. Is there anything in their annals w r hich w r ould 
indicate that we might be authorised to refer them to the same 
source, that is to the ignis sacer ? This question does not 
admit of a solution. It will suffice to cite a passage out 
of the chronicle of St. Bavon, which relates to the year 
1127 : “ Plaga divina Franciam affligit ignis scilicet corpora 
crucians .... pestilentia maxima facta est animalium.” 
What was this animal pest ? Thus formulated, no one 
can conjecture. If, in this obscurity, an opinion might be 
hazarded, w'e would say that in all probability these animals 
had not been fed on rye in those calamitous years when famine 
and scarcity were so general, and when the causes of the ignis 
sacer were unknown. Therefore the maladies which deci¬ 
mated the herds must have been others than those caused 
by the ergot. Perhaps the first epidemic which ravaged 
Portugal in 1189 was an exception; it is thus described: 
“ Hujus etiam tempore morbi nunquam antea visi ingrue- 
bant, ferventissimis intra viscera ardoribus, quibus homines 
quasi quadam rabie exagitabantur. Exorta etiam fauces 
frugibus tarn vi tempestalis, quam verminibus corruptis, 
et lues non minus nocens pecori quam hominibus, et multo- 
rum relictae vacuse possessionibus” (C. F. Heusinger, Fuchs). 
The uncertainty as to the form and nature of the epizootics 
in the middle ages, is a common fact. Thus the outbreak of 
the famous black pest in 1347 was preceded, in several 
countries, by epizootics no less grave. “ In primis liaec acerba 
pestis in brutis animalibus incohavit, scabies et leprae totaliter 
oppianabant equas, boves, pecudes, et capras, ita ut pili de 
dorso ipsorum depilabantur et cadebant, et efficiebantur macri 
et debiles, et post paucas dies moriebantur. Deinde incipit 
haec rabiosa pestis per universum mundum di§currendo in 
miserabiles lethaliter saevire” (Cutteis). 
Evidently the nature of the affection described in the 
foregoing is gangrenous, and has nothing in common with the 
ignis sacer, for except in the epidemic of Bretagne, which is 
coincident with the time of the appearance of the black pest, no 
traces are found of ergotism until the year 1373, when it re¬ 
appeared in France (Tessier). During the whole of the middle 
ages epidemics of the ignis sacer have but seldom broken 
out in the north of Europe. Heusinger believes that those, 
from the fifteenth to the sixteenth century, designated by the 
name of scorbutus, belonged to ergotism. This opinion seems 
