of every law, human and Divine, vanished. Most of those who were in office had been carried off by the plague, or lay sick, or had lost so many members of their families that they were unable to attend to their duties, so that henceforth everyone acted as he thought proper. . . . Many breathed their last without a friend to soothe their dying pillow. Instead of sorrow and mourning appeared indifference, frivolity and mirth, this being considered, especially by the females, as conducive to health. Among the middle classes, and even more among the poor, the misery was still greater. Poverty or negligence induced most of these to remain in their dwellings or in the immediate neighbourhood, and thus they fell by thousands, many ending their lives in the streets. The stench of putrefying corpses was often the first indication to their neighbours that more deaths had occurred. The survivors, to preserve themselves from infection, generally had the bodies taken out of their houses and laid before the doors, where the early morn found them in heaps, exposed to the affrighted gaze of the passing stranger. A fearful degradation of morals fell upon all classes; the churches were deserted, for often there were no priests to perform the sacred offices; the sittings of Parliaments and law-courts were suspended, and amongst the mass of the people 'Every man for himself!' became the order of the day. Doubtless there were many instances of heroism and self-sacrifice, but they, again, added lustre by reason of their isolation in the dead level of panicstricken self-interest that everywhere prevailed. The monasteries were overwhelmed by the innumerable legacies which flowed in upon them on all hands; and many were forced to close their doors and to refuse all admittance, in order to exclude the crowds of conscience-stricken penitents who thronged outside, beseeching admittance to the religious life and desirous of passing such days on earth as might remain to them in expiation of their past sins. In this terrible environment the steadfast devotion and utterly selfless bravery of the Mendicant Orders shines with a splendid and sustained brilliance. In the Hôtel Dieu in Paris, where in the worst days of the pestilence more than 500 died daily, the Sisters of Charity carried on their noble work of tending the sick without the smallest regard for their own safety. They paid a fearful price for their devotion; yet although the entire staff was decimated, not once, but many times, there was never any lack of fresh candidates. Strong in the faith and fearless of death, the Sisters sought only to alleviate as far as was possible the sufferings of others. The Franciscan and Dominican friars laboured no less splendidly; and the enormous number of those who succumbed during the plague tells only too clearly how widespread had been their activities, and how steadfastly they had remained in the most grievously afflicted areas, inspiring by the example of their fortitude and consoling by their boundless charity. Their memory has been preserved with due admiration and respect by many historians. 5 In powerful reaction against the widespread abandonment of restraint and the despairing, mirthless frivolity of the people, there reappeared, on a hitherto unprecedented scale, the standards of the Flagellants, otherwise known as the Brotherhood of the Cross. In 1349 200 Flagellants entered Strasbourg, where they were received with the warmest welcome. They announced that they had taken upon their shoulders the sins of the people, that by their prayers and mortifications the wrath of God might be turned away and the pestilence averted. Their example spread with even greater rapidity than had the plague itself. At Spires 200 children, all under twelve years of age, formed themselves into a brotherhood and, amidst the wildest applause of the inhabitants, set forth on the customary pilgrimages. Bands of Flagellants sprang up all over Europe, and everywhere the shining eyes of those who witnessed their penances told of the gratitude, admiration and approval of the people. Houses were placed at their disposal; women embroidered banners for them; the ringing of church bells announced the glad tidings of their arrival in a town. They marched through the streets [says Hecker ] in well-organised processions, with leaders and singers, their heads covered as far as the eyes, their looks fixed on the ground, accompanied by every token of the deepest contrition and mourning. They were robed in sombre garments, with red crosses on the breast, back and cap, and bore triple scourges, tied in three or four knots, in which points of iron were fixed. Tapers and magnificent banners of velvet and cloth of gold were carried before them. Penance was performed twice every day; in the morning and evening they went abroad in pairs, singing psalms, amid the ringing of the bells; and when they arrived at the place of flagellation, they stripped the upper part of their bodies and put off their shoes, keeping on only a linen dress, reaching from the waist to the ankles. They then lay down in a large circle, in different positions according to the nature of their crime the adulterer with his face to the ground, the perjurer on one side, holding up three of his fingers, etc. and were then castigated, some more and some less, by the master, who ordered them to rise in words of a prescribed form. Upon this they scourged themselves, amid the singing of psalms and loud supplications for the aversion of the plague, with genuflexions and other ceremonies, of which contemporary writers give various accounts; and at the same time constantly boasted of their penance, that the blood of their wounds was mingled with that of the Saviour. The enormous enthusiasm with which the revival of the Brotherhood had at first been greeted soon turned to indifference, and then to dismay. In the earlier months they had behind them the public opinion of the vast majority, and any interference with 5 See the fine tribute in Lea's History of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages, Book I., chap. vi. 6 Op. cit., p. 34 ff. their activities was warmly resented. Two Dominican priests, who attempted to interrupt one of their meetings and to reason with the ringleaders, were set upon with stones; one managed to effect his escape, but the other was stoned to death. But the total lack of directing authority in the movement led speedily to abuses and corruptions. Cases of housebreaking occurred. In Strasbourg the Flagellants undertook to raise a dead child to life; their failure to do so did a great deal to destroy the prestige that they had enjoyed in that city. In some cases the wandering bands degenerated into mere gangs of hooligans, who displayed no regard for the rights of person or property. But long before any such subversion had occurred the natural spokesman of the conscience of Europe had delivered his verdict, and the strength of the sect had been broken. On October 20, 1349, Pope Clement VI. issued a Bull in which he pointed out that the Brotherhood of the Cross had the sanction of no ecclesiastical authority for their actions; all bishops were to use every means in their power to suppress and discourage them, and in cases of disorder and disturbance of the peace the aid of the secular arm was to be sought. Philip VI., acting on the advice of the Sorbonnel, at once forbade their presence in France. Manfred, King of Sicily, threatened them with punishment by death. The Emperor Charles IV. took the strictest measures to ensure their suppression. Finally, when 100 Flagellants arrived at Avignon from Basle and desired admission to the city, the Pope forbade their public penance, which he had not authorised, and, on pain of excommunication, prohibited throughout Christendom the continuance of these fanatical pilgrimages. If we cast a veil over his extraordinary lack of judgment in the matter of the Jubilee, we find much to admire and applaud in the conduct of the Supreme Pontiff whilst the plague was at its height. When all around him, from the highest to the lowest, were losing their heads and giving way to panic and excitement, Clement manifested at all times a balanced sanity of judgment and a temperate wisdom which did much to prevent excesses and to preserve a true sense of proportion amongst rulers, statesmen and bishops. It was largely owing to his prompt and vigorous action that the dangerous, hysterical excitement produced by the activities of the Flagellants was checked. During the fearful persecution of the Jews which followed on the eagerly adopted suggestion that by poisoning the wells they had been deliberately instrumental in spreading the plague he issued two Bulls in which he emphatically testified to their innocence and called on all Christians to cease their disgraceful cruelties. As in the matter of the Flagellants, the execution of his orders was vigorously ' Lea, op. cit., Book II., chap. iv. taken in hand by the secular princes. In Avignon the Pope personally saw to it that the Jews were not molested. The poor people of that city were literally provided for by the fruits of his bounty. Physicians afforded such succour and relief as was possible amongst them, and the salaries of these doctors were paid by the Pope himself. Thanks to his eager, boundless generosity, Avignon was probably better served with medical attendance than any other city in Europe. An estimate of the effects of the Black Death would involve a consideration of the whole of European history from the middle of the fourteenth to the end of the sixteenth century. It is evident that even the tremendous revolution which the Renaissance effected in the world of thought, even the joint impulses of the capture of Constantinople and the discovery of America, even the political upheavals which accompanied and, to some extent, enslaved the Reformation-even these phenomena are totally inadequate to account for the completeness with which mediæval civilisation collapsed. If that collapse is minimised, or if an attempt is made to insist that between the years 1350 and 1600 Europe was rising proudly from triumph to triumph rather than sinking dismally into abysses of pride and self-interest, then the history of the mediæval times becomes totally unintelligible, a tissue of contradictions and irreconcilable paradoxes. If a lowwater mark is to be postulated, it must be placed probably during the first half of the eighteenth century and not in the years immediately preceding the revolt of Luther. The Reformation, using the term in its widest and most comprehensive sense, was really inaugurated by the pestilence of the Black Death; and the peasants' wars of 1381 were the first concrete indication of the tremendous disintegration that had already been effected. Only very gradually are the Protestant nations of Europe coming to realise something of the grandeur of the Middle Ages; only very gradually are they becoming conscious that the age of St. Thomas, St. Francis, St. Dominic, Dante, Roger Bacon, Innocent III. and Giotto, the age of the Gothic cathedrals and the age of troubadours and meistersingers, represented, in every department of human activity, a pinnacle of attainment which subsequent ages have not yet approached within measurable distance. A. L. MAYCOCK. 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