The early Church showed great compassion during plagues, in ministering to the sick, even those who were pagans. This is also seen in the responses of Luther, Spurgeon, the new Christians on Aneityum, and countless other Christians.

When coming to consider plagues throughout history and some Christian responses, it is appropriate to begin with this extract from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer:

O Almighty God, who in thy wrath did send a plague upon thine own people in the wilderness, for their obstinate rebellion against Moses and Aaron; and also, in the time of king David, didst slay with the plague of Pestilence threescore and ten thousand, and yet remembering thy mercy didst save the rest; Have pity upon us miserable sinners, who now are visited with great sickness and mortality; that like as thou didst then accept of an atonement, and didst command the destroying Angel to cease from punishing, so it may now please thee to withdraw from us this plague and grievous sickness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Down through history, plagues, including very terrible ones, have struck societies at various times. In 431BC, the historian, Thucydides, barely survived a serious one in Athens, where people dared not visit one another, nor help one another, and became indifferent to the gods due to their ineffectiveness.¹ In all plagues, there is an element of unpredictability and uncertainty as to the right responses.

The Early Church

There was what was called the Antonine Plague, and also called the Plague of Galen, because it was described by the physician and philosopher (a Platonist of some kind who wrote against the Stoics). The plague itself was probably smallpox. Various death rates have been suggested from 1% to over 50% of the Empire’s population, both extremes of which seem implausible. Possibly five million perished, but that is not certain. With breaks, it went from ad 165–180 and claimed the life of the emperor Marcus Aurelius (161–180). Meanwhile, the pagan physician, Galen, escaped out of Rome as soon as he could.

The so-called Plague of Cyprian, which was possibly measles, is sometimes said to have derived its name because it supposedly claimed the life of Cyprian, bishop of Carthage (248–258). However, he described the plague and did not succumb to it. His death came through persecution, being beheaded in the amphitheatre. Eusebius of Caesarea cited Dionysius of Alexandria (bishop 248–264), who described a terrible and unexpected plague in his city. It affected all, from infants to old men. The Christians stood out, in the estimation of Dionysius:

Most of our brother-Christians showed unbounded loved and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another. Heedless of the danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ, and with them departed this life serenely happy; for they were infected by others with the disease, drawing on themselves the sickness of their neighbours and cheerfully accepting their pains.²

Dionysius saw this as ‘the equal of martyrdom’ and contrasted the behaviour of the Christians with the heathen who threw out their family members onto the roads even before they were dead.³

In Cyprian’s day the plague was also terrible, with about 5,000 a day dying, as he recorded in On the Plague (often called On Mortality):

But nevertheless it disturbs some that the power of this Disease attacks our people equally with the heathens, as if the Christian believed for this purpose, that he might have the enjoyment of the world and this life free from the contact of ills; and not as one who undergoes all adverse things here and is reserved for future joy. It disturbs some that this mortality is common to us with others; and yet what is there in this world which is not common to us with others, so long as this flesh of ours still remains, according to the law of our first birth, common to us with them? So long as we are here in the world, we are associated with the human race in fleshly equality, but are separated in spirit. Therefore until this corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal receive immortality, and the Spirit lead us to God the Father, whatsoever are the disadvantages of the flesh are common to us with the human race. Thus, when the earth is barren with an unproductive harvest, famine makes no distinction; thus, when with the invasion of an enemy any city is taken, captivity at once desolates all; and when the serene clouds withhold the rain, the drought is alike to all; and when the jagged rocks rend the ship, the shipwreck is common without exception to all that sail in her; and the disease of the eyes, and the attack of fevers, and the feebleness of all the limbs is common to us with others, so long as this common flesh of ours is borne by us in the world.⁴

Cyprian understood Paul’s warning against grieving like those without hope (1 Thess. 4:13) to mean that Christians should not grieve at all.⁵

Christian care of those afflicted by the plague can be contrasted with the way many responded to the persecution unleashed by the emperor Decius in 250. Cyprian recalled, ‘Many were conquered before the battle, prostrated before the attack.’⁶ Decius, who like most tyrants, saw himself as a saviour and bringer of peace,⁷ desired a revival of the state cults. According to Cyprian, many, indeed most, Christians were ready to oblige him, and the bishop graphically described the panic: ‘They ran to the market-place of their own accord; freely they hastened to death, as if they had formerly wished it, as if they would embrace an opportunity now given which they had always desired.’⁸ Presumably, if only a minority held firm in dealing with persecution, only a minority showed similar bravery in dealing with the plague.

Rodney Stark, who is a sociologist rather than a historian, considers that plagues in the ancient world made a significant contribution to the expansion of Christianity.⁹ Pagan morale was devastated, its interpersonal attachments were greatly weakened, and its survival rates were significantly lower than that of Christians (despite what Cyprian said). The emperor, Julian the Apostate (who was given that nickname after his death) lamented as he neared death in 363 that the pagans readily abandoned the sick, while the Christians looked after sick, and even the pagan sick. Unwittingly, Julian provides evidence for the Christian testimony.

Around AD541, the bubonic plague broke out under the reign of the emperor Justinian, who was the Eastern Emperor from 527–565. Justinian himself caught it but survived. Whilst it is now treatable, recovery was more unusual in the ancient and medieval world. It is customary to say that tens of millions died and that the Empire never recovered, and that it led to eight years of famine. Originating in Ethiopia, the plague seems to have devastated Europe, Asia, North Africa, and Arabia, and those who survived probably developed some kind of immunity, although that is not certain.

As far as the earlier period is concerned, it is clear that many Christians, whether as individuals or through the deacons of the Church, looked after those in distress. The sick and dying were nursed, most often by Christians, whereas the pagans tended to abandon those who might infect them.

The Medieval Period

Having travelled through Asia and North Africa—but not originating in China as sometimes thought¹⁰—what was probably bubonic plague ravaged Europe in the fourteenth century. The Black Death, to use its later name, was especially severe in 1347–1348 when probably well over 30%, and even up to 50% or more, of Europe’s population was wiped out. The plague would die down in the winter, only to re-emerge in the warmer months, so the sunnier Mediterranean societies in the south suffered most. The medieval chronicler, Jean Froissart, commented that ‘a third of the world died’, although that may draw on the Apocalypse as much as sober history.¹¹ Paintings and drawings of Le Danse Macabre dealt with the universality of death, while in 1582, over two centuries after the worst plague, Pieter Bruegel painted The Triumph of Death. Europe could not forget what had taken place.

A common epitaph was ‘As I am, so you shall be.’ Black humour was common. Ring Around the Rosey is a song about the plague, the rosey being the reddish ring that preceded the skin blotch. Tumours grew mainly in the armpit and groin, to be followed by acute fever and vomiting of blood. The Pied Piper story may derive from about this time. Chaucer, who was born around 1340, mentions shops that sold rat poison, but the rat flea would look to human beings when there were not enough black rats upon which to feed.

The poet, Petrarch, has left a famous description of the plague. Writing from Parma to his brother in a monastery in Monrieux (who with his dog had alone survived to guard the monastery when 34 or 35 others had succumbed), Petrarch lamented:

Alas! My beloved brother, what shall I say? How shall I begin? Whither shall I turn? On all sides is sorrow; everywhere is fear. I would, my brother, that I had never been born, or, at least, had died before these times. How will posterity believe that there has been a time when without the lightnings of heaven or the fires of earth, without wars or other visible slaughter, not this or that part of the earth, but well-nigh the whole globe has remained without inhabitants. When has any such thing been even heard or seen; in what annals has it ever been read that houses were left vacant, cities deserted, the country neglected, the fields too small for the dead and a fearful and universal solitude over the whole earth?…Oh happy people of the future, who have not known these miseries and perchance will class our testimony with the fables. We have, indeed, deserved these [punishments] and even greater; but our forefathers also have deserved them, and may our posterity not also merit the same…¹²

Philip Daileader comments that Petrarch could make receiving a parking ticket sound tragic,¹³ but the Black Death remains the most devastating natural disaster in human history. The death-obsessed poet came to see the recurring plague as ‘a sign of the divine anger at human crimes. If those crimes were to end, the divine punishments would grow less or milder.’¹⁴

The practice of quarantining the sick was prominent in Venice, which kept newly arrived sailors in isolation for thirty days, later extended to forty days. In Poland and Milan, the practice was reasonably successful. Flight from infected areas was the primary response, and bad air was often blamed. The young suffered in higher proportion than the old, and women more than men.¹⁵ King Alfonso XI of Castile died, as did Boccaccio’s mistress, while the historian, Giovanni Villani of Florence, died without finishing a sentence he was writing. Three Archbishops of Canterbury died August 1348 – August 1349. Peasants dropped dead in the fields, and in Austria, wolves came down to attack sheep but fled back into the wilderness. The stench of dead bodies could be quite overwhelming.¹⁶ Boccaccio’s well-known quip is that people ‘ate lunch with their friends and dinner with their ancestors in paradise.’

A bishop in England permitted confessions to be made to laymen and even laywomen, while Pope Clement VI (1342–1352) granted remission of sins to all who died of the plague, as there were few priests to give the last rites.¹⁷ He finally came to prohibit processions as they spread the plague. The pope’s physician, Guy de Chauliac, saw so much abandonment of sick people that he declared, ‘Charity was dead.’¹⁸ Still, not all charity was lost, and the nuns of the Hôtel Dieu in Paris tended the dying with sweetness and courage.¹⁹

Flagellants, usually in groups of 200–300 but sometimes more, paraded through the towns of Europe, and punished themselves with whips, for their own sins and the sins of their communities. They were anti-clerical and often attacked the Jews. Pogroms were known before the Black Death, but there were massacres of Jews in Languedoc and Catalonia, and then across the Germanic lands and France as Jews were blamed for the plague. In many places, such as Mainz, Erfurt, Antwerp, and Brussels, entire Jewish communities perished. Pope Clement VI did his best to protect the Jews from accusations such as the blood libel. However, says Barbara Tuchman, ‘The period of the Jews’ medieval flourishing was over.’²⁰

To many, it seemed to be the prelude to the end of the world. Medicine was linked to astrology and so looked to the planets to explain events. The Pestilence did lead to the invention of the beak-like mask with glass eyes and two breathing nostrils filled with herbs and flowers to ward off miasmas. In September 1348, the pope spoke of the ‘pestilence with which God is afflicting the Christian people’, while Piers Plowman declared that ‘these pestilences were for pure sin’.²¹ Oddly, Chaucer barely mentions it. It was said that the manufacturers of dice turned to the making of rosary beads, but others thought that morals declined. In 1350, the Archbishop of Canterbury lamented that priests had become ‘infected by insatiable avarice’, and were charging excessive fees and neglecting souls.²² Still, 1350 was declared a Jubilee Year, and pilgrims flocked in large numbers to Rome, although the Pope was in Avignon. The impact of the Great Mortality can hardly be overestimated, and Barbara Tuchman refers to it as ‘the equivalent of the First World War’.²³

The Reformation

Zurich

On 27 December 1518, Ulrich Zwingli moved to Zurich, whose bishop lived in Constance. It was at Zurich that Zwingli undertook his life’s work. Zurich was a prosperous town of about 7,000. Birnbaum estimates that there were about 5,000 in the city and 60,000 in the Zurich state.²⁴ Zurich, however, had a poor reputation, and Bullinger once commented that ‘Zurich was to Switzerland what Corinth was to Greece’.²⁵ Zwingli himself had already fallen sexually in both Glarus and Einsiedeln. He claimed that he avoided married women, virgins, and nuns, but lamented that he was like a dog returning to its vomit.²⁶

In 1519, Zwingli abandoned the Church’s lectionary, and began to preach through Scripture—Matthew, then Acts, 1 Timothy, Galatians, 2 Timothy, 1 and 2 Peter, and Hebrews. In the same year, Zwingli began to read Luther (he had already read much of Erasmus). It was also 1519 when a plague devastated Zurich’s population, with 2,000–3,500 succumbing to it, including Zwingli’s brother Andrew. Zwingli himself had caught the disease and almost died.

His ‘plague hymn’ dates from this time, with its twelve stanzas neatly divided—four written as the disease struck, the next four as his health deteriorated, and the last four on his recovery.²⁷ Beginning with ‘Help me, O Lord, my strength and rock; Lo, at the door I hear death’s knock’, it works through to his healing, but also the realisation that death will come, perhaps ‘in deeper gloom’. Its triumphant conclusion is: ‘But, let it come; with joy, I’ll rise, And bear my yoke straight to the skies.’ Clearly, Zwingli underwent a sobering spiritual experience.

Wittenberg

In 1527, Martin Luther stayed behind in Wittenberg as plague threatened the town. To Rev Dr Johann Hess, pastor at Breslau, Luther sought to answer the question as to whether one may flee from a deadly plague. He argued that one could not place the same burden on everyone: ‘Peter could walk upon the water because he was strong in faith. When he began to doubt, and his faith weakened, he sank and almost drowned.’ He heaped up many examples from Scripture as to the lawfulness of fleeing, from pestilence, famine, sword, and wild beasts (Ezek. 14:21). However, he took all sensible precautions to protect his own life and not to spread the plague, as he considered it wrong to tempt God. Leviticus 13–14 shows that separation and quarantining are not contrary to the Word of God. Nevertheless, he added: ‘If my neighbour needs me, however, I shall not avoid place or person but will go freely’.²⁸

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