Religion, Spirituality, and the Black Death
In Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, he writes, “… the People, from what Principle I cannot imagine, were more addicted to Prophesies, and Astrological Conjurations, Dreams, and old Wives Tales, than ever they were before or since…” (Defoe 2003). When examining documents during the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries about the plague, one can see that there was a variety of explanations regarding who or what was to blame for disease. Although the idea of contagion was just beginning to emerge and circulate in scientific communities, a prominent idea among many, as seen in Defoe’s quote, is the idea that humanity itself is to blame for the Black Death. In this paper, I will argue that many believed humanity was so sinful that God either was the cause of the plague or was simply letting it happen, and therefore humanity needs to do penance for their sins to end the spread of disease. I will explore Defoe’s book A Journal of the Plague Year as well as fourteenth-century documents from John Aberth’s The Black Death: The Great Mortality of 1348-1350 that demonstrate how people were determined to find “signs” in the sky or in the world around them that showed that the end was near, as well as how they decided to commit penance once they decided that humanity was being punished by God.