Read Online The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850 by Brian Fagan - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Brian Fagan
Ads: Link
especially in times of
scarcity, when thieves would dig for coins, clothing, and fine objects
buried with the dead that could be pawned. Towns like Marburg in Germany maintained faint lights in their cemeteries, which may have prevented some looting, but no one protected rural burial grounds. One
can imagine the surreptitious gleam of candle lanterns in country graveyards in the small hours of the night, the stealthy digging into a fresh
grave, the quick stripping of the corpse of its shroud and silver ornaments. By morning, there would be only scattered bones, perhaps a grinning skull and dismembered finger bones, their rings torn away. From
there, it was but a short step to rumors of secret cannibalism, of people
eating their children. London taverns bred tales of hungry villagers seen
eating their kin and of famished prisoners in jail consuming fellow inmates, but no chronicler ever wrote of a specific instance.
Beggars flocked to the cities from the countryside. In the Low Countries, they gathered in large groups, scavenged the middens that lay outside town walls or "grazed like cattle" in the fields. Bodies littered cultivated land and were buried in mass graves. The mendicants spread
disease. In the town of Tournai in modern-day Belgium, 1316 was "the
year of the mortality." Gilles de Muisit, abbot of Saint-Martin de Tournai, wrote: "men and women from among the powerful, the middling,
and the lowly, old and young, rich and poor, perished daily in such numbers that the air was fetid with the stench." 10 Huge communal cemeteries
entombed the previously segregated dead, rich and poor alike. In Louvain, a wagon from the hospital "loaded with six or eight corpses twice or
thrice a day continuously carried pitiable little bodies to the new cemetery outside the town." Between 5 and 10 percent of Flanders's urban
population perished in the Great Famine.
By 1317, as the rains continued through another wet summer, people
everywhere despaired. The church performed complex rogation ceremonies
to pray for divine intervention. Guilds and religious orders in Paris
processed barefoot through the streets. In the dioceses of Chartres and
Rouen, chronicler Guillaume de Nangis saw "a large number of both sexes,
not only from nearby places but from places as much as five leagues away,
barefooted, and many even, excepting the women, in a completely nude
condition, with their priests, coming together in procession at the church
of the holy martyr, and they devoutly carried bodies of the saints and other
relics to be adored."" After generations of generally good harvests and settled weather, they believed divine retribution was at hand for a Europe divided by wars. Rich and poor alike endured the punishment of God.
The famine brought an outpouring of religious fervor and, for some,
profit. Canterbury Cathedral with its wealthy priory attracted streams of
pilgrims, many of them poor travelers in holy orders. The priory had an
honorable tradition for charity. Its budget had run at a deficit because of
its generosity, showing only four years with modest surpluses between
1303 and 1314. In 1315, the monks made an unexpected profit of £534,
despite the famine. Their wheat yields were as bad as anyone else's, but
they were able to sell considerable amounts of oats. Their real profit came
from £500 worth of offerings to the priory by pilgrims praying for better
weather. In 1316, the monks found themselves in the same position as
everyone else, with significant grain shortfalls and a need to pay much higher prices for anything they could not produce for themselves. They
also faced a moral dilemma. The priory was besieged by poor pilgrims
seeking relief. Yet offerings were off by 50 percent. Rents from the priory
estates had declined by nearly half, but the house could not reduce its level
of relief without affecting its good reputation among the devout. At the
same time, consumption of communion wine had
scarcity, when thieves would dig for coins, clothing, and fine objects
buried with the dead that could be pawned. Towns like Marburg in Germany maintained faint lights in their cemeteries, which may have prevented some looting, but no one protected rural burial grounds. One
can imagine the surreptitious gleam of candle lanterns in country graveyards in the small hours of the night, the stealthy digging into a fresh
grave, the quick stripping of the corpse of its shroud and silver ornaments. By morning, there would be only scattered bones, perhaps a grinning skull and dismembered finger bones, their rings torn away. From
there, it was but a short step to rumors of secret cannibalism, of people
eating their children. London taverns bred tales of hungry villagers seen
eating their kin and of famished prisoners in jail consuming fellow inmates, but no chronicler ever wrote of a specific instance.
Beggars flocked to the cities from the countryside. In the Low Countries, they gathered in large groups, scavenged the middens that lay outside town walls or "grazed like cattle" in the fields. Bodies littered cultivated land and were buried in mass graves. The mendicants spread
disease. In the town of Tournai in modern-day Belgium, 1316 was "the
year of the mortality." Gilles de Muisit, abbot of Saint-Martin de Tournai, wrote: "men and women from among the powerful, the middling,
and the lowly, old and young, rich and poor, perished daily in such numbers that the air was fetid with the stench." 10 Huge communal cemeteries
entombed the previously segregated dead, rich and poor alike. In Louvain, a wagon from the hospital "loaded with six or eight corpses twice or
thrice a day continuously carried pitiable little bodies to the new cemetery outside the town." Between 5 and 10 percent of Flanders's urban
population perished in the Great Famine.
By 1317, as the rains continued through another wet summer, people
everywhere despaired. The church performed complex rogation ceremonies
to pray for divine intervention. Guilds and religious orders in Paris
processed barefoot through the streets. In the dioceses of Chartres and
Rouen, chronicler Guillaume de Nangis saw "a large number of both sexes,
not only from nearby places but from places as much as five leagues away,
barefooted, and many even, excepting the women, in a completely nude
condition, with their priests, coming together in procession at the church
of the holy martyr, and they devoutly carried bodies of the saints and other
relics to be adored."" After generations of generally good harvests and settled weather, they believed divine retribution was at hand for a Europe divided by wars. Rich and poor alike endured the punishment of God.
The famine brought an outpouring of religious fervor and, for some,
profit. Canterbury Cathedral with its wealthy priory attracted streams of
pilgrims, many of them poor travelers in holy orders. The priory had an
honorable tradition for charity. Its budget had run at a deficit because of
its generosity, showing only four years with modest surpluses between
1303 and 1314. In 1315, the monks made an unexpected profit of £534,
despite the famine. Their wheat yields were as bad as anyone else's, but
they were able to sell considerable amounts of oats. Their real profit came
from £500 worth of offerings to the priory by pilgrims praying for better
weather. In 1316, the monks found themselves in the same position as
everyone else, with significant grain shortfalls and a need to pay much higher prices for anything they could not produce for themselves. They
also faced a moral dilemma. The priory was besieged by poor pilgrims
seeking relief. Yet offerings were off by 50 percent. Rents from the priory
estates had declined by nearly half, but the house could not reduce its level
of relief without affecting its good reputation among the devout. At the
same time, consumption of communion wine had
Similar Books
